The Cholmondely-Smythe Year

The location of the meeting was always different. Those attending the meeting were liable to change at any time, though a few of the attendees had been present at meetings going back two decades or more. Of those in attendance the majority were female, with most of the males present serving as their servants or bodyguards. Only two of the green-skinned, muscular men in the room had seats at the table. They were both wearing technical-looking nose clips and breathing shallowly through their mouths.

A breathtakingly beautiful woman banged a gavel on the table, getting everyone’s attention. “I call this AGM of the Families of the Orion Syndicate to order,” she said loudly. The muttering in the room settled down and everyone looked at her. “First order of business. The rebellion.”

The muttering increased again, and the two men at the table glanced at each other uncomfortably.

“There have been further rumblings, demands for gender equality,” another woman said. “The men are no longer satisfied being ruled by us.” She looked at the man sitting on her left.

“I cannot speak for the rest, but I am more than happy with my position as Head of the Family,” he said. He looked at the other man, who nodded reluctantly.

“This comes up time and again,” another matriarch said. “A little bit of persuasion,” she added, licking her lips, “and it will go away.”

There was a murmur of agreement, and a consensus was reached to move on. There was a few more minutes of discussion of territories and smuggling routes, and then one of the matriarchs, who had been silent to this point, spoke up.

“Excuse me,” Stella said as she rose from her chair. “Boss Cremini and I have a meeting with an informant.”

The Chair of the meeting waved her hand and Stella, along with the family head who had reluctantly nodded, stood up to leave. Nobody noticed the small device Stella had left behind on the table. The two of them stepped outside and, with a small smile, Stella turned the lock.

A few seconds after the door closed the device opened up, producing a green energy wave that gathered impulse until it caught the attention of everyone in the room. Silence fell as they all turned to look. Several of the matriarchs looked worried as the device suddenly shot a strange energy field into every corner of the room. The energy faded, and a second later everyone in the room collapsed into a steaming puddle of smelly orange goo.

“Captain’s log, stardate 194683.23. The Psycho is once more on scanning and cataloguing duty, this time through the Colgate Sector. While there is little of interest in this Sector, Commander Hill has picked up a strange signal coming from an uninhabited planet in the Beakon System. We are on our way there now. It is good to have something to do, as things have been frightfully dull in the weeks since the events on the Klingon Homeworld. I must say, the ship is a much quieter place without the esteemed Colonel Klumpf on board. In other news, Starfleet has inflicted yet another uniform change upon us, though I must say the new grey-shouldered uniform with the fetching division-coloured polo-necks is rather spiffy.”

The Psycho juddered out of warp and kangaroo-hopped its way into something approaching a standard orbit around Beakon III, a red-desert snooker ball floating through space. Once the crew had all regained their feet and stopped feeling quite so nauseous, Cholmondely-Smythe glanced over his shoulder at Commander Hill.

“Number One?”

“The planet is M-class, a little on the hot side. Not a good idea to be out in the midday sun unless you think ‘lobster’ is an attractive colour.”

“Jolly good. Be so good as to assemble an away team and beam on down to the jolly old coordinates, would you?”

“Aye, sir,” Hill said, heading for the turbolift. He tapped his comm badge on the way. “Hill to Barfoot. Meet me in transporter room three. Dress code is desert chic.”

Not long after, Hill, Barfoot and a couple of security officers beamed down to the planet, into the middle of a sandstorm. Fortunately they were prepared and already had their goggles up over their eyes, breathing masks over their mouths.

Barfoot checked the tricorder in his hand, which was blinking at him. He pointed. “Allons-y!” he said cheerfully, striding off into the desert. Hill and the others trailed after him, slipping and sliding down the side of the sand dune.

They stumbled along for a few minutes until Barfoot stopped. Not far in front of them was a rock formation, a couple of caves big enough for a person to walk into about head-height from the ground. “It’s coming from in there.”

Hill nodded to the security guards. “Take a look,” he said, and the two gorillas quickly stepped forward. With some difficulty one of them hoisted the other up onto a rocky outcrop, and then he in turn was pulled up. The two of them drew their weapons and, with a series of incomprehensible and pointless hand gestures, disappeared into the cave. Hill waited impatiently. An odd noise started up, and he was just about to take the risk of removing his mask to fiddle with it to find out where it was coming from when he realised it was Barfoot’s god-awful tuneless whistling through his teeth, distorted by the sound pickups in the masks.

“Shut up, Mister Barfoot,” he said.

“Shutting up sir.”

The security guards reappeared then, gesturing for them to come up. Hill went first, yelping in surprise when the security officers each grabbed upraised arm and yanked him upwards with such force that he nearly cracked his head on the rocks above them.

“Sorry sir,” one of them mumbled, as they turned to help Barfoot.

Once they were all up on the outcrop, the four of them entered the cave using their wrist torches to light the way. Barfoot followed whatever his tricorder was telling him into the darkened back corner where what looked like a rockfall had covered a section of the uneven floor. He scanned the rock, put his tricorder away and pointed at a large rock about waist height.

“Shift that, would you lads?”

The security guards, pleased to be able to do something useful after weeks of boredom on board the ship, hefted the rock out of the way. They stumbled and dropped it after carrying it a few feet, and Hill ignored one of them as he yelled and started hopping around, clutching his foot.

The first officer’s attention was fixed on the opening that had been revealed by removing the rock. He and Barfoot shone their torches into the darkness and stared in shock.

Looking back at them, deactivated and dusty, was Mr. Bleep.

“Well, obviously it’s not Bleep,” Barfoot said as he and Stark stood with the captain and Commander Hill in a small antechamber off the main engineering deck. “‘Cos he’s still up on the bridge.”

Set into an alcove of the room, with straps around his arms, legs and body, was the replica of Mr. Bleep they had recovered from the planet. Barfoot, before anyone could stop him, had christened the imposter ‘Mr. Bloop’ – a name that was unfortunately sticking.

“What can you tell me, Engineer?” Cholmondely-Smythe demanded.

Stark shrugged. “It looks like Bleep,” he said. “Not just on the outside, either. Barfoot tells me that the root programming code is absolutely identical to Mr. Bleep’s. The structure of the neural net loaded into the OS is a lot more basic, though. He’s almost like a prototype.”

Hill frowned. “But I thought Bleep was a prototype, back in the day. We were supposed to be testing him, weren’t we?”

Stark and Barfoot both shrugged. “Before our time,” Stark said.

“Where did he come from?” Cholmondely-Smythe asked.

“No idea,” Barfoot said. “There’s no indication of manufacturing defects or anything – nothing that isn’t present in Mr. Bleep anyway.”

Cholmondely-Smythe pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Perhaps we should ask,” he said finally. “Can you turn him on.”

“Yep, give me a sec,” Stark said, “I remember how to do this…” He tapped some buttons on a control panel set in the side of the alcove and, with a beep and a hum, Mr. Bloop came to life.

His head turned from side to side before his eyes rested on the group of officers standing there looking at him. “Good GreetingTime, FullName,” he said, in a voice not quite identical to that of Mr. Bleep. There was a hint of electronic fuzziness around the edges that suggested a lesser degree of sophistication. “Would you like to play a game?”

Barfoot’s eyebrows rose as Hill and Stark exchanged confused glances. It was the captain who answered, though. “What sort of game, dear boy?”

“As my movements are restricted, analysis indicates a game requiring minimal movement would be appropriate. Perhaps I Spy?”

“Maybe later,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. He looked at his officers. “How would you like to proceed?”

“I think we should get Bleep down here,” Barfoot said. “Then at least we can do a direct comparison, maybe that’ll give us a clue.”

“Very well, proceed,” the captain ordered.

“I Spy, with my smaller than standard broad-spectrum imitation ocular devices, something beginning with double-you,” Bloop said.

Cholmondely-Smythe was in his office a short time later, reading over some status reports, when his console beeped. He pressed a button. “Yes?”

“Captain,” the ensign manning the communications console while Bleep was down in Engineering said, “There’s a call coming in from Admiral Richardson.”

“Very well,” the captain said. “Put him through.” The screen lit up and Admiral Richardson’s face appeared, looking serious. “Admiral, what can I do for you?”

“The Federation has received a message from the Orion Syndicate,” he said. Cholmondely-Smythe’s eyebrows rose. “It would appear that they have undergone something of a… restructure,” Richardson went on. “The contact came from a man calling himself ‘Shinbone’, who claimed to be acting as the head of the Syndicate. He requested that diplomatic relations be started between the Federation and the Syndicate. It would appear he intends to rebuild the Syndicate as a legitimate, law-abiding entity.”

“My word,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, more than a little surprised. “Do we have any information to verify his claims?”

“The message came on an official channel,” Richardson confirmed. “Plus we have an operative at a mid-level position within the Syndicate. He has corroborated the story.”

“Goodness gracious me,” Cholmondely-Smythe muttered. “What do you want us to do, Admiral?”

Richardson glanced down and then back up. “Shinbone has requested that the Psycho have the honour of beginning the diplomatic discussions,” he said. “He claimed it was due to the recent confrontation, during the unpleasantness with the Klingons. A sign of the two sides being willing to work together despite past confrontations, that sort of thing.”

“Very well Admiral,” Cholmondely-Smythe said then. “We shall set course post-haste. We shall do our utmost for Starfleet and the Federation!”

“Just don’t cock it all up before the real diplomats get there.”

A few engineers looked up from their stations as the main doors opened and Mr. Bleep clomped his way into main engineering. He looked around, his rectangular head turning from side to side until he spotted his target, loitering in the doorway to the Chief Engineer’s office.

“How-do, Bleep?” Barfoot said, looking up as the android approached him.

“My systems are functioning within acceptable parameters,” Bleep replied.

“Perfecto. Right, let’s do this. Catch you later, boss,” he added, waving to Stark who was poring over a thick, old-looking recipe book printed on actual paper. The chief engineer waved distractedly.

Bleep followed Barfoot into the little side room and stopped as he came face-to-face with Mr. Bloop, who was no longer strapped into the alcove but was standing next to the table, motionless.

“Bit disconcerting, isn’t it?” Barfoot said with a grin.

“No,” Bleep replied bluntly. “Had Starfleet given the go-ahead, every starship would have had a communications android based on my schematics.”

“Right. Yeah, ‘course,” Barfoot said, shaking his head. “I just want to plug you in, get a live-side-by-side comparison of your code.”

“Acknowledged,” Bleep said, and his chestplate popped open a moment later to reveal a pretty old-fashioned input terminal. Barfoot, long used to dealing with Bleep’s hardware, picked up a length of isolinear cabling with an assortment of attachments on one end. The standard isolinear jack was converted into a larger type, which then plugged into a male-female converter, which attached to a multitronic converter, which then joined onto a short piece of duotronic fibre cable, with another female-male converter on the end. This slotted quite nicely into Bleep’s input socket.

“Okely-dokely,” Barfoot said, “now we’re cooking with replicators! I’m just going to start the program…”

He tapped a few controls and Bleep and Bloop suddenly went rigid, their arms flying out at ninety degrees to their bodies and their eyes lighting up. “WARNING,” they both said in unison. “DUPLICATE COMMAND CODE DETECTED. DUPLICATE PRIMARY NODES. SPLIT BRAIN IDENTIFIED. ATTEMPTING RE-SYNCHRONISATION.”

“Woah!” Barfoot said, slapping the controls and, when that failed, yanking the cable out of Bleep’s socket. “Okay,” he said to himself as Bleep apparently went through a boot sequence. “Not good. Hey,” he said worriedly, as Bleep beeped and came to life. “How’re you feeling, buddy?”

“Self-diagnostic indicates all systems operating within defined parameters.”

Barfoot wiped his brow. “Phew. Maybe I should just take an offline copy of your code and do a comparison that way, what do you think?”

“I think,” Bleep said, looking over at a still silent Mr. Bloop, “that is a very good idea.”

“Captain’s log, supplemental. We have arrived at the location of the Orion Syndicate Headquarters on Rigel VII. Despite our ongoing attempts at hailing the surface, we have yet to be acknowledged in any way. It has been seventeen hours so far and one’s patience is starting to wear a bit thin, don’t you know. I have agreed with Command that we will give the Orions a full twenty-four hours before withdrawing. The crew is starting to go somewhat shir crazy, and I am very much aware that with this crew, that is something very much to be avoided.”

“My, my, MY Delilah…” Wall and Damerell belted out at the front of the bridge. Sitting at an unmanned console at the back of the bridge, Doctor Jackson chimed in with the “Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-dos”.

At another console, Counsellor Hill watched with interest as Commander Hill, standing over the science console closed his eyes and massaged his temples with the frustrated air of a man about to go off the deep end.

“Why, why, WHY Delilah?!” Damerell and Wall went on, at full volume.

“Dear god, please shut up,” Hill said, interrupting Jackson’s equally-tuneful backing vocals. “I have a headache.”

An alert klaxon went off, lights flashing, and Hill moaned as he checked his console. He stood up abruptly. “Captain to the Bridge,” he said over the intercom.

“Report,” Cholmondely-Smythe ordered as he burst in from the broom-closet-ready-room.

“It’s a vessel decloaking,” Hill replied. “And it’s…big.”

“We know the Orions have Romulan cloaks,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. “And just how big?”

“At least four or five times our size, sir,” Hill told him. “And shedloads of torpedo launchers and disruptor banks as well.”

“She’s a predator,” Cholmondely-Smythe mused. “Not exactly the ship you build when suing for peace, what?”

“We are being hailed,” Bleep said.

“On screen.”

The viewscreen changed from a view of the big, spiky, nasty-looking ship to a familiar green visage.

“Hello captain,” Stella said, smiling with false sweetness. “How lovely to see you again.”

“Madam Stella,” Cholmondely-Smythe nodded. “Why am I not surprised to find you here?”

“Do you like my ship?” she asked. “It’s the Blunt Instrument.”

“No doubt,” Cholmodnely-Smythe said dryly.

Wall, Damerell and Hill were all staring at the screen in disbelief. Although they had heard the stories of Stella after the Klingon Rekhtag Sauce War, seeing a slightly overweight, green skinned, female version of Captain Olding was somewhat short-circuiting their brains. When Stella raised an eyebrow intimidatingly, Damerell flinched.

“Enough,” Stella said. “I have coordinates for you to beam down. Sending them now.”

Hill snapped out of his stupor long enough to confirm, “Coordinates received.”

“See you soon, you great southern ponce. Shinbone is waiting and he requests that you bring your medical officer,” Stella said, cutting the channel.

Cholmondely-Smythe glanced around. “Well. Number One, Counsellor, Doctor, would you care to join me?”

They all followed him to the turbolift and headed for the transporter room. A short time later they materialised on the surface of the planet, in a deserted corridor outside an imposing door. A discreet little sign next to the door proclaimed it to be the Orion Syndicate Chamber of Commerce.

The four of them looked around curiously, and Hill jumped aside with a yelp as the door creaked open and Stella stuck her head out. “What are ye waitin’ for?” she demanded. “Get in here.”

The starfleet officers followed her into the chamber, which was an immense and seemingly impractical room with eight whacking great pillars lining an avenue through the middle, leading to a dais at one end with a throne-like chair positioned in the centre. The room was darkened with the lights dimmed and shutters over the tall windows closed. High up in the walls, a few smaller windows cast atmospheric sunbeams into the room, highlighting spots on the tapestries on the wall, the intricate parquet floor and the carved stone pillars.

Stella strode down the central aisle and took up a position to the right of the throne. A voice spoke from the shadows.

“What a pleasure it is to finally be in your presence, Captain Cholmondely-Smythe.” The voice sounded fairly young, smooth and light but no less dangerous for it.

“Do I have the honour of addressing Syndicate Head Shinbone?” Cholmondely-Smythe asked as the Psycho crew all looked around, trying to find the source of the voice.

“You do,” the voice said. Movement near the foot of the dais drew their attention and a man stepped out of the shadow of the last pillar on the right. He appeared to be in his late twenties at the most, slender, dressed in form-fitting armoured clothing with some sort of heavy coat down to his knees. He was also completely bald, lacking not only hair on the top of his head but also eyebrows. His eyes were clear and sharp, and his smile, when he flashed it, had a definite edge.

Cholmondely-Smythe frowned. There was something very familiar about Shinbone, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. He definitely felt as though he had seen the man before. Beside him Counsellor Hill gasped softly.

“There is a very, very rare disease, Shallott’s Syndrome,” Shinbone said, apropos of nothing. “Sufferers show a sensitivity to certain smells, which can cause uncontrolled flatulence.”

Cholmondely-Smythe fidgeted slightly as Hill and Jackson sniggered like school children. “Yes, I am very much aware of the disease, thank you,” he said primly. “I myself suffered from it at a young age. All the male members of my family do. Of course, we have all been through the procedure that cures it.”

“And are you also aware that the disease, even once cured, leaves behind traces that render the sufferer immune to the effects of Orion female pheromones?” Shinbone asked, eyes glittering.

The captain tilted his head to the side. “I am indeed aware,” he replied. He watched cautiously as Shinbone walked towards them. The Syndicate Head stopped and smiled thinly. He looked at the Counsellor, reaching out a hand towards her head.

“May I touch your hair?” he asked.

“No, you most certainly may not!” she replied, taking a step back. She bumped into Stella, who no-one had noticed moving around to stand behind them. Stella smirked at her, and the Counsellor resisted the urge to punch the Orion woman in the face.

Shinbone abruptly drew a knife from his coat and ran the blade across his palm before anyone could react. Then he held the knife, handle first, out to Jackson.

“You’ll want to scan this,” he said. “Ta-ta, Captain,” he added suddenly, striding back down the aisle and mounting the dais to sit casually on the throne. “I’m sure we will be speaking soon.”

Cholmondely-Smythe nodded, a bit taken aback by the abrupt dismissal, and led his crew out of the room. The Counsellor glanced back when she heard movement and caught a glimpse of Stella slipping behind one of the pillars halfway down the room. Their eyes met and Stella smiled cruelly, winking at her. The Counsellor shuddered and hurried to catch up, joining the others just as Cholmondely-Smythe tapped his comm badge and ordered the beam up.

Barfoot glanced around main engineering, making sure it was empty apart from the skeleton crew who would be manning stations overnight. Satisfied, he tapped the panel and dimmed the lights before disappearing out of the door.

In the antechamber Mr. Bloop stood, apparently deactivated. After a few moments lights began to flash on his chest panel and his eyes came to life. Looking around he moved slowly to a console, careful not to make any noise. Once there he started pressing buttons and information began flashing up in front of him – crew numbers, schematics, fleet positioning and the like.

A few minutes later, when Chief Earley stuck his head around the door, Bloop was back in his original position. Earley shrugged and went back to his station.

“First things first,” Jackson said, looking down at the bullet-point list his staff had given him, once the analysis of Shinbone’s blood had completed. “He’s human.”

“Obviously,” Hill muttered under his breath.

“Secondly,” Jackson went on, “he shows traces of the chemical imbalances typical of a man cured of Shallot’s Syndrome.”

“I see,” Cholmondely-Smythe said.

“Bit of a creep, isn’t he?” Commander Hill commented. “What’s with the bald head?”

“There’s one more thing,” Jackson said, oddly reluctant. “I ran a comparison, after talking to the Counsellor about something she noticed while we were on the planet,” he said. “DNA is a perfect match.”

“With whom?” Cholmondely-Smythe asked, a terrible suspicion growing in him.

“With you, Captain,” Jackson told him. “I believe that Shinbone is a clone – of you. A marginal imperfection in the cloning process appears to have robbed him of all body hair.”

Hill snapped his fingers. “That’s why he looked so weirdly familiar!” he exclaimed.

Cholmondely-Smythe blinked, taking the doctor’s report and reading it for himself. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he finally spoke. “Number One,” he said faintly. “Contact Starfleet Command. We need to inform them of this latest development, and find out what the dickens is going on!”

Shinbone, sitting regally on his throne in the Chamber of Commerce, looked down at the gathered newly-minted heads of the major families of the Orion Syndicate. There was more than one male amongst them, and the women there kept looking around in anxiety. Only Stella, secure in her position beside the throne, looked comfortable.

“The war should have begun already!” the head of the biggest and most prosperous family insisted. “We are ready to run munitions to the different factions! Time wasted is money wasted!” A murmur of agreement went around the room.

“All in good time,” Shinbone said, calmly. “You have only been the heads of your families for a few weeks, thanks to my intervention and the cases of pheromone antidote I have gifted you. When the time is right, I will strike and bring the Federation into a war that will decimate it and its allies, leaving the quadrant ripe for piracy and smuggling.”

“Why wait? What possible reason could you have?” the Orion demanded.

“Just be patient,” Shinbone insisted, a dangerous edge to his tone. “Now leave me be.”

The family heads filed out of the room, some of them casting disgruntled looks back at him. He caught more than one mutter about his human origins, but he ignored that for now. “Barbra, would you stay a moment?”

One of the female chiefs slowed to linger, waiting until the door had closed behind the others. Shinbone smiled at her. He waited but she remained silent, watching him intently. “Allegiances can be formed and broken in an instant, can they not?” he said finally. “I believe I have your allegiance, Barbra. I’m not so sure about Amanita.”

“Trust is such a fragile thing, is it not?” she said in return. “Do you trust me, Lord?”

He walked down the steps of the dais to stand with her, and she leaned in towards him, displaying her body to its fullest effect. She was fairly young for a family head, and she was not one of those who had originally been in on Shinbone’s plan for revolution.

Shinbone looked at her, smelling the increase in pheromones as she tried to bend his mind to her will. He laughed and she jerked back, surprised. “Believe me, my dear,” he said, “better women than you have tried.” He glanced back over his shoulder at Stella, who raised an eyebrow and dipped into a brief curtsey.

Barbra smiled ruefully. “I have heard the stories,” she admitted. “I had to see for myself whether it was true.”

“It is,” Shinbone assured her. “I have a request,” he said then. “I need you to keep an eye on Boss Amanita,” he said. “If necessary he must be disposed of. I cannot afford to have his warmongering stirring up the other families until all my plans are in place.”

“I am honoured, my Lord,” Barbra said.

“Stella has spoken highly of you,” Shinbone told her. “Do not disappoint me.”

“No, my Lord,” she replied, bowing. He waved his hand in dismissal and she headed out of the room. A soft sound caught her attention and she turned back as the door were closing, just in time to see Stella approach a shivering Shinbone with a hypospray, injecting him in the neck. The shivers subsided and he took a deep breath. Barbra ducked out of sight, avoiding being seen before the doors swung closed. She bit her lip and shook her head. It seemed she would have a decision to make, sooner or later.

“Sir,” Commander Hill said, as he and the Counsellor joined the captain in his ready room. “There’s been unauthorised access to some of the ship’s data. No restricted material was accessed, though, just basic stellar cartography and colony tracking station uplinks, stuff like that. We’re still looking for the source.”

“Keep me informed, Number One,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. “Counsellor?”

“We’ve received a message from the planet inviting you to join Shinbone for dinner,” she said.

“You’re mad if you go down there,” Hill pointed out. “I’m pretty sure Shinbone’s loopy! Who knows what he might do to you!”

“It does seem a bit… ill advised,” the Counsellor agreed.

“Perhaps,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, “but we are here to open diplomatic relations, no matter who Shinbone is or his history. Besides, one can’t help but wonder how an apparent clone of my good self came to be in control of the biggest pirate organisation in the known galaxy.”

Neither of them could argue with that and so, at the appointed time, Cholmondely-Smythe beamed down to the planet. He was met by an Orion man who took him to a smaller room, where food was laid out on the table and Shinbone was waiting.

“Captain,” the Orion leader said. “So good of you to join me.”

“I was glad to accept,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. He took a seat and helped himself to a bread roll, buttering it and taking a bite as the Orion man started pouring some wine. “I have to admit, I am curious as to where you came from and how you got to be where you are.”

Shinbone smiled. “No doubt,” he said. “I was created, as far as I am aware, as part of a Romulan plot to infiltrate the Federation. The intention was to use me to replace you, back when you were captain of the Disposable,” he told Cholmondely-Smythe. “Then there was a regime change and the plot was abandoned. Trying to salvage something from the ruins I was sold to Orion slavers to get rid of me. I was only a child at the time and I wasn’t treated well by my new owners.” Shinbone’s eyes darkened at the memories he was reliving, and Cholmondely-Smythe made appropriate sympathetic noises all while nibbling at the lovely crusty bread.

“Eventually I ended up with Stella. She raised me to be the man I am today,” Shinbone said.

“She is a… most formidable woman,” Cholmondely-Smythe commented.

“When she realised I was immune to her charms she helped me get in contact with the rebellion – a group of Orion men working in extreme secrecy to try and come up with a way to negate the female Orion hold over them. I came to the leadership of the rebellion naturally.” Shinbone took a sip and leaned back as the first course was set in front of them. “In fact, I believe you and yor crew stumbled across one of our research facilities some months ago. Our scientists were trying to develop a counter-agent to the pheromones.”

“Not with the greatest of success,” Cholmondely-Smythe noted.

“Not initially, no,” Shinbone agreed. He leaned forward. “The Orions have given me a future,” he said, “but I want to know about my past.”

Cholmondely-Smythe nodded thoughtfully. “I can tell you about my past,” he said. “I suppose that would be the closest thing.”

“Yes!” Shinbone exclaimed. “Tell me, have we always been warriors?”

Cholmondely-Smythe noted the use of ‘we’ but made no comment. Instead he said, “I would prefer to think of us as explorers. Although my great-granduncle was something of a rogue. Family papers show he was a fully paid-up member of CAMiSOLE – I don’t know if you’ve heard of them?”

“The Committee to Abolish the Misery and Suffering Of Lifeforms Everywhere,” Shinbone said. “Yes, I know of their work.”

Cholmondely-Smythe nodded. “Let me tell you,” he said. “I want to believe you desire peace. The Federation is founded on the principle that all lifeforms can life in harmony. It is a goal to which I have devoted my life in an attempt to atone for Uncle Horatio’s sins. My presence here is a good example of that. Once the Orion Syndicate has earned our trust I would be pleased to shake your hand in friendship.”

Shinbone smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes.

“We have confirmation that Shinbone’s story is true,” Admiral Richardson told Cholmondely-Smythe a short time later. The rest of the meal with Shinbone had been somewhat awkward and stilted, with the captain regaling the Orion Leader with anecdotes from his youth and Shinbone looking increasingly bored and like he regretted suggesting the dinner in the first place.

“From where?” Cholmondely-Smythe asked.

“The Romulan agents your crew helped us liberate,” Richardson said. “The same ones who told us about the cloaking devices. They have some information that corroborates Shinbone’s story.”

“My goodness,” Cholmondely-Smythe muttered.

“The Oregano will reach your position in twenty-six hours,” Richardson said then. “They have a full diplomatic party on board. All you need to do is keep the avenues of discourse open until then.”

“Acknowledged, Admiral. Thank you for your call,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, closing the connection. He stared at the console for a minute, trying to process the fact that a Romulan clone of him had been running around the galaxy, stirring up rebellion amongst the Orions, rising to the top. Of course, it was in the nature of Cholmondely-Smythes to rise to the top like cream.

The door chimed and he blinked out of his stunned state. “Enter.”

Hill and Barfoot entered. “Sir,” Hill said, “There’s something you should see. Barfoot has been reviewing the logs around the time the Blunt Instrument decloaked.”

The deputy engineer handed over the padd, keying it to the right screen. “There was a marked, sharp increase in the level of thaleron radiation. I’m thinking the containment field fluctuated due to the change in local energy states when the cloak was deactivated.”

Cholmondely-Smythe frowned, taking in the readings. “Thaleron technology was outlawed in the Federation due to its unstable nature, wasn’t it?”

“Yes sir,” Barfoot said. “It’s too dangerous to be sensibly used. It makes very, very good weapons of mass destruction, though.”

“Oh dear,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. “And it was all going so well up to this point.”

“If you say so, sir,” Hill said. “One more thing. We’ve found the source of the unauthorised access.” He exchanged a glance with Barfoot. “And we think we’ve found a way to take advantage of it.”

Shinbone lounged on his throne, one leg hung over an arm and the other swinging aimlessly. He was bored, and disappointed after his dinner with Captain Cholmondely-Smythe. The other man – the original him – had turned out to be something of a complete and utter twit. All of Shinbone’s hopes and dreams of meeting someone who could finally give him the past he craved had been dashed in that one meal.

The door opened and Stella entered, striding the length of the hall quickly and confronting Shinbone on the throne. The Orion Leader sat up quickly, trying to look imposing and important.

“Please tell me it is time to make our move,” Stella said firmly. “All of this talking is a waste of time!”

Shinbone stood up and nodded. “You’re right. I was merely curious about him. Now that my curiosity is satisfied, it’s time for war.”

Preparations on board the Blunt Instrument were well under way. Orions hurried around the ship, getting everything ready. There could be no mistakes. Shinbone made his way to a science lab where a few other Orion scientists were waiting. There were all male, tall and muscular, with white lab coats over their large frames.

“Retrieve our agent,” Shinbone ordered, and one of the Orions stood at a console worked the controls briefly. The noise a shimmer of a transporter activated and the beam coalesced into the form of Mr. Bloop.

The scientists immediately swarmed over him, plugging him into the computer with a similar sort of jury-rigged cable as had been used on the Psycho. “Data transfer throughput is necessarily limited due to the cabling,” one of the scientists said, examining the data being brought across. “We couldn’t build a proper access port into the design for fear of it being discovered.”

Shinbone waved a hand dismissively. “As long as the data is there,” he said.

“It is,” the scientist confirmed. “We now have access to sensor data and ship assignments. We have the location of every ship in the Federation.”

Shinbone smiled, steepling his fingers together. “Excellent.”

Counsellor Hill was having a rather pleasant dream, being wooed and won by a very handsome man. She was somewhat perturbed, then, when the handsome man metamorphosed into Cholmondely-Smythe and started snogging her enthusiastically.

As if that wasn’t enough she felt another body behind her, as dream-Cholmondely-Smythe started kissing her neck, she turned her head just enough to see that Stella was the one pressed up flush behind her. Dream-Stella smirked at her, obviously enjoying her discomfort.

Dream-Cholmondely-Smythe lifted his head then and his lips and teeth were red with blood. He was also bald and twenty years younger. Dream-Shinbone grinned evilly.

A moment later the Counsellor managed to wrench herself awake, and she knew instantly that it had been no ordinary dream. Somehow, Shinbone and Stella had really been in her mind.

On board the Blunt Instrument Shinbone’s eyes opened, glittering. Stella stood behind him with her hands on his head, a strange device attached to her own temples. Blood dripped from Shinbone’s nose and he doubled over, obviously in pain.

“Find her again!” he insisted.

Stella manhandled him back into an upright position. “It’s getting worse,” she said. “It’s time to stop the games and get on with it!”

“Very well,” Shinbone said. “Tell the doctors to get ready.”

Heading down to sickbay, after calling Cholmondely-Smythe and asking him to meet her there, the Counsellor shortly found herself sat on one of the biobeds as Jackson waved a device over her.

“I can’t find anything wrong with you,” he said. “And there’s no evidence of external factors. Are you sure it wasn’t just a very vivid, very kinky dream?”

“I’m absolutely certain,” she said. “It felt… wrong. Dirty and unnatural.”

Jackson shrugged. “Like I said. Kinky.”

Frustrated, she turned to Cholmondely-Smythe, who was frowning thoughtfully. “Captain, I request you relieve me of duty. If my mind has been compromised, who knows what might happen next.”

“I’m sorry my dear, but I must decline,” the captain said. “We are in the middle of what may turn out to be hostile territory with backup a number of hours away. I need you by my side now more than ever. After all, I’m sure you remember the incident on Terax. What would I have done without you! There we were, surrounded by…”

The whine of a transporter beam interrupted him and he disappeared in a swirl of green.

“Oh, crap,” Jackson said into the stunned silence.

“We are under cloak,” Stella reported as she joined Shinbone in the medical bay on board the Blunt Instrument. “Modifications are active. They have no way to track us.”

“Good,” Shinbone said from where he was standing next to the table to which Cholmondely-Smythe was currently strapped. He gestured for the doctors and one of them moved forward to take a sample of Cholmondely-Smythe’s blood.

“Unhand me at once, you dastardly fiend!” Cholmondely-Smythe shouted.

“I think not,” Shinbone said. “I knew the android I planted would be too much of a mystery for you to resist. I planted him on the planet when I knew you were going to be in the sector,” he revealed. “And now I have access to all of Starfleet’s command protocols and the location of all their ships.” When Cholmondely-Smythe didn’t respond, Shinbone leaned over him. “I have come to the conclusion that my life has no meaning while you are alive,” he said.

“Your beef is with me,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, in a tone of realisation. “No need to involve the Psycho or the Federation, now is there?”

“I will now to no-one, not an Orion female, not the Federation,” Shinbone insisted. “Believe me, Captain, if you had lived my life, you would be in the same position as I, right now. I am everything you could have been!”

“Well, yes, alright, perhaps. But then, I’m everything you could have been as well, what?”

Shinbone smiled grimly. “You are about to see the echo triumph over the voice,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s no good sir,” Barfoot told Hill, who was breathing down his neck at the engineering console on the bridge. “Their cloak is perfect. None of the usual tricks are showing up anything, not even a sensor echo.”

Hill sat back down in the command chair. “Well, keep trying. I suppose we should at least try and get the captain back, right?”

Cholmondely-Smythe was now alone in the medical bay, except for a hulking Orion guard who looked like he spent more time lifting unfeasibly heavy weights than breathing. He heard the door open and managed to look to the side to see Mr. Bloop enter the room.

The android clanked up to the guard and said, “Lord Shinbone has requested that the prisoner be brought to him on the bridge.”

The guard released the restraints on Cholmondely-Smythe, and then promptly collapsed to the floor as the android’s arm came crashing down on his head.

“Impeccable timing, Mr. Bleep,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, picking up the Orion’s disruptor. “Jolly good show.”

“We must leave,” was all Bleep said in reply.

The two of them somehow managed to get to the shuttlebay without being seen. The ship was so big, and apparently the crew complement so small, that it was almost like the place was deserted.

“Hey, you! Stop!”

“Almost,” Cholmondely-Smythe muttered to himself. He ducked behind a bulkhead, an Orion disruptor gouging a tear in the duranium beside Bleep’s head.

“This is the door to the shuttlebay,” Bleep said.

“Can you open it?” Cholmondely-Smythe asked, returning fire.

“Affirmative.”

A few seconds later, just as the Orions were making an advance, the door whooshed open and the two of them headed inside. The door closed again, locking and preventing the Orions from getting through.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, pointing at a likely looking fighter. “That one will do. Tally-ho!”

He clambered into the shuttle, then had to quickly climb out again as he realised Bleep couldn’t possibly get up the ladder. Spotting a loading crane he ran over, got into the driving seat and after a few false starts, used the magnetic grappler to pift Bleep up into the air, depositing him onto the rear co-pilot and gunner’s seats, incidentally crushing them both. The door was glowing an alarming cherry red with whatever the Orions were doing to gain access.

Scrambling back up into the pilot’s seat, Cholmondely-Smythe peered at the controls. “Goodness! This is complicated,” he exclaimed.

“Try the big red button,” Bleep suggested, over his shoulder.

“Jolly good.”

The fighter’s engines started just as the door blew apart, and Cholmondely-Smythe threw the various levels forward, but nothing happened.

“It is necessary to release the velocity inhibitor,” Bleep told him.

The captain looked down and saw a level by his left hand. Shrugging, he released it and the fighter rocketed forwards, pinning him to his seat. His hand caught a manoeuvring thruster control and the vessel started to barrel-roll towards their destination. The closing bay doors were upon them seconds later, and it was only thanks to sheer luck that the ship’s unintentional angular momentum had them scrape through with seconds to spare.

“There!” Barfoot shouted, pointing and magnifying a section of the viewscreen. The fighter bursting out of the Blunt Instrument had disrupted the cloaking field. “One lifesign aboard… and an android.”

Hill stared at the screen. “Bugger me, Bleep did it!” he exclaimed.

“The big bugger is powering up tractor beams,” Wall told them.

“Barfoot! Beam them out of there now!” Hill shouted.

“You what?!” Barfoot replied. “Uh, right. Energising.”

Two forms coalesced on the bridge, and Hill was relieved to see Bleep and the captain forming. The materialisation finished milliseconds before a tractor beam lanced out from the Blunt Instrument and caught hold of the fighter. A second later, the smaller vessel exploded.

“Well done setting the self-destruct,” Cholmondely-Smythe congratulated Bleep as the giant Orion ship disappeared once more. “Helm, get us out of here, maximum warp.” As Wall joyously thumped at his console to obey the order, the captain turned to Hill. “Report.”

“We can’t penetrate their cloak,” Hill said. “Also, Barfoot and I believe that the Blunt Instrument itself is a thaleron weapon, capable of destroying entire planets.”

“Well, isn’t that just spiffing,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. “Anything else?”

The turbolift doors opened and Jackson stepped out, holding a padd. “Captain,” he said. “My staff have found something I think you need to hear.”

“Go on, Doctor,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, sounding resigned.

“Shinbone’s blood shows signs of a strange sort of temporal DNA resequencing,” Jackson said, sounding like he was just reading the words off the padd. “It looks like he was designed to be aged at an accelerated rate at a certain point, probably to bring him in line with your age. It was never activated, though, and now the cloning procedure is breaking down.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he’s dying,” Jackson said. “And he needs a full cellular transfusion from a compatible donor – that’s you, by the way – in order to survive. Which you wouldn’t, as the process would kill you. I can’t say for certain how long he has left, but I’m pretty sure the effect will be accelerating.”

Cholmondely-Smythe nodded, thoughtfully. “He is going to come for me,” he said. “We must be ready.”

Down on the planet Amanita, the head of the largest Orion Syndicate Cadre, was speaking to Shinbone over a communications link.

“Our patience is wearing thin,” the Orion said, glaring at the man on the screen. “We were promised unrestricted raiding and smuggling. Why are you wasting your time?”

“The Psycho won’t make it out of the Territory,” Shinbone promised, “and terrible war will break out within two days. Is that enough to satisfy you?”

“For now.”

Shinbone narrowed his eyes. “I think we need to have a little chat about proper respect.” At his gesture the channel was cut.

Amanita sat back. Next to him, Barbra cut him a look.

“Are you really so keen to have as much blood on your hands as Shinbone?” she asked. “He is going to start a war, yes, but he is going to do it by annihilating Earth! Wholesale genocide and massacres are not the Orion way!”

Amanita shrugged. “War is war, and where there is war there is profit,” he said.

Barbra threw her hands up in disgust and stormed out of the hall. It was time to take matters into her own hands.

“So it’s basically a cascading biogenic pulse, only the thaleron radiation gives it enough of a radius to cover an entire planet. All life, just wiped out in an instant,” Hill said. The senior officers had gathered in the briefing room to discuss the situation.

“Thank you Number One. I think his plan is obvious, is it not?” Cholmondely-Smythe said. At the blank looks around him, he sighed. “He has a weapon capable of destroying planets. He has a grudge against me and humanity in general.” He looked around. “Earth! He’s going to destroy Earth!”

Around the room various people made ‘oh!’ noises.

“He’ll come after you,” the Counsellor said.

“I’m counting on it,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. “We have been given orders to lead him to Sector 9876, where we will rendezvous with Starfleet Battle Group Marmaduke, headed up by Admiral Richardson in the Trumpton.”

He looked around. “Under no circumstances may we allow Shinbone to use that weapon. Battle stations!”

“Captain’s personal log, supplemental. We are en route to Federation space at maximum warp. I must say the crew are responding to this crisis with remarkable equanimity. I am proud of them, despite the Counsellor’s contention that it is because they don’t really understand what is going on.”

On board the Blunt Instrument Stella finished examining Shinbone with a medical device. She frowned.

“You only have a few hours left,” she said. “We must begin the procedure soon.”

Shinbone nodded. He looked awful – pale and sweaty, with odd black lines all over his body, even his face. “Status report,” he rasped out, his voice broken.

“There are seven minutes until we reach the Basin Rift,” Stella told him. “We are maintaining position behind the Psycho at a distance of two kilometres. They will never know what hit them.”

“And now we see but through a glass darkly,” Shinbone said, a nasty grin on his face. Stella rolled her eyes. “Target their engines and weapons. We need to disable them, not destroy them.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Captain Cholmondely-Smythe and Commander Hill were down in the recently-installed Stellar Cartography lab. When the Psycho had undergone a bare-bones refit shortly after going through the temporal vortex, one bright spark had noticed that there was a two-level turbolift that had been installed by mistake. As a result, the Psycho now had a state-of-the-art astrometrics lab that no-one really knew how to use. It was the only room in the ship that had the LCARS control consoles, and Hill was the only one who had any chance of working it as he had dismantled several of the in his spare time, just for fun.

“Can you pinpoint our location, please Number One?” Cholmondely-Smythe asked.

“Yep,” Hill said. “We’re… here.” The holographic view zoomed in to the galaxy at dizzying speeds, finally coming to rest upon a computer simulation of the Psycho. “We will rendezvous with the fleet in forty minutes,” he added, highlighting their location.

“Splendid,” the captain said. “Shinbone called us mirrors of each other,” he added, unprompted.

Hill frowned. “What, you and me?” he asked.

“No, me and him,” Cholmondely-Smythe said, exasperated.

“Oh, right. Yeah, okay.” Hil considered that. “Nah,” he said finally. “I mean, if you’d grown up together then yeah, maybe. But you didn’t, so your experiences are different and your interpretation of things will be different. Right?”

Cholmondely-Smythe looked at him in surprise. “That is remarkably astute, Commander,” he said.

Hill shrugged. “Common sense, innit?”

The holographic system suddenly flickered as the holographic Psycho entered an area of space labelled in purple. Hill frowned down at his controls. “Our connection to Starfleet Central Cartography is being disrupted,” he said. “We are entering the Basin Rift. It’s an area of space where long range communications are pretty ineffective…”

He trailed off and their eyes met in dawning looks of horror. Cholmondely-Smythe tapped his comm badge. “Captain to Bridge! Red alert! Shields up! Evasive manoeuvres!”

“Eh, what?” came the response, just as the ship juddered alarmingly, suffering through the massive deceleration of dropping out of warp unplanned. “Aargh! Gotta go Captain, we’re under attack!”

Cholmondely-Smythe and Hill ran out of Stellar Cartography and headed up to the bridge as quickly as possible, sprinting through the flashing red lights of the red alert. They had to brace themselves more than once to compensate both for weapons impacts and Wall’s manic manoeuvres. When they finally made it to the Bridge one console had already exploded with an injured crewman lying next to it, and the schematic of the ship and its shields on Hill’s console was alarmingly red.

Damerell, who had nominally been in charge, collapsed out of the command chair. He hadn’t actually managed to give any orders at all and it was only Wall’s terrifying flying and Stocks at tactical firing whenever he got a hint of the Blunt Instrument‘s position that was keeping them going.

“We’re hopelessly outgunned,”  Stocks told them, in the absence of anyone else speaking. “We can’t return fire when they’re cloaked. And our warp drive is offline.”

More blasts splashed against the severely diminished dorsal shields.

“Full axis rotation to port!” Cholmondely-Smythe ordered. “Fire all ventral phasers.”

Several phaser blasts impacted the Orion ship but there was no noticeable effect.

“Bit of a pickle, what?” Cholmondely-Smythe said. The ship rocked again, and then Shinbone’s voice came over the intercom.

“Captain. Won’t you join me in your ready room?”

Cholmondely-Smythe glanced at Hill and then crossed the bridge to enter his ready room, only to find Shinbone stood in there, facing the desk. Cholmondely-Smythe attempted to hit him with a chair but fell onto the floor as it passed straight through the counterfeit Shinbone.

The Orion Leader smirked at him. “Not bad is it,” he said. “It’s a hologram. Don’t bother trying to trace the emitters – they have been scrambled and are untraceable.”

“What do you want, Shinbone?” Cholmondely-Smythe asked through gritted teeth.

“Surrender and let me transport you onto my ship,” Shinbone replied.

“What about the Psycho?”

“I couldn’t give two hoots about your poxy little ship,” he said.

Deciding to try to appeal to Shinbone once more, Cholmondely-Smythe then said, “Your heart, hands and eyes are all the same as mine. The desire to be better is what makes us Human!”

Shinbone snorted rudely. “What a load of old tripe,” he said disparagingly. “Dreams of children and simpletons.”

“We are better than a man who would exterminate an entire planet,” Cholmondely-Smythe insisted. “Will you waste your life with hatred when you can make another choice – a better choice?”

Shinbone regarded him with hooded eyes. “I am going to show you exactly what we are capable of, Captain,” he said finally. “My name will echo throughout time, while yours will fade away into nothing.”

The hologram disappeared. Cholmondely-Smythe stared at the spot where Shinbone had been standing. “What an absolute tit.”

When Cholmondely-Smythe stepped back onto the bridge Hill was looking harried. “Situation, Number One?”

Hill turned to look at him. “Two Orion cruisers have just dropped out of warp and are taking up positions flanking us.” He frowned, looking at his board just as Bleep announced, “We are being hailed.”

Cholmondely-Smythe’s eyebrows rose. “On screen.”

An Orion woman appeared on the screen, looking grim. “Greetings, Captain,” she said. “I am Cadre Chief Barbra. We are here to offer our support in defeating Shinbone.”

“That is a turn up for the books,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. “May I ask why?” Behind him he could hear Hill muttering, “Gift horse, mouth.”

“Shinbone is mad,” Barbra stated. “As Orions we may pillage and pirate. We may smuggle and traffic. But we do not commit mass genocide. He is forcing us to become something we are not.”

“Fair enough. I don’t suppose you have a way of tracking that blasted ship through the cloak?”

“I’m afraid not,” Barbra replied.

“Then I suppose we must take advantage wherever we can,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. “My officers will coordinate with yours on tactical matter.”

“Good luck, Captain,” Barbra said.

“And to you.”

Disruptor blasts appeared as if from nowhere to rake across one of the Orion ships. Both ships returned fire, managing to score a few hits on the heavily-shielded Blunt Instrument. A torpedo struck one of the ships just as its shields fluctuated, causing massive damage. The ship’s power visibly failed and it hung, helpless, in space.

Extrapolating the position of the enemy ship more by luck than anything else, the Psycho tried to get its attention with photon torpedoes while Barbra’s ship went on a strafing run, hammering at the invisible ship with everything it had.

On board the Blunt Instrument Shinbone smiled. “Full stop,” he ordered. “Drop cloak around section thirty-seven. Let them think they have damaged us.”

When part of the Blunt Instrument appeared, Barbra’s ship launched an all-out attack but found itself caught as Shinbone used his overpowered disruptor banks to disable the ship’s weapons and engines.

Cholmondely-Smythe stared at the screen in shock as his allies were eliminated with no apparent effort. The section of the Blunt Instrument that had appeared disappeared once more, and the crew was left scrambling for ways to work out where the larger ship was.

“Oh, bugger,” Hill said then, frantically tapping buttons as Wall threw the ship into ever-increasingly wild manoeuvres to try and avoid the shots from the other ship.

The turbolift doors opened and the Counsellor staggered in, grabbing hold of a railing to keep her feet. “Captain,” she shouted over the various blaring sirens, “I have an idea.”

She stumbled across the pitching deck to grab hold of the central command chair and muttered something into Cholmondely-Smythe’s ear. He looked at her. “Are you sure?”

After thinking about it for a moment, she shrugged. “Mostly.”

“Good enough. Implement, Counsellor.”

Managing to make her way to the tactical console and shouldering Lieutenant Stocks aside, she placed her hands over the controls and closed her eyes. Reluctantly, she reached back for the creeping, crawling feeling she had encountered when Stella and Shinbone had invaded her dreams.

Focussing on that, she allowed her feelings to guide her hand over the controls, making adjustments to the targeting settings. There was a definite pull coming from one direction so she concentrated there. Abruptly she felt the connection, and she knew Stella felt it too from the alien surprise in her mind.

“Eat quantum torpedo, bitch,” she thought as loudly as she could, and fired the Psycho‘s entire complement of the overpowered warheads – all two of them – at the coordinates she had unthinkingly input into the console.

The torpedoes streaked out and, before anyone could react, slammed into the Blunt Instrument one after the other. The explosion was immense, causing major damage to the big ship as the cloak finally failed. The Psycho‘s shields were pounded by a volley of torpedoes.

“Shields are down on deck twelve, section 26B,” Bleep announced. “Sensors are detecting a boarding party.”

“They’re coming for me,” Cholmondely-Smythe announced. “Number One, they are your problem.”

“Oh, spiffing,” Hill muttered, looking around the bridge. “Wall, with me. Hill to security. Send a team to deck seven.”

Wall scrambled out of his chair and followed Hill into the turboloft, Ensign Irving taking his place. The two of them rode the turbolift in silence, both of them too pumped up with adrenaline to make conversation. They met a security team on deck twelve and were handed phaser rifles.

They hadn’t gone more than one section when a blast slammed into one of the security guards, killing him instantly.

“Christ on a bike!” Hill exclaimed. “Take cover! They aren’t playing around!”

A firefight ensued, with neither side gaining much ground. That was fine, as far as Hill was concerned. If they weren’t advancing then they weren’t getting closer to the captain, and they just had to wait it out until Shinbone inevitably kicked the bucket.

That hope was dashed a second later, when he saw Stella, an expression of extreme hatred on her face, duck into a jefferies tube. Hill thought fast. As a result, he made a very stupid decision. “Cover me!” he yelled.

“You what?” Wall shouted back, utterly failing to provide any covering fire as Hill charged at another hatch. Making it there somehow, with Wall finally getting the picture and emptying his phaser rifle power pack at the enemy, Hill popped the hatch open and clambered in.

He managed to intercept Stella quickly and grabbed hold of her arm from behind, but that didn’t quite go according to plan when she elbowed him in the throat and ran off. Choking, Hill got to his feet and staggered off after her.

“They are coming around for another pass,” Bleep announced. “Forward shields are failing.”

Blasts slammed across the saucer section, the last one causing devastating damage to the front of the bridge. One moment the viewscreen – and the front wall – was there, the next it was gone. Wind started howling around them, through the giant hole where the front of the bridge used to be. Damerell wrapped himself, octopus-like, around his console but Irving wasn’t so lucky. His grip slipped and he tumbled out of the gap, just as the emergency forcefields kicked in and sealed the breach. Damerell gibbered quietly, refusing to release his grip around the console.

“Counsellor!” Cholmondely-Smythe ordered, pointing at the now-empty helm console. She slid herself into the chair and looked over the multiple flashing red lights.

“We have exhausted our complement of photon torpedoes,” Bleep announced. “Partial power is restored to impulse engines.”

Through the gaping hole at the front of the bridge the Blunt Instrument swung into view, a large window lining up with the gap.

“What on earth is that maniac doing now?” the Counsellor wondered.

“He’s jolly well trying to look me in the eye,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. Shinbone’s voice crackled over the intercom.

“Are you still alive, Hubert?”

“Yes, very much so old bean, thanks awfully,” Cholmondely-Smythe replied. He walked over to the helm console and tapped at the controls. On the screen in front of the Counsellor a message appeared.

PREPARE ENGINES. FULL IMPULSE.

“Are you ready to surrender yet?”

At the Counsellor’s brief nod, Cholmondely-Smythe gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Do you know,” he said then, “at the Academy I was known as quite the risk-taker. Engage, Counsellor! All hands, brace for impact!”

“What? What are you… Oh, cr-“

The Psycho surged forwards under the Counsellor’s control, ploughing into the Blunt Instrument‘s lower deck as the bigger ship was too slow and too close to be able to get out of the way. A horrific grinding, screeching sound filled the air as the crew were thrown off their feet by the impact. All sorts of sirens were going off, adding to the cacophony.

They came to a stop, crumpled saucer section firmly wedged into the bowels of the Blunt Instrument.

In the Jefferies tube Hill finally caught up with Stella and tackled her from behind. She went down hard, stunned as Hill clambered on top of her and pushed an arm up behind her back. “Give it up!” he yelled.

“Shove off!” she replied, catching him off-guard as with an unfeasible flexibility she managed to kick him in the back of the head.

He fell off to the side, curling up into a ball as she kicked at his kidneys with a pointy shoe. When that stopped he risked glancing up to see her turning away and reached out to grab her ankle. She stumbled, lashing out backwards to kick him in the face.

“By dose!” he screamed, clutching it as blood poured from it. Still, he got to his feet and ran after her. The ship began to shudder as the Blunt Instrument went into reverse, trying to extricate itself from the grip of the Psycho. After a minute, taking a good chunk of the saucer section with it, the two ships finally parted.

She stopped with a cry as she came upon a section of the ship that had been gouged out by the collision of the two vessels, leaving a long empty chasm behind now that they had been separated. Hill, blood on his face and obscuring his vision a bit, couldn’t stop in time and slammed into her back.

The impact knocked her off balance and with one last cry of, “Buildy ‘ell!!” the Orion matriarch tipped over and fell into the chasm, her scream echoing back up until it faded to nothing.

On the bridge, Cholmondely-Smythe had run out of options. “We have to stop Shinbone from reaching Earth,” he said. “The only thing we have left is the antimatter in the engines. If we initiate the self destruct, given the state the blasted ship is in, we might do enough to cripple her.”

He looked around the bridge. Damerell was still clinging to his console and the Counsellor was giving him a steady look. “Very well. Computer initiate auto-destruct sequence. Authorisation Cholmondely-Smythe, Captain. Destruct sequence one, code one-one-ay.”

“Error. Auto-destruct sequence is offline.”

“Drat!”

Shinbone got to his feet. Every visible part of his body was now covered in angry-looking black lines. “Prepare the weapon! Even if I die today, I will achieve my goals!”

The crew hurried to respond and the ship began to reconfigure itself, wings dipping. In the centre of the bridge a podium rose up with a thaleron generator set up on it, as well as a control panel.

“Sir!” one of the Orion crewmen said suddenly, “there is an intruder aboard, he is approaching the bridge!”

“Who?!” Shinbone demanded, as the door opened and two Orions were dropped by phaser fire and Cholmondely-Smythe stepped out of the lift.

“Hello there, old chap,” the captain said with remarkable poise. “Cease and desist, there’s a good mass-murdering psychopath.”

“Never!!” Shinbone shouted as the remaining Orion crewmember threw himself at the captain, only to be clubbed rather ruthlessly to the ground with the butt of the phaser rifle, which broke.

“Just you and me now,” Cholmondely-Smythe said. He glanced around and seeing a knife on the ground picked it up.

Shinbone curled his lip and pulled a large knife from his belt. “You call that a knife? This is a knife.” He lunged for Cholmondely-Smythe, knife outstretched.

Stark charged onto the bridge, having been called there by the Counsellor after the captain’s departure. “What have you lot been doing up here?!” he said. “The ship is in bits!”

“The captain’s gone over there on a suicide mission,” she said. “What can we do?”

“Well, we could beam him back,” Stark suggested the she shook her head.

“The transporters shorted out after his site-to-site transport.”

“Hmm. Tricky.” He looked out of the great hole where the viewscreen used to be. The Blunt Instrument was still hanging in space not far away. “One of us could get over there in a space suit?” he tried.

“We don’t have time!” she said, but her eyes suddenly rested on Bleep. “Bleep!” she said, hurrying over. Looking at Stark she said, “Get another forcefield up over the back half of the bridge,” she ordered.

Stark hurried to the engineering console at the back of the bridge while a junior officer finally convinced Damerell to unwind from the navigation console and gently led him away, down to sickbay.

After a consultation with Barfoot, Stark got the forcefield in place and Bleep clunked to the front of the bridge with an emergency jetpack from the storage locker next to the ready room strapped to his back. Stark activated the forcefield and deactivated the one covering the ragged gap, and Bleep turned on the jetpack, launching himself out of the gap and zooming out in a wobbly arc towards an access hatch. Once there he reached out with his pincer-like hands and ripped the cover from the hatch, pulling himself inside.

“How are you doing this?!” Shinbone shouted furiously as Cholmondely-Smythe successfully parried yet another strike, their knives clinking together.

“Evidence of a misspent youth,” the captain said, panting slightly. “You’re looking at the Starfleet Academy Circus Skills Society Dangerous Implements Juggling Champion – three years running.”

They fought for another minute, until Cholmondely-Smythe finally parried one last blow and Shinbone’s knife flew away, striking the thaleron generator and disintegrating in a flash. Shinbone threw himself at Cholmondely-Smythe with a roar, and the captain sidestepped. He spotted a length of broken pipe and yanked it down just in time, as Shinbone recovered and charged again, impaling himself on the pipe. Cholmondely-Smythe looked on in horror as his clone pulled himself along the length of the pipe to try and wrap his hands around the captain’s neck.

“I… am… glad we are… together… at the fulfilment of our destinies,” he said.

“Sad to say the feeling is very much not mutual,” Cholmondely-Smythe informed him, stepping back as the light dimmed and went out in Shinbone’s eyes. He looked at the generator, which was still charging. If it went off it would annihilate the Psycho and everyone on it. He stepped up to it and looked at the controls helplessly.

Then the door opened and Bleep clanked into the room, catching the captain off guard. “What the deuce…?” was all Cholmondely-Smythe managed as Bleep clapped an emergency transport module onto his shoulder and activated it, causing the captain to be beamed off the ship and back to the Psycho.

As the Blunt Instrument‘s computer began a ten second countdown, Bleep extracted a small hand phaser from a compartment in his side and fired at the generator, causing an overload.

On board the shattered remains of the bridge of the Psycho the Counsellor and Stark saw Cholmondely-Smythe materialise just moments before the Orion ship detonated in a spectacular light show. The shockwave knocked them off their feet as it hit the Starfleet vessel, but the ship rode out the impact surprisingly well.

“Bleep?” the Counsellor asked, but Cholmondely-Smythe could only shake his head.

“Captain’s log, stardate 194683.23. The Psycho is undergoing major repairs at Spacedock. It appears Starfleet has enough spare parts to put much of the ship back together, though Admiral Richardson has stressed to me that this will not be happening again. In the meantime, my deputy engineer has requested the presence of the senior crew in main engineering.”

Cholmondely-Smythe tapped his foot impatiently as Barfoot stuck his head around the door to the main engineering deck. Gathered around him were Hill (with his nose bandaged up), the Counsellor, Wall, Damerell, Stark and Jackson. From the blank look on his face, even Stark didn’t know why Barfoot had called them all together.

Finally, Barfoot entered the room and, trundling along behind him was… Mr. Bloop.

“Guys, and gal,” Barfoot said, an irritatingly large grin splitting his face, “say hello to Mr. Bleep!”

“Hello everyone,” Bloop said. “It is agreeable to see you again.” The Counsellor raised her eyebrows, noticing that the oddly metallic speech patterns of the copycat android appeared to have disappeared.

“Pete?” Stark asked cautiously. “Bleep got blown up, remember?”

“Well, yes,” Barfoot agreed, “but I sort of accidentally downloaded all of Bleep’s code onto Bloop, and since he’s an exact copy – seriously, if I didn’t know any better I wouldn’t have a clue this wasn’t Bleep’s original body – I worked a bit of Petey-boy magic and hey presto!”

Cholmondely-Smythe’s eyebrows rose, as Hill stepped up with a look of interest on his face, examining Bleep carefully. “So you’re saying this is Bleep?” the captain asked.

“Good as new and twice as, er, android-y,” Barfoot nodded.

“Bugger me,” Cholmondely-Smythe said to the surprise of everyone in the room. “Well done that man. At least this is one less thing for Starfleet to shout at me about.” He looked around. “We have two months of downtime while repairs are effected,” he said. “I suggest you all enjoy them.”

Two months later…

Cholmondely-Smythe was waiting outside the recently upgraded holodeck, fighting the urge to fidget in a terribly uncomfortable, old-fashioned Royal Navy uniform. After extensive repairs the Psycho was as good as new – or at least only mildly pre-used. Footsteps up the corridor caught his attention and he turned to greet Commander Hill, who walked up tugging uncomfortably at the crotch of his trousers.

“Number One,” he said, and Hill grunted distractedly. Jackson rounded the corner then with a grumpy expression on his face. “Ah! Doctor! The man of the hour!”

“Why do we have to go through this inane procedure anyway?” Jackson complained.

“Tradition, dear boy,” Cholmondely-Smythe replied. “Shall we? I believe the others are waiting.”

They entered the holodeck and stepped onto the deck of the sailing ship Psycho. As Hill and Jackson hurried off to join in with making a mess of running a sailing ship, Cholmondely-Smythe sighed in satisfaction. After all the stresses of the last year, he really was hoping for a quiet life for a while. He looked around, pleased with the efforts his crew was making and glad for once not to be feeling their hostility directly at him.

He dragged his attention back to the business at hand. “Bring out the prisoner!”

Life aboard the Psycho was back to normal.