To: , ,
        , ,
        , "JustKenning"
        
From: "Jay  P Hailey" 
Reply-To: trekcreative{at}yahoogroups.com


Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile
Author: Jay P Hailey (JayPHailey{at}yahoo.com) Series: MISC - TNG OCs
COdes: None
Part: 138/335(?)
Rating:[PG]
Archive: Fine with me, just tell me where. Disclaimer: Paramount owns all
things Star Trek.  I claim Original Characters and Situations for me.
Webpage HTTP://www.phoenixinn.iwarp.com/jayphailey

Civil Disorder
by
Jay P. Hailey
And
Dennnis Washburn

The man in charge of the investigation was Arthur Hendrickson. Hendrickson
had made full Lieutenant by then. He was still thin and almost
supernaturally likable. It made him an excellent security officer. Most
people would not willingly hurt him. His nickname, "Snoopy",
referred to his other talent. Snoopy had a talent for ferreting out secrets
that other people would rather not have known. As an extra, added bonus,
Snoopy had no sense of tact. He would often tell the secrets he ran across.
The crew of the Discovery learned early on to be forgiving of each other
and sometimes even Snoopy.

He called me over to the sheep pens again.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" I asked.

"Well, Sir. I found the chemicals that killed poor little Mary Anne, I
think."

"Are they secure?" Were we about to lose deck nine and my
favorite starship captain in the process?

"Yes, Sir. I had to put 'em in a sample container, but I think we got
'em." Snoopy said.

"All right let's see it."

We walked inside and there I saw a couple of ordinary liquid containers.
One of them was broken open and seemed empty. They were in a sample
container. It was about two feet tall and eighteen inches wide. On the top
it had a force field generator. It was active. No gas would escape the
sample container. It was designed to take samples from a gas-giant planet,
or perhaps a cool star.

"Did you get contaminated?" I asked Snoopy.

"Maybe. I have a sort of a headache." He said.

"Hailey to Sickbay. We need transport for Lieutenant Hendrickson and
his team."

"Oh no, Sir. I didn't let them come in here. I came in by myself."

"All right." I leaned out to where a security team was waiting.
"Get some decontamination gear and clean this place up." I said.
"Please be careful with yourselves."

Snoopy and I sparkled away to Sickbay.

-*-

"Snoopy did catch a small dose of the stuff, but it was mostly gone by
the time he touched it. I was able to treat him easily." Dr.
Burlington said.

"So I'm all right then?" I asked. I was sitting on a bed in sickbay.

"You caught a microscopic amount, but I can't see any serious
elevation in your seratonin levels. You should be fine." She said.

"Thank you." I grinned. I got down off the table and went over to
Kamaline. She had the substance in the sample case in sickbay too. They had
the best isolation fields. Inside the field, Kamaline was probing and
scanning the substance that Snoopy found.

"What have you got, Lieutenant?" I asked her.

"I'm still working on it Captain. My working hypothesis at the moment
was that it..." Her tricorder beeped. "Yep, that's it. This stuff
is a primitive but effective weapon. It was assembled from some of the
medical and agricultural chemicals that the colonists are taking with
them."

"What happened to the rest of that container?" I asked. I was
horrified. The containers were simple closeable beverage containers. It was
insanity to hold deadly poison in them.

"The gas is heavier than standard atmosphere. It probably sank to the
floor and down the drains." Kamaline opined.

I called the engineering department and told them to inspect and
decontaminate the life support and recycling equipment for deck nine,
especially focusing on the drains from the sheep pens.

Then the implications of what Kamaline said hit me. "You mean some one
improvised and hid chemical weapons in my ship!?"

Kamaline looked at me soberly. "Yes, Sir. That's exactly what I'm saying."

-*-

I locked down the Discovery. The force fields that reinforced the walls of
the starship could also be extended and strengthened to form
"virtual" walls. With these in place each section of the
Discovery was isolated from every other, at least as far as people moving
through the ship were concerned.

Once the Discovery was locked down, I and each of my command officers took
a security squad around and searched each section of the starship.

The most unpleasant part was searching the colonists quarters. Many of them
didn't know what had happened. Suddenly they were trapped here or there,
and a goon squad was searching their homes and belongings.

I carefully explained to the colonists what happened and what I was doing,
but I don't think many of them were convinced.

We even searched the Foote's home and the home of Aaron and Elizabeth Sheffield.

We did turn up other weapons. There were improvised clubs and shivs. A
"shiv" is an improvised knife. The phrase is old English from the
terrible jails of the twentieth century.

There were even improvised reaction guns. They would use compressed air or
a mild combustion of chemical fuel to fling pellets at high speed. Our
databases suggested the ancient slang term "zip guns".

To send colonists unarmed on to the surface of a planet would be a quicker
form of suicide than what they were already contemplating. They had real
weapons. They were in storage. I didn't really consider the implications of
that. Thinking about it, I supposed that storing their real guns away in
the cargo holds was a fair saving of space and might get you to the colony
with more colonists in functioning condition. The trip out on the Discovery
promised to be boring and not very productive for the colonists. To have
bored, armed, colonists might lead to an incident or two. It was just human
nature.

Why would the colonists feel a need to be armed on the Discovery? If there
was something outside the ship that threatened us, the Discovery was a well
armed capital ship. Zip guns and shivs would not make a difference there.
Inside the ship there were a lot of security and the rest of us willing to
pick up phasers and shoot, too. Hell, if things were that bad I would have
handed them phasers myself.

The only reason for the colonists to arm themselves surreptitiously way was
if they feared or disliked the crew of the Discovery.

-*-

The life support system of the Discovery had in fact absorbed the whole
container of poison gas. The replicator-based recycling systems were so
efficient that they were turning poisonous, contaminated raw material
(Mostly animals wastes) into perfectly healthy food and potable water.
Decontamination consisted of running the whole load of raw material through
the replicator several times. Only the faintest hint of the deadly gas was
left. One molecule per one hundred million or so. Blind luck and a hungry
replicator system saved us.

-*-

"I am not your enemy." I told the colonists. I was addressing a
"town meeting" of sorts composed of several elected
representatives. The discussion was also being viewed by the colonists and
many off duty Starfleet Officers on their view screens. "I don't
understand why you felt it necessary to arm yourselves."

"You explained it very well with your search." One of the old timers said.

"Is that so?" I said. "Someone's hold out weapon killed Mary
Anne Foote. It could have been much worse. What would it have done to your
colonization effort if we lost the whole deck? Dumb luck saved us. What
other disasters are hiding in the woodwork?"

The old timer shook his head. "Nothing there gives you cause to
suspect me, Captain. If you have no cause to suspect me, then you have no
right to search me. Or have I misread your sixth constitutional
guarantee?"

"No. That's exactly right. You have rights against unlawful search and
seizure anywhere else in the Federation. Aboard this ship I have the
absolute responsibility to fulfill this ship's mission. I am granted
dictatorial powers to do it with. My mission is to get you safely to your
new world. Not freely, not happily, but safely. You can see to your own
freedom and happiness once you're there. Democracy is not a good operating
system for a ship under way." I said.

Another old timer laughed and said "He's got you there, Ollie. He's
only fifty some odd, but he's the Captain."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"You can call me Latimer, young man." He seemed like he belonged
beside the river in a Mark Twain book.

"Were you a spaceman at one time?"

"Yep. I was."

"Then you understand my position."

"Yep." He gave a sharp glare. With a start I realized that he
might be a thousand years old or more. I felt very out classed. "Just
because I understand you, that doesn't mean I agree with you. You watch
yourself."

"Look." I said. "I don't want trouble. I can see now that
I'm going to have to take some steps to insure that we don't have any. I
will get you safely to Beta Howard 223, and if the time comes and you don't
feel you want to stay, then I'll bring you back. However, this ship has one
Captain, and that's me."

The reaction to that was a sort stunned disbelief. Aaron spoke up.
"Don't make any promises you can't keep Captain." He looked
different from the friendly man with whom I had regular dinners. At that
moment I could a sort of animalistic quality that I wasn't used to. It
wasn't directed at me. It was at the other people in the room.

"As I said before, I am the Captain of this vessel. I will make the
decisions and all the resources of this ship will go into making them
stick." I said.

Aaron looked at me and his demeanor changed. He was again the friendly
pioneer I was familiar with. "Trust me, Captain. More will become
clear, in time."

I didn't like getting patronized right in front of the passengers and crew,
but I didn't want to start a schism between the two sides, either. Maybe
that was part of the problem? I really didn't want to expose my crew to
another culture that had the trappings of being so advanced. If the
Discovery became too contaminated then I wouldn't be able to take her back
to the Federation. I would have to place my own home under Prime Directive
protection.

I was reminded of an old saying. "Nothing is often a constructive
thing to do and an intelligent thing to say." So I went with it.

The basic points of the meeting were made. I was the authority on the
Discovery. Security was going to have to be tightened in the colonists
sections. I hoped we could all get along, anyway.

The old timers nodded and grumbled but didn't say anything substantial.

As the cameras went off, and the meeting ended, Latimer shook his head at
me. "I don't envy you. That's the truth." That made me feel
wonderful.

On the way out the door, I caught Aaron. "What the hell is going on,
here, Aaron?" I asked.

He grinned and shuffled for a moment with his head down. Then he looked up
into my eyes. "Now isn't the time. All I can ask you to do is to trust
me."

Looking into his eyes, I really wanted to. I didn't. It didn't make much
difference. We were already four months inside the Klingon Empire.


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