STAR TREK - TOS - 54 - Flag Full Of Stars

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Brad Ferguson - Star Trek - Flag Full Of Stars

Chapter One

ADMIRAL JAMES T. KIRK LIKED HIS OFFICE in the Admiralty well enough. To him, the most

important thing about it, aside from its prestigious size and generous appointments, was that it boasted an

unobstructed view north to the Golden Gate and, in particular, the magnificent old bridge that spanned it.

Kirk had swiveled his chair around to gaze out the window behind his desk at the big bridge, its sharp

angles softened to the eye by a hastily scheduled shower. The view from his old office had been east,

toward the bay. Nice enough, all right - but nothing at all like this.

Obscured by the rain, the bridge looked like a painting done in oils, and Kirk had a certain taste for that

sort of thing. He was also glad that the Fourth of July weekend was over and that the holiday bunting had

been taken down from the towers; he liked the bridge just as it was, and rather resented it when the

locals tarted it up with decorations. He supposed the people who were responsible for the bridge would

do the same thing all over again for the festivities coming the week after next.

Kirk had little else to do but stare at the bridge, because the emergency rain had caused a hold in the

countdown. Impatient, Kirk decided to call the Navy Yard chief again. He thumbed the direct-connect

on his fonecom and, after a negligible wait, the image of a red-bearded Scottish giant swam onto the

screen. The giant was dressed in one of the new Starfleet uniforms - the white-bibbed "penguin grays," as

they had quickly come to be known.

"Good morning again, Chief," Kirk said.

"Aye, Admiral, an' a wet one it still is, too," Alec MacPherson answered. "We're all just lookin' at the

rain an' gettin' a good case o' th' fidgets. The hold's now at one hour an' fifty-three minutes." The big

Scotsman snorted in disgust. "Couldna thot pesky woman ha' waited a bit t' make it rain?" "I suppose

not, Chief. Status?" "Ready an' waitin', Admiral. Everythin' is go. No problems from th' nasty weather,

either; I've got environmental shields up, an' th' saucer is locked tight as Grandma's purse in any case. I

wouldna mind settin' th' new launch time for as soon as practicable, though, sir. All o' this is wearin' me a

wee bit thin." "Agreed," Kirk said, nodding. "Let's go A.A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version BY

BRAD FERGUSON 2

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with what we discussed earlier. I make it, um, just under fourteen minutes until the rain's scheduled to

end. Let's send her up five minutes after that; the sky over the city will have cleared enough by then.

Keep in mind that there are a few tractor-pressor gangs topside who've got a good case of the fidgets,

too." "Aye, Admiral; I can well believe it. All right, sir; I'll be sending 'em a tick at T-minus eighteen.

Admiral, have ye changed your mind about comin' over for the launch? Still plenty of time for ye to beam

across town and stand wi' us here." "Thanks, Mac," said Kirk, holding up a hand, "but you don't need me

getting in your way. I'll stay here." "As you wish, sir," MacPherson said. "Well, here's hopin' the gods are

smilin' on us." "Aye to that. Kirk out." "G'bye, sir." MacPherson's image faded from the screen; Kirk

thumbed another button.

A familiar face appeared on the screen.

"Communications, Enterprise," Uhura said.

"Hello, Uhura. Let me talk to Captain Decker, please." "Surely, Admiral. The captain is here on the

bridge, sir; I'll put you through right away.

Please stand by." AT THE OPPOSITE END OF TOWN, at the communications console on the bridge

of USS Enterprise, Lt. Commander Nyota Uhura swiveled in her seat to find a seemingly relaxed Willard

Decker sitting comfortably in his command chair.

"Captain?" Uhura called. "Admiral Kirk calling, sir. On six." "Thanks." Decker hit a button, and Kirk's

face appeared on the main viewer. "Hello, Admiral. What news?" "Get ready to take a time tick from

MacPherson, Will. The rain is supposed to stop in about fourteen minutes. You'll lift off five minutes after

that. The tick will come at T-minus eighteen minutes." "Understood," Decker said. "We're raring to go,

sir." Kirk grinned. "Well, just be sure you put all the little pieces in the right places. It'd be embarrassing

to have anything left over when you're finished." "Scotty says he knows where all the parts go," Decker

replied, grinning. "Thanks for the advice, though, Admiral." "Smooth sailing, Captain. Kirk out." The

screen blanked.

Decker released the comm line and directed his attention forward, to the pilot station. At the helm was

Diana Octavia Siobhan "Dossie" Flores, a relief helmsman and navigator during the latter part of the

five-year mission and, with former helmsman Hikaru Sulu's reassignment, the officer in charge of the

upgrade to helm systems. Former navigator Pavel Chekov had left ship's company to attend the Starfleet

security school at Annapolis and had not yet been replaced, so Chief Suzanne DiFalco, Montgomery

Scott's number-two for navigation systems, was pinch-hitting as navigator for this short flight.

"Chief," Decker said, "I trust you're ready to receive the time tick?" "Aye, Captain," DiFalco answered.

She paused for a moment and then added, "Got it, sir. The clock is now running." DiFalco's fingers flew

across a series of buttons on her board. "Our projected course to Spacedock Four has been corrected

for the new time of departure.".A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version BY BRAD FERGUSON 3

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"Amended course laid in, sir," added Flores.

"Very good." It was quiet now on the bridge; everything that could be done had already been done, and

then checked and re-checked. Captain Decker looked around him. Most of the people on the bridge

were new to Enterprise, having been assigned aboard only during the six months that the saucer had been

sitting in the Navy Yard.

The green bridge crew had found its identity quickly, though, forming itself around the few veterans still

aboard - which was exactly what Admiral Kirk and Captain Decker had hoped would happen. Much the

same thing had occurred in Engineering, where Scotty had seeded a number of old hands among the new

personnel who'd been trained in the latest methods of ship design, construction and maintenance.

"Well, it seems that there's nothing left for us to do but wait," the captain said. "Miss Uhura, please patch

into the local 3V relay frequency for WorldNews and put a flat version on the main viewer. Let's see

what they're saying about us." "Aye, sir." " - AND NOW THERE'S JUST A LITTLE MORE THAN

twelve minutes to go until the scheduled end of the rain," newscaster Nan Davis said, smiling into the

trivision scanners. No one in her audience seeing the young woman could have guessed that Nan was

nearly frantic, trying to fill air time with information she'd already repeated several times in as many

different ways. Good Lord, she thought, this is my first worldwide feed on Terra, and it's going right

down the poop chute! Damn the weather!

"The weather might be terrible outside," Nan continued brightly, "but we're nice and dry here in our San

Francisco studios - and with us this morning are our special guests, Admiral Timothea Rogers of Starfleet

Command Public Information, and retired Starfleet captain Robert April, the very first commander of the

starship Enterprise." Both guests nodded to the scanners as their names were mentioned. April was a tall,

distinguished looking man of about eighty with a handsome shock of white hair; he was casually but

neatly dressed in civilian attire. Rogers, middle-aged and beginning to look it, was in Starfleet dress

uniform. Her expression was intimidating; her straight, prematurely graying hair framed a long face that

seemed unused to smiling. This is a Starfleet flak? Nan had thought when she'd met Rogers earlier that

morning. She'll be awful on 3V - a real zombie.

The interview, so far, had proven her right.

Admiral Rogers had been adequately responsive throughout the feed, but she was about as endearing as

a Rigellian fever sore.

"For those of you just joining us," Nan said, "the countdown for the liftoff of the renovated command

section - or the `saucer,' as the professionals call it - of the starship Enterprise has been put on hold due

to a two-hour rain ordered early this morning by California Governor Sarah Meier. The unscheduled

shower was needed to help extinguish a small forest fire that started around dawn near the city of Mill

Valley, just north of San Francisco. We're now told that the fire is out and that damage to the local

ecosystem has been minimal." Nan, Rogers and April were seated comfortably on a small studio set that

had been put together overnight by the WorldNews studio crew. The animated backdrop consisted of a

moving starfield dominated by an artist's.A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version BY BRAD

FERGUSON 4

All portions of this file not otherwise under copyright are Copyright c 1991, 2000 by Brad Ferguson. All

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Duplication or redistribution of this file in any form whatsoever is strictly prohibited.

conception of the way Enterprise would look once her renovation had been completed. The setting

looked good, better than the credit-pinching WorldNews art director usually managed to provide. Nan

had been quite pleased with the set when she'd first seen it that morning, and had taken its presence as a

good omen.

But that had been before she'd met Rogers.

So much for omens.

"Starfleet has delayed the launch until just after the emergency rain," Nan told her audience, "for fear that

turbulence from the command section's powerful impulse engines could worsen the weather and turn it

more stormy than Weather Control intended it to be.

The skies are scheduled to clear enough for the launch within a few minutes after the end of the shower."

Nan paused for a moment while the prompt bug in her ear buzzed. "We've just been informed by

Starfleet," she said, "that the command section of the Enterprise will lift off five minutes after the

scheduled end of the rain - or a little over fifteen minutes from now." She could not quite hide her relief

from the scanners.

Nan turned slightly in her seat to face April.

"Captain," she said, "it seems we're on our way again. Tell me, as the first skipper of the Enterprise, how

do you feel about seeing her, well, reborn?" April smiled. "Quite proud, Miss Davis, quite proud indeed.

I still feel as if I'm a part of that ship; I spent quite a while aboard her, you know. The changes in

technology since Enterprise was launched more than forty years ago have been considerable; I'm glad

she's being brought fully up to date." "Admiral," Nan asked Rogers, "can you tell us something about

those technological changes?" Rogers nodded briskly. "Certainly. For one thing, there have been many

advances in the management of shipboard environmental needs.

The air filters and water reprocessors on the renovated Enterprise are designed to be three hundred and

seven percent more efficient than those they are replacing - " "That's amazing," Nan said, nodding. That's

dull as dishwater! she thought. I'd swear this woman's part Vulcan - the part that's not zomboid, I mean.

Gamely, Nan tried again. "What about the ship's new warp engines?" she asked the admiral. "Isn't it true

that the new ones are so powerful that they would have torn the old Enterprise apart?" Rogers pursed her

lips as if in distaste.

"Well, yes, I suppose so," she answered dryly, "if you care to put the matter in sensationalistic terms. The

new warp drivers do generate six times more power than the old ones, and such a strain would have

been a problem for the old Enterprise. However, the re-design has taken the additional stress on the

ship's frame into account." "And what about the ship's new weaponry and shielding?" Nan prompted

hopefully. "What can you tell us about those?" "I can't discuss classified matters," Rogers said flatly. Then

she frowned. It was a frown that made Nan wince; it reminded her of the time when she was four years

old and had just peed on her mother's living room rug, right in front of about twenty party guests. Gads,

that had been a bad day. almost as bad as this one was turning out to be.

There was a brief, awkward silence, which reminded Nan that there had been one at that.A Flag Full of

Stars: The Original Version BY BRAD FERGUSON 5

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party, too. She winced again.

"Er, when Enterprise was first built," April said, trying to be helpful, "warp technology was in its infancy.

The top speed I had available to me was warp four, and we really had to push her to get it." He smiled.

"We thought that was pretty good in those days, Miss Davis. Your viewers may not be aware that this

Enterprise replaced a predecessor ship of the same name that wasn't even a proper starship, in that it

didn't have warp capability at all." "Really?" Nan said.

"Oh, certainly," April replied. "That ship accelerated under impulse power to reach something close to the

speed of light. Those aboard her relied on Einsteinian effects in order to make a star voyage in what for

them was a reasonable amount of subjective time. That was long ago, of course. Now the engineers are

talking about achieving velocities much, much faster than warp eight with the next generation of ships -

velocities so fast that we might need an entirely new way to reckon speed. I can't wait to see that, and to

be out there for it." "How are you going to manage that?" Nan asked.

"Somehow," April replied, smiling even more broadly. "I hardly think I'm quite done yet." Love that man,

Nan thought. "That brings up something else, Captain," Nan said brightly.

"You've just mentioned the next generation of ships. Why renovate the Enterprise instead of building an

entirely new cruiser from scratch?" "Well, Miss Davis," April began, "my understanding is that the new

design incorporates so much fresh technology, it can't even be finalized for more than a decade - " "The

decision you're talking about was made by Starfleet for two reasons," Rogers said, interrupting. Nan

sighed in frustration just loudly enough for the audio pickups to catch the sound. She looked daggers at

Rogers, but the admiral chose not to notice.

"Those reasons are money and time," Rogers continued. "Enterprise's renovation will cost only sixty-two

point six percent of the price of constructing an entirely new cruiser, and work will be completed a year

sooner. Another way we shortened the time factor was by taking the job away from Starfleet's

Construction Authority and giving it to our Fleet Deployment people." "Is that so?" Nan asked. Is this

ever going to end? she wondered wearily.

"Indeed it is - and since things have gone so well with the Enterprise refit, Fleet Deployment will be

handling all of Starfleet's ship renovation projects from now on. The Construction Authority will continue

to be in charge of building entirely new ships." "Fascinating," Nan said, putting a feeble amount of forced

fascination into her voice.

"Why is it being done the way you're doing it, though? Who's responsible for the change?" "Admiral

James Kirk was put in charge of Fleet Deployment eight months ago," Rogers said briskly. "The

renovation plan is his." Interesting, Nan thought. Jim Kirk, eh? I can tell that she doesn't have much use

for him, either. I wonder why not? What's wrong with her, anyway? "But aren't starship repairs and so

forth usually done in orbit, in special docks?" Nan asked. "I mean, the entire starship is usually left in one

piece, isn't it? Why was the command section detached and flown down for renovation?" Rogers

nodded. "Before now," she said crisply, "Starfleet has always done this kind of work in the

microgravitational environment.A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version BY BRAD FERGUSON 6

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freely available in orbit. However, Admiral Kirk's plan represents an entirely new way of doing things.

Simply put - and it was far from simple - Admiral Kirk broke the entire renovation process down into a

series of small tasks. He then combined those tasks into a master renovation schedule that was much

more efficient than the plan it replaced." Giving the devil his due, eh? "What, precisely, did Admiral Kirk

come up with?" Nan asked.

"He determined that some of the renovation work could be done much more efficiently in a gravitational

field, and that some of it could be done with only slightly more difficulty in gravity," Rogers answered.

"He then compared cost factors, and found that a substantial savings in time and budget could be realized

if we did most of the work on the command section on the ground." "But isn't working in a gravity field

inconvenient?" "Not when you're painting, running wiring or laying carpet, among any number of other

jobs," Rogers replied. "Admiral Kirk knew, of course, that Enterprise's main gravity generators would

not be up and running until rather late in the renovation process; in fact, they came on line only last week.

We gained a great deal of time by not waiting for the engineering section to be made ready before

beginning substantive work on the saucer.

While the command section has its own, smaller gravity generators, they are not intended for months of

continuous operation. So we took advantage of the biggest gravity generator in the immediate

neighborhood - Terra itself." "Starfleet likes to point out that it's San Francisco's largest single employer -

" Nan began.

"Well, it is," Rogers said snappishly.

"Starfleet's contribution to the local economy is considerable - " Spare me the figures, please, thought

Nan wearily.

" - and doing the saucer work on the ground at the Navy Yard allowed us to hire private contractors

from the area to do jobs usually done by Starfleet engineers in orbit.

These work-for-hire civilian crews commuted from their homes each day. They did not have to be

transported or shuttled to orbit daily, or boarded there at Starfleet expense. This alone saved the

Federation's taxpayers millions of credits." Nan nodded. "I see. So what's scheduled to happen next in

the renovation process?" "Work on the command section is nearly complete," Rogers answered crisply.

"As I've mentioned, Starfleet felt that the larger part of the work on the saucer - " The control room

called up a computer-generated graphic of Enterprise and put it on the air. Blinking arrows indicated the

saucer-shaped command section.

" - could be done faster, easier and more cheaply on the ground. The engineering section, on the other

hand - " The arrows moved quickly from the command to the engineering section.

" - needed to be worked on in orbit. For one thing, the engineering section can't be landed.

The command section, though, is actually constructed as a lifeboat and may be used as such in an

emergency. In a procedure we call `saucer separation,' the command section detaches from the rest of

the ship and, under its own impulse power, can rendezvous with a rescue craft or make a landing on a

planetary surface - that is to say, on either land or water.".A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version BY

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In 3V displays everywhere, little sparks appeared around the neck of Enterprise, and the ship was

suddenly beheaded by an unseen headsman. The command section obediently flew away at appreciable

speed toward a bluish-green planet that had suddenly been brought into the picture. There's somebody

up there with a sure touch for the graphics generator, Nan thought appreciatively.

"Your viewers will recall that Enterprise returned from its historic five-year mission early last year,"

Rogers continued. "Six months ago, a skeleton crew separated the saucer and flew it down to the San

Francisco Navy Yard. That's where it's been ever since, straddling four repair bays." The control room

switched to a live shot of the Navy Yard, the eastern part of which was dominated by Enterprise's

command section.

The remote 3V scanners caught the diminishing rain pattering down on the shields protecting the saucer

from the weather. The mist in the air had condensed on the normally invisible shields, allowing them to be

seen. They overlapped repeatedly, looking like exquisitely thin plates of clear crystal piled in shingle-like

fashion above the saucer, protecting it.

"Work has continued right along on the engineering section since the separation," Rogers added. "For

instance, the new warp drivers have already been mounted, and the reconstruction of the ship's warp

assembly is now sixty-eight percent complete." No decimals that time. She must be getting tired. "When

do you think the whole job will be finished, Admiral?" Nan asked.

"Starfleet estimates that it will take another year," Rogers said. "After a brief shakedown cruise,

Enterprise will be put back into active service, to continue its peaceful mission of exploration and

discovery." Nan nodded. "Getting back to the business at hand, Admiral Rogers, will it be difficult to

rejoin the two sections of the ship?" "No, not particularly," answered Rogers, "but it is a job that calls for

the utmost precision. The saucer will go into orbit, make rendezvous with Spacedock Four, and then be

brought into precise position by tractor-pressor crews. Correctly mating the saucer with the engineering

section will take careful handling - but our people are very good at that sort of thing. We're beginning to

think about designs for ships that will permit easier saucer recovery, but that's still to come." Well, that's

all on that, I guess, Nan thought.

She decided to change the subject and dig for a little more background. Anything to liven this show up a

little, please, God. "Captain April is not the only Enterprise alumnus here today, Admiral Rogers," Nan

said. "I understand that you yourself once served aboard her, years ago." "Yes," Rogers replied, her

expression turning cold enough to stop all conversation.

What'd I say, anyway? Nan asked herself in puzzlement. Well, that'll teach me to try to bring a human

interest element into a story. Nan looked to her other guest for help, but even the cheerful Captain April

appeared cowed.

Nan surrendered and turned to face the nearest scanner. "We'll be right back after these important

messages," she said, hoping that the control room would manage to cue up something in time.

ACROSS THE CONTINENT, a slightly degraded 3V image flickered in the corner of a

secondary-school classroom in the endlessly.A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version BY BRAD

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rebuilt Chelsea section of N'York.

The room housed an experimental program at the cutting edge of the science of education. It was called

"Project 14-B" by the administrators who had created it and "the Class" by everyone else, including its

participants. The Class made a fetish of group participation. Its purpose was to find out whether students

learned better when they challenged each other's intellects in a classroom setting.

To stimulate what the originators of the Class called "the appraisal and learning sectors of the conscious

adolescent mind as perceived en masse," there were thirty-three students enrolled in the Class, a figure

well beyond the standard limit of five. The term was nearly an entire year long, from the middle of

September through the end of August, and enrollment was limited to second-year students who had

completed more traditional programs of study in their first year. Parents enrolled their children in the

Class because, despite all the controversy surrounding it, results were what counted - and the Class got

results.

The Class curriculum demanded rote memorization and classroom recitation instead of the more

traditional sleeplearning and end-of-term hypnotic review techniques. Oral and written tests had been

devised to establish and rate the students' proficiency against an established standard, as well as to instill

a spirit of competition among them.

Most unusual of all, though, the Class was not guided by an artificial-intelligence educational program.

Instead, there was a teacher, an actual person, who came in every day and put his pupils through their

paces. The person who had been hired for this unusually demanding job had turned out to be quite good

at it, despite the initial misgivings of the school board.

In the three years of its existence, the Class had made a not inconsiderable contribution to the sum of

knowledge about how the adolescent human mind worked and how it might be made to work better.

Students in the Class tended to do well once they became used to the way things were done in it, and

they continued to do better than average after they returned to a more traditional educational setting.

Someday, if the success enjoyed by the Class continued, its techniques might spread throughout the

Federation.

The limits of what the Class could and could not do - its syllabus - were set in durasteel by its creators

and could not be changed, but those limits were broad, and much could be done within them. On this

particular day, the teacher had decided that the spirit of education and the requirements of the syllabus

would best be served if the Class watched the trivised launch of Enterprise's command section from the

San Francisco Navy Yard.

The teacher had prepared his students by providing research materials in several media on Starfleet and

the histories of ships bearing the name Enterprise, including biographical data on notable past

commanders of those ships.

Yesterday the Class had even viewed a very old motion picture - turnerized into full color and three-dee

for modern audiences - that had told the story of one of the naval commanders most associated with the

Enterprise, an admiral named Halsey. Halsey had lived and died a unimaginably long time ago, back

when the ship then bearing the already proud name of Enterprise had been the first of three aircraft

carriers that, in series, had belonged to the old United States Navy.

The students had long since become bored.A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version BY BRAD

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by the delay in the countdown. The gentle murmur of their originally furtive conversation had gradually

grown in volume to a dull roar.

The teacher, who had been giving his full attention to the feed from San Francisco, now roused himself as

his reverie was jarringly interrupted by a pitch aimed at viewers with indigestion.

He turned in his seat at the front of the room to face the Class directly and cleared his throat.

That was all it took. Voices fell silent immediately. Heads turned toward him.

"The pre-launch activities will best be appreciated in silence," the teacher said in a low, rumbling voice.

He did not threaten them.

He did not have to. The students gave their full attention to the commercial.

The teacher turned back to the trivision. He took pride in never having had even one serious disciplinary

problem in the three years the Class had been in existence. It was understood that, as a practical matter,

he alone was in charge of the day-to-day administration of the Class, and that made him responsible for

everything that went on in it. This attitude completely dismissed the notion of most modern educators that

students should have control of the curriculum - a notion the teacher treated with a quiet, almost amused

disdain. He made it a practice to lay down the law, as it were, to each new group of students firmly,

clearly and without equivocation every September. and, every September, each new group of students

instantly came to accept his authority without question.

That kind of obedience from independent-minded young people was clearly a tribute to the teacher's

natural ability to control his class. It just might have had something to do with this, too: The teacher was a

full-blooded Klingon.

His name was G'dath, and most of his students were scared to death of him.

ACROSS TOWN, in a shabby, ill-maintained apartment in an otherwise pleasant neighborhood known

as Stuyvesant Preserve, two other Klingons were watching the same trivision feed with lessening interest.

"I find announcements such as these vulgar and unsettling," one said, indicating the commercial for the

indigestion remedy.

"Really?" returned the other. He was naturally inclined to be argumentative, and the idiot assigned to him

was a perfect foil. "I rather enjoy them," he continued. "I find in such announcements yet another

symptom of Earther and, hence, Federation decline. Such things are a most promising indication of our

eventual triumph." "Need the announcement be so. blunt, though, Superior?" the first one asked, pointing

to the trivised image. "That graphic rendition, for example. Such things disturb me greatly.

Why don't humans simply go to their doctors in secret and keep these vulgarities to themselves?" The

other Klingon shrugged, uncaring. This one is a fool indeed, he thought. I must constantly keep in mind

that his blood is thinned by human taint. "The Earthers do not seem to care about keeping such matters

private," he said, putting a certain, studied condescension in his voice. "Neither, for that matter, do I. My

interest is only in the news portion of this feed, Klor - the why of it. I cannot imagine the Federation

allowing wide publicity of such an important development in its secret war policy without its having an

excellent reason for doing so - and anything that involves the one named Kirk is of great interest to us.".A

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Now it was Klor's turn to shrug. "Perhaps there is no reason for the publicity, Superior, save idle

Starfleet boasting," he said. "We certainly have learned nothing from this feed.

That bloodless woman admiral, for example.

She would not discuss classified information." "What she says or does not say is of no importance to us,"

Keth said. "The Empire already has that data - from us, among others.

We serve well." "Would that we could do more than serve as furtive bandits gathering information," Klor

responded with some heat. "It does not befit one of the Warrior class to sit the day through and watch

the trivision set. It befits a Warrior to act, not react." "Does it befit a Warrior to question Imperial

orders?" Keth barked.

Klor blinked. "I meant no disrespect, Superior," he said hastily, averting his gaze.

Keth calmed down. The fool has a point, he thought. This is indeed no work for a Warrior.

Would that I had not volunteered for this duty - but my commander was. persuasive. To be out on the

border again, in the chair of command, a deck under my booted feet, blooded fighters at my side and all

weapons at the ready - "Your word is taken," he said briefly. He then pointed to the 3V corner. "They

seem to have returned to the news transmission now.

Give it your full attention. Note each detail." "I obey, Superior." IN A CAVERNOUS BUILDING in

Dulles Park, Virginia, a young woman named Alice Friedman had long since tuned a 3V-capable

datapad to the WorldNews feed. She had turned the volume on the datapad low when the commercials

had come on, but she was still keeping half an ear on the feed. She didn't want to miss a thing that was

happening in San Francisco, but she'd be damned if she'd watch commercials.

Alice had been up and working since before dawn, and this was not the first day in a row she'd done

that; she was tired. She sighed wearily as she ran a hand through her curly brown hair, increasing its

disorder. Alice again wished for coffee, but the servitor was broken.

Far away, outside somewhere, she heard the groaning and rumbling of heavy machinery. The crews were

still at work on the dart, hard up against a looming deadline that could not be changed. The dart would

be ready on time, though; they'd worked right through the long Fourth of July holiday the weekend

before, just to make sure it would be. Alice was confident that they'd make it now, although she'd earlier

had her doubts.

Alice had made a successful career out of pushing orbital lifting bodies for freight lines - she was one of

the few women who'd ever done that for a living - and, more recently, she'd spent endless hours in the

dart simulator. She would spend many more hours in it before the big day came, a little less than two

weeks from now.

Alice finished reading a section of the manual and shifted her attention back to the WorldNews feed..

The commercial break was finally over, and her datapad was now showing a picture of Enterprise's

command section still patiently awaiting liftoff.

Some woman was babbling a description of the scene, though Alice and anyone else watching could see

everything perfectly well for themselves. Captioned for the thinking-impaired, she thought with no little

irritation.

God, I hate WorldNews..A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version BY BRAD FERGUSON 11 All

portions of this file not otherwise under copyright are Copyright c 1991, 2000 by Brad Ferguson. All

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BradFerguson-StarTrek-FlagFullOfStarsChapterOneADMIRALJAMEST.KIRKLIKEDHISOFFICEintheAdmiraltywellenough.Tohim,themostimportantthingaboutit,asidefromitsprestigioussizeandgenerousappointments,wasthatitboastedanunobstructedviewnorthtotheGoldenGateand,inparticular,themagnificentoldbridgethatspannedit.Ki...

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STAR TREK - TOS - 54 - Flag Full Of Stars

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