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A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version

BY BRAD FERGUSON

All portions of this file not otherwise under copyright are

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

Chapter One

DMIRAL 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 Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version

BY BRAD FERGUSON

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 BRAD FERGUSON

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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

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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

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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 Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version

BY BRAD FERGUSON

All portions of this file not otherwise under copyright are

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

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.

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AFlagFullofStars:TheOriginalVersionBYBRADFERGUSON1AllportionsofthisfilenototherwiseundercopyrightareCopyright©1991,2000byBradFerguson.Allrightsreserved.Duplicationorredistributionofthisfileinanyformwhatsoeverisstrictlyprohibited.ChapterOneDMIRALJAMEST.KIRKLIKEDHISOFFICEintheAdmiraltywellenough.Tohim...

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