Danny Amor's Online Library/Danny Amor's Online Library - Volume 1.iso/html/startrek/old-incomplete/wherethestarshavenoname.p1

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From: [e-mail] (Brad Ackerman)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: Where the Stars Have No Name (Ch. 1-3) [part 1 of 1]
Date: 17 Oct 1992 13:27:16 -0500
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Here is a story uploaded to America Online by [e-mail].  The
Promenad e-mail address is not in use, use [e-mail] to contact
the author by Internet E-Mail.

---


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Brad Ackerman                   |  "The trigger has been pulled.  Let's
[e-mail]              |   get there before the hammer falls."
[e-mail] |
[e-mail]               |   -Capt. James Kirk, "Errand of Mercy"
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-- cut here -- begin STNONM.TXT -- part 1 of 1 --
Preface


I would like to take this opportunity to thank DEMARTS for inspiration.
After reading the first three chapters of his current work, "Seek Him I'
Th' Other Place Yourself," I finally found the incentive to create my own
ST novel which, I hope, will do ST justice.

Like DEMARTS, I have set my story in the ST Universe.  It is not ST Canon
(to borrow a term), but it is about the other people and ships that
inhabit
the ST Universe.  In this instance, this is an adventure involving the
captain and crew of the starship USS Ascension, the flagship of the
Ascension-class dreadnought fleet.  The time (in ST History) is a few
years
after the adventure of Kirk and crew of the Enterprise as depicted in ST
VI: TUD.

NOTE:  Copyright Acknowledgments
    STAR TREK created by Gene Roddenberry.
    All copyrights and trademarks of Paramount are hereby acknowledged and
respected.  In no way is this work to be considered or construed as an
infringement on those established copyrights and trademarks.  This is a
work created for the enjoyment of the ST Fandom and is not intended for
sale.  This is to be freely distributed under the following condition:
    1.  The above notice and the author's name must accompany all copies of
the chapter(s);
    2.  The chapter(s) may not be modified in any form without the written
consent of the Originating Author;
    3.  No charge other than reasonable distribution compensation be charged
for its distribution.

    "Where The Stars Have No Name" is copyrighted (c) 1992 by Kenneth Edward
Fernandez.

    The author invites comments, criticism and the like and can be reached
via
E-mail on the Promenad Service under the screen name CHRISPIKE.

This work was originally created on an IBM PS/1 (C-34) using MicroSoft
Works formatting, but has been converted, at the wise counsel of a friend,
to an ASCII format.


And now...

        Sometime in the 23rd Century...












Historian's Note:

    "Where The Stars Have No Name" takes place between ST VI: TUD and ST:TNG
"Encounter at FarPoint."













Dedication

    For DEMARTS:  thanks for the inspiration.  Hope Mrs. DEMARTS and Little
DEMARTS are doing well!













Where The Stars Have No Name

A STAR TREK Novelette
by

Kenneth Edward Fernandez







*P*R*O*L*O*G*U*E*




>>>OUTGOING TRANSMISSION<<<

SCC 40

EMERGENCY PROTOCOL
Ursa Beta Beta Omega Thetis
ONE A TWO A THREE A
engaged


USS Ascension (DN 2520)
Captain Sebastian Carillo Cervantes, commanding

BE ADVISED--Ascension currently en route to StarBase 747 after
encountering
unmapped anomaly near Roma Draxxi Simtarri, causing vessel to be spatially
relocated on the farside of the Galaxy opposite the Romulan Star Empire.
At current course and speed, traversing the Imperial domains of the
Klingon
and Romulan governments, as well as the Kzin Homeworlds and Magni Romani
Empire, Ascension will arrive 396 years, seven months, four days, two
hours
and 14 minutes.


>>>END OF TRANSMISSION<<<

11:54:23
sd ref 3/9910.21

repeat




*O*N*E*
So Far From Home


Cervantes woke with a start.
    Sleep had eluded him for so long, and now, he feared it.  He gently
touched his moist brow, felt a trickle as it slid downward, running the
length of his jaw until it dripped off onto the soaked fabric of his bed.
He looked down, suddenly realizing where and who he was.
    He eased himself off the sweat-soaked bed and quietly padded to the
terminal at his desk.  Swiveling the monitor, Sebastian Cervantes sat down
and activated the desk-mounted terminal.  He tabbed the command menu,
selecting the log entries of the past seventy-two hours.
    In microseconds, the black, reflective surface of the monitor winked to
life with the information retrieved.
    For all the times he had reviewed the log entries, hours reliving the
events of the past three days in his mind, Captain Cervantes could not
find
an answer to their current dilemma.  Could not get himself to admit
defeat.
 Could not get himself to realize the futility of the situation.
    "Computer," he found himself saying, slowly rubbing his temples, eyes
shut, wishing to be anywhere but here.  In his spacious, quiet quarters.
Aboard the flagship of the Federation dreadnought fleet.  In an area of
unexplored space.  So very far from StarFleet, from home.  "Time of
arrival
to StarBase Seven-Four-Seven?"
    "At current speed and course:  396 years, seven months, one day--"
    "Thank you, Computer," he sighed.
    Of course, no change.  Except by three days and some odd hours.  Had he
expected otherwise?  Had he hoped that all this was just a bad dream and
that he would wake up with the Ascension cruising gracefully toward her
next assignment in familiar space?
    He allowed himself a faint, if not wry, smile.  No, of course not.
    Wearily, Cervantes tabbed the desk's commlink panel beside the terminal.
    "Cervantes to Bridge."
    "Bridge here," came an unfamiliar voice.  "Lieutenant LeBaron speaking."
Obviously a new one from the last transfer of personnel at StarStation
Montgomery, Cervantes surmised.
    "Status report."
    "Continuing course and speed as per your last orders, sir.  We should be
reaching Sector JP1212 in one hour, fifteen minutes.  We're also
continuing
the emergency distress transmission at two minute intervals."
    "Any responses?"
    "No sir.  We're apparently traveling through an area of uninhabited
space.
 According to the science officer, every system we've passed by is void of
sentient life.  No Class M's for kilometers.  Odds are, someone will
eventually pick up the transmission as it nears known civilized space."
    "Of that, I have no doubt."  The first known "civilization" which would
pick up the transmission would be the Romulans.  Undoubtedly, they would
trace the source of the beam and launch an investigative task force,
locate
the Ascension and bring her back to the Homeworlds.  A warprize for the
Praetor.  Once they berthed the Ascension and executed the crew, their
scientists would swarm all over the starship trying to unlock the
technological secrets she stored.  They would strip the dreadnought,
dissect it, analyze and then create new warships based on their captured
Federation design.  The RiHanni were, if anything, a desperate people.
    Cervantes was not going to let that scenario occur, he was sure of that.
He would just as soon self-destruct the Ascension before letting it fall
into the hands of Romulan generals.  He returned his attention to the
Bridge officer:
    "Thank you, Lieutenant.  Continue standing orders and notify me as soon
as
there is any change."
    "Will do, Captain."  And the Bridge officer terminated the commlink,
leaving Cervantes to stare unblinking at his reflection in the monitor.
    So far from home...

    Even though their current emergency was only three days old, Alex
Llorente
felt as helpless as the moment they all had first realized what had become
of them.  The ensuing moments flashed into memory time and time again,
thus, the first officer was getting very little sleep.  He tried reading,
perusing through his shelves, fingertip skimming across the bindings at
familiar titles.  His mother, back home on Earth--officially called Sector
Zero-Zero-One as a direct result of a recent StarFleet directive--had
urged
him to collect the old-style books with pages instead of the usual norm of
data chips and library discs.  It was much more natural, to him anyway, to
read Shakespeare from a book rather than reading it holding a PADD.  He
smiled to himself at the thought of his mother.  He missed her, even now,
four hundred years away, in a distant part of the Galaxy he once knew as
home.  He wondered how she would react once she realized her routine
dispatches would be returned by StarFleet, how she would storm about HQ
demanding to find out what had become of her only son and the ship he was
on.
    She would probably be frightened, if she wasn't already.  A dark fear
would grip her, he was sure of that, and she would have that pained look
on
her face like she did nearly a year ago when he and she stood in the
glass-
encased lobby of spacedock. . . .
    They stood together that day, his arms wrapped comfortingingly about his
mother's shoulders.  She was crying.  A full head taller than his mother,
all he could do was whisper soothing words, patting her silver-streaked
hair.
    It was the day the Londinium was returning.  The day his wife's ship was
coming home, half-destroyed, damaged beyond repair.
    When the great metal portals of the spacedock slowly parted, a murmur
quickly spread throughout the lobby.  People began to calmly walk to the
floor-to-ceiling glasteel observation fronts, pointing in the general
direction of the spacedoors.  The murmur grew into burst of gasps and sobs
as the doors revealed the one horrid image each person had been dreading
to
witness for the past two days:
    The battered hull of the USS Londinium.  She was pitted and scarred.  Her
once-prestine hull of pearl-grey now mostly blackened, scorched, damaged
by
battle.  Alex watched quietly as the various hidden tractor beams
throughout the dock began focusing their beams on the starship, locking
on,
and quietly guiding her to her assigned berth.  Even as she silently
glided
passed them, Alex heart began to ache as he took in the details of the
damage.
    The saucer section was still intact.  Where the Bridge once capped the
section now stood a blackened gap, a pit.  Nothing remained of the Bridge,
but the damaged outcropping of the turboshaft which would have led to the
command center of the ship.  That's where Laurette should have been.  As
the Londinium's first officer, she was suppose to have been at the side of
her captain.  But she wasn't.  The recovery team would later find her
body-
-not knowing they were handling the body of the ship's first officer, so
bad had the radiation burns been--of all places, in Engineering.
    He noticed, also, that portions of the fore saucer had been blown away.
All that remained of the ship's registry number was the familiar naval
construction code.  As his eye traveled past the saucer section, he noted
the damage done to the impulse engine, its dome shattered, the shards
reminding him of giant, uneven fangs.  Well, he thought grimly as his
mother continued to heave great sobs into his chest, StarFleet sure did a
good job of bringing her back whole.
    He realized, for the first time, the absence of the starboard nacelle and
its support pylon.  They must have been jettisoned, the flow must have
been
imbalanced in the nacelle and Captain Greer had to order the nacelle
jettisoned--hopefully at the bastards who had done this to them.  That
must
be it, he convinced himself.  He took in the sight of the surviving
nacelle-and-pylon assembly:  long, agonizing cracks seem to run the entire
length of the darkened nacelle, the emergency flush vents blackened from
the energy dump.
    His eyes finally fell on the one section of the ship he had hoped to
avoid.  The Engineering section was patched, giant dull-grey plates
contrasting with the original ship's hull coloring.  That had been the
section hit the hardest according to what Alex had been able to read from
the reports.  The engineering staff had been in the middle of a core dump
when their assailants fired on them and had managed to penetrate the
deflector grid protecting the entire engineering section.  The ensuing
fire
only added to the volatility of the procedure and the core dump was
halted.
 There was ample evidence indicating that the crew shut down the core and
sealed it off from the fires raging within.
    There was more.  Laurette had been in engineering when the attacks were
at
their fiercest.  Seeing the danger of having the core dump ignite, she
ordered the sealing of the section.  Recovery saw this when they found her
body slumped over the panel, skinless hand over the emergency seal-off
button.
    He shut his eyes at the memory, the tears burning and threatening to
spill
over.  For the sake of his mother, he reminded himself as he had for the
past two days since learning of Laurette's death, he had to remain strong.
    Strong.  He was an officer, dammit!  An officer of StarFleet Command!
Officer's don't cry!
    He clutched his mother, bowing his head, and weeping quietly with her,
realized that tomorrow would have been their three-month anniversary. . .