***Zorakk

Future Shock
Third version

Chapter Four
Cops!!

Quark contacted him as he had promised and relayed the news that Jamal was indeed Orion Syndicate. After being appraised of the gonjah attack, Quark asked Pete to come see him when he got back to Deep Space Nine. A chill went up Pete's spine as he considered the possibility that his supposed 'lead' on the Orion Pirate was an illusion and Jamal, or his agents were within a few dozen klicks of Xarthe-Hove. If that was correct, Pete's response was to put some distance between himself and Jamal, and not be cought in the Bajorian outback in a duel to the death with two dozen pirates and an armed corvette of some kind. Of course the entire question was moot anyway. Because of safety interlocks, the Tomahawk's engines would not ignite unless the biosphere was pressurized. And with a two and a half by three meter [8 x 10 feet] hole blasted in the outer hull and the structrual damage to the inner hull causing the inner airlock hatch not to engage correctly; the biosphere could not be pressurized.

Pete had been meaning to speak to Quark about getting a Star Fleet over-ride super charger installed in his truck's engine arm/fire igniter circuit. After all a runabout, which is about the same size and engine configuration as my Tomahawk couldn't afford to have its engines go off line just because of a hull breech. Such a thing might easily happen in combat, leaving the runabout drifting helpless in space. Of course in the case of a civilian truck, it was a safety feature, mandated by Terran Imperial Law… seemed like the long nose of the Emperor was stuck into everything these days.

They had been uncommonly lucky in choosing the small rural Bajorian village of Xarthe-Hove to refuel and spend the night in, as they had an excellent doctor, a retired Star Fleet Officer, Doctor Julian Bashir who had chosen to settle on Bajor after a long and rewarding career in Star Fleet. In addition to Dr. Basir, Xarthe-Hove also boasted a first rate Artificer and Tinker, Tal Narkotz. The doctor had looked over David about eight that morning and pronounced him fit, and so he and Bryan spent the rest of the morning playing with the village kids. Meanwhile, the artificer, worked on the airlock. He wasn't able to make it vacuum tight but there was no longer a gaping wound in the side of Dream Walker, and he installed a rats nest of jumpers around the seal sensors so that the Tomahawk's engines would fire up. The timing was not perfect and you could tell something was dreadfully wrong by the sound of the antigrav suspensors and turbo-ion drive. I'd have to go to the port at Kilkamec City to get it 'really' repaired and to get the space worthiness certification.

So at 12:23:54 Local time, with the primary sun at zenith, they started out for Kilkamec City. Kilkamec City was only a couple hundred or so kilometers to the north, it should have been a quick eight or ten minute atmospheric hop. However, something Tal Narkotz had done – or hadn't done – or a leftover side effect of the gonjah's shapcharge was interfering with the Tomahawk's ability to stay airborne as the puttered along at about 300 kph [190 mph] and barely 600 meters [2,000 feet] above the average terrain. Pete was using his antigrav pads, normally a very limited system designed for maneuvering close to the ground in parking operations at a starport. The Dream Walker's engineering computer and everything under its command didn't like the idea. The result was Pete had to keep an iron grip on his manual hydrolic flight controls, unable to shift any of the responcibility for keeping them airborn and moving in the right direction to the computer.

"WARNING!" lcars intoned in its flat slightly feminine artificial voice. "Land immediately. Suspensors are over heating."

'Of course they were,' Pete thought. 'They were not designed to take the whole mass of the Tomahawk without the backups from the main drive which was only marginally working.' Pete switched off the alarm circuit. Over the four years he had been pushing photons on board the Dream Walker, Pete had learned just about how far he could push things without causing a catastrophic failure. They were almost to the outskirts of Kilkamec City.

Dream Walker was again flying through the foothills skirting the highlands of the Undarri Ridge that formed a spinal ridge cutting off Da'Kor Province from the rest of the continent. Some of the peaks even here in the foothills reached altitudes of 4,000 meters [13,000 feet] and were spectacular. The continent-spanning Undarri Ridge had been formed three hundred million years ago when two continental plates had smashed into each other, throwing up the spectacular mountain range that now served to bisect the continent into two unequal parts, northwest and southeast; with the major portion of the continent in the southeast.

Kilkamec City was located in the foothills at about a thousand meters [3,300 feet] above mean sea level on the northwestern slope. Running out from the Undarri Ridge to the west was the line of volcanic mountians called the Line of Fire that shielded the southern approaches to Kilkamec City. This meant all approaches from the south had to go up and over the Fire Mountains, through 'bust-ass pass' and down a narrow winding canyon to Kilkamec's starport. The turbulence was pretty severe. The Tomahawk bounced and swayed at the whim of the winds much more so than an air taxi, even at the best of times, and with the antigrav suspensors redlined, this was a very bumpy ride.

David was white-knuckling it, clinging to the flight engineer's acceleration harness in the left rear of the control cab, this was only his second planetary hop aboard a light truck, and this one was under less than optimal conditions. Bryan, on the other hand, was enjoying the turbulence, whooping it up as though he were on a roller coaster fun ride. David looked a little green.

Dream Walker had made it into the lower treeline of the foothills known as the Murky Wood, before Pete lost the main antigravs and had to hurriedly engage the backups as they plunged a couple of hundred meters in a few seconds. The weather conditions were such here that low-laying, thick fog banks were common in the area, thus the name Murky Wood. Pete was able to stabilize the Tomahawk's flight field a bare hundred fifty meters above the cold waters of a mountain lake, which according to the map of Bajor was Lake Tetekasaar, a left over from the last glacial epoch on Bajor a million years in the past. Lake Tetekasaar was fed by the Teneetee River, which originated far in the southeast peaks. The Teeneetee finally wound its way down to Lake Tetekasaar and crashed down a 100 meter [330 feet] falls into the 20 by 55 kilometer [12½ x 34 miles] lake, which was dotted with islands of various sizes.

After locating a wide stretch of sand on the western shore of the lake, Pete hovered the Tomahawk a dozen meters off the ground along the shore until he found what he had spotted from the air. A small, out of the way cove about a kilometer wide with steep cliffs surrounding the western quadrent, which seemed virtually deserted. By this time the Tomahawk's small fusion reactor was redlined at 120% and the Engineering Christmas Tree was awash in red danger indicators, Pete pulled the Tomahawk quickly over a concrete slab which had probably been the foundation of a building in the distance past, and let it settle onto its hydraulics and cut the main power.

On a large plateau only about two dozen kilometers further down slope was our goal, Bajor's major starport.

"Well, here we are," Pete said "Thank you for flying Air Pete…"

"I think I want my money back…" David said grinning.

Pete had chosen this wide cove because of the secluded nature of its beach from the surrounding countryside, and because of the native Yukataarie trees on cliffs surrounding the cove itself towering a hundred meters into the air, spreading a foliage canopy over most of the shallow end of the cove. David and Bryan were stretching and crowding each other out of choice spots in front of the Tomahawk's forward viewports, trying to see everything about outside.

"Let's go swimming!" Bryan pleaded. Living a good part of his life on a small asteroid moon under a pressure dome, Bryan had never been in a body of water larger than a bathtub, and now he took every opportunity to make up for lost time. David was also very enthusiastic about swimming.

"Hmmn," Pete said. "I think it's probably much too cold for that," he said, pointing to the drifts of snow that covered perhaps a third of the ground in splotches patches, mostly under the huge tree's canopies where the sun didn't get to.

"Well, then can we play in the snow?" Bryan begged.

"I guess so, we'll have to wait for the ion turbochargers to cool off before we can get airborne again. We ought to make it in one more hop."

"Yyaahh!" David agreed.

The outside temperature monitor showed it to be barely +2°C [36°F], and so both boys got a chance to try out the new parkas that had been bought on Ventax II. David's was neon red with gold accents, while Bryan's was metallic blue with silver accents. Both were designed for maximum visibility in either a rural or an urban setting. Once in their parkas, both boys stood by impatiently as the airlock cycled open. It took a lot longer than normal because of the bypasses and spotwelds. Finally though the inner lock hatch was open and both boys were out and down the gangway before Pete could do more than caution them not to wonder too far off.

Pete grabbed his old Marine fieldjacket, shrugged into it and followed the boys down the egress ramp. "Crom! How I hate the cold!!" Pete muttered just as a snowball inpacted square on his chest.

"Why?" Bryan asked. "This is fun!"

"Okay, okay, I know +2°C [36°F] isn't really cold… I know that… boy do I know that," Pete said. "My platoon pulled a month's duty in a search and destroy operation chasing out the last remnants of a Jem-Ha'darr Invasion force on Hoth – an arctic world rich in mineral wealth. Geeze that was lousy duty, a real bug hunt for suspected hostile xts."

"Sounds exciting," David said.

"Don't get me started," Pete laughed. "Hoth was a real gem of a world, the highest the mercury ever got there was -25°C [-13°F] with tornadic winds. Because of some typo, Hoth was listed as Class M – not class K {which it should have been imho} meaning within limits that humans could survive on it without massive technological assistance. HAH! Eskimos maybe! The upshot was we went in with just the normal Class M cold weather gear, parkas, long johns, etc – and none of the things that could have made the month's patrol of the glacial outback at least bearable, like heated power armor and such. Boy am I glad I don't have to put up with sfmc bughunts anymore!! Up yours Gunny."

David and Bryan looked at each other and shrugged. It sounded like a perfectly acceptable adventure to them …

The terrain they were in was rather like a glade, with both the giant Yukataarie trees and their much smaller, but more numerous cousins, the Tarmarakk. The Yukataarie tree can reach heights of 300 meters [1,000 feet] and be as much as sixty meters [200 feet] in circumference at the base, their canopies can cover a half kilometer [one-third of a mile] or more. These local specimens were perhaps half that size. The Tarmarakk, its cousin had the same overall mushroom shape, with its foliage canopy fully two-thirds of the way up its rough bark but were uniformly under fifty meters tall. The Tarmaraak leaf was built to catch every photon that landed on it, an evolutionary adaption to their habitat which they shared with the Yukataarie trees, who because of their superior height and canopy extent got first call on all the solar radiation coming to them, the Tarmarakks had to make due with the Yukataarie left overs, and so they were 'engineered' to use every stray photon of ir or visible light that hit them. This resulted in virtual twilight at noon in dense stands of these trees – as very little light got through the Tarmaraak canopy.

Locally this meant that although the overall air temperature was above freezing, there were still sizable patches of snow under these trees. The land sloped up gradually from the lake shore, where the Tomahawk was parked, and into the Yukataarie and Tarmaraak trees, which slowly became denser the further you moved away from the lake, and into the Murk Wood. Along the lake was an old blacktop road which showed signs of being still in use [potholes had been filled in within the past year] but not frequently [sand and occasional snow drifts across the road]. A few dozen meters south of the concrete slab [a pleasure boat launching chute?] where Dream Walker now sat, this blacktop veered into the wooded area. And it was along this deserted road that I was now strolling, cautioning the boys not to stray to far into the woods around us – as I had no idea of what type of wild life might be present.

Unexpectedly, Pete's comm-web phone rang. He stared at the small piece of electronics in his parka's top pocket. 'Who the hell do I know on Bajor?' Pete wondered. It rang again. I plucked the unit out of my breast pocket and pressed the 'accept transmission' button.

"Hello?"

"Is this Pete Reynolds?"

"Yeah, who wants to know?"

"I think you know who this is," the voice on the other end was chillingly calm. "You have something of mine that I want back… a certain 11-year-old boy."

"Jamal," Pete snarled.

"See, you do have some limited intelligence. Now show me that you're really smart and return David Pasce back to me… or they'll be real trouble."

"Oh there will be trouble, but its all going to land right in your backyard." Pete disconnected and threw the phone into the woods. If Jamal had traced that number it was useless to him anyway, and if he were to continue to use it the billing records would act like a huge neon arrow pointing out their exact location for Jamal. Thinking about him reminded Pete of the words of the old Constable at Xarthe-Hove about the Gonjah's originating in the 'high country.' Pete quickly hurried back to Dream Walker and got his old sfmc service phaser pistol and made sure it had a fully charged photonic-core powerpack in it, and literately ran back the hundred meters [300 feet] or so to where the boys were.

They didn't see any Gonjah's or Jamal however or any other wild life bigger than a bol and the time really flew by until it was nearly 15:00:00, soon Pete had virtually forgotten about the disturbing comm-web call. The sun was bright and the boys were relaxed and having little boy fun. After the initial grumbling about how it was colder than a witch's tit, Pete began to relax and even joined in a round of snowball fighting – although he was cold as hell, the boys were having so much fun that he began to realize that they would probably be here for the night. The boys were having so much fun they would mutiny if he tried to pull them away now.

Then he looked up. He heard laughter approaching. Heaving himself up from the hollow in the snow that he had spent most of the afternoon fine tuning until it was as comfortable as I could make a mound of frozen water, Pete shielded his eyes against the glare of the Bajor Prime sun on the snow of the glade and looked toward the sound of treble voices shouting and laughing. It was indeed a couple of boys about David and Bryan's age, accompanied by a man. The eldest of the two was maybe ten and the other perhaps seven. They both wore thick parkas so it was difficult to see what their overall bodies looked like, but it was a good bet that as Bajorians they were slim and athletic. Both had walnut-brown hair and those frail Bajorian features that made them look like they might blow away in a strong wind. Neither was skinny but rather they both were thin in a sort of muscular way, like nearly all Bajorian kids, boys and girls alike.

Their voices carried on the wind like a chorus of angels. Both boys carried a large multi-person sled, almost a toboggan, between them and were laughing and half running, half stumbling up the slope towards us. Behind them walked a man with a load of his own, a large canvas bag and a portable snow shelter.

And they were headed toward Pete and the boys.

Pete casually watched them as the party approached and waited till they set up their camp area. He watched as the new arrivals set up their 'basecamp' on the sand maybe twenty meters [65 feet] away. The man looked over toward Pete and waived. Pete returned the waive and the Bajorian father returned to getting his boys ready to frolic in the snow.

Within minutes, Bryan realized that the others were there and nudged David. The boys came over to Pete and stood watching the newcomers. "Why don't you go play with them for a while you guys?" Pete said. He was anxious for David and Bryan to have as much contact with kids their own age as possible. The loving attention of an adult was necessary for a human child to grow into healthy adulthood, but so was contact and play interaction with members of their own peer-group.

"I don t know," David said slowly. Over the past year, life had not been kind to David and he tended to look at other people, even kids, with suspicion.

"Come on!" Bryan said, tugging at David. "It'll be fun."

"I dunno…"

"You can't just stay over here and ignore them," Pete said. "They'll be insulted, Bajorians are very outgoing people."

"Well…." David said still hesitant. Bryan had already started over toward them.

"You didn't have problems with the kids at Xarthe-Hove," Pete reminded him. "Go on! Have fun!" Pete said squeezing David's shoulders.

Bryan made his way over to the boys, with David a few steps behind. The Bajorian kids stoped their snow preparations and looked at the approaching strangers. All four boys came together in a knot of child-flesh and chatted for a bit before they all ran off to play.

Pete watched the boys play a bit and looked over to the Bajorian man. He was also watching the boys and he had a smile on his face. Pete had one of those flashes of intuition that comes to boylovers infrequently but which is normally correct. Pete thoughtthe the Bajorian loved his boys as much as Pete loved Bryan and David. 'No surprise there,' Pete thought; and maybe even in the exact same manner. Pete decided to take a leap of faith and walked over to the Bajorian setting up a portable shelter.

"Hello! My name is Pete Reynolds," Pete said.

"Hi, I am Vareen Zahbadr. Your boys seem very friendly. I am glad that my sons have found new friends." Vareen seemed a bit casual to Pete, even for a Bajorian, but it was refreshing.

"Friendly? Yes they are that, but I worry they don't have enough friends their own age."

"You too, uh?"

We laughed at this and shook hands.

"I haven't seen you here before Pete. Are you Star Fleet off of ds9?"

"No, Vareen, I am a trucker by trade, and ds9 is a regular stop for me. This is my first time to this place however. We found it by accident… literately."

Vareen's eye brows raised in unspoken question.

"We had some trouble with the truck's airlock, I was taking it it Kilkamec for maintenance when everything started over heating, and we had to set down here – and of course the boys had to go play in the snow."

"Oh, then that must be your Tomahawk up the road." Vareen commented.

"Yup. You've got a good eye. Not many ground-pounders know the difference between a Tomahawk and a Star Fleet runabout."

"Har!" Vareen laughed. "Don't I know it. I'm a nuclear drives mechanic. I own my own shop at the Kilkamec Astral Port. Problem's with the airlock you said? I'll bet you've got some kind of wiring horror installed to over-ride the engine lockouts."

I blushed. The operation Vareen had just described and old Narkotz had done, was of course, illegal. And even though necessary to get the Tomahawk to a service port, it would still generate a stiff fine of 100 bars of gold-pressed latinum – if Vareen wanted to be a butthead.

"Don't worry, half my customers have some kind of illegal gizmo or gadget, or have defeated some kind of registration device on their ships. I never bother about it."

"Sounds like you're the guy I want to talk to," I said.

"Want me to take a quick look now?" Vareen asked. "The boys are safe, both of mine are wilderness safe and life-guard rated."

Pete paused. Vareen's comment about his kids being life-guard rated brought up several questions. He assumed David and Bryan could swim… but he didn't really know. It pointed up how much Pete had to learn about his two young friends.

"Uhhn… Okay, I guess so," Pete said and the two adults walked back down the two hundred or so meters [300 feet] to the Dream Walker.

Vareen spent a few minutes doing a walkaround inspection. "What happened to the air-lock? Explosive decompression?"

"No, just the opposite, a 'burglar' tried to use a shaped charge to blow the lock open. He succeeded… and twisted the hatch frame…"

"Yeah, and take a look at this warp nacelle, the support pylons are warped. I'd say that port nacelle is a full 10 degrees out of alignment. Engage your drive in this condition and … >>phooph<< no more ship, the velocity differential and thrust vector misalignment would tear this bucket apart in seconds."

"Geeze!" Pete muttered, "just how much are we talking about to get this thing ready to go superluminal?"

"Quite a lot normally," Vareen winked at me.

"Normally?" Pete asked.

"You have come along at just the exact opportune moment. I was low bidder on a salvage job last month, an old Galaxy-class starship was jumped by the Jem'Hadarr and shot full of holes, I was able to salvage it dirt cheap. I've got about 200,000 tons of assorted Star Fleet junked, but perfectly serviceably subsystems, including a warp support pylon that'll fit your Tomahawk like original equipment. I'll let you have it at cost and install it free for your kids being so kind to mine."

"You are a god." Pete said gratefully – and he was only half joking. If eternal worship and blood sacrifices were a part of Vareen's price he would have had paid it. The Tomahawk is his life's blood, if its grounded… he would soon be in the poor house.

Pete, Vareen and the boys left their day in the snow at about 19:00:00 and wondered back down the deserted, out of the way, blacktop road. The narrow beach access road wound in and out of the trees, but eventually arrived at the ramp where Pete had set the Dream Walker down on the concrete slab that was probably the foundation of a pleasure boat launching chute. Dream Walker's landing struts were equipped with wide weight distributing pads that would allow Pete to set the truck down on normal close-packed clay soil without the struts sinking into the ground – but it was always nice to find a deserted concrete slab that could be used as a parking ramp.

Vareen, and his boys, Magnon, 10, and Jazar, 7, ambled back along the ill-kept access road, beside us, plowing our way through drifts of wind-blown sand and snow that covered the road for tens of meters at a stretch. David and Bryan proudly showed their new friends around the Tomahawk; while Vareen and I sat in the ward room, sipping Romulan Ale and watched the Primary sun sink slowly toward the jagged western horizon. Pete learned that Vareen's mate had been killed in a Jem'Hadarr raid, supposedly on the starport at Kilkamec City, but somehow some of the high explosive ordnance had also laid waste to a long narrow strip of countryside that cut through a residential area when the family had lived three years ago. Luckily the boys had been with their father and in the city proper in an attack-shelter.

Meanwhile the four boys were making elaborate plans for their next meeting – perhaps even tomorrow – when the Dream Walker was in repair – and if not then, well the Dream Walker would be coming to Kilkamec City for its 10,000 hour overhaul soon at their dads's shop.

Magnon bragged that he knew all about ion engines and would show them all a few tricks while the Tomahawk's engine nacelles were slung down open for maintenance. All three of the other boys immediately grabbed up pillows off the bed in the sleeping area and chased the ten year old out of the transport.

By 19:45:00, however, Vareen decided that it was time for them to leave. None of the boys were very happy about this, but Magnon and Jazar promised to show David and Bryan their secret fort in the woods to the rear of their property and the four boys bid farewell to each other.

As the three weary but happy Terrans waved farewell to their bajoran guests. Pete decided he was way too tired to fix anything for supper, even though the ship's pantry was full now, so they called the local delivery place, and after assuring them that the call was not a prank by paying in latinum in advance, Pete managed to get them to deliver Pizza and Coca-cola to a vacant lot in the foothills with a truck parked on it.

The delivery arrived much sooner than Pete had dared to hope for and he tipped the driver extravagatly as the two boys siezed the food and took it in. They scarfed down a whole extra large supreme [with extra cheese] and gallons of sugar-water and then laid around nude patting their bellies and belching. The boys started watching isn on the entertainment system, but the boys were still very excited about making new friends, and Pete was extremely satisfied with the way in which the day had gone. The only thing he regretted was not getting all the holographs he'd planned to take – but all in all he considered it a very successful outing.

By 21:00:00 they were all three ready for bed. Pete had left the inner airlock hatch open after the pizza guy had left, despite the frigidity of the air, because he was trying to replace most of the Dream Walker's internal atmosphere – this because no matter how good the filters in a celss unit, the air on anything smaller than a heavy cruiser or passenger liner starts to smell 'canned' within a few weeks, so most skippers of small vessels take every opportunity to exchange atmospheric gasses.

Pete sleepily stumbled over to the inner hatch closing mechanism. He was just about to secure the hatch when he noticed an old Bajorian baglady nattering around outside only a few meters away. Evidently this stretch of lake shore was not as deserted as it had first appeared. Where she had come from he had no idea. There were no residential units within a kilometer [1000 yards] of where they were parked. The area gave all indications of being an older area that had been destroyed by the Kardasians during their twenty year occupation of Bajor and then had simply been left on its own for the native grasses and weeds to recover.

"Shame!" the crone yelled. "The Prophets will punish you…"

"Huh??" Pete was startled by her outburst.

"The Prophets teach us to be ashamed of nudity because it fosters carnal thoughts in the evil minds of man…"

A religious nut, Pete thought. "Get a life, lady," he said and cycled the airlock hatch closed. Both the boys were already in bed and asleep as Pete gently laid down on the bed humself and let out a huge sigh. He was feeling mellow and content with Bryan's warm little body snuggled up to mine and the sounds of the celss fans still working on the atmosphere purge. Pete drifted off to sleep without a care in the world.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

BHA-WOOGAH!! BHA-WOOGAH!! BHA-WOOGAH!!

lcars perimeter alarm jerked Pete awake. Since the run in with the gonjah Pete had taken the precaution of arming Dream Walker's external security zone which covered a ten meter [30 feet] radius from the outer hull.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

"You in the runabout! Open up! This is the police!"

"Intruder Alert. Beware! There are armed pirates with weapons set to inflict lethal wounds. Intruder Alert!" lcars anti-piracy circuits blared back at the cops.

Pete hit his head on the shelving above the bed.

"OWWW!! Goddamnit! Take it easy on the mural! I'm coming!"

Pete opened the air lock hatch and was looking into the flashlight of a very large police constable. It gave him an instant migraine.

"What?" Pete tried his best to avoid sounding belligered. He failed miserably.

"We got a call from someone about some suspicious activities in this vehicle," the cop said.

"INTRUDERS HAVE ENTERED THE BIOSPHERE!! INTRUDER ALERT!!" lcars screamed.

Godzilla drew a Bajorian disruptor pistol and waved it under his nose. "Shut that Prophet cursed thing off – or I will," he snarled.

"lcars, stand down Intruder Alert subroutine. Record all on holovid log, Star Fleet protocols. Now what the hell's going on?"

The cop did a double take at Pete as though he was unused to being questioned. Pete could see he didn't like it very much. He was waring the three stripes of a constable sergeant and the trucker guessed it had been a while since anyone asked him to account for his actions.

"You have no special rights here, offworlder. You don't ask me questions, I do the interrogation. You are the suspect."

Pete took a deep breathe. "Details constable. I can't think strait because of this headache, and I can't answer charges I don't know about."

The cop's partner, gave his sargent a big Bajorian hillbilly grin and said: "I bet this offworld scum don't think so strait at the best of times," he chuckled.

"lcars insert time frame reference marker for slander," Pete said. There was an assuring audio tone from the ship's computer.

The secondary sun had set and glancing at the chronometer, I found it was 21:45:02. We had only been asleep a bit more than a half hour. A light dusting of new snow was beginning to fall out of a pewter sky.

"Someone said there was a man undressing two small boys in here." Godzilla said, his breath clearly visible as clouds of moist air condensing in the cold crisp evening air.

"Yes there was. I was getting my kids ready for bed. They're right there passed out after a long day at the beach." Pete was starting to see how this had come about. The old bag lady, curse the evil-minded old biddy. "You can tell how pooped out they are, they are still asleep through all this harassment."

"Step out of the vehicle sir. We need to get this resolved."

Godzilla's tone of voice had changed ever so slightly alerting me to the fact that I was really in danger here. The cop was attempting to maneuver me out of lcars holovid range.

Pete stepped out and called to lcars: "lcars continue holovid surveillance, exterior sensors." The Hillbilly took his arms and told him to turn around. "lcars use external sensors to record identities of all present." Pete had noticed three gev squad cars pulled up along the beach access road, their cops were just milling around. Godzilla had bravely called for back up before assaulting my castle.

"Am I under arrest?" Pete asked the hillbilly as he put cuffs on me.

"No."

"Then get these damned things off me unless you have a real good reason to be doing this. I'm a Terran Imperial Citizen, we take our civil right very seriously."

"I know all about the Empire," the hillbilly said. "You're on Bajor now, and here we like to handcuff suspects, so just shut up till we get this straightened out."

No doubt about it, the hillbilly sounded less than friendly.

Pete watched as Godzilla and another officer climbed into Dream Walker and shook both Bryan and David.

"Wake up, kids."

Unfortunately David did. With a vengeance.

At first he slowly opened one eye and he saw a stranger standing over him. He panicked and bolted up, much better than I could have considering his height, and hammered Godzilla in the nose with a sweet straight punch. The cop fell back holding his nose. David kicked roughly at Bryan, who finally also awoke to what must have looked to him like a nightmare of armed, uniformed men grabbing at him and David. They both looked like naked trapped animals as they searched for me. Bryan saw me handcuffed and leaning face first against Dream Walker's hull. He jumped up and grabbed a holocam tripod out of the in flight storage cabinet and swung it two handed into the face of the other constable.

SMACK!

"OWCH!! Goddamn!! I'll get you, you little shit!"

Crack! Bryan swung the tripod at Godzilla which caught him with another shot upside the head.

Godzilla went down, and the other cop came out screaming – with a naked David on his back, clawing at this eyes.

"OFFICER DOWN," someone shouted and the six other cops joined in the fray! A scuffle ensued inside and outside the Tomahawk and suddenly all six cops stiffened in mid stride clawed at their skulls and screamed, colapsing like bags of laundry. They rolled on the ground, rolling from side to side bawling like babies.

David had used the psi icecycle.

Pete grew concerned for David and Bryan's safety as the angry hiss of a Bajorian disruptor blast filled my ears and left a huge scorched area on Dream Walker's mural. One of the six reinforcements had regained sufficiently to asume a kneeling firing position. His eyes were glazed over with hatred.

"Just get out of the truck and let them calm down!" Pete screamed. Of course being cops who had been challenged, they didn't listen. Soon two more cops, still groggy and shaking their heads from David's attack had pulled Bryan out of the van screaming and crying. Two others had succeeded in peeling David off the cop he had been fighting with; and had him on the ground, his wrists pinned behind him in handcuffs and a big bruiser of a cop with a knee in the middle of David's back, pinning him to the ground.

Godzilla came out of the airlock bleeding violently from several places on his face. At least this gave me some satisfaction. Godzilla was panting now, the clouds of foggy air causing a slightly rasping sound in the mountain air. "Get an ambulance to take those little MenTalt thugs to the loony bin! They can use 'em for lobotomy experiments."

"Fuck you!" Pete screamed. "They're just terrified."

Godzilla came over to Pete and yanked up painfully on his handcuffs, "I don't give a flying fuck if they're scared. They have challenged the power and the glory of the state. They must be punished. Kawdonn, get this pre-vert out of my sight!" Godzilla turned to another officer who drug me over to a patrol car and roughly dumped me in.

Pete watched in misery as Bryan fought his captors to a stand still. They had a hold of him but could not hope to control him. He was kicking and screaming and all the while a pale blue-green field of electroluminence flashed and flickered around him.

Another car drove up and a female officer waring the insignia of a castelain got out and approached Bryan.

She spent ten minutes talking to the boy to no effect. He was still fighting with all his resources and screaming obscenities Pete hadn't heard since leaving the Marines, at them. David although still pinned to the ground by a beefy cop's knee in the middle of his back was evidently not co-operating either. The constabulary castelain gave 'beefy-boy' an order and he let David up and get a blanket to wrap around himself. Although David was no longer physically struggling as Bryan was, he still was not being co-operative, I could hear him shouting:

"Reynolds, David S.; I do not speak the Bajorian language, I am a Terran Imperial Citizen, I speak Interlingo and System English."

'Good kid,' Pete thought. The equivalent of 'name, rank and serial number' only.

The castelain finally gave up and walked over to the squad car and opened the door. "Are you his father?"

"Yes, damnit!" Pete lied. "I insist you contact the Federation administrator at once."

"We need you to calm them down. We are afraid the little one will hurt himself. He's obvious a potent MenTalt." The shield was still flickering in a miniture aurorae around Bryan.

"No shit Braniac? I told the goon squad that first thing as they locked me in here. Bryan is prone to night terrors and panic attacks. David's just pissed because your nazis startled him awake with Gestapo tactics. Are you familiar with early Terran history, castelain? Does nazi and Gestapo mean any thing to you? Maybe Kardasian and Obsidian Order will communicate what I mean."

The castelain turned red but was a master of control, Pete wondered briefly if she had ever studied Sammar-zha, the Klingon exercise routine.

"Yes, Mr. Reynolds I am familiar with the Gestapo … Well I'm going to take the cuffs off because both boys are very distressed that you are in here." She took off the cuffs and told me: "I m taking a risk here. I am n supposed to take these off."

Pete heaved a deep sigh. "Look, castelain, I'll play fair with you, but you have to help. We were startled awake by your men, who then proceeded to use less than professional tactics on us. Bajor is suspossed to be a civilized world, a respected member of the Federation. The Federation code, which Bajor signed, mandates several civil rights that all Federation citizens have. One of those is the as sumption of innocence until proven guilty – proven by a court of law, not a marauding band of thugs, which is what these men have behaved as so far … You can't have constables running around on their own power trips and threatening helpless children with lobotomies and incarceration in mental hospitals withour reprisals. Both my kids are T+ MenTalts, unless you have some psionic armor in your cars, I venture to say you'd all be crispie critters now if it were not for the boys self restraint."

She actually looked shocked. Maybe Godzilla really was a rouge and she was unaware of his brutish tendencies. Pete pushed past her and headed for the ring of cops still experimenting with poking nightsticks at Bryan.

"Get the fuck out of the way!" Pete jostled a cop who turned on him snake-like and brought up his nightstick.

"Fyitz!" the castelain roared in a command voice that made all the cops jump. "Stand down! IMMEDIATELY! All of you! Let him pass!"

Fyitz snapped to attention and instantly holstered the nightstick. "At once, castelain," he said.

Pete pushed past the ring of cops trying to control Bryan.

"Get the hell back! Slime-dogs!" Pete shoved through them and they gave way, partly in confusion over the conflicts between the castelain and Godzilla. Pete knelt on the ground in front of Bryan.

"Okay, let him go," he said to the cop holding Bryan's wrist. The aurorial effect of Bryan's shield crackled and buzzed ominously around the Bajorian constible's hand. The cop looked down right relieved

"No!" Godzilla snarled, hurring forward his eyes ablaze with a crazy look.

"Last chance." Pete said to the constible trying to restrain Bryan. "Let him go!"

Pete then quickly wheeled around to face the hulking cop sargent and said in a low menacing voice as he stood glaring at the constable sergeant.

"You have behaved like a crazed weasel in a feeding frenzy! You scared the shit out of my boys and I, assaulted all three of us and refused to do the sane things necessary [and required under the Federation Code] to resolve this situation. Now you will let my son go or I will file formal charges of criminal assault under cover of authority against you and this entire flying circus in the Federation Circuit Court on ds9. You're all on holovid recorded by my ship's computers…" Pete raised his voice to include all the cops, "you could all be facing a long, long stay under the loving attention of Betazoid psych-techs at a Federation… 'loonie bin'! Or worse, the Tantulus Prison Colony." Pete stretched out the last and glared directly at Godzilla.

"By the Prophets, a shit-house lawyer," one of the constibles muttered.

"Are you threatening us?" Godzilla asked.

"No. It is a promise."

"You wouldn't dare…" Godzilla said in a challenging tone.

"Oh – try me. You think just being Bajorians will save you if my clan declares vendetta? You did notice the Star Nomad registration on my truck. If the Federation lets you off on some technicality, my clan is unlikely to agree… and we don't believe in 'rehabilitating' our enemies… we believe in disintergration."

Godzilla, for all his loutishness, had animal cunning. He stood there with clenched fists glaring at Pete.

"Let him go sergeant." The castelain said and Godzilla reluctantly nodded at the cop who released his grip on Bryan's upper arm.

Bryan flew into Pete's arms sobbing. At a hand signal from the castelain, David joined us. He was not crying, but he was still frightened. His eyes quickly darted from cop to cop and Pete imangined he was reading another salvo of psi icecycles.

"See? Nothing to it you dumb fuck," Pete said to Godzilla. "Congratulations, you've earned the right to wake up alive tomorrow."

Pete sat on the hard cold concrete with his back against the Tomahawk's rear landing strut with one boy kneeling beside him glowering at the cops and another boy sobbing in his arms for what seemed forever. When Bryan's emotions came under some resemblance of control Pete explained to the boys that these constables were investigating something and they were to cooperate with them.

"Why did they have you handcuffed?" Bryan sniffled.

"Because they thought I had hurt you and were being careful. Now you guys go with this lady and be good. Don't worry about me. I'm fine."

Pete watched as Bryan spurned her hand and walked behind David to her car. He did however take the blanket she offered to wrap up in.

The bleeding cops glared at me, as did the hillbilly senior constible. They came over to Pete and fanned out, one 30 degrees to the right the other 30 left. The rest, including Godzilla formed a loose circle around all three. The hillbilly's gun hand rested on his holstered disruptor.

"We were called here because someone thought they saw you molesting that boy. What do you have to say to that? Hmmn dirtbag."

"As I tried to tell you before. I don't know what you are talking about. I need more details, what did they say they saw?"

Godzilla looked like he was sorely tempted to grab Pete by the neck and start choking. He glanced over to where the castelain was talking to David and Bryan, then turned back to Pete.

"Look as far as I'm concerned you're a perp, a dirtbag, a filthy homo. You will tell me what happened here and I will ask the questions! NOT YOU!!"

"And as far as I'm concerned you're a fascist bully and a disgrace to honest law enforcement everywhere in the galaxy…" He wanted to say more, but things were starting to boil again and he did not want to escalate this any further. Pete took a deep cleansing breath.

"The boys and I finished playing in the snow about 19:00."

Pete pointedly left out any reference to Vareen and his kids. No need telling the coppers everything.

"We were really tired after all the fun we had today, so I ordered a pizza and we chowed down. After supper, David and Bryan were falling asleep, so I carried them over to the bed. I was flushing out the air in the Tomahawk and the airlock door was open, when I went to secure it for the evening there was an elderly Bajorian lady outside…"

"Why would someone think you were molesting the boy?"

"Easy. Prophet-paranoia. You Bajorians are all crazy…"

"Watch it off-worlder!" the hillbilly said.

"Okay, I'm sorry. It was a cheap-shot."

"Do your boys always sleep without underwear of pajamas? The person who called said they were naked."

"We all sleep in what feels right. We're not prudes and we didn't have any idea that Bajorian peeping tomasina was out there. For Christsake I thought this was an abandoned stretch of a back road with a convenient strip on concrete to park the Tomahawk on while we played in the snow."

"Then you don't know?" the hillbilly's face softened somewhat into an 'I pity you, offworlder,' kind of look.

"I have not got the slightest idea what you are talking about."

The hillbilly grimaced. "This isn't just another vacant field, off-worlder. This is a shrine, during the last days of the occupation Kardasian butchers rounded up 14,000 Bajorian children between 8 and 13 years old and brought them here and executed them all in the space of an hour, using plasma beamers. Ever had a plasma burn, earther?"

"I-I'm sorry. I really didn't know…," Pete stammered.

"That's why we took the charge seriously. If you were up here doing unspeakable things to those two boys, the Prophets would have been very angry."

"I-I see…," Pete said.

The hillbilly looked deep into me and said, "Yes, I think you do."

This effectively ended the hillbilly's participation in the questioning; but Godzilla was still not satisfied, not because of any real suspicion of any criminal act, but because he was pissed at me personally. He kept asking a bunch of annoying questions and Pete began to grow frustrated with him.

"Why don't you get those cuts taken care of? Because I am done answering your questions. So if you are going to arrest me then do it and take your chances with the consequences," Pete said.

"Sergeant!"

The castelain waved him over to a private conversation. David and Bryan looked at Pete longingly from the gev. He smiled at them and they visibly relaxed a bit.

The questioning resumed with different partners this time. The woman castelain was talking to Pete as another officer tried to talk to Bryan and David. He failed miserably. The boys virtually refused to talk to any one, with Bryan now copying David's tactic: "Reynolds, Bryan A. …"

The bleeding cop was with the paramedics getting his cuts treated as I watched Bryan sitting in the patrol car mouthing 'Name, Rank and Serial Number'.

"Mr. Reynolds, Bryan is not cooperating with the officers."

"Don't ask me. I can't tell him anything from over here. I have answered all your questions twice. This conversation is at an end. Now."

"You are being difficult sir."

"No ma'am I am not. I'm simply exercising my rights under both the Federation Charter and the Terran Constitution. You asked me questions and I have answered. Now they are beginning to repeat themselves and I am very tired. So unless you have anything new to ask, either arrest me or let us go back to sleep.

She went back to a conference with several officers and Pete waited again. David and Bryan had linked arms and were sitting in the patrol car with their arms crossed across their chests and looking like they wanted to kick something.

After what seemed like an eternity the castelain came back to the gev Pete was in. "I don't think we need to arrest anyone today. But I do want to talk to the boys some more. Will they cooperate?"

"Don't ask me. You separated me from them, and won't let me talk to them. While I understand you want to make sure I'm not influencing them, I also know that this is a traumatic experience for any kid. As of now, if they want to talk to you – they will, if not they won't. My advice is don't let them think you're trying to trick them – and don't underestimate their intelligence. They are both frighteningly bright!"

She nodded and walked back to the gev that held the boys. Pete watched as she managed to get them talking a bit. David even smiled a couple times in spite of himself. Bryan looked like a hold out though. In the end however Bryan allowed her to pick him up, and he wrapped his arms around her neck. She took David's hand and brought both boys over to Pete.

"I don't see any reason to keep you three up any longer. I am sorry for disturbing you. And constable-Sgt McGirk apologizes for scaring you Bryan."

Godzilla was glaring at her like he desperately wanted to say something, however he held his tongue.

We exchanged pleasantries before they left and I heard McGirk say to the lady castelain: "By the Prophets, he assaulted me! Me, the Arch-Vedic's proudest centurion! I want to arrest the little thug-brat! I want to see him squirm and suffer. I want…"

"You will do no such thing. He was scared and reacted in self defense. All you have is a few cuts and will have to take some ribbing about letting a little kid beat you up. He will probably have nightmares after waking up to your ugly mug……"

They argued all the way back to their cars.

The three beleagered friends went back to bed. It was nearly 23:30:00. It took quite some time to 'warm up' after their extended stay in the cold night air, and all three of them were exceptionally glad that they had other warm bodies to snuggle against. For a time, that was all they did – just lay their, snuggling.

"Pete?"

"Yes?"

"Why did they do that?" Bryan asked in a small, still frightened voice.

"Because someone thought I was molesting you when they saw that you guys were naked."

"What does that mean?" Bryan asked, "Moe-less-ting."

Pete was concerned a bit, and unsure how to proceed. How do you explain to a nine-year-old [even a really bright one] the conflicts between physical pleasure and respecting the rights of others?

"Molesting means when someone who is an adult forces a kid to do sexual things."

"Like Jamal did to me," David added.

"But that isn't what you were doing," Bryan said.

"I know. Did I force you?"

"No."

"That is the difference between what we do and what Jamal did to David," I said. "Thankfully most of the galaxy is sane, but there are places where most people think that if we do those things even when you want to – it is bad. And there it is illegal. I could go to prison if any one found out that we do those things together.

"Why is it bad? I like to do the things we do to feel good."

"Because it is the way that some people think here. I don't like it but I can't change it, that is just the way things are here whether we like it of not."

"If they are that stupid then I just won't tell anyone," Bryan said.

"I think that would be good," I said.

"But you have a license, right?" Bryan asked. "So its okay?"

"Yes, I'm what the Federation calls a licensed pedophyle."

"Pedo––what?" David asked, shifting his position in the bed so he was laying facing me and propped up on one arm.

"Pedophyle," I said. "It means someone who prefers to associate with children over adults – in all ways, including sex."

Both boys giggled. "We know," Bryan said.

"Pete, some people think what we do is criminal," David began. "They would like to put us in jail because we like to feel good. Other people like you think it's okay. How did this mixed up thing ever come to be?"

"Wow! The sixty-four Stellar question," Pete said. "In the beginning of human civilization, no one thought that children had any rights to anything, much less to be able to practice sex like adults, and the few adults who were pedophyles were severely persecuted, facing long prison terms or even death for 'playing' sexually with children."

"That wasn't very fair," Bryan said.

"No, it wasn't," Pete replied. "But when the first faster than light drives made starships possible, in the early part of the 21st century, a planet which was named Beowulf by the people who settled there was established as a colony world. Beowulf, circles Queen Alice's Star, some 20 light years from old earth,

"This colony was set up by a group of enlightened gay people from the North American Alliance. They were determined to leave all of the old sex-phobias behind and embraced the Boylovers. By 2050 Beowulf was the center of pedophylic activity in the known universe."

"A lot of the religious nuts of this time thought that the whole planet should be destroyed so that this abomination would not exist."

"They wanted to kill everyone?" David asked.

"Yup."

"Even the kids?" Douglas asked.

"Especially the kids," Pete said. "They said such things as 'kill them before they multiply'…"

"Dickheads," Bryan muttered.

"You mean that it was a planet made up of only gay people?"

"No, that wouldn't work for very long – for a lot of reasons. There were mostly straight people in the colony, The difference was that it is very expensive to set up a colony off world, and there were a lot of very rich pedophyles who helped chartered the Beowulf colony. Because of this they had a lot of political power and a lot of say in how the colony was set up. They screened the people who wanted to come to Beowulf very carefully."

"I bet they didn't let any mean people like that constable McGirk come," Bryan said, shivering involuntarily.

"No, I don't think they did, Bry," Pete said and gave him an extra hug.

"Go on with the story," David prompted, "What happened then?"

"Yes!" Bryan agreed. "Story!"

"Well, as time went on and the colony survived its first few years and began to grow, the people on Beowulf realized that they needed a constitution, just like all the other planets in the Solar Alliance."

"What was the Solar Alliance?" Bryan asked.

"The Solar Alliance was the group of planets – all colonies from either Earth or Mars – which the Earth belonged to before we met the H'Rumbians, the Kymellians, the Vulcans and others who made up the charter members of the Federation."

"Oh."

"There were of course problems in the early pioneering days of Beowulfian society. They were, after all, attempting to create an entirely new way for human beings to organize a society. Within the pedophylic community itself there were factions and divisions that all had to be reconciled. Although all pedophyles agreed that younger was better, there were those who preferred little boys, these people, like myself are called pederasts; and those who prefer little girls – I've forgotten what they call them – and on top of that there were the people who are from the René Giuon Society that advocated 'Sex before eight or its too late!'…"

"Hah!" Bryan said. "That's us!"

Pete laughed "Yeah, I guess I tend to lean more toward the René Giuon Society than toward the more conservative nambla which preferred to deal with older teenage boys who were viewed as being old enough to give informed consent. It's all tied up with when are kids old enough to 'consent' to sex."

"It's all so complicated…" Bryan said.

"And that's just what the people who were trying to work out a way to please everyone with the Constitution thought."

"How did they finally solve the problem?" asked David.

"In two ways," Pete said. "First was to basically make those people who wanted to engage in sexplay with children get a license. The early testing was primitive and did not work 100% at weeding out people who were a little too 'aggressive' in their sexual attitudes and tended to want things their own way – rather than putting the child's wants and needs first. Today's testing is very invasive and is done by trained Betazoid telepaths. It's very rare for them to make a mistake and pass someone who would more than likely hurt a kid."

"When they do a scan, does it hurt?" David asked. "Jamal said if I ever tried to lie to him, he'd have a telepath do a mindscan, and that it'd hurt really bad."

"No, it didn't hurt at all," Pete said. "The psych-tech I had when I went for my pre-license scan was a real professional. I was just exhausted after it was over."

"You said two ways?" Bryan asked.

"Yes, As Beowulf's constitution was being hammered out, the concept of 'informed consent' was difficult to define or to set standards for. Finally, what the government of Beowulf did was to divide sexual activity itself into four categories, each of which required an ever increasing level of informed consent."

"So if you did one thing it would ok if some one just said 'yes' and something else you might need to get them to sign something?" David asked.

"Well, they didn't go quite that far with consent, but they did set up four different 'classes' of sex. Class A sex is auto-erotica and was ruled to be a basic human right covered under 'the-pursuit-of-happiness'-clause of the Beowulf Constitution. No regulation of this type of sexual activity is permitted."

"What's auto-erotica?"

"That means having sex with yourself, no one else is around, so you masturbate yourself, or think about things that excite you."

"You mean that some people wanted to pass laws about that?" Bryan asked.

"Oh, Bryan, you don't know the half of it. On pre-space Earth the puritans and evil-thinking religious people used to have a saying: 'If it gives pleasure to anyone, it's either a sin or a felony!'."

"I'm glad I didn't live back then."

"Class B sex is the first part of what you guys and I do," I continued my lecture. "It involves mutual masturbation, 'touchie-feelie' foreplay, and the cuddling that almost all of us boylovers engage in as our primary sexual outlet. And partly because this is, in its mildest form, indistinguishable from the affectionate play between parent and child it was also deemed to require the lowest level of informed consent. In other words, even most toddlers are old enough to give this level of informed consent."

"Yeah," David said. "I like Class B sex – a lot!"

"Me too!" Bryan said.

"And Class C sex is the other thing that we do in bed," I said.

"Suck each others dicks!" Bryan shouted.

"Yup, and its called 'oral sex' in polite company. This kind of sex was ruled to be less invasive than penetration and so it was subject to a middle level of consent. Again the concept of chronological age is not used and so many children even as young as seven or eight were viewed as being able to give informed consent to this type of activity. Consent meant that the child knows that in some parts of the galaxy, this is considered to be very wrong, and especially between a grownup and a child. If the kid is uncomfortable about any part of this, he can say 'NO' and a boylover will understand, and not try to force it. Again informed consent rules out the use of force or coercion and violation of this by trying to force oral sex on someone, adult or child is considered a criminal assault. Informed consent also means that the child can say 'NO', to anything. This is very important."

"Class D sex involves actual penetration and sado-masochistic practices such as bondage and domination. This class of sexual relations – which includes heterosexual sex – required the highest level of informed consent and while this consent was not tied to a specific chronological age, it is rare that a kid can demonstrate the ability to give informed consent at this level of interaction. Force or corrosion used at this level is one of the elements of the crime of Rape."

"That's what Jamal was doing to me," David said. "Raping me."

"Yes," Pete said, putting his arm around David's skinny shoulders and pulling him close to him. "David…"

"Yeah?"

"We need to talk about some things," Pete said. Bryan yawned and stretched and leaned up against David's other side.

"Like what?" He sounded worried.

"I got a comm-web call from Jamal…" Pete started.

The eleven-year-old went rigid and Pete could literately feel his heart pounding in his chest. "I knew when you wanted to make that call last week that it would mean trouble; and now we've got gonjahs and comm-web calls. I'm afraid Pete."

"Don't be," Pete said with more confidence than he actually felt. "I told him that you were going to stay with me. I want you to stay with me always."

Bryan snuggled against David. "Me too," Bryan said sleepily.

"The problem is," Pete continued, "that we can't just say it and make it happen. If people ask us questions we need to be able to answer them and have our answers match."

"I think I understand about that – but Jamal…"

"You did an excellent job when the cops asked you your name," Pete hurried on, hoping that the 11-year-old would not pick up on how nervous he was. "By using your first name and my last, I think it made the difference between us getting to sleep here together in the Dream Walker tonight and being split up and thrown into jail – or foster homes in you guy's cases. We need to decide what to tell people. I don't like to lie, but we may have to. Unfortunately every place is not as progressive thinking as the Federation. In some places – even here on Bajor – what we do, the three of us, playing together naked and making each other feel good is illegal and the penalties are severe. If someone asks if I am your father we need to decide what to say."

"Okay," David said. "But can't I just say that you're my dad? Like tonight?"

"Like I do," Bryan added.

"In Bryan's case we have paperwork to back up the claim," I explained. "In your case, even in the Federation or on Imperial Terra we're cruising along a fine edge between legal and illegal. Jamal kidnapped you – and I'm not real sure what our status [you and I] is. We've absolutely got to find your mom."

"It won't make any difference, she'll still not want me. But if she is high it might be a really nasty scene. When she's high, she uses me to 'step-n-fetch' for her and sometimes get her next fix setup."

"We'll take care of that when we need to. In the meantime, what are we going to say when people ask about your mom?"

"I don t know." He sounded like he wanted to cry.

"Tell us about her David. Bryan and I need to know as much as we can… so if either of us has to improvise, we can. At the same time, Bryan and I will tell you about us, so that in case the situation is reversed and you have to improvise, your story will have the maximum chance of jibing with reality."

"Okay," David said. "My mom was real pretty 'till last year. Then she started taking stuff to make her feel good."

"Drugs?"

"Yeah."

"My mom's boyfriend was a doper," Bryan said. "I didn't like it much when he was high, because that is when he was mean to both me and my mom."

"Is that why you were living with your aunt?" David asked.

"Yeah," Bryan said, and wiped his eyes. "Mom was scared that Lennie – her boyfriend – would hurt me, so she sent me to live with my dad's sister."

"Why didn't you live with your dad?"

"My dad was in Star Fleet," Bryan said proudly, "but he was killed in an away mission when I was five."

"I'm sorry," David said in a small voice.

"Pete helped me get his personal logs and stuff, I really feel like I know him now." Bryan said. "Was you mom a doper?"

"Yeah. I guess so," David said – in a voice that indicated that this was really the first time he had really admitted it – even to himself. "It was a little at first, then it more and more. Soon it was all the time. S-she stopped caring about anything. Even me." His eyes teared up. "She loved me before she met Johann. He gave her the Xirconium-B! He ruined my life. He took my mommy from me!" The tears ran down his face in rivers but he refused to cry. He was good and pissed.

"She spent all our money on drugs. Even if we didn't eat she bought his drugs. She got skinny and dirty. She changed. Nothing mattered but her drugs. She got mad at me if I told her I was hungry. She left me alone for days sometimes. Johann kept giving her drugs and making her do things with men to get the drugs. The same things he wanted me to do. And she did it to get her drugs. Then about the time school got out he started telling me I would have to do those things if I wanted to eat.

"She told him to fuck off, at first." He smiled, "She was mad at him and she stood up for me. I was happy. I thought she was my mommy again."

But it didn't last?" Pete asked.

His face drooped. "N-no… she kept taking the drugs……"

For a minute, the eleven-year-old was overcome by memory and clung to Pete, sobbing. Pete enfolded him in a bear hug and Bryan was bust rubbing his back and right side.

"O-one day he came over," David continued after a few minutes, "and told her she owed him a lot of money, and that she had to pay him right then."

"That's not fair," Bryan said. "He was the one that got her started on the drugs in the first place!"

"That's how dopers work," I said and gently squeezed David's shoulders comfortingly.

"We didn't have any money to give him," David said. "She begged and he just laughed at her. He left, he said she knew what to do if she wanted her drugs. I didn't know what he meant."

David paused and looked at Pete, and he realized that David was leading up to the point that Johann had beaten him and left the small boy for dead in a Kilkamec City alley.

"Mommy just sat in the kitchen crying one night. The next day she was all shaky and sweaty. She hurt real bad and I couldn't help her. The next day she was worse. She was mad at me and said it was my fault… 'cause I wouldn't do what Johann wanted."

He pulled his knees up to his chest, curling into a semi-fetal position, and kept talking. "She was so mad she hit me. She'd never hit me before." Again tears rolled down this cheeks, and he paused to wipe them away. Bryan was now also crying silently, but openly.

"It was the drugs. His drugs," David spat angrily. "She left – telling me it was all my fault and she was gonna give me what I deserved. The next day he left me in the alley."

"What…?" Bryan asked softly.

"Good thing I had that surplus medikit … " David's voice cracked. "My mom abandoned me to Johann, who hated me. It could have been worse I guess. He said he could do whatever he wanted to me, fuck me or kill me –- He told me mom said she didn't care what happened to me as long as she could have her drugs. Like I was some… thing not her son! He told me I was his and then he did those things I told you about." He sniffled. "She was a good mommy before she met Johann. She loved me. He took her away from me, and I want to kill him," David said savagely.

"David, I know you want to kill him. So do I, as a matter of fact. But we can't go looking for him like that. It has become apparent that this Johann guy is more connected than the average dope dealer and pimp. That gonjah that tried for us last week was not just a random attack. Jamal may have some connection to organized crime here on Bajor, but I think the gonjah may have been a message from your old friend Johann."

"That's just great!" David exclaimed, "I told you calling would only be trouble…"

Yes, maybe," Pete said. "But I have a plan for both our thugs. First the most dangerious Jamal. Member of the Berezovski faction of the Orion Syndicate. He is considered a dangerious screw up by many of his peers in the Orion Syndicate. My aquaintance Quark on ds9 has some contacts that may help us with that problem. Then ther's Johann, if Jamal is a member of the Bajorian Assassin's Guild, then we can go to his 'family' and try to get the Djinn to intervene for us – for a price of course."

"But how will you do that?" David asked, "You're not a member of the Bajorian Assassin's Guild are you?"

"No, but Morn is and he owes me a couple of favors."

"Ohhh ––"

"Also," Pete continued, "If we just walked up on Johann on the street and wasted him we would go to prison and never see each other again. What we really need to do is decide what we will tell just average people that we meet in everyday life."

David thought a minute. "Can't we just tell them that my mom didn't want me and gave me to you?"

"That is close to what I told the castelain this evening. We can tell them she got into drugs and couldn't take care of you any more. I don't think we should tell people that your mom didn't want you any more."

"Why not? It's the truth," David muttered.

"C'mon, David," Bryan said. "I used to think my mom didn't love me either, but I don't think that any more."

David looked skeptical.

"I think you need to remember that your mom loved you a lot," Pete started. David snorted at this. "But the drugs got in the way. She is still your mother and if she ever gets straight I think she will remember that and want you back badly."

"But now I don't want to go back to her. She let Johann do those things to me. I want to stay with you… you love me… d-don't you?"

"Of course I do, David," Pete said. "Bryan and I both love you very much." Bryan accented my words by reaching over and kissing David. "But I don't want you to hate your mom. I'm going to try my best to get her out of Johann's grip too."

David looked at me for a long minute and then silently cuddled against me even closer. "Okay," the boy whispered. "What do you want me to say? I'll say and do whatever you want me too."

"I think we can just say that you're mom is having troubles – we don't have to define that – and that I'm taking care of you."

"Okay," David said, "I was scared they were gonna take you away."

"So was I – for a minute," I said laughing.

"I'm glad we're still together," Bryan said and snuggled against me.

"Me too," David quickly added.

"Me three," I chuckled and enfolded the two boys in a bearhug. "lcars, stop recording," I yawned and was rewarded with a soft chime. "Set AM alarm 06:30:00, vigorous wake up."

Captain's Log, stardate 9807.30 "Cop's Cove," Bajor

The alarm clock subroutine that lcars used the next morning began at 06:30:00 Local Time with a Star Fleet Marine Corps drill sergeant banging on a metal trash can lid while blowing a whistle.

"Let's go, let's go, LET'S GO – MAGGOTS!! Get outta that goddamned rack and hit the deck. Hit the deck on the bounce or so help me I'll ask the Captain to keel haul you at warp three!"

"Aaargh! lcars, alarm off!"

"You instructed that my call be vigorous this morning," lcars chided Pete.

"Vigerious – yes; psychotic – no. Okay, I'm up. Return to standard monitor."

"By your command…" Pete swore at the people who were responcible for the design of these ai interface personalities for ssics [starship intergrated computer systems].

"Unhhnh!" was David's comment.

"I don't wanna get up. No way. It's too early," Bryan whined and curled into a fetal position with the blankets cacooned around himself. "And I'm still cold."

David opened one eye and grinned conspiratorially at Pete, pointing at Bryan's nest of blankets. Pete grinned and nodded, grabbing one corner of the blankets while David sat up in the bed and grabbed another corner.

"One…" David whispered.

"Two," Pete said softly holding up two fingers.

"THREE!" David roared and yanked the blanket at the same time Pete did, exposing Bryan's cute little naked body to the harsh elements of the new day.

"Awww – you guys …" Bryan groaned and sat up. Pete had noticed another difference between Bryan and David. David was more like himself in the morning, Pete did his best work early on, and was awake instantly. By sunset of a normal Terrestrial length day, he was ready for bed – Bryan was just the opposite. Getting him started in the morning was no easy task, as he loved to linger in bed dozing in and out of a lite sleep and was a virtual night owl.

They took turn in the bathroom getting ready for the day, and this allowed Bryan a few extra golden minutes of hugging the blankets to himself, but eventually around 07:45:00, after a breakfast of Bjorian Varny bird eggs, little tiny breakfast steaks made of some unknown, but tasty meat, all three of them were up and ready to meet the new day's adventures.

Pete cycled open the airlock and let the landing ramp extend to the local terrain. A cool, but not unpleasent breeze blew in, laden with pine-rich moisture from the forest ten meters away.

"Okay boys! pt, assemble on the deck now," Pete hollered in my sfmc personae.

"pt?" David asked. "What's that?"

"Uunghh!" You don't want to know," Bryan groaned.

"I'm going to teach you some Klingon calisthenics that will help build your stamina and muscle tone." Pete said.

"And make you sore all over!" Bryan smiled.

The boys were dressed in sneakers, knee socks, short shorts and tee shirts and grumbled their way down the landing ramp and out to a patch of tough shore-grass and sand in front of the Tomahawk. Most of last night's snow flurry was still lightly dusting everything in sight in spite of the outside temperature: 18°C [64°F].

"C'mon, Bryan, this'll warm you up. The Sammar-zha is a combat exercise that…" Pete started but was immediately interrupted by both boys.

"YAY! when can I beat someone up?" Bryan jumped up and down in place.

"Yes!" David agreed.

"NEVER!" Pete said seriously. "The things I am going to teach you can easily hurt or kill an unskilled opponent – like our Bajorian friends from last night." he said.

"Oh," both boys sounded chastised. Just the way they should have.

"This is important, boys," Pete said. "The Sammar-zha is a Klingon way of training both the mind and the body to function as an efficient whole in an unarmed combat way. It is not a toy and not to be used for anything other than self defense."

"Okay."

"Alright boys, This…" Pete said and went into the starting position of the Sammar-zha, "is the starting position. 'Zha' means 'game' in Klinogaase, and to the Klingons everything is a game, including life itself, which they term the Komerex Zha, or the growing game. Klingons believe that everything from the smallest living cell to the multiverse as a whole, is either 'komerex' [growing or dynamical alive] or 'khesterex' [shrinking or dying] The Sammar-zha is the basic building block of a rigorous Klingon regimen of physical and emotional conditioning which my grandfather taught to me when I was Bryan's age, and now I am going to teach to you. It's demanding work, but it's not impossible, the closest thing in Terran culture would be a mutated fusion of Tai-che and karate. Ready boys?"

Bryan and David both nodded.

"AHN-targ! Sammar-zha!" I growled in Klingonaase. My two 'students' snapped to attention and then assumed approximations for the start position for the Klingon exercise 'Sammar-zha'.

We spent the next hour in a good basic combat workout, stretching and muscle building activities. Then we went into some basic defense moves of the Sammar-zha.

Both boys started out as ungraceful looking as Algolian Bloodworms, but they were quick students and learned quickly. The Sammar-zha calls for the body to stretch and exercise each of the major muscle groups of the body in its opening movements, and some of these movements are complex enough that he had to demonstrate them several times for the boys before they even came close to getting them right.

Although they were still pretty clumsy and tired easily, they were making excellent progress for children so young. It would still be quite a time before they were ready for the bat'telh drills, but even Klingon children were not normally allowed to drill with the bat'telh until they were twelve; so Bryan had an excellent chance of maintaining a parity with his Klingon peers – and David was enough of a natural athlete, and was stubborn enough that he had no doubt that David also would not be far behind in another year.

David's major problem was a lack of self-assurance, he tended to hesitate and hold back, which was disastrous in any kind of Klingon activity. He'd need a lot of encouragement and support to bring him up to speed. Bryan, on the other hand, had the exact opposite problem. His natural exuberance and energy led him to over extend himself and try to anticipate the next move. In actual deadly combat, these skills, trained and harnessed correctly would lead to a devastatingly effective warrior, but poor Bryan was still a junior learner, and in his case more often led him into positions where he was extremely vulnerable and could not easily withdraw from in time.

As we were finishing the warm up, a Bajorian constable's gev silently hovered onto the narrow beach access road beside which I had parked the Dream Walker.

The very attractive female castelain from last night's altercation got out of the gev and waived at me. "Good Morning, Mr. Reynolds… David, Bryan."

"Castelain!" Pete called back. "What brings you here so early this morning? Not official business I hope."

The boys were still a little spooked by this attractive castelain because of the actions of the goon squad last evening, but he could tell that her smiling personality was beginning to make an impression on both boys as it already had on me.

The castelain smiled widely, "No, I just finished my shift and thought I would come by to apologize again for the actions of constable-sargent McGirk. He gets a little crazy sometimes, he was a member of the Resistance during the closing days of the Kardasian Occupation; and he tends to treat everyone who is not a cop as though they were Kardasian Guls or Liggates. Oh, and off duty, my name is Darrsohn Ved-Unhtharr. Darr for short."

"Oon-THAR," Pete said attempting to pronounce the unfamiliar Bajorian name.

"Almost," she said, "and very close for a Terran. Your vocal set up isn't designed to make our 'unh' sound correctly… no 'nose gills'," she said using the Interlingo derogatory term for the most distinguishing Bajorian difference from Terrans, the wrinkles of 'extra' skin that covered the upper portion of the Bajorian nose.

"And the 'ved'-prefix… you're from a vedic family?"

"Good looking and sharp." She said. "I like that in a man."

David and Bryan had stoped their pt session and now giggled unabashedly as Pete blushed, not sure how to answer this.

Darr sensed my social unease and quickly picked up the conversation ball and sped off in another direction: "Do you guys like doughboys?" She asked as she held up a bag of the Bajorian doughnut-like pastries. "I brought a peace offering."

"We love them, thanks," the boys said – rudely grabbing at the bag.

"Boys! Boys! Company Manners, please," Pete said quietly.

"Oh, yeah," Bryan said letting his hands drop to his side.

"Sorry, Mz. Ved-Uhntharr," David said.

Darr laughed, her laughter was a pleasure to hear, rather like a Klingonaase windtinkle, or its distant cousin, the Chineese wind chime.

"Let's go into the ward room," Pete said. "I don't have any coffee, but we've got hot chocolate, several teas and even some combat rations synthemec…"

"Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. Tea will be wonderful."

"Pete," he said. "Please call me Pete."

"If you will call me Darr instead of castelain."

"Deal."

The Dream Walker's small ward room was as crowded as it had ever been, with all four of us crowded around the meter-square table, and wolfing down doughboys and swilling earl-gray tea. We spent a half an hour talking and laughing. It was a much nicer encounter in the light of day after a good night's sleep.

"Pete, I need to talk to you alone for a minute." Darr said, and I knew that we were going back to official business mode. "It is very important. David, why don't you and Bryan get back to your Sammar-zha workout?"

The boys looked less than happy about returning to their pt workout, but both muttered: "Okay."

Darr's face lost a lot of its animation as she shifted to her official personae of Castelain Ved-Unhtharr.

"I ran a personal id scan for David's mother last night after we left. You are not really David's father are you? I ran your id also."

"Then you know I'm a licensed boy lover…"

"Yes, yes, that's not what I mean. I found the transfer of guardianship on Bryan, and after the results of David's mother's id scan I think I can guess how you and David met. You needn't worry about me causing you any official trouble. While I do not agree that the Terran Empire or the Federation's policies are correct, neither am I sure that there are not. I've seen a lot of horrible things happen to children in my duties as a constable, and some children do need people like yourself… if you take seriously the part about the spiritual side of your oath." Here castelain Ved-Unhtharr looked closer at me with her appraising constable's eye. "I spent nearly a half hour with David and Bryan. I'm sure they thought they were telling me nothing, but that's not true. It was clear that both boys love you very much. I hope that you do strictly adhere to your oath."

"I do, castelain."

"I'm still Darr," she sighed and said: "I believe you. I'm not normally wrong about these kind of things and so I will let your official relationship with David go unchallenged. As I said we did locate David's mother…"

"So you did you find her? I could not after she handed David off to me." Pete did not tell her about Jamal because he still had some idiot idea about settling the score with him personally. He blamed the Klingon blood in him for this vendetta-like mindset.

"Yes we did." She paused.

He knew she was stalling. "How is she?"

"Pete, she's dead." Darr didn't look at him. "I hate this part of the job. Kilkamec City pd found her body in her apartment last night. She has been dead for about two days. The killers impaled her on a pole, anus to mouth, but the cause of death was third degree phaser burns over 80 percent of her body. Someone tortured her to death with a phaser on a thermal setting that was not instantly fatal. She probably lived through about a half hour of this."

"My god!" Pete said stunned. Until this minute, he had held out hope that eventually they would 'catch-up' with David's mother, get her 'wrung out' of drugs and David would be either reunited with her, or they'de work out some kind of formal custody deal, probably by just coping out the paperwork Bryan's aunt had done already.

"She was a junkie wasn't she?"

"I think so," Pete said.

"Kilkamec pd thinks this was a drug deal that went bad, she had been ODed on Djinn Weed, a particularly nasty neural stimulant, it would have amplified the pain of the phaser burns a hundred fold."

A long pause followed. He was stunned. He wanted to keep David forever but not like this. Things were beginning to move way too quickly. Jamal had been merely an annoying detail of David's past, but he was quickly becoming a dangerous predator that Pete could not ignore, a major strategic threat. The saddening part of it was neither could Pete involve the Bajorian authorities, because he still wanted David with a minimal amount of red tape.

"An autopsy will be performed," Darr said softly. "Pete, I hate to do this but we need to do a identification. Somehow she never had her finger-prints or retinal scans taken – so someone has to id the body."

"I only saw here once in the last nine years outside a few days ago." Pete lied, never having laid eyes on David's mother at all.

"We need David to do it. It has to be someone that knew her well enough to definitively say whether it is her or not."

"Geeze," Pete muttered. "Isn't there someway we can avoid having to drag David into the morgue to view his mother's dead body? He shouldn't have to look at his mothers corpse! That is just too cruel."

"He won't have to, Pete," Darr said. "We can do the identification from holovids… I have them with me here we can do it right here."

He heaved a sigh, "Alright, let me see the holovids please."

Darr handed him an isolinear tape chip and he slipped it into the ward room's entertainment holo-projector, and activated it. A series of holoviews of a rather attractive young woman about 30 began the slide show. As he advanced through the two dozen or so holograms, they went from David's mother as she obviously had been before the drugs, through the drug-days – these were obviously police surveillance holovids – and to the crime scene where she had met her grizly death.

"Crom! The last few are real graphic, aren't they?"

"Crime scene holovids always are."

He deactivated the entertainment center and stood up, walked toward the airlock and called to the boys. "Any way we can skip the crime scene holovids?" he asked as Bryan and David came in.

"I don't think we need those, the woman is nearly unrecognizable as a human in them." "David," Pete called from the head of the access ramp. "Can you come back in here for a minute? Darr has some holoshots she wants you to look at."

David, with a sigh of relief broke off the calisthenics and jogged over to the ramp and up it into the air lock. Pete stepped aside and let the 11-year-old proceed him into the ward room, and flop down on the small sofa across from the entertainment center's controls.

"David," Darr said in a soft voice, "I have some holographs I want you to look at and tell he if you recognize the person in them."

"Uhnn – okay," David said. Pete sat down beside David, and unconsciously put my arm around his shoulders.

Darr touched the holoscreen controls. An incredibly detailed and high-resolution 3D image of a smiling woman in her mid thirties appeared on the holoscreen. The simulacrum was apparently a half meter tall and very life like.

David took one look, gasped and turned away. "She… She's dead, isn't she?" he asked.

If Darr was surprised, her professional castelain's facade would not let her show it. She pressed the advance button several times and the 3D image changed, from rather attractive young woman, to harassed looking, to finally the maddened look of a strung out doper who had gone too long without a fix.

"Is this your mother, David?" Darr asked.

"Yes," he said through tight lips. "Is she dead?"

Darr paused a moment, and then nodded.

David leaned against Pete, all the strength leached out of his body. He didn't bawl, but silent tears ran down his cheeks in a solid stream. Pete hugged him and Darr stroked his back trying to add her comfort to the moment. Bryan had come in from the outside and was standing silently in the doorway to the ward room. When David stopped crying, he looked up at Darr, "How did she die? Was it the drugs?" Bryan had joined them now on the couch, and the two boys were leaning against each other, holding hands.

"We think so, David. There will have to be an autopsy to tell for certain." Darr sighed and looked at Pete for an instant. There was a silent agreement between them not to tell David that his mother had been tortured to death. "David, I'll need you as the next of kin to make a formal identification."

"What does that mean?" David asked.

Darr took out a small isolinear chip, "With Captain Reynolds co-operation we can use the truck's computer to record my interview. I just ask you a few standard questions and then we're all done."

"Okay," David said.

"Alright," Darr said and handed me the isolinear chip, which I slid into lcars recording slot on the entertainment center and started the recording.

"This is castelain Darr, Bajorian Police Constabulary. This is a victim identification of subject Jennifer Pasce, Terran Female, age approximately thirty-two terrestrial standard years. Identification made by her son, David.

"David, do you know of your own knowledge that the holographs I have shown you are of your mother, Jennifer?"

"Yes." He answered mechanically.

"Has anyone told you how to answer this question?"

"No."

There were several other standardized deposition questions, but it was over quickly. When it was all over, David was still in a simi-state of shock as Darr gathered up the isolinear chip and made her departure.

The Dream Walker managed to lift into the brilliant ice-blue of the mid-morning mountain sky, but it was clear to anyone watching that the Tomahawk had major problems with its atmospheric maneuvering systems. It plowed through the sky, listing slightly to port, looking like a ruptured goose instead of a sleek interstellar space craft. Dream Walker was designed to span the mind-numbingly vast distances that separate the tiny pockets of sentient life in our galaxy – and with the use of the warp gate network, even the distant extra-galactic destinations tied together by the warp gates. [The warp gates were built millions of years ago by an unknown – and presumably now vanished – alien race. They use an unknown technology to connect different widely separated points in 3D space together.]

Pete was fighting with the Dream Walker's Yaw-stabilizers, trying to keep the truck from fishtailing to drastically through the sky, while Bryan was busy keeping one eye on the sensors and one eye visually scanning our surroundings for air traffic without traffic transponders. We were way down under a thousand meters in the airspace normally reserved for 'recreational use' that meant things like hang-gliders and ultralight aircraft. We were only here because we were a 'distressed' vessel. Normally we would have had to remain above 1,000 meters [330 feet] altitude, but Kilkamec City ground control had granted us a one-time waiver to move the Tomahawk from the lake to the starport maintenance yards.

"Any luck finding Vareen's commweb number?" Pete asked.

"Just got it," David said, looking up from the lcars interface, with which he was connected to the Bajorian planetary cybernet. "He's got a pretty good site," David commented, "a lot of kewl graphic interfaces."

"I'll look at it after we're back on the ground." Pete said. "Do me a favor, ring through so I can get permission to park?" Pulling the commweb interface down from the overhead he managed to get it locked in place one-handed and aligned properly.

"Coming on line, Pete," David said.

The ring indicator came through loud and clear and then a perky female voice: "Vareen Maintenance and Salvage. How may I direct your call?"

"Vareen, please. Pete Reynolds calling."

"Thank you, connecting."

"Hey, Pete," Vareen's voice crackled in my ear. "You made pretty good time."

"Yeah, but just barely. What's your parking beacon frequency, I'm about to fall outa the sky."

"Whoooo, sounds serious. Dial up 5860-dot-875 mHz on your locator."

Pete glanced at Bryan, who nodded as he input the frequency into the locator beacon receiver. A flashing red dot appeared on the scrolling map of Bajor currently on the navigation plotter between the pilot and navigator's station.

Minutes later, Pete sat the Dream Walker down on the nicolyte landing apron in front of the main building at Vareen Maintenance and Salvage. Magnon and Jazar were waiting out in front, and David and Bryan were excitedly waiting by the airlock hatch, as Pete finished the power down procedures. As soon as he opened the hatch they were out and down the ramp, excitedly calling to their friends.

"You guys will never believe what happened last night," David started.

"…and we almost arrested." finished Bryan.

"Wow! No shit?" Jazar asked admiringly.

"C'mon, you guys. Times awastin'," Magnon said and the four boys ran off and disappeared into the depths of the salvage yard as Pete turned to Vareen. A battalion of diagnostic and maintenance droids were already crawling over the Dream Walker.

"Why don't we go on into the office while the droids finish the diagnostics. As the Ferengi say: 'hold onto your latinum with both hands'," Vareen laughed.

"Hah, Hah!" Pete said jokingly, and accompanied Vareen into the office.

The shape charge that the gonjah had used to blow out the air lock had done a lot more damage than he had dreamed. The problems with the drive had nothing to do with Narkotz's jumpers around the engine interlock circuits, instead the charge had set up shock waves that had seriously fragmented a large portion of the read only memory of the engineering computer. Without access to this, lcars had attempted to take on the job of manually controlling the fusion igniters and plasma guides – with only limed success. There were also tiny stress fractures through out a large section of the portside hull which would require a total reapplication of the Xylonite-epoxy that bound the molecules of the hull into theoretically a single huge molecule, virtually impervious to ems or nuclear radiation, either as photons or subatomic particles.

The damage was sever and normally might have run into the high six figures to repair. Pete was more convinced than ever that Jamal must pay, and pay dearly for all the troubles he had caused both David and Reynolds Interstellar.

Although neither of them broached the subject, Pete was virtually convinced that Vareen was a boy lover also – albeit a closet one because of his environment and family considerations – and so gave Pete a deal on his repairs that he could not have beaten anywhere in the quadrant. Basically he charged Pete cost plus 1.5% labor. Reynolds Interstellar got out of this very sticky situation, that might have bankrupted the firm, with only a large hole in the corporate bank account amounting to 34,000 Stellars. Pete decided that he absolutely had to look into insurance, no matter how high the premiums were for independent truckers like Reynolds Interstellar

He had always carried cargo insurance, and of course he had the standard crash-disaster insurance that would cover a catastrophic crash due to loss of control plowing the Tomahawk into something or he ground. But regular flight insurance that would covered things like the gonjah attack he had always considered a high priced luxury…but Pete was essentially a family man now.

The Dream Walker's repairs would keep it in drydock at Vareen's shop for awhile, and so the vacation he was enjoying with David and Bryan would continue for now. Rounding them up from the back lot of the salvage yard was a more of a chore than the Nomad had imagined, but luckily Vareen was a past master at this esoteric skill, having to do it often enough with Magnon and Jazar. They were also able to take care of one other thing while at Vareen's shop, the provisioning of life-preserver kits for David and Bryan. These kits contained the all important vac-armor and 7-day portable celss pack, along with several other emergency goodies. This also was off the ill-fated Galaxy-class and so he knew it was rated at 150% redline in all of its functions and expendables. Now in the unlucky event we ever had a major explosive decompression, both boys would have the emergency equipment they needed to ensure survival.

Vareen and his two boys took their guests across the starport to the main transmat link between Deep Space Nine and Bajor in their little electric utility cart which having a vendor's id plate on it, sped through several non-public tunnels under the starport, cutting a full fifteen or twenty minutes off the trip as compared to the route that we would have had to take as just members of the traveling public.

"I'll give you call as soon as I'm finished with the Tomahawk, and then I can bring it up to ds9 for you."

"That sounds great," Pete said. "I really want to thank you for all of your help."

"It's not a problem, Pete," Vareen smiled. "After all, all that Star Fleet gear is really just sitting there in orbit. Most of my business is in Bajorian and Klingon design stuff. I'm glad I can at least get my investment back on some of that stuff. Star Fleet stripped most of the interesting things like the computer core and the sensors/weapons interfaces before they abandoned the hull."

The two men said their good-byes and each gathered his complement of boys. David, Bryan and Pete made their way through the ticket line to buy transport tickets to ds9. Both boys wanted to buy a weekly unlimited pass so that they could come back and forth to play with Ja'zaar and Magnon – but Pete wasn't quite ready to have them roaming the Bajor system with a weekly transport pass – not with the question of Jamal still an open one.

Both boys were disappointed, but submitted to his decision, albeit with a lot of grumbling. Bryan was an old hand at traveling via transmat, having done it dozens of times a year acting as a courier for his aunt between Starbase 288's ground facility and the orbital docks in geo-stationary orbit over the base. David, however had only used the transmat once or twice in his life.

The transmat operates on complex multi-dimensional hyperspatial principles that Pete did not pretend to understand… but then, he was not a transmat engineer, only a lowly truck driver. But one does not have to fully understand all of the theory to make the device operate for you. Basically, a receiver and a transmitter pair are cross-linked in two locations separated by no more than 50,000 kilometers [30,000 miles], in this way, the output end of transmitter A arrives at receiver B, while the output of transmitter B arrives at A. The effect is you step through a large oval frame from point A to Point B without having to travel through the intervening 3D space. You step through a bi-stable mini-wormhole.

All three stepped through a transmat frame linking the surface of Bajor with the Deep Space Nine orbital complex, some 35,000 kilometers [22,000 miles] overhead; instantaneously arriving at ds9's main Transmat Station, just off the main promenade. After a quick check through Star Fleet Security, to verify that they were indeed human and not Dominion shape-shifters, Pete's two little friends got their first first took at the main promenade of ds9.

David was suitably impressed by ds9's commercial Promenade, Bryan, who had spent much of his life on Starbase 288, less so. The Promenade took up three levels of the central section of the station's main ring habitat. You could start at any point and walk for more than 9 kilometers [6 miles] before returning to your starting point, more than 27 million cubic meters of old earth capitalism welded firmly to Feringi greed and mercantile expertise floating in space a million kilometers from the Bajorian Wormhole… the only known example of a bi-stable naturally occurring wormhole in the universe.

There were those who said it was the Bajorian Worm hole which had given the idea of such things to the now vanished Elder Race who had constructed the warp gate network, upon which so much of the galaxy's economy depended.

"Pete!" David said tugging at his arm in his excitement, "What's that?" he said, pointing at a Vorlon encounter suit gliding by silently on its countergrav pads.

"Manners, David! It's not polite to point at xts as though they were part of the scenery, and some species regard it as a challenge to combat."

"Ohh…" David said, embarrassed.

"To answer your question. That was a Vorlon, a member of one of the oldest races in this section of the galaxy. They're very reclusive, both as a race and in their personal habits; you're really lucky to have caught a glimpse of one within minutes of coming to ds9."

"Wow," both David and Bryan were suitably impressed.

They continued to stroll down the Promenade and came to a wide expanse of polished marble, inlaid liberally with gold and silver veins. In the center of this opulent facade, were two oversized doors made of aluminized titan crystal so that the formed a mirrored exterior, but anyone on the interior side could easily see out. Acid-etched into the crystal itself were two elaborate murals, one of a full-length nude human boy about 12 years old and the other of a slightly younger pre-adolescent girl, also nude. Under the Interstellar Boy Lovers blue-triangle logo was a sign in ruby lined gold said:

This was Pete's favorite place on ds9, it was a combination of several different kinds of establishments, all dedicated to serving the Boy Lover and general pedophyle community. First of course the hk-Klub is a casino and speakeasy, where one can have a good time, either with a date or alone and choose to be escorted by one of the club's pre-teen or very young teen hosts or hostesses [depending upon the individual's particular orientation]. The club also offers secure hotel facilities, dining in several galactic cuisines, money laundering… er… exchange and banking facilities and of course a wide variety of holosuites ranging from bedroom size to auditorium size for those wishing to recreate Emperor Tiberius infamous Boy Banquettes.

"Normally when I'm on Deep Space Nine, I just live in the Dream Walker down on the docking ring. But since Vareen is busy working on the old gal, we'll have to 'rough it' here at the hotel," Pete explained to the two boys and took out his Interstellar Boy Lovers Network membership card and swiped it past the door's ir sensors. There was a loud click and the door's locking mechanism released and they went into the club's entry alcove.

The alcove was about five meters [16 feet] deep and nine or ten meters [30 feet] wide. Along the walls were life sized tri-dee holograms of naked children of both sexes between about six and fourteen years old. Inside, the alcove was appointed like a large corporation's main reception area, with couches and large chairs scattered around the room. From the ceiling some form of Klingon Opera was playing, but at a much muted level from the 120+db that Klingon audiences preferred. Behind a desk beside the inner door to the club was a young Bajorian girl, perhaps fourteen or fifteen – old enough for her breasts to have started their development but not old enough to have developed pubic hair, who rose to greet us. She was maybe 160 centimeters [5'3"] tall and weighed about 45 kilograms [100 pounds]; her hair was golden red, waist long, and pulled back into a pony tail; her eyes were warm brown. She was totally naked, except for a large silver medallion with a bright emerald embedded in it which hung between her petite breasts.

"Good morning, sir," she said. "Party of three, yes?"

"Yes, that's correct. We'll need a single with a bath for an indefinite period."

Our young Bajorian host sat back down in front of the network terminal on her desk and tapped a few keys. A tiny hologram of the residential block of the hk Klub appeared. "Do you wish an external view?" she asked.

"Wow!" Pete exclaimed. "You mean one of the Ring Rooms is open? I've never been that lucky. Yes, I'll take it."

"Good choice," the girl said. "I think you can see the worm hole from it."

"Do you work here?" Bryan asked.

The girl reached out and caressed Bryan's shoulder. "Yes, I do, cutie! You too!" she reached out to David. "You're both so delicious looking!"

Bryan immediately rubbed up against her and David blushed bright red. The teenager laughed and hugged both boys.

"You're welcome to join us Ms…?" I said.

"Kira, Mandi Kira, and I would like that. I will be relieved here within ten minutes or so if you can wait."

"Kira?" Pete said in astonishment, "As in Brigadier General Kira, Bajorian Liaison Officer and Commander of ds9?"

"The same – but don't worry. I don't bite."

"Who's General Kira," Bryan asked.

"My mother," Mandi said.

"…And also the Bajorian administrator on the Wormhole Treaty Council that runs ds9. There is also a Dominion member and a Federation member, but Kira really runs things, she's a real legend in the sector."

"And a royal pain in the behind. Any idea of what its like to live up to that kind of reputation? A royal pain I tell you," Mandi laughed and finished processing our reservations. "Okay, that'll be 4 Stellar 63 Solars for the first night, including security and key deposits which you get back. How will you be paying for this?"

"Terran Express… I never leave home without it," Pete said mimicking a famous holovid celebrities commercial on isn; and handed the card to Mandi.

After taking care of the formalities, Mandi's replacement on the reception desk showed up: a 14- or 15-year-old naked boy who gave Mandi a quick hug. They let Mandi lead us through a maze of corridors and access crawl ways that she said was a 'short-cut' to their room. Finally they arrived and Mandi took out the coded room key and slipped it into a slot beside the door.

"Okay, guys, gimme your thumb prints," she said, and they coded the lock to recognize each of them. Inside, the room was actually two rooms and a bath. The bath was a large deluxe version, with both a tub and shower, a double sink with a huge mirror and medicine chest over it – and of course a potty. One of the rooms was outfitted as a living room/parlor with a huge titan-crystal floor-to-ceiling viewport which utterly dominated the room with its view out into the depths of interstellar space. The other room was a miniature vr-holosuite. From all appearances one had left ds9 and was walking on a reproduction of one of the most beautiful [imho] beaches of the Galaxy. Located along the base of the Carpathians Mountains on the 70 Ophiuchi planet of Tarsus. With the enormous gas-giant planet Awesome arching over twenty-five degrees of the sky, and with the other planet sized satellites of the gas giant glowing brightly, against the velvety blackness of space. The waves of the Ocean-sea were especially inviting and made a soft lulling sound as they crashed against the sandy beach. To one side and virtually pushed out of the way, so as not to spoil the overall effects of the semi-permanent holo-terrain were two large queen-size beds, a large wardrobe and an small sofa-love seat arranged facing Awesome.

The sun had long since gone down in this vr-simulation, but Awesome cast more than enough light to see by and it made the sea glow with a pale blue/green and yellowish light that added an air of mystique to the whole experience.

"I wish my whole life was like this," Mandi said. "Isn't it romantic?"

"It is that," Pete murmured.

"Kewl!" both boys said and immediately began to bounce on one of the beds.

Mandi glanced at the back of her medallion and said: "I've gotta run guys…"

"Awww, we want you to stay," Bryan said.

"Can't l'il monkey," the teenager said. "I've gotta get back to my quarters and get dressed and then shoot on over to school. I take my Phase III exams today… can't be late for that."

"Wow!" both boys looked at the older girl with admiration, already finished Phase III.

"What'll you do now?" David asked. "Go to Star Fleet?"

"Or the Bajorian Academy," she said, standing at the door. "I haven't made up my mind yet."

"But you'll have supper with us, won't you – to tell us how you did?"

"Well…"

"Yes," Pete said, "You must join us for an early supper, say 18:00:00."

Both boys looking pleadingly at Mandi. She burst into laughter and said: "How can I refuse? I'll meet you in front of the main hkk entrance at 18:00:00."

"Hooray!!" both kids cheered.

"And now I really do have to run. Testing starts at 09:30:00 sharp!"

Pete closed the door and walked over to the room's food replicator and dialed up a hamburger sandwich, french fried potatos and a glass of flavored Bassilik Beast milk.

"Wow!" Bryan said in owe. "Our own private replicator?" Bryan had spent the last four years on Star Base 288 and knew how rare these were because of the phenominal energy use needed to support their operation.

"Yeah," Pete said. "Dig in you guys – anything you can dream of – and a lot of things you've never imangined are only a keypad away. The Ring Suites were ds9's visiting vip quarters back when ds9 was the primary port of entry for anyone coming from the Gamma Quadrant, and the Federation pulled out all the stops to impress visiting vips."

The two boys used the food replicator to select a perfect lunch and then all three sat around a small table facing the huge main viewport.

"Look! Look!" Bryan and David shouted together as the wormhole dialated and spat out an Imperial Terran Battleship. The three kilometer long by 400 meter [1300 feet] thick wedge shaped vessel was clearly visible, even at 100,000 kilometers [60,000 miles] as the Bajorian suns glinted off its super-white reflective hull.

"Pretty impressive, huh?" Pete asked.

"Wow!"

"You bet!" the boys were now over with their noses pressed against the forcefield reinforced crystal of the viewport, watching the Battleship draw nearer at 3,000 kilometers [1,800 miles] per second in a huge arching approach that would take it behind Bajor before finally docking with one of the upper pylons, dwarfing the space station.

Pete reached over and picked up the suite's remote off of a low coffee table. Turning on the suite's entertainment center he selected video and a channel designated 'flight operations'. A 72-inch [1.80 meter] giant screen burst to life with a close up scan of the Battleship. A Bajorian announcer was reading off the ship's id and specifics.

"His Majesty's Battleship Armeggeddon, gross gravitational displacement 8.9 million tons. It is 3,051 meters [10,010 feet] long, 1,118 meters [3,668 feet] at its widest point across the warp nacelle pylons and 398 meters [1306 feet] from the top of its twin sensor housings to the lower tip of the keel. Power is supplied to hms Armeggeddon by a nested array of matter/anti-matter reactors capable of producing 3.2 terawatts of raw electricity. Enough to more that supply all of Da'kor Province…" Pete and the boys watched some fill footage of one of the Armeggeddon's battles during the Federation-Dominion war and finished lunch.

"Boys, I have to go see Quark about some things – do you think you can manage to amuse yourselves without getting into trouble?" Pete asked.

"Of course," snorthed David and Bryan nodded.

"Afterall, I'm a veteran at having fun aboard a spacestation without getting in the way," Bryan reminded him.

"Okay," Pete laughed. "But I still want to be able to keep track of you two, So I want you to blip these on your playsuits." The trucker took two tiny combadges from his pocket. "They're set to Dream Walker's home frequency – all you have to do to activate them is touch them."

"Kewl!" Bryan exclaimed. "Just like Star Fleet."

"Exactly," Pete confirmed. "That's where I copied the design from. The replicator can do virtually any assembly job from nudging atoms around to form molecules to slapping silicon and aluminium into microelectronics… the replicator had the Star Fleet specs right here."

The boys affixed the combadges and tested them to varify their function just before Pete left for his meeting with Quark. As the door slid shut behind him, David turned to Bryan. "So what're we gonna do?" David asked.

"Hmmn," Bryan said. "We could try to find a vr arcade, " He quickly walked over to the suite's comweb and called up a locator map and studied it for a minute. "I'm pretty good at Diablo xlii."

" 'Kay," David agreed, walking to the door. It slid open silently and David peered out cautiously. "I've done a little gunslinging myself, I've never gotten beyond the Tholian hit squads."

"Hah!" Bryan laughed. "There's a trick to that…" and he whispered to David as they walked out and down a side corridor off the main promenade, but according to the computer locator program there was suppose to be a vr-arcade down there somewhere. The nine-year-old wanted to show David the finer points of playing vr games. David was older, but he had not been able to play vr as much as Bryan, so it was not really surprising that the younger boy was better at them.

"Look out! Boneheads!" someone shouted.

David whirled and spotted the shouter. "Incoming!"

From there everything seemed to happen at once. The corridor the boys were in was barely four meters [13 feet] wide, and there was crowded with confuits, pipes and other non-identifiable stuff lining the walls, this effectively narrowed the really useable corridor to maybe two and a half meters [8 feet]. The person who did the shouting was a kid on an antigrav board, whizzing down the corridor strait at them. He'd come around a corner from a connecting corridor maybe ten meters back [30 feet] – and well, there just was no time to do anything. The kid plowed into David and Bryan and the force of the impacy knocked the other kid off the board, which once it didn't have this kid's weight to support, shot strait up to the ceiling and crashed, the antigrav and electric propulsion unit shut down and the board slammed into the deck about five meters [15 feet] away.

"Get off me, you overgrown bol!" the kid said to Bryan

"Sorry," the nine-year-old muttered and got to his feet.

"You oughta look out where you're going," David said.

"What are you? NUTS!? Everyone knows this is a skateboard corridor," the kid said. "And we only have a few that crabby old security chief Odo will let us ride our boards on… oh NO! My board," the kid said and ran over to where it had crashed and knelt beside it – tossing the saftey helmet aside.

It was then they found out she was a girl. She took off her helmet and her long chestnut hair tumbled down her back, nearly to her waist. The girl was ten or eleven and she was kinda pretty. She was on her knees bent over the antigrav skateboard.

"If anything is wrong with my board…" she did not finish the sentance, but the meaning was clear. She fully intended to beat the shit out of them both. Pretty ambitious Bryan thought.

"I'm sorry," David said. "We didn't know there was anything like a skateboard only corridor…"

The girl stood up and looked at David for a minute. Bryan thought she was gonna yell at him, but she didn't. Instead there were tears welling up in her brown eyes.

"It – it's not. All corridors are pedestrian walk ways. It's just that this one and a very few others the grown-up will let us kids ride our antigrav boards on. People are suppose to try to keep the middle clear for us."

"I–I didn't know," David stammered.

The girl took a closer look at David, wiping the few tears from her cheeks, and then glanced at Bryan. "Hmmn. You're Terrans. Your folks in Star Fleet?"

"Yeah – er, no." David stammered.

"What he means is that yes, we're Terran – but no, not Star Fleet. Our dad is a trucker." Bryan explained.

"Ohh," she sniffed.

"Why? Aren't you? Terran, I mean." David asked.

She laughed. "Of course not…" the girl started.

"You're not Bajorian," Bryan added his two credits worth. "No nose gills or ear-ring."

"Really direct aren't you," the girl grunted. "I'm a Kobalite."

David and Bryan stared at each other.

"Frak! Don't you know anything?" she asked in exasperation.

Bryan was still trying to think of a snappy comeback when David suddenly snapped his fingers and said excitedly: "Yes, I do know about the Kobalites. You're ancestors fought a thousand year war with killer robots called Cybars or something…"

"Cylons," the girl said, nodding approvingly.

"Yeah," David continued. "And all of your home worlds were destroyed. A small group of survivors set out across the galaxy and finally wound up in Federation space, where you settled down and became a part of the Federation."

"Yeh," The girl said. "My grandpa Starbuck was one of the Warriors that kept the refugees safe from the Cylon pursuit. Now my mom and dad are Star Fleet – they are assigned to the uss Excalibur, part of ds9's squadron."

Wow!" David and Bryan were both suitably impressed.

"I hope nothing serious happened to your board," David said, and he and the girl knelt beside the fallen antigrav board, with Bryan looking over their shoulders.

The girl poped open a small access plate and ran a diagnostic while studying the tiny readout display. Finally she heaved a sigh of relief. "Nothing serious," she said. "Aft stabilizers are out of alignment. Too bad, or I could show you some cool tricks I know."

"I know a little about riding an antigrav board too," Bryan said.

She looked him over head to toe with an appraising glance.

"Yeah," she said. "You probably could ride a board." She turned quickly to David and said, "You too. All you have to do is learn to keep your balance."

"I'm not too good at sports…" David began.

"Nonsense. Antigrav skating isn't a sport… sports you have to work hard at. Skating is playing, the difference is sports are work and skating… is… well playing!"

"We were going to go to a vr arcade," David said. "Wanna come? Our dad gave us plenty of money."

"Well, I guess," the girl said. "I'll have to realign the stabilizers before I can ride anymore…"

"Then it's settled," David said. "My name is David, and this is my brother Bryan."

"Hmmn. You guys sure don't look much alike. My name is Aurorae."

Aurorae was dressed in a summer playsuit [shorts and short sleeves] with a gold and brown camouflage pattern and sneakers with ankle socks. She had long good looking legs and a terrific fanny. Her chest however was as flat as David's or Bryan's. [No tits!]

"Do you guys know where you are going?" Aurorae asked.

"Uhhh– really no. We just got here last night." David said.

"Well, if you're looking for a vr-arcade, you're down one level from the corridor you should be on. C'mon," she said. "I'll show you."

She guided us to an emergency access stairway and we went up one level and came out in a virtually identical corridor. Bryan couldn't see how anyone could figure out where they were. Everything looked the same. But Aurorae seemed to know exactly where she was going – and sure enough, they reached the vr- arcade that Bryan had heard about.

"Here we are," she said. "Are you any good at Wing Commander?"

"Oh boy," Bryan said. "Wing Commander xxxvii is my favorite."

Aurorae grinned. "That's obsolete," she smirked. "We use Wing Commander xli here."

"Are you any good?" Bryan shot back. He was getting mad at this… girl!

"I'm Lt. Commander rated, in the F-21 Wildcat fighter. I've shot down over twenty Jem'Hadarr fighters," She bragged.

Well, Bryan was impressed. The F-21 had just been introduced in the 36th generation of the game. He'd flown a few missions in these top of the line vr-fighters, but they were very complex and he had spent so much time trying to keep track of the instrumentation that he'd been easy meat for the simulated Jem'Hadarr he'd come up against.

Aurorae and Bryan were now standing toe to toe looking in each other's eyes. David was upset and moved in to break up what he thought was a fight starting.

"C'mon, you guys…" he said.

Aurorae glanced at him and immediately changed her challenging attitude… boy was she confusing!!

"Look," she said. "There are three of us now. We can sign out an f/b-83 Wild Weasel fighter bomber. That needs a crew of three – and we'll all be at cadet level, so it'll be even…"

"And," David said, "we'll have to get along as a crew if we want to win. You two will have to get along."

"Okay," Aurorae said.

"Who's gonna be pilot?" Bryan asked, still a little bit angry.

"We'll flip for it!" David said firmly.

"Okay," Aurorae said.

Bryan was getting the idea. <David likes Aurorae – maybe even as a [yecch] girlfriend! And Aurorae likes David. That was why she backed down when David got upset when we were arguing… Oh well, I've made up my mind… I'm not to get jealous.>

They signed up for a twenty minute training/orientation flight on a fighter bomber in the Wing Commander vr universe. Aurorae won the pilot's couch [but Bryan was consoled by the high probability that she had never been at the controls of a Tomahawk for real like he had] and David got the ew/sensor position. Bryan was the tactics officer – which he thought was better anyway. He got to do all the shooting.

The vr-simulator was half cockpit of a real f/b-83, the bottom half, with all of the complex electronic and cybernetic controls – and half game. The upper half was formed by a large holoscreen upon which the mission details were projected in three dimensions. The Virtual Reality system used was excellent, utilizing all five senses, and as we strapped ourselves into the acceleration couches, Aurorae to the Left, me on the right and David in the slightly raised jumpseat in the middle and behind us, we really felt like Star Fleet Marine pilots getting ready to go on a combat mission against the Dominion. The Wild Weasel's weapons systems consisted of two phaser cannons, port and starboard, mounted on the ends of two stubby atmospheric flight wings. Also the Weasel had various bombs and missiles to engage surface targets with. These were all mission dependant. The control systems were a dream, virtually all the bombs and missiles were 'smart' fire and forget after designating a target for them, but targeting for the phasers was more complicated. Because Aurorae was piloting Bryan had to try and anticipate her moves as he was using the phasers, her pilot's helmet had a phaser-gun overlay with which she could see what he was doing, and so could co-operate, and of course Bryan could call over the intercom.

Aurorae turned out to be a crafty and skilled warrior, and much as he hated to admit it, she probably did a better job as the Weasel's pilot [and commander] than he could have. After the training mission, which we did well enough on to get commissioned as ensigns, was complete; we signed up for a real combat mission.

The story line they got into involved the invasion of a planet that had a Jem'Hadarr military base on it. Their squadron was supplying tactical ground support to a division of Star Fleet Marines who were involved in a ground assault on the Jem'Hadarr base. The three wanna-bes flew three sorties in 90 minutes and attacked a Jem'Hadarr strong hold. Bryan's bombs and missiles virtually laid waste to the Jem'Hadarr outer defenses, which allowed the marines to breech the strong hold and eventually destroy it. They also shot down three Jem'Hadarr fighters that jumped up as they were returning to the carrier after the second sortie.

When they climbed out of the vr-simulator 90 some minutes later, they all had a new respect for the abilities of each of the others. Bryan was especially pleased when Aurorae leaned over to him as they were turning in the flight gear and whispered:

"Really good game, Bryan. You are a natural."

"Thanks," he said, "you were great too." <Who would have thought a girl could fly that good?>

"I learned a lot of tricks from my grandpa Starbuck," she said. Turning to David, she asked: "Where did you get that trick with the ew-emitter? I've never seen anyone who knocked down a fighter with a focused ems beam like that."

"Well," David said blushing, "I saw that Bry had already got the spike-head's shields down to 6%, so I figured that it would not be designed to stop an ems pulse. The ems pulse fried their cybernetics and collapsed the shields the rest of the way. I figured that'd let Bryan take 'em out easy, but they must have had some kind of propulsion containment failure too, because they blew up before Bryan shot."

"I've gotta remember that, it might even work in real life, I'll tell my mom and dad about it and they could load it up on the Excalibur's tactics simulator… maybe it will work the same way with real Jem'Hadarr fighters."

"Wow!" David said.

"You guys want to come to my secret place?" Aurorae asked. "Only a couple of kids know about it, we have a kind of club, and maybe you guys would like to join, if you're going to be here awhile."

"Yes," David said. "We'd really like to come to your secret place."

"We are going to be here for awhile," Bryan explained, "Pete's a trucker, like we told you. His 'homeport' is here at ds9, so we're here sometimes and gone sometimes."

"Great, do you want to join our club?"

"Sure," the boys said together.

"Great," Aurorae said. "C'mon then." She immediately ran off laughing. "Can't catch me!" She hollered back at us. David and Bryan just glanced at each other. No girl was going to outrun them!

They ran through corridors, up stairways, down stairways, dodging humanoid and exotic xts as we went, most of who's interlingo curses followed them as they swept past. Bryan had to admit Aurorae was as good at running as she was at vr games. Both boys had to run full out, but at least they were able to keep up with her. It would have been really embarrassing if they couldn't.

Finally, half dead from exhaustion, they wound up in one of three docking pylons, high above the main ring habitat of ds9. they were three levels down from the actual docking ring, where starships could physically connect biosphere's with the station, Aurorae explained. They went through a double-thick blast door and found themselves in a small alcove with three doors leading off it. All of the doors were sealed and locked. Aurorae took out a small electropass and shoved it into a lock slot on the frame of one of the doors and it slid open soundlessly.

Behind the door was a small room which had originally been designed as a storage facility, but was now fixed up like a small combination living room and bedroom. There was a large bed with a standard foamrubber mattress and four or five pillows, a number of cotton and wool blankets were also on the bed. In addition the room had a table and three large chairs, a holovid projector and entertainment center and a small combination food processor and refrigerator. Aurorae opened this up and pulled out three cans.

"Want some Martian Fizz?" she asked, extending a can to David and Bryan.

"Yeah," David said. "This is really kewl!"

"We like it," Aurorae said and motioned the two boys over to the bed. They all sprawled on it, half sitting/half laying like members of a Roman Orgy and sipped our soft drinks.

"What kind of club is it?" Bryan asked. He had decided he liked Aurorae after all.

"We call ourselves the 'Space-Time Pirates'," Aurorae said.

"Kewl!"

"We're a special club. There are only six kids in it, four girls and two boys, so you guys could even it up. We only let special people in, you have to be nominated by a current member, and then the whole group votes on whether or not to let you in… and you have to pass an initiation."

"What kind of initiation?" David asked.

"We're a group of kids who like to do some grown-up things…"

David and Bryan looked at each other, they could of course tell what the other was thinking because of the telepathic bond that was daily growing stronger between the two boys. Neither of them could believe their good luck.

"What kind of things?" David asked.

Aurorae paused for a moment and then said: "We get naked together and touch and play with each other," the ten-year-old girl said.

Bryan looked at David. The older boy had the same big stupid-looking grin as on his face as Bryan did. They looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

Aurorae, however was not finding this funny.

David reached out and grabbed Aurorae with both hands and rolled over away from Bryan and sprawled full out on top of the startled ten-year-old. "I think we can pass that initiation test," David said smiling. "And I thought it was gonna be months before I got around to trying to talk you into getting naked with me."

Now it was Aurorae's chance to laugh and without any warning at all, reached up and enfolded David in her arms and kissed him full on the lips. David looked surprised for a minute, but only for a minute and then began to stroke her shoulders and neck.

Meanwhile, Bryan quietly stripped down to his underpants, and the announced in a loud voice: "If you want me naked, you'll have to catch me and do it."

David and Aurorae looked at each other and suddenly lundged at Bryan as one. He was able to dodge David, mostly because he had gotten to know him and how he would move. Unfortunately for Bryan, Aurorae also seemed to know how and when David would act, and she was filling in the gaps. Bryan dodged right into her outstretched arms, which she immediately wrapped around him, pinning Bryan's own arms against his sides.

The nine-year-old struggled to get free but Aurora was really strong for a girl, and it seemed the more Bryan struggled, the tighter she held him. David kinda knocked the younger boy's feet out from under himself and in a lightning pass got Bryan's underpants off.

"Hah!" Aurorae laughed. "Thought we couldn't do it, huh?"

"No," Bryan laughed. "I was just tired of waiting for you and David to finish all the kissie/kissie stuff… Aurorae's got a boyfriend," Bryan sang. "David's got a girlfriend…"

David slugged him on the shoulder, but not hard. "Shut up, monkey-boy," he muttered.

"David's got a girlfriend…" Bryan continued. "I'm naked. Now its your turn."

Aurorae grinned and turned to David and unsnapped his shorts. David then unsnapped the dressing access on Aurorae's playsuit and as she unzipped his shorts and let them fall to the floor, David unzipped her playsuit and pealed it off her shoulders and let it drop. David also quickly removed his tee-shirt and threw it in the corner. The eleven-year-old boy in just his underpants stood facing the ten-year-old girl in just her panties. For a minute they just stood there stairing at each other and Bryan thought he'd have to stir thing up again to get them moving.

'Oh gross,' Bryan thought. 'They're really in love.'

Aurora twisted around and squeezed David's butt as she pulled his underpants halfway down, then let the station's pseudo-gravity field take over. David's underpants fell around his ankles as his wiener completed its erection and stood stiff and out away from his body. David stepped out of his underpants while Aurorae quickly got free of her panties.

"Bryan," Aurorae motioned for him to come over, and reached out to hug both boys. They responded to the girl's overatures and all three of them dived onto the big bed and cuddled, David and Bryan sandwiching Aurorae. The ten year old girl looked at both of the boys. "Has either of you ever done 'it'?"

Both boys blushed. Every human or humanoid kid on every planet since before spaceflight has known what it was. Even if they didn't really know, or understand it… they knew it was what the grownups and some big kids did, and that it was a big secret, and that it involved boys and girls being naked together. Somehow that made babies. The younger kids were not 100% sure of how or even if that's true.

"This-this is the first time we've ever even been naked with a girl," David said.

"We've been naked and played together before," Bryan said "But that's different…"

"Do you want to do it?" Aurorae asked.

"How?" both boys asked.

"It's really easy," Aurorae said, "And it feels real good. Want to try?"

"Wanna?" David asked, looking at Aurorae.

"Yes!" She said. "First we gotta get you stiff."

"Not a problem," Bryan said displaying his own boner. David did likewise.

Aurorae spread her legs apart and said: "Okay, see that hole down there, not the butt, the one on top?"

"Yes" David nodded.

"Okay. David, you're first then. Crawl on top of me and push your wiener in that hole, then pull it out half way and stick it in again; keep on doing that until you feel a really good feeling, or until I tell you to stop, okay?"

"Yeah," David said.

Bryan moved so he could get a better view of what was going on as David crawled on top of Aurorae. As he had been instructed and put his boner in her hole. Then things started to happen pretty fast. David began to move his hips and soon his whole body was moving up and down. Bryan remembered this was sometimes called 'humping' by the big kids and now he could see where this name came from. It seemed to go on for a long time, but it was really only a few minutes. At last it was over and David rolled off of Aurorae.

As David rolled off, Aurora grabbed Bryan and pulled him over to her. "Are you ready, Bryan?" she asked.

"Yes," Bryan grinned. "Are you sure this won't make a baby?"

"Very sure," Aurorae answered. "You have to be older to do that, and have hair around your wiener and under your arms. We're safe."

"Okay," Bryan said and climbed up on top of Aurorae and maneuvered his stiff wiener until it was at the edge of Aurorae's hole. "Ready?" She nodded and the boy pushed his wiener into her hole. It was great, soft and warm and Bryan was surprised to learn that Aurora had muscles down there so that as he moved his penis in and out it felt like a giant hand gripping all parts of his wiener at once. Bryan sank into her all the way, until the base of his dick hit against her pubis.

He started pulling his wiener out and sticking it back in again. A kind of electric shock ran up and down his back and began to radiate away from his spine; at the same time, it felt like when Pete was rubbing his penis, it felt like the boy was going to explode, and then, just like when Pete was rubbing him, there was a rushing feeling from the bottom of his belly to the tip of his wiener. Bryan was paralyzed for a minute and basically just rolled off of Aurorae. He hope that she was not disappointed. He had heard that when boys and girls did it, that boys got 'finished' before girls did and that sometimes girls didn't get to feel as good as we boys did… 'But maybe with both David and I doing it to her she was able to feel good to,' Bryan thought. All three children cuddled together and just kind of dreamily drifted in between napping and wakefulness for awhile.

Pete was just coming out of Quark's Bar and Domjott Casino, where he had just completed an elightening conversation with Quark, Morn and Jabbah the Hutt. The obese worm-like Hutt was the Orion Syndicate's Sector Boss here the Bajor-Kardasia sector of the galaxy. Headquartered on a small desert planet deep within the badlands called Tatooine. Quark and the Hutt were roumered to be among the Marquis' most valuable weapons conduits. Since the Kardasians had sided with the Dominion during the war, the Federation had lost all interest in persecuting the Marquis and Starfleet, while not openly helping the Marquis rarely answered Kardasian complaints about Marquis raiders and routienly blasted Kardasian vessels bold enough to cross into Federation territory.

Pete had learned a very important fact that went a long way toward easing his mind about Jamal. Although he was indeed a junior member of the Syndicate's elite, he had made powerful enemies, including the Hutt. Jamal could expect to help or reinforcements from the Orion Syndicate as long as he hung around Bajor. Pete had just left the meeting when his combadge bweeped for his attention.

"Reynolds Interstelllar Freight Forwarding, Reynolds here, he said

"Captain Reynolds, can you please come to Security Chief Odo's office please?" the female Bajorian voice asked.

"Er… yes, I can…"

"Good, we'll be expecting you then."

The connection was abruptly terminated and Pete wondered how Odo could have possibly known of the top-security meeting about Jamal in Quark's. If Odo knew Jabba was on board Deep Space nine, it might be that the Security Chief wanted in on the action capturing a Syndicate Crimelord…

ds9's security department had been headed up by Odo, the only Founder openly in the Alpha Quadrant. The changeling's origin was shrouded in mystery, but he had been head of station security since the Kardasian occupation of Bajor, some sixty years ago. He also happened to be one third of the Triumvirate [the Dominion's representative] that operated ds9 and controls the Alpha side of the Bajorian wormhole. General Kira [Mandi's mother] was the Bajorian representative and Commander DelMarva was the Federation's represenative on the station. Pete had learned a long time ago that when push came to shove, and security said report, you reported.

The Star Nomad was however unprepared for the scene that greeted him as he arrived at the station's main security office. Security Chief Odo was there himself, several of his Bajorian security patrolmen were lounging around. In addition there was a Ferengi in a Star Fleet captain's uniform who could only be Nog, the first Ferengi to enlist in Star Fleet back in the days before Farenganar had joined the Federation. He commanded the most powerful starship assigned to the wormhole defense squadron, the uss Excalibur, an Armeggeddon-class pocket battleship. I wondered what was going on here.

"Are you Pete Reynolds?" a security cop asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"Okay, sign here…"

Suddenly from the direction of the cell-blocks he heard Bryan: "Pete!" the boy shouted. Pete turned and saw Bryan, David and a girl about the same age being led out into the entrance alcove of the security office.

"Look at them hew-mahn," Captain Nog jostled my elbow… the Ferengi are a very physical people. "Who would believe anyone so young could cause so much trouble?"

"The little girl is your responsibility?" Pete asked. "The two male 'criminals' are my kids, David and Bryan."

"Yes, the girl is Aurorae, the daughter of my best fighter pilot, and her husband, a grunt-marine squad leader," Captain Nog said. "They are both away on a specialized mission at present, so ultimately Aurorae is my responsibility. I can see I will have to have a talk with her."

Pete was informed that his boys and the girl had been found wondering around unescorted in Down Under, the lower three levels of the station's ring habitat which was strictly off limits to those under 16 years old. Down Under was home to all of the seedier entrepreneurs – like rough spacer bars with illegal gun-running going on in the back room, doper dens with a wide variety of potent pharmaceuticals, both human and xt, and the low-rent redlight district.

Most of the things found Down Under are also available on the main floors of the Promenade, the difference being that in Down Under there is very little security supervision and lower standards. It was rare for a customer to be mugged on the Promenade, either in the stores or on the street; muggings and even murder were uncomfortably common in Down Under.

This of course was why Down Under is basically off limits to kids, which on ds9 means age sixteen terrestrial standard years. The penalty is getting hauled into the station security office and having your parents come get you. Odo and staff rightly assumed that the parents would impose much more draconian punishments on the juvenile ne'er do wells than they could.

As Captain Nog and Pete looked on, the three kids said their good-byes.

"Remember, you guys. If you're here on Saturday that's when the next meeting of the club is… you can meet the rest of the kids," Aurorae said as she accompanied Captain Nog toward the transmat station.

"Okay! We will!" David and Bryan said together as they jumped around Pete excitedly. As Aurorae disappeared into the crowd of humans, humanoids and xts all scrambling to get to to the transmat portals, both the boys turned to Pete and began a rapid-fire description of the day's events.

"We were almost run over by Aurorae on a gravboard…" said Bryan.

"She's a Kobalite…" said David.

"And we went to a vr arcade…"

"And flew a marine fighter bomber… I was the ewo…"

"And we went up into one of the docking pylons…"

"And then…"

"And…"

"But you see what I mean…"

On board the Tiger Claw in high orbit over Bajor and outside of the range of transmat equipment, Jamal Vendecardis looked up from the library computer's screen and stared off into the air as he thought about the group he had selected from Bajorian society to be his 'cat's paw' in this confrontation. Jamal knew full well that if he just went in guns blazing, the Bajorian authorities would make short work of him and his motley crew. Nor would the Syndicate stand behind him in causing an interstellar incident, fouling up who knew how many delicate links and deals between the upper eschilons of the Bajorian government and the Central Committee of the Orion Syndicate. No, and direct action would have to be by "remote control."

The Puritan Fundamentalist Christian Full Gospell Vigalantee Committee [pfcfgvc] had been formed on old earth shortly after the arrival of the Techtanese in 1995. It had been the Terran's first unambiguous contact with an alien species, and it had fractured their society into many many factions. People who had been organized into nation-states were now forming alligences around ideas, some sublime and some wacky. One of these ideas, the so called 'old tyme religion' was championed by the pfcfgvc. Over the centuries, the Vigilante Committee, or 'vc' for short had become more than a wacky religious group. They had become bomb-throwing anarchist terrorists bent on spreading hatred of non-humans and what they called 'secular humanist civilization' throughout the galaxy.

Their goal was the eventual destruction of all technological civilizations, so that a mythical 'golden age' of morality and god-fearing community would somehow mushroom up in the ruins of the defeated evil secular humanists. Their theology is murky and dark, and rumored to include cannibalistic and human sacrifice. They were hated and feared throughout the Galaxy – and they had a cell here on Bajor, working against the pagan Prophets of the Bajorian religion. They should make the perfect partner for Jamal's revenge; He rubbed his hands together in contemplation of their association.

High in a nearly inaccessible boulder strewn box canyon in the mountains overlooking Kilkamec City was the Temple of Eternal Damnation for All Non-Believers and the Prophets. [The pfcfgvc tends to go overboard in their names and ranks.] In the temple in a small office, Obergruppenführer Algol Synaar swore a silent and profane oath as he looked at a report from one of his operatives in the city. Overal income was down, Kilkamec City Police were scoring major hits against the various vicelords contracted to administer the cult's holdings and collect the revenue. Something must be done soon to slap these filthy heathen Prophet-worshipers down – fast and hard. Algol Synaar began planning how he could accomplish this with a maximum of bloodshed short of a tacnuc device.

The Fists of God were his first choice. They were the street level enforcement arm of the pfcfgvc, extremely important to the maintaining of a sufficient level of terror in the poorer Bajorian neighborhoods to allow the terrorist cell to operate with impunity. They used prostitutes of both sexes and all ages, sold drugs, both pure and tainted, ran cheap and crooked casinos, and in general controlled most street crime in a large arc of poorer suburbs and the central sectors of Kilkamec City. This in turn supplied the pfcfgvc cell with the funds it needed to pursue its terrorist activities here on Bajor against the Prophets and beyond in a vast web of terror and intrigue that reached into the Gamma Quadrant and to Kardasia Prime itself; and in the other direction through five warp gate corridores to Imperial Terra itself, where the Grand Dragon and Exhaulted Cyclopse set forth the group's Speritual and political goals.

In the old days, during the Dominion Wars, the pfcfgvc had been a willing pawn of the Founders and the Kardasian Obsidian Order, hoping that the Dominion and the Federation would destroy each other in their lust for conquest… after it was over, of course the pfcfgvc would be there to pick up the pieces – and spread their brand of "everyone's a sinner and going to hell" religion.

Algol was a mid-level vicar, with a parish that included the valuable starport sector of downtown Kilkamec City. It was his to tax with extortion and protection rackets, the profits from his side deals in drugs annually provided him with plenty of money for his hobby, the sadistic manipulation and torture of helpless children. One of his operatives, Nils Johanson had sent him information on a vulnerable kid, David Pasce.

David was not all that important in the overall plans of the Obergruppenführer. He was a small boy, the son of a doper he had one of his Fists hook hook on Xirconium-B and other less potent drugs last year. The religious sadist had targeted the boy for special attention. The mother was a weak doper and had only held out a few days after Johanson had made the demand for her son in exchange for more dope. But David Pasce had escaped him, or more likely that bonehead Johanson had screwed things up somehow and he had fallen into this Jamal's hands – and one of his 'toys' had escaped him, but no matter, the bounty that the Orion was offering for help more that made up for Algol's loss.

Now this opportunity from the Orion Syndicate had fallen into his lap. Algol punched the button on his computer screen and studied the data that Jamal Vendecardis had sent him. David has somehow also excaped from Jamal – apparently with the help of some space cowboy truck driver. Algol let a small grin cross his face as he contemplated how to end the life of this trucker in the slowest way possible… perhaps slow phaser roasting as his agents had done to Jennifer Pasce when David had escaped him. He must remember to rub the eleven-year-old's nose in the fact that his mother had died a horrible torturous death because of him. Yes, that would be quite satisfying.

And after he had completed his revenge on David for having dared to escape, why not turn him over to Jamal for ten bricks of gold pressed latinum? As for the other little boy… there would be the public execution, to ram home to the peasants that he – Obergruppenfuhrer Algol Synaar – was The Boss. Synaar was of two minds as to how to execute the infidels accompanying David. Beheading was quick and dramatic – a lot of blood and a lot of shock value, that would due for the little boy – but it was also over much too quickly for the infidel Reynolds… hmnn… what to do, what to do. He could feed the accursed one to his Mythrin serpent, that was also dramatic, and much slower and more terrifying for the victim. Or perhaps atomic disintegration. If done precisely and slowly it was exquisitely painful…

Ah, well, he'd have to catch the brat and his companions first, Obergruppenführer Synaar sighed. When his intellegence network had reported a boy matching David's physical parameters at Kobbutz Rhitamann, Algol had sent a gonjah to recover him… that however had been less than sucessful. His next strike would have to be under Bajorian control, no more clumbsy gonjah hoards to deal with. Opergruppenfuhrer Synaar sent for Brother Zachariah, the leader of a special unit of the Fists of God devoted to 'clean up' and 'abductions'.

Brother Zachariah, an obese middle aged and balding Bajorian waddled into Obergruppenführer Jamal's office. He executed a surprisingly buoyant bowing salute and said: "Your wish, Vicar of Amajurr?" using Jamal's religious title ins tead of the military one.

"Go to Kilkamec City and track down David Pasce," Algol said, handing Brother Zachariah an isolinear file chip containing the data Jamal had provided him. "He'll be with an adult male and another boy. Bring them all to me."

"What if they resist?"

"You may kill the adult, but bring the children to me!"

"At Once, my Lord Vicar."

END of CHAPTER FOUR