***Zorakk

Future Shock
Third version

Chapter Three

The Orion Syndicate predated Terra's entry into galactic civilization and controlled most piracy, slavery and other illicite activities all along a 3,000 light year front in the Orion Spur of the Milky Way's Cygnius Arm. They were reputed to have taken total control of at least a dozen starsystems that acted as home base for their maurading fleets of armed merchant ships and outright warships. In addition it was also said that they had members in high places in virtually all of the galactic civilizations – including Terra – in this quadrant of the galaxy. All in all, people to be wary of in confronting. How much power and influence could Jamal bring to the fight? For that matter how much could Pete bring to bear?

Troubles, troubles, troubles. 'But,' Pete thought 'we must not overlook the fact that there is an upside – we've met David.'

Bryan and David had gone to bed almost immeditaly after jumping to warp, it had been a long and active day for both of them. Pete had been busy first with making sure Dream Walker would be difficult to trace through subspace, taking a number of 5th dimensional jinks and jumps in an attempt to confuse anyone using subspace detectors to follow them; and then in trying to dig up more information on Jamal. There seemed to be very little on him in the public records. Maybe he'd be able to find out more when he got back to ds9 and had access to his own computer net. He had dozed off and spent several hours in the pilot's acceleration couch fitfully dreaming about space battles between a woefully under armed runabout and a Jem-Ha'darr battleship.

"BING BANG BONG!" lcars said. "Oh-six hundred hours, ship's time. Time to get up, everyone. BING BANG BONG!"

Pete groaned and arose from his folded over position at the pilot's station. "Morning, lcars. Status?"

"All systems operational. All functions nominal. On course for ds9, warp factor six. Estimated time of arrival 09:27:55."

"Very Well," Pete said and went back to the sleeping quarters. David was already sitting up, his bare legs dangling over the side of the bed. Bryan was still reclining in the nest of blankets, but his eyes were open. Pete sliped out of his jumpsuit and made a grab for Bryan. Swinging the giggling boy up over his shoulders, he then snagged David and headed for the autowash.

"Nothing like an invigorating romp in the water to get one's juices flowing in the morning," Pete yelled and switched on the water jets and the sonic message. Both boys shrieked as the water hit them, and looking conspiratorialy at each other seized both Pete's arms and tuged him into the autowash also.

"Why, thank you boys for inviting me to join you," Pete smiled.

"Our pleasure," David smirked and executed a low bow, as he did, Bryan took a open handed swat at the older boy's butt. The swat connected with a resounding <Splat!!>

"Oww!" David protested. "No fair…"

The autowash was really three fixtures in one molded into a nine cubic meter volume, including pumps and filters. The shower area was oversized, a meter and a half [5 ft] wide by two [6½ ft] long with two high volume showerheads and several sonic emitters, in an emergency it could be used as a decontamination area with the erection of forcefield shields. The rim of the shower area is also raised three feet [90 cm] [except for the entry portal] and can therefor double as a large hot-tub; and with the addition of correctly focused sonic beams can be converted into a fist-class jacuzzi.

Pete got his first real look at David in the raw here, although his teeshirt costume had left little to be discovered. The eleven-year-old was as he had appeared, with a slim, athletic body, already starting to show some adult muscular development, especially across his chest, shoulders and back. Pete watched as David slowly soaped his body, watching David run his soapy hands over his chest and nipples, his cute hairless underarms, his buttcrack, and finally his wiener and balls. He gently washed his hairless 8-cm [3 inch] circumcised penis which was absolutely perfect, in its erection, Pete thought, the head, a rosy pink in color. His balls were small and drawn in tight to his body, in a preadolescent scrotum.

He turned to Pete with a grin of pure mischief, and said "Would you wash my back?"

"Sure," Pete said and began to soap up his hands.

"When I excaped from Jamal, I was kinda scared…" David said. Pete looked at this as a kind of crack in the shell of protection that the eleven-year-old had put up since our first meeting.

"Both Bryan and I could see that," Pete said and Bryan nodded for emphesis. "That's why we tried to go as slow as possible."

David took the soap and turned to Bryan. "Want me to do yours?" he asked.

"Ah, yes, slaveboy," Bryan said giggling.

David swatted at Bryan, and grabbed his shoulders, physically lining him up and then began to wash his back.

David's skin was so soft and warm, like Bryan's, that Pete nearly lost control of himself. He had a raging, pounding hard on that felt like it would explode any second. Pete finally finished David's his back, down to and including his soft little fanny.

David again turned to face Pete, and noticed the Nomad's pounding dick.

"You have a stiffy!" David giggled at Pete.

"Haw! Haw! Haw!" Bryan guffawed. "That guy is always hard."

Pete "Hurrumphed!" and looked down at his erect dick. "I believe you're right," he said with an almost undetectable pelvic thrust.

"Here," Bryan said, "I'll show you what to do." He reached out, wrapping his smooth little hand rather firmly around Pete's throbbing member; Pete reached out to touch Bryan's slender 7-cm [2½ inch] erect wiener. They simultaniously began to masturbate each other. Bryan was a savage there in the autowash, working Pete's dick like it was a mechanical pump or something, within thirty seconds he had the results he was searching for as Pete howled and emitted a quantum-torpedo of semen and sperm that splattered against the far tiled wall of the autowash.

"THAR SHE BLOWS!!" Bryan shouted and David laughed until he couldn't stand up strait. "And now… suck my dick!" Bryan ordered in a commanding voice and thrust his pelvic area out at Pete, his small wiener was erect and stiff.

"By your command," Pete panted and snatched Bryan off his feet and swung him up, holding him above for a moment before transfering his hold on the little boy to under his arms and lowering him to the correct level for sucking his dick, and swallowed Bryan's wiener and balls all at once. Bryan squeeled with pleasure as Pete did body-presses with Bryan's 28 kilogram [62 pounds] body and sucked his wiener.

"Okay – okay," Bryan said suddenly. "Let me down – I gotta pee!" Bryan scampered out of the autowash and over to the toilet.

Pete got out just after Bryan flushed and went down the short passageway to the sleeping area. He got a clean pair of shorts and pulled them on. David was right behind him.

"I-I wanted to thank you for buying me the neat clothes," David said. "They're better than anything I've had for a long time, ever since…"

"That's okay, David. No problem," Pete said as David finished dressing. Pete put his arm around the boy's shoulder, and the boy looked startled at first, but quickly leaned into Pete to be cuddled more.

Meanwhile, Bryan had been poking around in the cold pantry.

"Err…Pete?" he called from the entry to the galley, "We really don't have anything but ice cream in here…"

"So?" Pete asked. "What's wrong with that?"

"Yeah," David agreed.

"For breakfast?" ever practical Bryan asked.

Pete entered the compact galley and rummaged around in the over sized drawers of the galley overhead storage area. "Try this," he said and tossed Bryan a foil packet about 15 centimeters long and 4 centimeters thick [6 x 1½ inches].

"What is it?"asked Bryan.

"Combat E-rations," Pete said. "Not too bad really." Bryan was right though, they were seriously understocked in the grub department with two healthy growing boys on board. Pete made a mental note to lay in supplies when we docked at ds9.

"C'mon you guys," Pete said. "Sit down and eat up! You have not lived till you've tasted Terran Imperial Marines combat rations."

Bryan was already sitting at the Dream Walker's small meter square table in our 'ward room' as David came in from the adjoining galley. The young boy tore the combat ration pak open and stuffed the beef jerky-like stick of emergency rations in his mouth. "Not bad," he said, his mouth full.

David nodded and opened a package and tentative took a bite. "Pretty good," he agreed. Bryan turned over the foil wrappers of the E-rations. On the foil was the red, white and blue banner of the United States and the words:

"Yeah, I know." David said, "I read about it in a comic book. This stuff is suppose to keep for a century. More if its stored in a vacuum."

"Oh yeah? How?"

"They sock it with gamma rays to kill all the bacteria.

"Yuck, you mean the stuff is radioactive?"

Pete had joined the two boys in the galley by this time and the exchange between Bryan and David seemed to indicate that the relationship between the two young boys was progressing well.

Pete laughed at Bryan's conclusion about the food processing that combat rations were subjected to. "No, Bryan, the gamma rays go right through it and kill all the bacteria and then keep on going. It takes a special kind of material to become radioactive itself."

"Oh," Bryan said.

"Whatcha get?" David asked. "They have 12 basic meals."

David seemed well versed in the Imperial Marines… another mystery which Pete planned to inquire into later, if he remembered.

"It says 'Type C Turkey Dinner', so I guess it's thanksgiving," Bryan said.

"Good enough for me!" David said, "let me have another of those Rations, Combat Emergency, Type II."

In fact they all had a second round.

"Hey, okay," Bryan said. "I got fried chicken and french fries. Authentic junque food!"

"I got 'steak, salad, baked potato, and biscuit'." David said reading right off the foil pack.

The boys nearly inhaled the ration sticks and sat around smacking their lips.

"Okay, who's up for ice cream?"

"Me–me–me!" both boys were squirming all over each other waving their hands in the air.

Pete served up two heaping bowls of ice cream and they both attacked the ice cream like crazied weasels. Sighing, Pete returned to his ration bar. Seconds later he looked up from his 'steak'. "Damn! You must have been hungry." All the two boys did was nod as they wiped ice cream from their chins.

David looked up at Pete and began a haulting speech: "I want to thank you for all of the things you have done for me. You and Bryan both have virtually saved my life…"

"David," Pete said softly, as the three streached out in the chairs in the truck's small galley. "We – Bryan and I – want you to join our little family. At least until you can decide if you want to go back to your mom."

David shot a surprised look at Bryan, who nodded.

"Y-you want me to come with you – you mean even when you leave Bajor?"

"Uh-huh," Bryan said.

David turned to Pete, and it was his turn to just smile and nod. "I think that if we're going to do this, there are some secrets I should tell you about myself, and then you can make up your minds about whether you want me around or not."

Pete chuckled, "Like it could be any worse than hooking up with a 'child mo-LES-ting PER-vert' like me…"

"Or a rogue runaway kid," Bryan giggled. "Like me."

"C'mon, Bryan, you're not a Rogue, only unattached…" Pete giggled and began tickling Bryan. "Except to me!"

"Kinda funny you should mention those things," David interrupted. Pete and Bryan could see by his serious demenor that David had something serious to unload.

"I kinda liked what we did in the autowash. That was not anything like what it was like with Jamal. You were gentle. And I wished it had been me you sucked off – instead of Bryan. I've been playing with myself – you know with my wiener – since I was six. So I guess I'm kinda a queer, but I don't care any more. I want to wrastle and play naked games with you guys.

"David," Pete started, searching for words, "You know that Bryan and I enjoy playing with each other like that," Pete said. "All boys mess around with each other sometimes," he said as comfortingly as he could. Pete hugged David again. "It's a natural part of being a little boy. It's way too early for you to say one way or the other if you're gay, xt-sexo, bi-sexual or hetro. You have to be a grown up before those things mean anything – and you decide that. While you are a kid you can experiment with anything and its ok."

Bryan leaned over and put his arm around David's shoulder. "You can play with my wiener if you want… any time you want. I think its fun too – and I want you to be happy again."

David sniffed and looked up at Bryan, "Thanks, Bryan," he said. "But I've still got Jamal to worry about. You two can't imangine how cruel and evil he is…"

"I don't see any 'Jamal' here," Pete said softly.

"You're mocking me," David accused. "But you shouldn't. Jamal is a powerful individual and I don't wanna get fucked again! It hurts! But I don't wanna you guys to get hurt either, and you will if yo mess around with Jamal. He has an old converted Star Fleet frigate from the Dominion War days, he has a crew of two dozen cut-throat pirates… I'm realy afaid of being hurt again; and worse I'm afraid for you and Bryan, so maybe it would be best if we just parted ways at Bajor."

"I won't let Jamal hurt you." Pete said.

"Nor me," Bryan echoed solemnly. Bryan dug around in the storage bin that formed part of the bed's headboard and dug out Crunchie.

"But you will get hurt if you don't dump me. He will make sure that you get hurt! Maybe even make it worse for me. I'm scared stiff of Jamal."

"You can use Crunchie to help protect you," Bryan said. "He's never failed me……"

David reached over and hugged Bryan, momentarily sandwiching the stuffed toy terror between them. "Thanks," David managed to get out and Bryan immediatly reached out and hugged David.

Pete paused for a moment himself and then answered, "I meant what I said when we first met. You don't have to thank Bryan or myself. Bryan and I like to get naked together and play games. You can choose to join us, or you can choose not to. Personally, if all we do is spend the evenings watching a movie and cuddling, I will be happy."

"But…"

Again Pete interrupted him. "No, for now there is no 'but' – the only thing is for you to just enjoy and feel safe. And to know, deep down in your being that I will never hurt you. I know you're frightened, and you think that you've heard all these empty promises before…; but Bryan will tell you, maybe it will be more believable coming from another kid. I will not hurt you. I subscribe to the Federation's Children's Bill of Rights as part of my oath as a Boy Lover."

"What's that?"

"Let's see when I got my licence, I could recite this from memory. That's been a while, but let's see if I can still do it – alright?"

David shrugged, still puzzled.

"Okay," Pete said, "Here goes:

• I understand that my body is my own. No one has a right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body.
• I understand that sex is among the most powerful physical drives my being is subject to. This drive is normal and good, it is neither moral nor immoral. I understand that it is my right to satisfy this drive however I see fit, provided only that I do no harm to another.
• I acknowledge the fact that I am a child and that I am vulnerable to outside pressures exerted by the adults around me. I promise that I will always listen carefully to the advise of my parents and those adults that I love and trust.
• I have the right to say NO to anything that scares me or makes me feel uncomfortable when it comes to personal interaction with other people…."

"Oh there's more, then there was the Oath that I had to swear to get my licence as a Boy Lover. I'm pretty sure I can still recite that one:

1. I have read and acknowledge the truth of the Children's Bill of Rights.
2. I will never use force, either physical or emotional against a child; I will always express nothing but affection and respect for the child I am associated with.
3. I understand that although sex is a big part of life, it is not the only thing that is important. I promise to faithfully attend to the responsibilities of friendship also.
4. I realize and acknowledge that children are gifts from God and that my relationship with them, either as a parent or lover is built upon a spiritual foundation, not just a physical one. I promise never to do anything to violate the trust given to me by a child.
5. I understand that the violation of any of these principles will be grounds for the immediate revocation of my licence and privileges granted thereby.
   I further understand that violation of this covenant is punishable under criminal and civil law."

Both David and Bryan were impressed with the solemn words of the oath. Bryan had never heard of licensed Boy Lovers either. When he had come up to me in the vr-arcade on Starbase 288 he thought he was being very naughty and living on the edge.

"How long have you been with Jamal?" Pete asked David.

"Three weeks… maybe a month. It was hard to tell, they had me drugged and kept me in the brig a lot."

"Wow! Why's that?" Bryan asked.

David looked embarrassed. "Well, er… It's something that's kinda secret, but I guess I trust you guys."

Both Pete and Bryan waited expectantly.

"My mom is a Rouge MenTalt, she never registered with PsiCorps and was never officially trained. But she learned on her own, from her mother. The Power has passed down through the female line of her family for generations. I'm the first male in a dozen generations to have the Power. I was supposed to be a girl, but when I was born a boy instead, my mother fled from her home and became a double fugitive – on the run from PsiCorps and from her own order of witches.

"I do not know a lot, but I'm pretty good at what I do know." David continued. "I tried early on to mind-warp Jamal, but I failed because he had natural defences against psi-attacks. But I scared him, and from then on he kept me woozie on trancs and ordered his crew to wear Klingon mind shields." He thinks I'm at least a T+3, so he'll doubly want me back."

"Hmnn," Pete mused out loud. "So we've got two big problems."

"Yes," David said. "Jamal and PsiCorps."

"I think you can cross PsiCorps off your list," Pete said. "They have their hands full with other things. I'm pretty sure the official line for the last century has been if Talents do not go through the official training, they are unlikely to ever be able to match the abilities of a trained MenTalt, and so are not a threat."

"But mom…" David stammered.

"Your mom was probably a member of a very secret group of Amerinds and Wiccans from old Earth. Early in the First Wave expansion in the mid 21st century, they left earth and established a colony they called 'Aquarius' and then used psi-powers and some now lost ancient Martian technology to cloak the entire planet from detection by even the most sophisticated sensors. Today, no one knows where Aquarius was located, but there are lots of people who would like to.

"Among the least charitable of these is a group of luddites and conservative evangelical fundametalist Christians who call themselves the Puritan Fundamentalist Christian Full Gospell Vigalantee Committee. Or just 'vc' for short. They believe that it is their duty to help Jesus return for the Second Comming. They believe the easiest way to clear the path for their god is to brutally murder everyone who does not accept their rather constricted view of god and religion. "They're considered a terrorist group on every civilized planet in the galaxy, on some all Christians are banned because of them – and if they cought wind of the fact that you might be related to Aquarius in some way you'd be at the top of their find and torture for information before killing list."

David hugged against Bryan and Pete even harder. He had a deathgrip on Crunchie.

"I DON'T WANNA DIE!"

"Don't Worry," Pete said calmly, "No one is going to die."

David snorted. "My own mother doesn't want me around, except when she needs a runner to go to the store for her or something, she's a doper who spends 90% of her time hoped up on ChromiumX…" David said.

"I see," Pete murmured in a low, comforting voice.

"And she'd rather be with Bonehead than me, because Bonehead supplies her with Chromium-X.

"Who's 'Bonehead'?" Pete inquired.

"The most evil piece of shit in the galaxy besides Jamal. His real name is Lars Johannson, he's my mom's latest boyfriend… the one who got her hooked on Chromium-X.

"I think you are probably wrong," Pete said. "I think it much more likely its the Chromium-X talking… anyway, I'm going to need your home comm-web number." Pete said, sitting up and moving across to the sleeping area's mini-couch. "I should have done this last night after we were clear of Ventax II."

"No! No, you mustn't……" David sat bolt upright.

"Okay, okay, calm down," Pete said "But I can't believe that your mom or someone isn't worried about you."

"They're not," David said instantly, his face twisted into a scowl.

"Well, I'm worried about it. How about humoring me and giving me their comm-web number," Pete said. Taking a small portable commweb from the receptacle just to the left of the couch. "I'm calling just to let them know you're okay and see what they say."

David made a rude noise. "They're not worried, Pete," David said solemnly.She doesn't even have a comm number and I doubt if she knows I'm gone."

"I see," Pete said thoughtfully. He sensed that David was cruising on the edge of breaking down again; and I wanted to spear him that if I could. "There was no one to help?"

"Like with so much else to do, the cops would give a bleep about a kid like me," David sighed gustily and then he reluctantly gave Pete a comm number. "But it'll only cause trouble…"

"Who's this?" I asked looking up from the commweb.

David glanced at Bryan, and shrugged. "Bonehead's."

Pete sat down on the couch, opened the portable comm-web and dialed the number.

"Pete!" Bryan's voice was edged with terror. Startled the truck driver looked toward him.

"Cut off the video pickup! We don't want him to see us – I know!"

Instinctively Pete touched a control button on the bottom of the commweb and the tiny video led over the ccd screen went out. I've learned to trust Bryan's hunches. 'He's right more times than he's wrong,' Pete thought.

"Hullo?" a guttural male voice said after the third ring. The small 6 cm [2½ inch] screen showed an unshaven hairy obese Bajorian about 30 with thick eyebrows and a prominent sneer etched across his philistine features.

"Hello, is this Mr. Johannson?" Pete asked.

"Who da hell wants to know?" the voice asked roughly. "What's wrong with da vid?"

"My name's Pete and I picked up a kid you might know: his name's David. I just wanted to let you know he's okay and see if there was anything you wanted to tell him," I answered.

"Oh ya did, huh? Listen you cocksucker I don't give a flying fuck if da little faggot is alive or dead, I gots lots of 'em hanging around here. All ages, all sexes."

"I don't think you understand. You see David's decided to stay with me."

"WHAT!!?? Why I'll have yo killed, ya thievin' two bit hustler, I have friends in the resistance, dey'll hunt youse down like a Kardasian voll! I'll have him back, and that other little piece of ass he wuz hanging around with. They'll both die of some horrible xt-clap or some other xt-std before dey see de twelvth birthday. You betta just be smart and hand him over, so's I can discipline him for running away," Johannson ranted on, making very little sence to Pete. "Den mabbe I let you live."

"In your dreams fatboy," I growled.

"WHAD YO SEZ!? I kill you ––––"

"Sue me," I said and pressed the disconnect switch. I looked at the 'transmission terminated' icon on the tiny ccd screen for a while with an obviously shocked expression before I pressed the off button and watched the brief flash of light as the ccd cells of the vidscreen discharged. A slow rage was building in me and he had to consciously try to avoid throwing a non-productive rage-tantrum right there. How dare that subhuman slime say such things against a pair of sweet little boys like David and Bryan? 'To hell with the authorities,' Pete thought, 'I'll waste this piece of dogmeat myself.'

David looked pained. "See? He said he didn't care, didn't he?" David's face was an unreadable mask of intense emotion seething within his being.

Pete nodded.

"He called me a faggot didn't he?" David asked in a quiet voice.

Pete nodded again.

"And a mutant… that part was true at least. I'm a filthy mutie," David said.

"I thought we settled that. No one sees you as a 'filthy mutie' least of all your Jamal – who more likely sees you as a cash-cow to earn long term income from," Pete said.

David, for a few minutes, managed to just lean against me with tears rolling down his cheeks freely, but soon he was openly bawling again, with Bryan accompaning him. Pete hugged them bothand let them cry. Through his sobs, David swore for the first time in front of Pete. "That son of a bitch Johannson! That fucking son of a bitch! I hate him! I tried like crazy to please him – so he wouldn't hurt me any more; but I couldn't do anything right. He beat the shit out of me every other day! I hate him! I hate him!"

The Star Nomad hugged David tighter, petting his soft brown hair.

At last, the emotion spent and the crying over, David released his hold on Pete and sat up. "I should just off myself and be done with it!" he said in a freighteningly calm voice.

"David! NO!" Bryan literately screamed through his tears.

The atmosphere in the room became suddenly electric and all could sense more than see a pale blue-green aurorae surrounding Bryan and reaching out toward both myself and David.

"I – I think I may be a mutant, too!" Bryan said. "Not a useful Talent like you David that can be trained, but a dangerous mutant. I wanted to tell you when we first met, Pete, but you were so kewl, and I wanted to stay with you. But now the Federation Security Agents will come and take me away and put electrodes in me and cut me open to see what makes me tick. My aunt told me."

Both David and I sat their and simply stared at Bryan. If this was some plan of his to get David's mind off suicide, it had worked well. The eleven year old's tears had dried up completely as he tried to comprehend what the words Bryan was saying meant in the cold hard reality of the multiverse.

"Bryan that is absolute nonsense! What makes you think you're a mutant?" Pete asked.

"Watch!" the nine-year-old commanded, pointing to the used complementary kleenex in the wastebasket a meter away. A distracted look came over Bryan's face and then his eyes seemed to blaze electric emerald for an instant, as the sea-green flecks in his blue eyes reacted to whatever commands his mind had just issued. The deteris in the wastebasket suddenly burst into flame and then settled down into a single large orange-yellow flame as it burned the paper and cotton fibers of the used kleenex

"Warning!" lcars chided. "FIRE!"

"Hoe–lee Sh–-" I said softly, still staring at the now lickering flame. "lcars, stand down."

"And I can make myself invisible," Bryan said matter-of-factly.

"G'wan…" David muttered.

"I don't mean really invisible, like bending light or something; but I can make people just ignore me, and not pay any attention to what I'm doing, and just forget that anything happened. But it takes time to prepare, and it leaves a humungus headache. That's why I couldn't use it too often, I have to have time to prepare…"

"Aww, Bryan, I know how you feel…" David said and hugged Bryan.

Pete looked at Bryan, his face was anxious. "That is some demonstration," he said. "I think the invisible trick could be called telehypnosis, and the trick with the kleenex would be telekenesis. Neither of these things make you a monster, or dangerous, they just make you very special. As far as I know you need to be a T+3 to make telekinesis work constantly."

"What's T+3 mean?" Bryan asked.

"When humans first went out into the galaxy and started to meet other people, they learned that the universe itself is alive, and that what is called "psi" or extrasensory perception is a part of this universal life force and common among about half of all sentient life – especially among non-humanoid forms. We humans like to measure and compare things, and psi was no different. So back in the 21st century they established a group of tests and measurements that could compare the relative potencies of different people with psi-powers. They called these special people "MenTalts" which stands for MENtal TALenTs, and established a scale called the T scale. Because we thought of it, we set ourselves at the center with T=0. From there the table is logarithmic – do you know that word?"

"Of course!" Bryan snorted. "I'm not a baby, I'm almost ready to pass my Phase One tests later this year!"

"Ooohhhhh – tuff guy, Phase Two are you. We'll find out when you start back to school next month," I teased Bryan and grinned.

"School!?" both boys groaned.

"Yes, school. Anyway, the T-scale is logarithmic and goes up to T+8 or down to T-4. Plus numbers are greater than Terra norm, and minus numbers are less than norm. Example: Betzoids are all T+2 and some are T+3 or T+4…"

Now of course Pete knew all about MenTalts and the amazing things that are possible to the human mind, but he'd never encountered one [much less two] close up before. A true MenTalt is a one in a million reordering of the human genome to produce something… well… different but still human, and as far as he knew there was nothing in Bryan's medical or genetic records that indicated that he might be a T+ talent, but the past few seconds were fast making a believer out of him. There was a distinct possibility that Bryan Shimosuwa was a MenTalt, and judging from this display, a fairly high potency level one also.

"Okay, David," Pete said, "You're turn. Tell us about you being a mutie."

David looked something like a small trapped animal in the headlites of an oncomming jetcar. "Do I have to?" he asked in a small voice.

"Well, it will help," Pete said. "It always helps to have someone to talk to about problems."

Again the young boy paused, as though marshaling his thoughts.

"I can show you part of it…" David started. "But you won't like it. even if I try to make it as mild as I can."

"Hah!" Pete bragged. I'm half Klingon – I live for pain…" But he was instantly sorry he had said that. At first it had been like the precursor of a migrain. Then in an instant he was overcome with a pain such as he had never felt before. There were no analogies, but the best discription he could give after the fact was it was like having a icecycle of atomic hydrogen driven into the core of his brain. The 34-year-old ex-marine folded up and fell over onto the desk of the Dream Walker.

"Oh I knew this would be bad…" David said. He and Bryan both tried to help the man onto the bed. where he instantly fell back.

"What in the name of Feck-LARR was that??"

"Its my self defense javeline. Its susposse to make a bully or preditor look for a different, easier target."

"I can see why," Pete muttered.

"That was really cool," Bryan said

"Anything else?" Pete panted and struggled to sit up. Finally giving up the effort and remaining reclining on the bed.

"I can talk to animals." David said as his climax.

"Neat!" was Bryan's quick comment which Pete echoed. That didn't sound lethal.

"And I can do one other thing, which is not very useful."

"What is it?" Bryan asked.

"Well…" David paused. "Watch." He picked Crunchie out of Bryan's lap and stood the stuffed animal on its hind legs. It sagged sideways slightly. David closed his eyes and deep furrows formed in his forehead. As with Bryan's big demonstration, at first it appeared that nothing was happening. However this was not the case Pete realized as he looked closely at Crunchie. The Tyranadonn had 'fleshed-out' some, and his tail, which had been slack and limp behind him suddenly whipped out at the air slashing it fack and forth.

Then, suddenly on the bed between Bryan and David was a perfect three dimensional representation of the reptile. At first Pete thought it was a hologram, but no, it was solid and had substance, the tiny terror's long tail lashed the air in confussion and it reared back on its hind legs and roared its defiance to the world eyes ablaze.

"Kewl," Bryan whispered and reached out toward Crunchie.

The mini-tyranadonn snapped its jaws full of razor sharp tiny fangs shut, and Bryan drew back, suddenly unsure of himself.

David suddenly let out a tremendous sigh, opened his eyes, and Crunchie returned to his status of much loved stuffed toy.

Bryan picked up his toy off the bed and hugged it close to his breast.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that before," Pete said.

"Way kewl," Bryan said. "It means you can really make your toys come to life…"

Vendakardis Jamal, Paridonn of the fourth order in the Orion Syndicate slouched in his command chair on the bridge of the the ancient frigate Tiger Claw and stared at the port auxiliary data screen. On it was a navigational plot. A curved red line with a stylized starship icon at its apex represented the object of Paridonn Jamal's attention. It was a small Tomahawk-class warp truck who's pilot had stolen something from him. Something that Jamal wanted back – after killing everyone else on board the fugitive ship. Jamal swore softly at the navigational plot. A second blue trace with a somewhat larger frigate's icon at its apex indicated the trajectory and current position of his own vessel. There was a disapointingly wide gap between the two icons.

"Mister Ames," Jamal swivled around in his command chair to face his astrogator, who was trying to be unobtrusive as he went about his task of making sure that Tiger Claw prosued the fastest, most economical course in its persuit of the warp truck through subspace.

"Aye, Cap'n?" Ames looked up somewhat apprehensivly from his instruments.

"Why are we not closing the gap between ourselves and the fugitive?" Jamal demanded.

"Er…"

"Yes, Mr. Ames," Jamal purred.

"Well, you see, it appears that the Nomad has a non-standard warp generator. Tomahawk's are suspossed to be limited to warp six, but he's doing warp eight point three…"

Jamal leaned over to his intercom and roared: "Mr. Ruiz!!"

"Yes Captain?"

"Ruiz, what do I pay you for?"

"Uhh – starship engineering, sir?"

"Then find me a way to intercept that thrice accursed Star Nomad!"

There was silence for a minute and then Ruiz answered. "I'm afraid the best we can do is track him to his destination and then get him. The Claw's warp generators will do warp seven… seven point two on a good day… but we're not going to catch up with the Tomahawk. He's probably got a warp supercharger in line."

"Then why don't we have one?"

"They don't make 'em big enough for the Claw…"

Jamal stared at the intercom and finally shook his head. "Alright, Chief Engineer, do your best."

"Aye, sir."

Jamal returned to studying the navigation plot. The two icons continued to crawl across the crystal screen. Jamal was virtually certian that he knew its destination already, the planet Bajor on the Kardasian frontier.

Jamal stood up from his command chair. "You have the con, Mr. Ames. I'll be in my daycabin."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

Jamal sprawled on the couch in his daycabin/office and brooded.

'Great!' Jamal thought. 'Like I really need all this aggravation right now.'

Bajor was where this whole mess had started. In a way, Jamal wished he'd never heard of David Pasce… but damnit, he was a MenTalt, an unregistered one and so could be a valuable asset to Jamal's operation. No doubt about it, the prize was worth the persuit, but as for the Nomad… Jamal ground his teeth as he thought of the lanky spacer… the Orion Pirate would take great pleasure in slowly disembowling him.

As he thought of the blood squirting and the screaming for mercy, a multitone chimb alerted him to an incoming communication. Jamal swore as he saw the message header. It was from his worst enemy Mum'aba'zah Kah'reem Orion Paridonn of the fifth degree. Technical, Jamal outranked Kah'reem, but the other was related both by blood and several marriages to well connected members of both the governmental ruling council and the Syndicate's tribunal. Mum'aba'zah Kah'reem had been a thorn in his side for years, but nevertheless, he could not affort to ignore him. Jamal pressed the "accept" button.

On the screen was the leering bloated face of Paridonn Kah'reem.

"So how is my old comrad-in-arms?" Kah'reem's oily voice poured out of the comweb.

Jamal ground his teeth, but managed to put on an acceptably pleasent face. "Fine you old cut purse," Jamal's fake expression was replaced as Kah'reem did a double take and peered directly into the comweb vid pickup. Although related to some of the most influential families on the Orion homeworld, Kah'reem had started his career in the syndicate as a humble pickpocket and sneak thief. A past he tried hard to conceal.

"I hear that you have lost something you value?"

"And where did you hear that… my old friend?"

"Let us just say I know, and not discuss how." Kah'reem's face settled back into its mask of serenity. "I know, however that you had a young human boy with enough psi power to scare you into waring psishields. And that you let him slip through your fingers… Too bad, such a prize would have brought a high price on the homeworld's slave pens…" Kah'reem let his voice drift off into silence while he grinned at Jamal. The level of accuracy of Kah'reem's intellegence indicated that Jamal had a saboteur and spy in his crew in the employ of that fat bastard. "And now," Paridonn Kah'reem said in a falsely concerned voice, "I have reports that you are burning out your warp drive trying to catch the one who perpetraited this affront to your sterling honor."

That bit hard into Jamal's underside. Kah'reem had been instrumental in uncovering one of Jamal's covert economic dirty tricks… aimed at the central bank of Orion. The Central Committee had not found enough to execute him, but thanks to Kah'reem, they knew what he had done, although they could not prove it. That was why a Paridonn of the Fifth Order was commanding a minor pirating operation of the Kardasian-Triangle frontier.

"Perhaps I can prevail upon some of my friends in the Orion Armada to come to your assistance… hmmmnn?" Kah'reem twisted the verbal knife.

"That will not be necessary, Paridonn Kah'reem."

"Ahhh… why so formal, Jamal?" Kah'reem asked in mock surprise.

"What is it you want, Paridonn Kah'reem?"

"Oh, nothing… I only called to let you know I'm watching…" Kah'reem, laughing, reached for the terminate transmission switch and it seemed to Jamal that this laughter pierced the veil of hyperspace and echoed and re-echoed in his own day cabin.

Damn Kah'reem. Just as things were falling into place and this collection of skum were finally starting to function as a crew, Kah'reem call rubed his noes in the fact that there were spies aboard. If Kah'reem had one [or more?] then who else had interests in Tiger Claw? The Central Committee? the Banja-Unmarr? (the Orion Secret Police) perhaphs even the Noppe himself? Jamal swore again and decided he would have to clean out this skum… but first we would kill the Nomad and reclaim his psi-dog.

Jamal stood and walked over to the double plated hatch of his daycabin. Sensors in the decking detected his aproach and the hatch split in two, forming a meter and a half gap. Jamal quickly advanced on the astrogation station, "Mr. Ames, abandon the persuit. I'm pretty sure I know where this li'l birdie is going to end up. Change course and plot a direct, maximum warp course direct to Bajor."

It was after supper that evening and the boys had just devoured the last of Pete's stock of combat E-rations while the young Star Nomad made some fussy last minute corrections to the convoluted path the Dream Walker was following between Ventax II and Bajor – in hopes of throwing off persuit by the Orion Syndicate – not there was really much chance of that.

Pete began trying to think of markers he could call in to help with this sewage spill. Quark was in of course, the Ferengi was always trying to tie Pete to a long term agreement that Pete had just as dilligently tried to duck. It was rumored that Morn, one of Quark's cronies from the old days during the Federation-Dominion war was a midlevel member of an off-world faction of one of the minor houses that made up the Orion Syndicate. Maybe he could go after Jamal from within the Organization. General Kirya, Chief Administraitor of Deep Space Nine was friendly toward him, as was Odo, the Dominion's represenative here in the Alpha Quadrent… and Pete knew Odo hated the Orion Syndicate from his days as chief of security, first for the Kardasians on Terrak-nor, and then under the legendary Benjamin Sisco on Deep Space Nine after the withdrawal of the Kardasians from Bajor. Odo would not take much convincing…

"C'mon, Pete," Bryan yelled bursting onto the flight deck with David close behind. ""We've still got almost two hours before we reach ds9. I'm ready for a little slap-n-tickle. I wanna rassle!"

"Slap-n-tickle?" David asked dubiously.

"You'll see," Bryan said, tugging his new friend toward the sleeping area of the truck. "You'll like it."

"I like to rassle too," David added shyly.

"Then it's settled!" the two boys said and each grabbed one of Pete's arms and hauled him out of the pilot's couch.

"Okay, okay, ossifer… I'll come peacefully," Pete said and seemed to come allong. But suddenly, his long arms whipped out like striking serpents and scooped both boys up into the air, tossing each across a shoulder. "Now we'll just see who likes to rassle!!!"

Both boys howled and cried in mock terror and rage as Pete entered the sleeping quarters and tossed them onto the bed, while he sat on the sofa and removed the ship's slippers he was waring and most of his clothing.

"N'yah-hah-hah!" Bryan crowed. "You'll never take us alive, ye lilly livered space crawler!!"

Suddenly Pete launched himself at the boys, on a trajectory that carried him into the middle of the queen-sized bed. He reached out and enfolded the two boys in his arms, carrying them along with him and finally flopping down on the bed. "Me too," Pete said simply, renewing his challenge to the two boys.

David and Bryan squealed with laughter and both began to squirm and attempt to free themselves from the the spacer's powerful grasp. David managed to wriggle out of his grasp as Pete momentarily applied all his attention to securing Bryan.

"N'yahh, N'yahh! Can't get me!" David chanted.

Pete ignored David and increased his hold on Bryan, being careful not to apply too much pressure to the nine-year-old. "Papa bear has captured baby bear number 1, and will soon get number two," the Nomad predicted.

"Not this baby bear!" David laughed. While Pete was busy with Bryan, David maneuvered around and came up quickly behind him and skillfully applied a headlock. Unfortunately, his forearm was too short to successfully complete the maneuver. Pete quickly pinned Bryan' legs between his own, then released his grip with his right hand on Bryan and reached around to peel David off my back and flip the eleven-year-old down beside Bryan. He then pinned the boy's legs beside Bryan's and wrapped his massive hand around the boys' four wrists and stretched the two little boys out full length.

"That didn't take too long, baby bear #2," Pete grinned.

Bryan was waring his old gray short shorts from the first day the trucker had met him. He had started to use these as pajamas now. These shorts had a broken zipper, which Pete had noticed earlier; and now the pants snap had also come undone, revealing the snowy white of Bryan' underpants. He reached over and pushed Bryan' shirt up and began to tickle the nine-year-old's tummy.

"You can undress me if you want," chirped Bryan.

"Want me to?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," the little boy grinned.

David also squirmed around and smiled playfully up at Pete.

"Me too," the boy said.

Pete scooped Bryan into his arms and stood up, walking over to the bed, laying him down on the bed, he knelt beside Bryan and removed his shirt, marveling at the smoothness of his little boy chest; then slid the boy's shorts over his hips and down his thin legs.Pete then returned to David and lifted him onto the bed also.

The spacer reached under the boy's undershirt to caress one of Bryan' nipples which became quickly erect, springing for attention. Then he rubbed his hands all over David's beautiful chest and upper tummy, feeling every ripple in his tight yet silky skin. David closed his eyes and sighed in pleasure as Pete's hands explored his sides and the small of his back.

"Hey, do me!" Bryan exclaimed

Pete set about removing the boys' sneakers and socks one at a time, tossing them into a corner of the room.He ran his fingernail lightly down David's chest from just under his chin to his belly button and then transferred to Bryan, repeating the maneuver as the nine-year-old shivered in excitement under his messaging.

Pete unbuckled David's belt and unzipped the boy's pants and slid them down his long slender legs. A shiver ran through Pete as he pulled the pants totally free of David's legs and looked at the eleven-year-old laying there in just his underpants. He then returned to Bryan and slowly removed the boy's undershirt, so that both little boys were laying there in just their underpamts.

The white cloth of Bryan's underpants contrasted with the bronzed-pink color of his suntanned skin. He was like a giant ingot of gold-pressed latinum laying on the bed.

David's penis, now unconfined by the constriction of his pants, had caused the material of his undershorts to tent out quite impressively.

"Hah!" David laughed at Bryan, "C'mon Bryan, you're falling behind."

The eleven-year-old momentarily pulled down the front of his underpants and his young penis sprang free before the boy again pulled his underpants back into place.

"I know!" Bryan said distressed, "I can't get it alive. Can you help?"

Pete bent over Bryan and softly rubbed the semi-erect front of the nine-year-old's underpants, slowly Bryan' penis began to swell.

He could tell that David was already fully erect, even through the thin cotton of his underpants. Pete stood up and impatiently stripped away his own shorts and then laid down beside the two small boys, gently rubbed the tiny bulge in front of David's shorts.

At last Pete could wait no longer and rolled Bryan and David over on their tummies. He sat up beside them and grasped the elastic of Bryan's underwear, slowly pulling the boy's underpants down to mid thigh level, exposing his tiny pink fanny. Then he reached over Bryan and pulled David's underpants down and completely off, tossing them in the corner of the sleeping area.

Wriggling around and kneeling at the foot of the bed straddling Bryan and David's slender legs between his own, Pete began to knead the soft warm flesh of their fannies like bread dough, interspacing this with tickling the crack between the cheeks of their rumps. Removing Bryan's underpants, he then turned the boys over on their backs.

He watched with excitement and pleasure as David's wiener, now free of his underpants, sprang up alive and throbbing. David's penis was as beautiful as the rest of him – hard, excited, a flawless shaft and perfectly formed boymeat with a circumcised head. There it was, almost 9 centimeters [3½ inch] of boyhood perfection, standing proudly at a ninety degree angle pointing toward the ceiling. It was the prettiest piece of boymeat he could have imagined.

Bryan was stretching his arms over his head and arching his back, thrusting his hips upward slightly in an attempt to make his own more modestly erect 7 centimeters [2¾ inch] of penis seem larger.

David laughed and smacked the younger boy on the belly flat handed, causing him to double up momentarily before Bryan retaliated by gabbing at David's wiener, and the two youngsters began to wrestle on the bed.

Pete joined his two young friends on the Tomahawk's queen-sized bed.

"Now what?" David asked innocently in a lull in his mock combat with Bryan. Bryan's face was radiant with expectation and he reached over and hugged David around the shoulders.

"You'll see," the almost nine-year-old chortled.

"Wait and see," Pete said agreed mysteriously.

"Wow!" David said, looking intently at the Star Nomad's rather modest 19 centimeter [7½ inch] cock which was also fully erect.

"I thought Jamal was big. Can I touch it?" David asked cautiously.

"Only if I can touch yours," Pete laughed, and laid down on the bed full length beside David.

As David reached over and started rubbing his penis, the spacer reached over and gently grasped Bryan's erect wiener. The nine-year-old's wiener became even firmer as I gently masturbated the boy.

"Now, Bryan," Pete said between gasps of pleasure, "You start doing David."

The boy nodded wordlessly and reached over for his friend's member and began rubbing the skin back and forth over the glans of David's penis. This made David squirm momentarily and sigh in pleasure.

"Whooo," David muttered as an electric thrill ran up his arm from his fingers and genitals simultaneously to set off twin shivers of escetsy in his brain that then shot up and down his spin several times. David momentarily lost co-ordination of his body as the dry pre-adolescent orgasm hit. The youngster paused in strokings Pete's dick, who was, however, too busy with Bryan to do much about it at the time. Pete rubbed the skin of Bryan's circumcised penis up and down over the exposed glans.

"Uhhh," Bryan moaned. He went into a frenzied passion of lust. His long slender legs twitched and lost strength and the young boy could feel an explosive feeling rise up from the base of his balls and explode through his wiener. Pete felt the jerking of the young boy's penis and his entire body as he also experienced an intense pre-adolescent dry orgasm, just as David had at the manipulation of his member by Bryan.

"FIRE!" yelled lcars, "Multiple ignition sites. Crew will don emergency equipment and stand by the airlock in vac-armor… Fire Emergency!!" Alarms shrieked throughout the small starship. A few seconds later, lcars ammended its report: "Fire supression in progress."

Bryan had a dazed look on his face as he leaned against the older boy, his legs still wobbly from his earth-shattering experience just a moment ago.

"Geeze! Was that –YOU–?" Pete muttered, looking at Bryan.

"Oops!" Bryan said.

All three were still sprawled in various positions limbs akimbo on the bed. Several small scorched patches marked where the sudden increase in ambient temperature had tricked lcars fire sensors into believing a major conflagration had broken out onboard the ship.

"I've heard that fire was a sexual turn on for most small boys…" Pete said. "Here's an example of what happens when a MenTalt boy looses control…"

David suddenly recovered from his post-orgasm stopor and the shock of the fire alarm. He realized that Pete's dick was as fully at attention as it had been throughout the last few minutes. David gasped Pete's hard meat in his young hand and began stroking hard.

"Yike!" Pete howled as a huge spike of bioelectricity coursed up and down his autonomic nervous system.

David watched Pete's dick slide up and down in his hand. He started slowly, taking two or three seconds to complete a single stroke. Then he began to accelerate the pace, it was wonderful and I felt my juices building to the climax.

The trucker's load fired almost at once and nearly to the ceiling, eventually splattering down on his chest as David kept milking him. When Pete was finally spent, he rolled out of the bed and went to the bathroom and used a hand towel moistened with warm water to wipe himself clean. He crawled back into bed with the two young boys and this time pulled the bed's blankets up over them. Reaching up and he turned out the reading light which was an intergral part of the queensize bed's bookcase headboard, and then rolled on his side and put an arm around the two nude boys protectively. Bryan cuddled next to him, he put his head on the man's chest.

Pete could feel the softness of his hair on his nipples as the boy snuggled in next to him. David wrapped himself around Bryan, spooning him and sighed, draping his arm around Bryan's waist and using his hand to cup the nine-year-old's penis and testicles.

"Thank you," Pete said and brought his face near to first Bryan' and then David's. He softly kissed the two young boys lips and was a bit surprised when David returned the kiss passionately.

Bryan looked up at Pete across his chest."That was incredible, Pete!"

"I'll never forget it for as long as I live." Pete said truthfully.

"Me neither," David agreed. "That was a circle jerk, right? I've heard of them but…" he let his voice trail off.

"Yes," Pete sighed contentedly, "A perfect one, everyone got off. Now it is time for sleep…" the three companions dozed off in each other's arms, exhausted but happy.

"Where?" Bryan asked as he squinted through the crystal of the forward viewport. "I don't see anything…"

Pete sat back in the pilot's acceleration couch and wrapped an arm around David, who was sitting in his lap, nude. Pete declined to comment. David did his best to surpress a giggle.

"And why is it David can be naked and I can't?" Bryan amended his complaint.

"Well, maybe it was because last night you wanted me to show you what being Officer of the Deck meant," Pete purred. "It means you're in command, while the Captain, me, takes a well deserved break. The reason you are in 'uniform'…" Bryan was waring a pair of shorts, a web-belt with a pair of suspenders connected to the absent pack retainor and came up over his shoulders to fasten in the front, and Pete's old kevlar combat helmet insert. "…is that Star Fleet Officers are required to be attired in the uniform of the day while on duty."

"Okay, okay," Bryan said, sweeping aside Pete's comment. "Are you sure we're close enough to Bajor to see it?" I don't see any planets at all…"

Pete smiled widely. "Lieutenant Shimosauwa, you are the ood, in temporary command of this mighty star cruiser. The ship's computer recognizes you as ood…" Pete let the sentance trail off into silence.

"Oh! I get it!" Bryan smiled. "lcars."

"On line," lcars immediatly replied.

"Are we or are we not in visual scaning range of the planet Bajor?"

"We are in range." lcars confirmed.

"Then why can't I see it on the viewport?"

"Viewport is currently set at optical unity. No relativistic compression or sensor augmentation engaged."

Bryan shot a quick glance at Pete, who was now openly chuckling. "Hah! You turned off the viewscreen. I should have realized that when I did't see much of anything."

"Yes," Pete said "You should have."

"lcars, restore viewscreen to normal space operation," Bryan said.

"Aye, sir." the computer's electronic simulation confirmed and the electronic viewscreen overlay of the viewport activated.It now showed a computer driven vr simulation of the outside universe if Einstein had not been right about the visual effects of traveling near light speed, as Dream Walker was currently doing as it slowed to planetary speed upon entering the Bajor solar system.

"Locate Bajor," Bryan said.

"Now your getting smart," Pete said. "A lot of things you can do by yourself – searching eight billion cubic light years of space for a planet isn't one of them. The computer can do it in an instant."

The viewscreen centered on a tiny pale blue sphere. "Magnification factor eight." Bryan said and the planet seemed to leap forward at them until an arc of the far horizon covered two thirds of the screen. Blue and white were the predominent colors – as with all Class M planets, but Bajor's continents were also a riot of other colors, pale mist green to intense jade, burnt ocre and chestnut brown, orange, red and pale purple-white of hundred million year old glaciers. David and Bryan were both mesmerized by the magnified image.

"Ready to take her down on the deck?" Pete asked.

"Can I do it?" Bryan asked, his big eyes twinkling with excitement

"Maybe next time," Pete said and buckled the acceleration harness around himself, and slipped on an omnicom headset. He settled himself in for entry into a planetary atmosphere, taking the collective in his left hand and the cyclic in the right, while settling size 13 boots on the aileron pedals. Pete took a breath and looked over at Bryan who held his thumb up and David who copied Bryan. They started their re-entry.

Dream Walker came in assfirst with its ion-drive venturi glowing blue-white as it finished the deceleration from interplanetary velocity to re-entry in half the time normally required. As the velocity dropped below five kilometers per second, Pete flipped the nose of the truck over and dived strait down for the surface.

"Uh-oh," Bryan said, studying the qlr detector screen at the navigator's station. "Pete, there's a Bajorian Solar Guard cutter challenging us."

"Put it up on the speaker," Pete said.

Bryan had learned quite a bit in his time with the Star Nomad. He expertly reached over on the central instrument complex between our acceleration couches and turned a switch.

"…alien vessel, this is the Bajorian Solar Guard cutter Wankade. We have you under our guns! You are ordered to heave to and prepare to be boarded. Unknown alien vessel, this is…"

"Cool your jets, cutter," Pete said reaching into his flightsuit's top left pocket, taking out the isolinear chip Quark had assured me would answer all Bajorian official questions of his actions; and plugged it into the iff socket of the omnicom.

"Pete!" Bryan said worried, "They're powering their forward phasers. Do something…"

Bryan was watching a group on instruments which comprised my elint/ecm reciever/analysier, a bit of hijacked Star Fleet technology that allowed the seemingly normal civilian grade sensors to do several advanced [and for civilian craft only quasi-legal] functions. One of these was to detect the increase in neutrino flux that accompanied the powering up of a directed energy weapon like a phaser cannon; another was to detect the unmistakable qlr signature of a weapons tracking array illuminating the poor old Tomahawk.

"Wow, the Bajorians are really spooked these days." David said. "We must have set off a few alarms in Bajor Solar Guard sector hqs because they don't often scramble a cutter to do an intercept – we're not even inside the 10,000 kilometer [6,200 miles] outer defense zone yet."

"They don't seem to care," Bryan said hunched over the elint/ecm screen on his right rear "Now they are paining us with missile tracking sensors. I think it's past time to do something!"

"Not to worry." Pete said cooly and finished setting the rig's iff transponder to squirt the clearance the Feringe had gotten for me to the cutter.

There were a few anxious seconds while the cutter bore down on them, its missile launch ports open and phasers fully charged. There was encrypted chaos over several voice and data comm lines as the cutter's crew confered with Bajor Solar Gaurd hq. Then the omnicom spat:

"Victor Poppa three eight eight six November Kilo, do you copy?"

"Victor Pappa three eight eight six November Kilo, go." Pete said calmly into the headset's boom mic.

"You are guilty of an illegal high-gee re-entry, a felony under Bajor law…"

Pete began to sweat for the first time, the Solar Guard was taking this far too seriously. He began to wonder how good that clearance Quark had given him was…

"…however, in deference to your clearance by arch-vedic Mihran, the Bajorian Solar Guard will not press charges. You are officially warned to transmit clearances in a timely manner in the future."

The hundred meter 12,000 ton cutter came within a half kilometer of Dream Walker in its arching return to a heading for its orbital station. That was tatamount to a sideswipe collision at orbital velocities,

Pete sighed and wrote it off as a very pissed off Bajorian Solar Guard Commander who meant to intimidate him.

"Wow-oww!" was Bryan's comment as he got to see the cutter up close enough to read its markings and see the individual viewports embedded into its durillium hull.

They crossed over the Xarganthian Sea Coast just south of Kilkamec City, Da'Kor Province's number two city, at 125,000 feet [38,000 meter], just beginning to exit the leo inner defense zone. Remembering the cutter's warning [which Pete took very seriousl] to transmit clearances in a timely fashion, he decided it was time to wake up the local ground ils controller.

Bryan was already fumbling with the latest hard copy of the Bajor Sector Aerospace Area Control soi, with David leaning over his shoulder, pointing and giving helpful suggestions. The soi had been downloaded from ds9's lcars, and the boys found that the nw quadrant of the Valaya continent was controlled by the Kilkamec City Star Port Authority.

Pete let David dial the initial contact frequency into the omnicom and Pete gave the boom mike a hearty <thawack> with his index finger.

"Bajor Aerospace Control, this is Victor Poppa three eight eight six November Kilo, do you copy?"

"Victor Pappa 3886 from KilkCom, go."

"Bajor, I'm an independent with a consigned cargo from Vymann-kor to kobbutz Rittmahn; from Vedic Hijarski at Defense Command, Gamma Quadrent to Office of Special Intelligence, ka'butz Rittmahn…."

"Sorry Victor Poppa, kobbutz Rittmahn is a restricted destination. I show no authorized civilian traffic this afternoon."

"Yes, I know, Bajor, but my landing permit follows." Pete plugged in a second isolinear code chip from Quark into the Dream Walker's Omnicom and pressed the send switch, transmitting the second part of the authorization that the Feringi had supplied with that had turned the Orbit Guard cutter around in its tracks.

"Wait one, Victor Poppa."

Pete winked at David, who was becoming a little apprehensive again and slowly rocked the Tomahawk's stubby atmospheric flight steering vanes to ease the boredom as the landforms of Bajor came ever closer to me at almost 1,500 km/hr [900 mph].

"Victor Poppa, you are cleared to kobbutz Rittmahn, descend immediately to Angles 35 and contact kobbutz Rittmahn Control on 119.685 mHz."

"Roger Bajor control, Victor Poppa out."

"At least they didn't try to shoot us down," Bryan chortled, having recovered from his earlier fright.

Less than five minutes later the Star Nomad was reducing his airspeed even further and making more and more use of my countergravs to stay in the air. The Tomahawk was not an aerodynamic design, it has only vestigial stubby wings and rudder functions. She's built for efficiency of loading and for essentially deep space operations, it is only because of her powerful countergrav generators that Pete could do the things he did with the Tomahawk in an atmosphere with gravity tugging at her.

Pete set the Omnicom for the kobbutz Rittmahn frequency and made contact with the control tower. They were expecting him, Vedic Hijarski had shot Bajor Space Central a QuantumLink Radio telegram to expect the Dream Walker and asking them to notify kobbutz Rittmahn upon arrival.

Pete winced as he heard the name of Quark's phoney Vedic. Did he really have to be so flamboyant? Why not just pick a common Bajorian name instead of this obviously non-Bajorian one. It was only the Bajorian's constant devotion to the Prophets that let them turn a blind eye to virtually anything done with the blessing of a Vedic. Mihran was bad enough, but at least it sounded kind of like a Bajorian name, but Hijarski?

<Too late to worry about it now,> Pete thought <anyway, the controller had accepted the Vedic's authority to authorize a landing at a Bajoran Defense Directorate field instillation.> According to the headers on the permit files, kobbutz Rittmahn was involved in counter intelligence work.

The money working for Quark was good, but now he had Bryan and David to think about also. Quark's couriers had a distressing tendency to end up dead or in Federation [or worse] detention.

Pete came in low and fast over the grasslands south-west of the main landing field and flared the noes up almost 80 degrees to shed the last of his velocity for touchdown.

"YEE-HAHH!" Bryan yelled as the Nomad stabilized Dream Walker and brought it's velocity down to under 100 kph [60 mph].

"Like that, huh?" Pete grinned at Bryan.

"YEAH! I can't wait till you teach me…"

Pete banked right to make the final approach to the main landing strip, now totally dependant upon the Tomahawk's powerful antigravs for lift and the coutergrav field to make maneuvering in an atmosphere possible with the small steering jets. Hovering over the main strip he finally brought all four landing slids down together on the concrete and nikolyte of the main landing ramp only a few meters away from the port's lso.

The Landing Signals Officer signaled his satisfaction with the landing and directed them off to the northwest with his light batons toward a ramp leading down toward a huge hangar with the insignia of the Bajorian Federal Republic on it and rittmahn machine parts painted on its side in fifty foot high letters.

Pete held up his thumb through the crystal of the foward wraparound viewport to indicate that he understood and raised the skids up about a hundred and fifty centimeters and slowly drifted toward the indicated ramp. When they got over by the large warehouse, a group of Bajorian stevedores came out and all Pete had to do was open the rear cargo hatch and watch over the Tomahawk's internal video monitor while the Bajorians brought in an antigrav pallet and muscled the large connex on to it. It was also apparent from the detachment of Bajorian infantry in combat fatigues and armed with infantry tactical weapons that surrounded the Dream Walker that this was all they were permitted to do. When they were finished, Pete sealed the rear cargo hatch and hovered back out to the main runway of the base. Pete wanted to refuel before lifting off again and called the control tower to ask about refueling.

"Wait one, Victor Pappa." The tower operator said and there was the sound of a hurried conversation in hushed tones, just beyond the normal range of the omnicom's pick up. "I'm sorry, Victor Poppa 3886. Permission to refuel is denied. You are cleared to immediate liftoff, destination of your choice, but you must leave now! Without delay."

Bryan immediately sat forward in his seat and stabbed a small finger at the propellant supply indicator. <Good call, Bryan> Pete thought as he glanced at the propellant levels in the Tomahawk's tanks. Not enough to make orbit and then match orbit with ds9.

"Negative, control, I need to refuel first. Insufficient propellant to achieve orbit."

"Victor Poppa, I say again, by order of the security vedic you must leave kobbutz Rittmahn at once. Suggest you do a sub-orbital burn to Kilkamec."

Pete was about to complain about how 15 minutes couldn't do any harm when David nudged him and pointed. This time at the elint/ecm cluster. A large red indicator light had winked on and the signals analysis screen showed the telltale signature of a tracking sensor. This told the intrepid trio that somewhere a phaser cannon had powered up and its targeting sensors were now painting the truck. Someone was deadly serious about not wanting anyone around. Pete mentally kicked himself <…must be getting slow in my old age not to have picked up on the edge in the tower operator's voice.>

"Er…roger, control. Commencing lift off – destination Kilkamec City," the tell tail remained glowing hot angry red on the elint/ecm overhead board. Pete revved up the neids and to quote an ancestor of his, "Got the hell outa Dodge!"

Fighting paranoia, and the urge to hug the ground and go into evasive maneuvers as they sped away from kobbutz Rittmahn, all three breathed easier as within thirty seconds the sensor telltale went out, as the Bajorian gunners made their point. <What the hell did that little Ferengi conman got me into? It was that damned phoney Vedic Hajarski… The Bajorian wanted what was in the crate,… but they did't think Quark was funny either. Damn him.> Pete fumed.

Pete pointed the nose of the Dream Walker north west and opened the throttles wide. The small starship leapt forward and began to accelorate toward mach one. As the minutes passed, it became apparent that even Kilkamec City was out of range as Pete watched the propellant level drop ever lower as the h&k ion drive guzzeled liquid atomic hydrogen.

"You guys want to dig out that Da'kor province flight info again?" Pete asked.

David dove for the small recessed area under the course plotting three dee dispay and triumphantly came up with the printout.

"What're we looking for?" Bryan asked.

"Anything with a field large enough to sell liquid atomic hydrogen between here and Klickamec City," Pete said. "A class F spaceport, or a planetary aerospace field with a quarter mile runway even."

After a few minutes study, David announced their findings.

"Xanthe-hove," he said. It's 200 km [125 miles] away over the Undarri Ridge."

"Nothing this side of the Ridge?" Pete asked hopefully.

The boys shook their heads.

"Oh hell!" Pete muttered. "That's about 50 km [30 miles] more than we've got propellant for…"

"What if you go way high, then glide in on just antigravs – no h&k at all?" David asked.

Pete and Bryan both did a double take and looked at David.

"What a wacky idea…" Bryan started.

"Well, it was all I could think of…"

"Its just wacky enough to work, the antigrav draws its juice from the reactor, which uses lah about a tenth of the flow rate the drives do…" Pete mused. "Where did you get the idea?"

"It… it was on isn… "Klinger, Federation Marshall…"

Bryan and Pete burst out laughing.

"We've got nothing to loose, and it might get us to Xarthe-Hove without having to call the Bajorian Rangers to give us a tow into Kilkamec City. I shudder to think what the charges on that would be…"

"Are we going to crash?" David asked.

"Naw… rough landing in the wilderness maybe a couple of days wait for the Ranger Search and Rescue to find us as worst," Pete said.

"Klinger crashed on isn."

Pete reached over to the elevenm year old and ruffeled his brown hair. "I'm not Klinger," Pete said. "Okay, here we go." Pete pointed the nose of the Dream Walker up into a steep climb and again opened the throttles wide.

At 138,000 feet [42,000 meter] he leveled off, gave the truck one more kick in the pants with the h&k ion drive to give it forward momentum and then choked off the propellant feed lines to the h&k. Dream Walker lurched to the port and then began to drop toward the ground. Pete began to fly the Tomahawk by the seat of his pants, using the antigravity pads, manuvering thrusters and countergrav field to coax the 300 ton hunk of metal and ceramics into a slow and even graceful [for an unpowered Tomahawk] arc toward the Undarri Ridge.

Da'kor province on Bajor was on a mountainous penisula of the continent. The penisula was 500 kilometers [300 miles] wide and easily twice that in length that streached out to the northwest into the Xarganthian Sea from the planet's only major continent in the western hemisphere, Valaya. Da'kor was seperated from the rest of the continent by a thick wall of especially high mountains called the Undarri Ridge. The lowest point in the Undarri was at Lowpoint Station, at 4,386 meters [14,390 feet] above sea level. Dreamwalker's atmospheric flight mode was taking them up and over the Undarri at 16,000 meters [52,500 feet]. From this altitude, the Undarri looked much the same as any other glacier-encrusted mountains on ant class-M world in the Federation.

David and Bryan were both huddled over the Tomahawk's 3d map sensor while Pete guided the truck down through the stratosphere of Bajor at high subsonic velocity.

"They look like toys…" David mused and put out a finger to probe the holographic display. The interference pattern set up my his hand intruding into the hologrphic display caused the image to blurr and dance unstably. David quickly withdrew his finger. "Whoops! Sorry," he said.

Meanwhile Bryan had been studying a page of text on the small vidscreen. "The Undarri Ridge are the tallest mountains on Bajor. In fact they are third tallest in the Federation. The highest point in Mount Surattibi which is 11,000 meters [36,000 feet] above sea level and has the Ice Desert of Vyemann-darra on it's crest. The Ice Desert the coldest point on the planet, where the temperature never rises above -73 C [-100 F]…"

"We don't want a forced landing there…" David whispered softly to himself.

Pete looked up from the flight controls. "During the Kardasian Occupation of Bajor, Da'kor Province was the only part of the planet that they were nt able to fully subjugate. That was in large part due to the Undarri Ridge."

They couldn't bring through enough reinforcements?" David asked.

"That's right. They managed to get one armored convoy through the Undarri, but it arrived with bearly 60% of its original strength."

"Why didn't they just use transmats?" Asked Bryan.

"In combat its harder to do than you might think…" Pete started.

"Troops on the ground might disrupt the exitgate from forming," David said excitedly.

"Exactly," Pete agreed. "We use the transmat all the time and don't even think about it. But the truth is that's only because there is no one trying to stop us. It's a lot easier to stop an incoming wormhole that to cause an exitgate to appear."

"WARNING – Propellant level is now crital!" lcars announced. "Estimated time until flame out 500 seconds."

Pete sighed. "I guess this is the point where I earn my pay. You two better strap down. This is going to be close."

Bryan and David wrapped the acceleration harnesses around their skinny bodies and then looked at Pete. Pete had been gradually loosing altitude since passing over the southwestern edge of the ice desert and entering the windward slopes of the Undarri.

"WARNING" intoned lcars. "400 seconds."

"Alarm silent," Pete said and swooped out over the tundra uplands at the base of the Undarri, still at 3,000 meters [10,000 feet] and doing 450 kilometers per hour [280mph].

"Bryan, can you find me the locator beacon for Xanthe-hove Its a quaint little village I've been to a couple of times, it should be in the ship's history log."

"Got it," Bryan replied. "Steer 340 magnetic, range 28 kilometers [17½ miles]. Approach is from southeast, heading 330 degrees true." As Bryan spoke, a bright green diamond shape appeared on the heads up display. Beside it a digital readout of the range began to update itself. The Tomahawk was now skimming the tree tops at 300 meters [1000 feet], with within the jetcar lanes leading to Xanthe-hove.

On Dreamwalker's forward viewscreen, in addition to the normal heads up display another telltale had come to life. This one was in red and the number scrolling down represented seconds of propellant left. Pete stabilized the three hundred ton miniture starship on its antigravity pads and matched velocity with the Bajorian local ground frame. With ten seconds of propellant left, Dream Walker synchronized velocity with the ground and Pete begagan to allow the truck to descend toward the grassy field below.

Nine seconds of propellant, 100 feet [30 m].

Eight seconds of propellant 50 feet [15 m].

Seven seconds, 17 feet [5 m].

Six seconds, 23 feet [7 m] as Pete slightly over corrected.

Five seconds, 16 feet [5 m].

Four seconds, 5 feet [1½ m].

Three seconds, 2 feet [0.5 m]

Two seconds, 11 inches [0.3 m]

One second. Touchdown. Pete quickly shut down the thrusters and antigravs and felt the comforting bump as the landing skids touched down at a comforting 5 inches [12 cm] per second. Pete looked over at his two Special Friends and grinned, "You know what they say – 'Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.'"

David and Bryan both groaned. "I was afraid he was going to say that," Bryan smiled.

"Xarthe-Hove is listed as a class "F" spaceport, no instrument assisted landings, and no live attendants, only automatic refueling and communications hubs," David said.

Pete lifted the Tomahawk a few dozen centimeters above the greass and weeds of the field and let the truck glide toward one of the concrete parting ramps in the transiet portion of the small spaceport. "Actually," Pete began, "I've been here a couple of times before. Its a sleepy little village with friendly people where nothing ever seems to happen."

"Oh great," Bryan muttered, "Welcome to Boringville…"

The parking ramps were mere concrete slabs ten meters [32 feet] wide by fifty meters [165 feet] long with intergrated fueling and communications connections. Overhead was a modular tin roof that offered some shelter to the ramp in case of rain, but little else. Pete lined up on the painted lines on the concrete and sat the Tomahawk down convienently close to the refueling pumps.

After completing the shutdown of the drives and placing the main photonic batteries in standby/charge mode, Bryan tapped the propellant levels indicator. The digital bargraph readout showed an infintesimal amount of liquid atomic hydrogen remained in the propellant tanks. "We just made it, less than four kilograms of propellant left."

Dream Walker's crew of three climbed down from the Tomahawk's main airlock hatch and out onto the dusty, windswept concrete ramp Pete showed Bryan and David how to do a post flight walkaround inspection.

"Basically, this walk around is to ensure that re-entry has not jarred loose anything, or compromised the truck's thermocoat of high temperature heat shielding," Pete lectured.

The small spaceport was in a huge clearing in a wooded grove at the foot of the Undarri Range. The landing field itself was perhaps a kilometer and a half long and a quarter that in width. The field was ankle deep in grasses and weeds. Along the west edge was a deserted two lane blacktop road. Across this was a small grouping of houses, which streached back into the dense wooded area surrounding the landing field. A sagging perimiter fence ran along the inside of the field against the blacktop. The southern end of the field was littered with parking ramps, like the one Dream Walker was currently occupying, hangars – some open and empty, other sealed tight – and various other non-discript buildings.

From one of these non-discript buildings about the size of a small hangar thirty meters away came the sounds of a vr holo-vid game of some kind. Suddenly a group of young boys, perhaps 8- to 13-years-old exploded from around a corner of the long low field maintenance building. The boys shouted and waved toy lasers around in simulated military operation, maybe reenacting some famous battle of the Kardasian occupation. The whole pack skidded to a halt perhaps five meters away as they saw the new comers. There was some initial shuffling of feet indecisively, and then one of the older boys came forward and ignoring Pete completely addressed Bryan:

"Hey, kid. Wanna play?"

Bryan and David glanced at each other and then Bryan looked over his shoulder at me questioningly, "Can we?" he asked.

"Of course. Take off," Pete smiled and like a morning fog the kids including Bryan and David were gone. Off to combat the evil Kardasian foe.

Pete walked over to the slab's control and comm panel and took out his cash card and put it in the slot. There was a soft tinkle of a chime and the services panel came to life. Pete studied the display for an instant and then punched in the code for refueling of the neid's propellant tanks with top quality liquid atomic hydrogen [lah] and then with the keyboard told the port-droid's cpu to do a full diagnostic on all systems; but to hold for authorization on any repair work.

Pete went back into the Dream Walker to finish up all the house keeping chores that accrued at the conclusion of a contract delivery. Normally, the stellar frieght business is all cash on delivery, but Quark's loads are different. In most cases the people Pete was delivering to would as soon cut your throat as pay out good latinum, so he billed Quark and let the Frengi add the delivery charges onto whatever he's charging the customer. This method, however, required maintaining mitticulessly complete records of all expenses. So, much as Pete detested all the work involved, he maintained a multi-entry log book.

The trucker was about to close the logbook program when the port's droid signalled for my attention. The diagnostic he had ordered had found the warp drive problems and was asking if he would authorize repairs which would cost…

"Holy carbonized fish parts," Pete muttered as he saw the estimate of repairs plus parts. It was a good thing that Quark was picking up the tab on this.

He authorized the repairs and then called Quark.

The Feringi's somewhat dazed continence appeared on the screen. Pete had the uncomfortably distinct feeling that Quark was not expecting to hear from him any time soon.

"Oh!…er…Reynolds. How'd it go?"

"Not bad, except for nearly being shot down by the Bajorian Solar Guard, and then getting the bum's rush from Kobbutz Rittmahn, under threat from a phaser cannon fifteen seconds after dropping the consignment. Anyway, I'm here for payment Quark. With expenses it comes to 216 bars, 41 slips of latinum." Pete slipped his cashcard into the data socket on the omnicom.

"W-H-A-T??!!" the Ferengi exploded, "that's over four times what we agreed."

"Yeah, but most of it is for repairs to my warp drive that ducking those Jem'Hadarr fighters last time caused." Quark snarled something about he should send the bill for that to the Founders, but as Pete watched the readout on his cashcard, it jumped almost 217 bars of latinum. "Thanks Quark," he said.

"Are you available for another charter? I always have need of fast, discrete courier to deliver…"

"No, hold it, Quark. I'm in a bit of deep doo-doo I have to dig out of…"

"Huyew-mons are always in deep doo-doo…" Quark chuckled.

"This time its serious. I've had a run in with the Orion Syndicate… or rather these bad boys said they were Syndicate."

Quark messaged his earlobe absently and said slowly: "The Orions are tough characters…"

"I know Quark, I know. But what I need is someone with contacts who can find out more about this guy for me, and I thought since you know virtually everyone in this sector…"

"Allright, Reynolds, allright. I get the picture. What do you know about your 'competitor'."

"His name is Jamal something and he has a ship. That's about all I know," Pete admitted.

Quark looked distracted as he sorted through data in his vast information database on the Orion Syndicate. "Hmmn," Quark muttered. "Vendakardis Jamal, Parridon of the Fourth Order," Quark seemed a bit surprised at that.

"He's skipper of a converted Narn cruiser from the era of the Shadows Wars back in the 22nd Century. Its been completley overhauled, new model warp drive, at least one photon torpedo launcher and a half dozen heavy phaser cannon emplacements, plus a potent Shivajanus forceshield. He has a crew of about two dozen, mostly mixed Orions and human scum, making a marginal living as a commerace raider… ah, here's something useful. He's in disgrace with the Orion Central Committee. That's why a Parridon rank mademan is sweeping cosmic ash in the outback of nowhere instead of running a "trade" planet. What is the conflict between you ?"

"Well – er – Jamal was mistreating this small human boy…."

"You don't need to say anything more. Your dick got the better of you and you, feeling like the silver knight, interfered somehow…"

"Worse, like the knight I rescued him… he's here with me now."

"You stole him…"

"Quark, you know damned well slavery is illegal in the Federation."

"But… but… Reynolds," Quark stammered. "Jamal doesn't give a shit about the Federation's laws. He'll be after you with everything he can command."

"Can you help?"

"I can't but Morn may be able to… he's one of Jabba the Hutt's main lieutenant's, Jabba runs Tatooine, a little out of the way trade planet in the middle of the badlands."

"Morn?" Pete asked in surprise.

"Let it drop, Reynolds," Quark advised and Pete shut up.

Quark looked away as someone off camera made a comment, and then turned back to the screen. "Okay, look Reynolds, I'm going out on a limb for you. I'll help all I can – but in return I want five , no ten consignment runs – all at baseline scale rates and callible as I need. Agreed?"

Pete winced. Ten runs – that might take a year or two to clear. "Allright. Baseline Scale, but you pay maintance, and you can't force complience if that means I have to scrub a pickup or delivery."

"Thief! Robber!" Quark complained smiling. "Done! You stay put right where you are. I'll have a job for you in a day or two, meanwhil;e a nice little out of the way place like Xarthe-Hove is perefect to lay low in."

"Allright, I'll wait to hear from you."

After finishing with Quark, Pete leaned back in the pilot's couch and focused the external optical sensors on the landing field. It was a warm early Sunday afternoon and the field was crowded with kids of both genders, both pre-teen and teenagers who obviously viewed the landing field as their playground. The kids kept swarming around each other forming and unforming alliances. It was rather like watching a flock of birds in random flight. For the most part the youngsters remained in the open part of the field in the central region of the facility, but periodically a group would break and come boiling across the grass toward the landing pad that the Dream Walker was parked on.

The group that had kindly 'adopted' David and Bryan into its midst was playing a variation on Laser Tag. In the original game, it is just a free-for-all, with the objective being just not to get 'hit', but almost immediately after its first release, the game had been adopted by underage soldiers across the galaxy. Laser Combat was a hell of a lot of fun. Pete had even indulged in it a time or two himself. It allows the individual to vent his inborn blood-lust in a non-lethal fashion. Each participant wore a playsuit with laser-light sensitive target sensors woven into the onepiece outfit; and each participant carried a small laser pistol which emitted a 50 mw laser beam, not enough to burn with, but more than enough to set off the sensors in the playsuits.

Thereafter it was up to each wanna-be infantry platoon leader to lead his troops to victory. Yes, good clean fun. Pete was glad that David and Bryan were being given the opportunity by the local Bajorian kids to participate. he got up and went to the galley quickly for a cold one, and returned to the control cab, busying myself attempting to pick out Bryan or David from in the riot of children on the field.

Resupplying the Dream Walker's food supply was easier than Pete had thought it would be. Xarthe-Hove had a wide selection of shops and stores which provided a wide selection of both fresh and processed foods. Pete rented one of the local electric gev cars, which were the only technological transport allowed, to do the shoping and was soon done and had off loaded the foodstuffs at Dream Walker.

Xarthe-Hove, although it appeared to be a sleepy little agro village, was in reality a vital town of nearly 12,000 which hosted several light industrial firms from a Quantum Link Radio manufacturing company to a three-D video production company. The town spread out back into the dense forest surrounding the south and west of the landing field in a labyrinth of narrow streets and wide avenues for the Bajorian street network, which somehow appeared to be interfaced with the forest, although some of the trees in the woods were several thousand years old, and none appeared younger than a millenium, from their girth and height.

By the time Pete had completed the resupply of Dream Walker's galley and cold storage reefers, the double suns of Bajor were setting. Pete used the local comweb to call one of Xarthe-Hoth's fast food places and ordered a combo-platter. The Spacer was not sure what it included, but the Bajorian digestive system was basically the same as humans – if the Bajorians could eat it, so could they without fear of poisoning. Delivery was very quick and fifteen minutes later Pete was deciding it was time to recall David and Bryan who were still playing happily with the Bajorian kids. Pete went forward to the control area and settled into the pilot's couch and scanned the twilight with the ship's light amplified viewscreen. Ahh, yes, there they were. The play group had shrunk to only a few kids now as most Bajorian parents had also recalled their offspring.

Pete picked up the omnicom headset and sent its output to the truck's external bull horns. "Attention David Pasce and Bryan Shimosauwa – recall. Time to come home." When it appeared that the boys were trying to streach out a few extra minutes, Pete put on his sfmc drill instructor personae and yelled into the omnicom: "Awrite Marines! You heard the recall. Get the lead out! On the Bounce Marines!" That got the response that Pete was looking for and the boys came running across the wide landing field toward the Dream Walker.

Pete wasn't sure what had awakened him, but he suddenly found himself awake, his heart pounding and surrounded a growing sense of unease as if he were back in his old Marine platoon, about to assault a Jemm-ha'darr bunker. He slowly sat up in the bed and out of habit glanced at the Tomahawk's chronometer on the bulkhead beside the open inner hatch to the air lock across the narrow hall in front of the miniture bonzai tree forest growing in the two meter long flowerbox at the end of the cul-de-sac hall.

17:28:44 gmt – 05:45 local time – about an hour before sunrise. Pete slowly crawled out of bed, being careful not to awaken David or Bryan. He sat on the edge of the bed pulling on his boxers and then slowly walked barefoot over the thick pile carpet of the Tomahawk's biosphere toward the big double viewports on the flight deck.

Sensing that Pete was awake and up, lcars began to bring the biosphere up to daywatch standards from the inactivity of the evening. He felt warm air softly blowing from the vent at floor level, taking the chill out of the air.

Outside the Dream Walker's viewports, twilight was already beginning to give way to predawn light as Bajor's bright G1 primary star began to rise above the horizon. The smaller, much fainter M3 companion was at the closest point to Bajor in its orbit, but was only a very bright ruddy star – too small and far away to have a visible disk – hanging low on the eastern horizon.

Pete watched for a minute the cloud of birds which rose from their night's roosting in the woods to the east of the aerospace field and marveled at the coordination of the flock as several hundred of the avian whirled and dove in a complex ariel dance to greet the new morning.

The Tomahawk's planetside weather module, built into the clear titan crystal of the forward viewport glowed softly deep within the crystal as the computer stimulated several dozen light emitting segments to display readout in the extreme lower right of the navigator's side viewport.

Temperature: -2 C.
Wind Velocity: 28 km/hr
Windchill Factor: -7 C.
Relative Humidity: 24%
Barometric Pressure: 27.78 (falling)

Perhaps that was it, he thought as he walked back to the bed. Somewhere he had read that extreme changes in air pressure could trigger changes in brain chemistry, and cause symptoms like anxiety.

'Maybe it was that – the extremely low barometer making me feel so uneasy, so vaguely apprehensive…,' he thought.

Pete intended to get at least another half-hour cuddled up with Bryan and David in the warm bed before actually getting up. He sat on the edge of the bed for a minute and thought about heating some water so that the three of us could have hot chocolate when we got up…

Without warning, the outer airlock door exploded inward with a loud crash and an actinic flash of some type of explosive charge.

"What the hell?!?" Pete roared and dove toward a small, non-discript drawer in the inflight storage unit a meter from the edge of the bed, where he kept his personal arsenal.

An insane laugh filled the cabin and Pete stared, momentarily paralyzed…

Through the airlock hatchway came a vision out of hell itself!

It might have been human or Bajorian at one time, but no longer. Something had radically mutated both the physical appearance and the mental/emotional structure of the creature which now paused in the hatchway for an instant, snuffling at the air. It was now totally alien, over six feet tall, with its body completely covered with course curlie ashe-gray hair. It's snout and jaw had been streached and huge inhuman fangs had been fused into the gaping maw that had elongated to resemble a wolf's muzzle. It had an enormously potent set of teeth, including three centimeter-long upper and lower fangs. Its eyes glowed hot, angry orange-red. Long boney fingers ended in slashing talons which savagely ripped out at Pete as he stumbled backward, falling across the bed and his two terrified companions.

Werewolf! was all Pete could think of as he struggled to regain his footing while at the same time dialing a lethal setting on the Marine military phaser pistol in his hand.

The beast bellowed its rage and lust for blood. It came through the fragments of the airlock's outer hatch on cloven hoofs; a reptilian tail switched to and fro behind the nightmare as it paused for a second, surveying the room.

David scrambled to his feet and ran for the far corner of the room, attempting to lead the horror beast away from Bryan and Pete. The creature lunged at David, its jaws gaping, dripping saliva; its claws slashing at the boy's skinny chest. The creature came after him with uncanny speed and raked its talons across David's bare shoulders. The eleven-year-old screamed as the claws dug deep into his flesh. The jaws snapped shut with a loud KLACK!! and then opened again in hungary anticipation.

ZWOWW!!

The morning twilight which was began to seep into the room through the viewports was washed out by a brilliant pulse of actinic blue-white energy from Pete's phaser pistol.

The nightmare roared in pain and fury as the phaser beam touched its upper shoulder; It turned toward where Pete was still sitting on the bed, one foot on the floor and rapidly dialing a higher intensity setting on the phaser pistol.

Bryan hid half behind Pete, his eyes wide with fear.

The creature took a hesitant step toward Bryan.

David screamed: "FIRE!"

ZOW! ZOW!! ZWOWW!!!

Pete pressed the trigger three times in rapid succession. The first shot hit the creature, ripping a 7-cm wide crater in its fur-covered body, setting some of the course fur ablaze. The second shot also hit the creature, this time in the upper left quadrant of the skull, destroying the creature's left eye and blasting away much of the skin and fur from the white bone of its skull. The third shot caught the creature in the midsection, again doing grievous damage to it. The creature turned and raised its taloned claws to strike at David again just as Pete shot it again, this time right between the ribs with the phaser set to full lethal intensity – just one step below the ultimate setting – demateralise. The phaser blast caused the beast to jerk once and fall over backwards, to lay sprawled in the airlock among the blood and body parts that the earlier lower phaser settings had blasted off it.

Bryan was at once kneeling beside David, crying with both fear and relief that his friend was still alive.

"Thanks, Pete." David managed in a weak voice. He winced as the younger boy gently touched the claw wounds across David's shoulder and thin chest. They were moderately deep and beginning to ooze red blood that trickled down his chest.

"I think," Bryan said, "that I'd better get a medipak on this."

"And then we'd better get out of here," David said.

"I don't think so," Pete said hesitantly. "I don't know how long it'll take to get someone to repair that airlock hatch. We can't take off with it like that. The Tomahawk has a built in override, the engines won't engage unless the airlock is fully gas-tight."

"But –" David tried to object. "What if it had friends?"

"Forget it. I know we have to use full phasers on them now. Next one fool enough to show up will not get half as far as this one did."

Pulling on his clothes, Pete said: "You're going back to bed until we can get a doctor to look at those claw tears. Bryan, will you stay with him and make sure he does get in bed?"

"Aye, aye, sir." Bryan saluted.

The ex-Marine absently returned the salute and walked over to the shattered airlock hatch where he began trying to extricate the creature from the airlock.

"Okay, Doctor Bryan," David said and grinned, crawling under the covers and then pulling them down so as not to get any blood on them. The wound on his shoulder had almost stopped bleeding, but the deep claw rakes across his chest were still welling up fresh blood slowly. Bryan got a warm damp towel from the bathroom and washed down David's chest and shoulder, then went to the inflight storage lockers in the cargo section to get a medipak.

Minutes later, Bryan returned and popped open the medikit, which looks like a large plastic baggie. Bryan spread it out over David and the medipak's AI-diagnosis circuitry went to work, examining the boy and determining the extent of his injury and automatically configured itself around the wounds on David's chest and shoulders. Bryan ran his thumb quickly along the piezoelectric activator and there was a soft pop and a faint, almost inaudible humm as the medipak began treatment.

"You're lucky," Bryan commented as he looked up from the diminutive led readout on the medipak. "The pak says it can get you back up to 100% healthy in about 4 hours. That means we'll be on Deep Space Nine in time for supper."

The detonation of the explosive charge the thing had used to gain entry had awakened the entire town of Xarthe-Hove which was slowing beginning to cluster around the southern end of the aerospace field, and of course it wasn't long before the village constable showed up.

"Ay-yup, looks like a Gon'jahh alright," the elderly Bajorian constable said kneeling beside the carcass that I had dragged out of the airlock.

"What's that?" Pete asked.

The Bajorian shrugged. "I dunno. It was probably a man… once. But somehow he been mutated… probably the result of some kind of biowar weapon that the Kardies were using during the occupation. We run into these things ever so often. We call 'em 'gonjahs' which means 'cursed ones'. They mostly live by themselves in the highlands. Rarely see them this far down in the valley."

"This one used an explosive charge to blow open my airlock," I said.

"Oh ay-yupe, they're smart enough to use technology. Sometimes they're used as expendable hit men for the Assassin Guild. You haven't stirred anyone up – say in Kilkamec City – have you son?" the Bajorian eyed me suspiciously.

"Not that I know of," Pete replied mentally crossing his fingers and wondering if that 'Jamal' character was a member of the Bajorian Assassins Guild also.

"Well, I'll have Old Doc Bashir come over to look at your boy, he's Terran too, retired Starfleet; and I'll ask Tal Narkotz, our chief artificer to come see if there is anything he can do for your airlock hatch; but to me, it looks like you'll be staying for a few days until he can get parts shipped out from the main starport at Kilkamec City. Ay-yupe."

The Bajorian constable strolled back over to his gev and turned off the flashing blue strobes on his roof and floated off down the field silently on whisper mode.

Back inside, Bryan had started some breakfast, scrambled eggs, toast and hot chocolate Pete sat down in the sleeping area's chair and reflected on how lucky he had been in the latest conflict and how brave David had been. Bryan brought in a platter with the breakfast on it and when everyone had started enjoying breakfast, sat on the edge of the bed with David.

"So, Dave," Pete started, "Felling any better?"

"Yes!" David said and sat up – immediately wincing as his sudden movement caused a spike of pain to shoot down his spine.

"Pete," Bryan asked.

"Yeah?"

"Tell us a story? It'll make the time pass until David's better."

"Yeah!" David agreed enthusiastically. "From when you were in the Marines."

"Hmmn," Pete began, "There was the time the co tried to settle this war out on the frontier between two primitive interplanetary – no stardrive – races. We almost all bought the farm that time…"

NEXT PART

NEXT PART