The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter I

"Now I have seen the warnings, screaming from all sides,
It's easy to ignore them, and God Knows I've tried,
All of this temptation, it turned my Faith to Lies,
Until I couldn't see the danger, or hear the rising tide.

We can take it back,
We will take it back,
Some day..."

Blank.

"Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
at the bottom of a dark Scottish lake."

Blank.

"Hot Punk, Cool Funk,
 even if it's old junk,
'still rock n roll to me."

Blank.

"Good Golly, Miss Molly!"

Blank.

At long last, the fog was clearing from his head. In between inexplicable 
snatches of music and the vague sensation of motion lay long periods of 
blackness; oily, turgid seas in which his conscience had sunk without 
trace.
Further Back...
There was a moment of tumbling, explosive confusion, as...
He couldn't remember.

He couldn't remember.

He stopped trying to remember, and just relaxed. There was warm metal under 
his back, and something padded underneath his head.

The thought crept up on him, now he stopped searching for it.
Bones.
Bones McCoy.
Doctor.
Something about... He snarled mentally in triumph, as the whole name came 
back to him. *Leonard H. 'Bones' McCoy*.
Doctor.
Ship's Doctor. 
There was a ship involved somewhere, he knew that. But he couldn't sort out 
a picture in his head : it was big and white, which seemed correct, but it 
was also topped with a gaily coloured sail that seemed out of place. 
*Star* Ship.
*Captain James T. Kirk*. That was him. He was captain of the USS 
Enterprise. 
The horrible, tangled explosion came back to him. Terminals sparked and 
fused, and there was a Scots burr coming from one of the panels in front of 
him.
"Lock on a retrieve! RETRIEVE!"

Something had crashed. The Enterprise?
Leonard McCoy.
Go Away, he told the thought angrily. I'm trying to concentrate on the ship 
and you're only distracting me.
Leonard McCoy.
Leonard McCoy.
Leonard McCoy.

What was so important about Bones anyway? Man's a doctor, he can look after 
himself.
No he can't. Snap out of this! Wake up; Come on, get out of this mental rut 
and think!
But he couldn't hold on to the thought, and he fell asleep again.

Blank.

"So many people have come and gone,
Their faces fade as the years go by,
I passed all their cars as I wandered on,
Clear as the sun in a summer sky.

It's More than a Feeling..."

Blank.

The floating, airy sound of an aria, smashed though by an aggressive, 
thrashing guitar chord.

"Swing low in a dark glass hour, you turn and cower
See it turn to dust
Move on a stone-dark night, we take to flight
Snow folds into rust
See me defusing mine, like a nursing rhyme
Fat man starts to fall
Here in a hostile place, I hear your face
Start to call...

And if you think that I've been losing my way,
That's because I'm slightly blinded.
And if you think that I don't make too much sense,
That's because I'm broken-minded.
Don't keep it
Inside
If you believe it
Don't keep it all inside."

The snatches of song were getting more fluid, now, holding some sort of 
continuity. He was getting lucid again, but he still felt feverish. What 
the hell had happened?

McCoy. Bones McCoy. It was vital that he remembered!

It came to him.
"I think I follow you."
Bones smiled, lop-sidedly, and gave a short, snorting laugh.
"That'll be the day. You possess many admirable qualities, Jim, but a 
medical mind - or even a good dictionary of terminology - isn't one of 
them."
They shared a laugh, then, but McCoy's was strained.
"Nothing medical at all?"
"No. I've run the feinberger over my cracked old cranium more times than I 
care to count : There's nothing *medically* wrong with me."
"Hence, Shoreleave and psychiatry."
"And Amen to that."
"I know this may... grate a little, but you could give Spock a shot at -"
"No, Jim. Last thing I need right now is to have him doing his 'illogical' 
routine all over my privacy."
"It'd be an odd sort of repayment, though."
Bones laughed again, more easily this time.
"Yes, I suppose it would. I fool around in his skull, he fools around in 
mine."
"Well, I'm sure M'Benga will cope as CMO in your absence, but... hurry 
back, hey?"
McCoy nodded.
"M'Benga will cope fine, Jim. I need to know what the hell is going on up 
here," he tapped his temple meaningfully, "before I put myself back into a 
position of trust. How do I know I'm not going to flip out in the middle of 
a delicate operation?"
Kirk nodded.
"It's only nightmares *now*, but it could be tremulas, spasms or even 
blackouts to follow : there's no way of telling."
"Well," Kirk said with a small smile, "That's the way it goes. I'll be 
seeing you again when we come back this way in a month's time. Until then."
So Bones was safe. There.
No. He wasn't.

His head throbbed. Possibly a concussion. Certainly, when the Galileo...
the Galileo...
The ship was rolling under his feet like a wild bronco. Lieutenant Murray 
was wrestling with the recalcitrant controls, howling abuse at the dead 
panels. Chekov was snapping out orders over his communicator, and the 
wrenching tug of a tractor beam caught the ship briefly, throwing them wild 
again. Murray, already half-out of his safety straps, slipped out and 
jolted against the ceiling. Kirk saw the young pilot's head collide with a 
buckled beam, heard the heart-chilling sound of bone giving way, saw red 
flower in the brief, disorienting moment of null-gee. Then the tractor beam 
lost them in the clouds, and the body rolled away as the tearing winds 
buffeted them like a paper boat in a roaring torrent.
Chekov was already slipping from his seat to go to the controls. In shock, 
Kirk realised that Ensign Brody had died too : Chekov's jacket was darkly 
stained with blood. He turned to look, and wished he hadn't. Brody's black 
hair was matted with blood, and her eyes stared lifelessly ahead.
Three left from a crew of seven. Two had died instantly, when the first 
rocket struck home and the hull had twisted out of shape, crushed 
instantly. Then Murray, then Brody. Just himself, Spock, and Chekov left, 
in a crippled shuttlecraft falling like a stone toward the planet.

Jangling guitar ringing out like a clear bell on a midwinter morning, 
hanging in the air like a mist of noise.
"One man come in the name of love,
One man come and go,
One man come here to justify,
One man to overthrow.

In the name of Love,
One More in the name of Love
In the name of love,
Walk on in the name of Love..."

More detail now, flooding his mind with an assault on his senses. A steady 
rush of air, the metal beneath his back thrumming gently, producing a 
nearly subsonic bass note and putting his teeth on edge.

"One man come on a barbed wire fence,
One man he resist,
One man washed on an empty beach,
One man betrayed with kiss.

In the Name of Love,
One More in the name of Love
In the Name of Love
Walk on in the name of Love..."

Over the music, a human voice, chattering in recognisable English.
"... Three Caz. Caz One; BP eighty over forty, pulse erratic, deep shock, 
some second and third degree burns, about two pints short, type A Rhesus D 
Negative. Caz Two; Concussion with possible fever, blood loss but not in 
shock. Caz Three... Got no idea. High temperature, but that may be natural 
for this guy. Unconscious, bleeding a little. Green blood, probably copper-
based. Doesn't seem to have any major injuries."
A moment of attentive listening.
"Negative, Repeat, Negative. Skulls and ribcages on all are intact bar 
hairline fractures. Limbs likewise in good condition."
A few seconds of noise.
"Can't tell on that front, but that was one hot, tight and messy landing 
they pulled. Could be internal haemorrhaging, could be clean : either way, 
be thankful they're alive for now. That was no walk-away touchdown. There's 
not enough left of the ship to make a tin can out of."
Another pause.
"Yeah. Rat, signing off."

"Early morning, April Four,
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky,
Free at last, they took your life,
They Could Not Take Your Pride.

In the Name of Love..."

Another Memory pressed in, and the song fell away.
The howling blare of the Red Alert Klaxon had sounded, and McCoy had 
dropped his drink from the shock.
"Captain Kirk!" The wall comm blared.
"Here, Uhura." Kirk responded, snapping into a rigid pose of readiness.
"We have a level Zero call for you on the Coded channel, sir."
Level Zero. The supposedly-secret classification for any emergency which 
threatened, by its very nature, the whole of Federation Space. As Far as 
Kirk had heard, no Level Zero alert had ever been called. Not a first he'd 
have liked to keep in the record books next to the Enterprise's Name.
"Pipe it through. I'll advise you further at the first opportunity. Helm, 
maintain present course until further orders. All Hands, stand ready for 
battle stations."
He flicked buttons on his console and watched as the screen cleared to 
show, not the standard blue-and-white UFP logo, but simply the words 
MAXIMUM SECURITY in red-on-black.
"Kirk, James T. Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Enterprise, Registry NCC 1701. 
Starfleet rank held : Captain. Passcode : If it can't be fixed, just ask 
Scotty."
McCoy gave him a surprised frown.
"I thought it would be mildly funny if a Zero ever got called and I had to 
tell it that. I was wrong. There's nothing funny about this at all."
Kirk said, his expression pensive.
The screen cleared without preamble, confirmation, or warning. That was the 
nature of a Zero alert : a bullet of bad news straight into the heart of 
your day.
"Captain Kirk. This is Admiral Johannsen, calling from Starbase 15. I have 
been instructed to place the entire of sectors twelve through sixteen on 
Zed Kappa Status immediately. Repeat, on behalf of Starfleet I am calling a 
Zed Kappa alert. We have evidence here of unnatural death caused by an 
unknown biocontaminant, introduced either deliberately or accidentally into 
the atmosphere of the Customs Patrol Vessel Corrollia. Of the 
sixty-eight personnel aboard at that time," the admiral swallowed, "no 
known survivors. Our evidence, your direct orders and a copy of your new 
general orders for the duration of the crisis are appended. This message 
ends. Good luck, James."
"What in heaven's name is a Zed Kappa Alert, Jim?" Bones blustered.
"A biohazard. A lethal disease of unknown origin."


--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (2/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:51:16 GMT
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter II

His throat was dry, and his eyes smarted at the pinkish blur above his 
head. Then two female voices hit him in the ears like velvet-wrapped 
sledgehammers.
"Uh-Oh, We're in trouble,
Something's come along and it's burst our bubble,
Uh-Oh, We're in trouble,
Gotta get home, quick march, On the double!

We been out all night and we haven't been home,
Been walking through the backstreets, all alone,
The party was great, yeah, we were really thrilled,
but when we get in we're gonna get killed!

Uh-oh, We're in trouble,
Something's come along and it's burst our bubble,
Uh-Oh, we're in trouble,
book us all a ticket for the next space-shuttle..."

"Rat calling all birdboys. Hook up and call in. Zeerust, get me a bearing 
on the camp transmitter. Form up behind me and proceed to your shacks. I 
gotta take our three caz to the med. And for Chrissake, T-Phon, change the 
tape, will ya? If I hear Shampoo again I'm going to go nuts."
The Song cut off abruptly. Before another could take its place, a voice 
reported crisply, "Locked in : four kliks, bearing 242."
"Confirmed." That was the one who referred to himself as Rat. What a name, 
thought Kirk irreverently, aware he was nodding off again. Then a faint, 
hissing noise thundered into sound.
"I gotta soul that cannot sleep
at night
when something just ain't right
Blood bones but without soul
exploding eagles in the night
mix like sticks of dynamite
black or white this is my fight
C'mon courage, let's be heard
Turn feeling into word
American equality has always been sour
An attitude I would like to de-flower
My name is peace this my hour
Can I get just a little bit o' power?

Power of the Equality,
Ain't all it was cracked up to be,
Inferior like a hollow tree,
The Power of Equality.

Right or Wrong my song is strong,
Ya don't like it, get along
Say what I want, do what I can
Death to the message of the Ku Klux Klan
I don't like your remedy,
Media chief you menace me,
The people you say cause all the crap
wake up, motherfucker, and smell the trap-"
"YeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeHAH! HOME RUN!"
"Thanks, Zeerust. I'd kinda noticed. Well, You know what that means, boys 
and girls... Our esteemed comrade T-Phon gets to wear the Rat scrag-patch 
next time out. Congrats, T-Phon. You made it back from your first run in 
one piece. Try keep it that way, huh? Whoah, that's my stop. Gan, Lliadril 
- avec moi, s'il vous plait. See you."
The metal under Kirk's back tilted downwards slightly, and he felt the 
change in the motion of the air.

"Where the hell am I?" he managed. His throat was dry and his voice rasped.
"Rat! This one's conscious!" A female voice. Gan, or Lliadril? Or someone 
else?
"Hang in there, m'friend. MEDIC!!!"
"Out of the way! Crash cart coming through!"
"Get me the Ultrasound scanner and thirty milligrams micozine."
"Two-one-lift! Okay, hold him down..."
"Arrest! Charge two-fifty! One, two, three, four, five, six-"
"Thirty milligrams adrenaline and twelve of Cardimene."
"-twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-"
"Two plasma packs and a box of dressings."
"Breathe One-"
"Where's that damn plasma! NOW, GODDAMMIT!"
"Breathe Two-"
"Shockable! Clear!"
"Heartbeat! Respiration!"
"Plasma-"
"Ultrasound's clear-"
Kirk felt a needle prick his arm, and the uncomfortable pressure of liquid 
entering the vein. The world sharpened a little around him.
"Can you hear me?"
"I think so. Could I have some water?" he tried.
"Coming right up. Caz Two stable and conscious!"
"Caz One still in shock!"
"Caz Three stable, unconscious."
"Okay, help me out here. You are?"
"Kirk... Captain James T. Kirk."
"Starfleet?"
"Yes..."
"Thank God. And they are?"
"Lieutenant Chekov, Commander Spock..."
"Which is which?"
"Spock's the Vulcan... green-blooded one..." He felt nauseous.
"The shot I gave you will probably make you want to puke, but it'll pass. 
It's just a rough-n-ready cocktail, not refined. WATER-CARRIER!"
"I can't see much..." Kirk mumbled.
"Ain't much to see. Can you see me?" The same voice that had shouted that 
he was conscious. A face loomed over him. Long, straggling, sun-blonde 
hair, azure eyes in a smiling, weather-beaten face. She seemed to be barely 
out of her teens.  He nodded.
"I'm Gan, James. Pleased to meet you."
The nausea was passing.
"Can you sit up?"
"Think so." He said, feeling a little more firm.
"You sound better, anyway." 
"Feel like someone parked a shuttle on my head."
"They just about did. You're lucky to be alive." She pressed a cup into his 
hands. He sipped from it.
"Tastes rusty." he frowned, perplexed.
"Always does." she grinned. "I gotta go get Gull. You hang in there."
Music was ringing out still, from somewhere, a mournful tune underscored 
with doom-laden bass.

"Hey You,
Out there in the cold, getting lonely, getting old,
Can you feel me?
Hey You,
Standing in the aisles with itchy feet and fading smiles,
Can you hear me?

Hey you - don't help them to bury the light...
Don't give in
Without a fight.

Hey you,
Out there on your own sitting naked by the phone,
Would you touch me?
Hey you,
With your ear against the wall waiting for someone to call out
Would you touch me?

Hey you - would you help me to carry the stone...
Open your heart - I'm coming home."
The bass took off, scoring out a wailing riff.
"This him?" A new voice.
"Captain James T. Kirk." That was Gan again.
"Kirk. I'm Gull."
Kirk looked up into a glowering, intense face, framed by a shock of dark, 
raggedly cut hair. Another damn kid with a weird name, he thought.
"Welcome to Hell." Gull finished.
Kirk blacked out again.

The past was beginning to make some sort of sense, to fall into some sort 
of order. After the Zero alert, the Enterprise had rendezvoused with the 
Valiant to take on board three of the Federation's foremost 
geneticist/biologists : Enzel, an ebullient, belly-laughing man with almost 
unnaturally red hair, Craig, a slender, petite woman with an impressive 
collection of scars acquired in combat zones, hot-labs, spacecraft board-
and-rescue operations, and countless more besides, and Sudek, a Vulcan-
Romulan crossbreed who Spock held as one of the most skilled, logically 
progressive researcher in a generation.
He could remember another figure. Who was that, hanging back, masked in 
shadows?

The shuttlebay was cool and cavernous, the lighting lowered to the ship's 
dark-hour standard - reminding Kirk that on his schedule, this was about 
three in the morning. The effect was to make the place feel like some 
bizarre cathedral to technology, an effect he felt ill-at-ease with.
Of course, he reflected, if this was a temple to technology, then its high 
priest and godhead made flesh was Montgomery Scott.
"Scotty." He said, inclining his head to the tired-looking engineer.
"Sar." Scotty said, his brogue thicker than usual. Probably exhaustion. 
Kirk had put the strongest and most able of his command staff on extended 
shifts until they had the scientists aboard. He suppressed a yawn and 
greeted Enzel, Craig and Sudek. Enzel was rubbing his eyes and yawning 
openly. Craig was leaning against the side of the shuttle, dressed in 
civilian clothes and sporting a functionally short but still attractive 
haircut. She had her hands stuck into the pockets of her jeans, her collar 
turned up, and a lit nico-stik in her mouth. She looked more like a teenage 
rebel than a double-doctorate scientist. Sudek stood rod straight, his arms 
folded into the sleeves of a vulcan robe.
There was the shadowy figure, behind the scientists, holding up his hand, 
palm out. Held loosely between his fingers was a white pop-up badge with a 
black logo.
Star Fleet Security.

Along the table, heads nodded in approval.
"It is now..." Kirk consulted his desk Chrono, "half past four in the 
morning, ship-time. ETA at the Corrollia is twenty-six hours from now. In 
the meantime, I suggest all duty officers turn in for eight hours minimum, 
and the second shift swing the required alterations to the existing lab 
facilities. In short, I'm completely shattered."
There was the murmur of a good-natured chuckle, but the combination of the 
lateness of the hour and the seriousness of the situation made it seem 
small and hollow.

"She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge,
She studied sculpture at St. Martins college
That's where I,
Caught her eye..."
"Captain?" A familiar voice. At long last.
"Spock?"
"Yes, Captain. How do you feel?"
"Like a punching bag." He didn't need to open his eyes to picture the 
habitual eyebrow-hitch at his use of simile where accurate information was 
needed.
"She told me that her dad was loaded,
I said in that case I'll have rum and coca cola,
she said fine,
And then in thirty second's time,
she said
I wanna live like common People, 
I wanna do whatever common people do
wanna sleep with common people
wanna sleep with common people like you,
So what else
Could I do
I said
I'll see what I can do..."
"We are safe, at least for the moment. Chekov's condition is borderline 
critical, but stable and showing signs of recovery."
Kirk opened his eyes.
"Where are we? And what the hell is that music?"
"I took her to a supermarket,
I don't know why, but I had to start it
somewhere,
so it started there,
I said pretend you've got no money,
She just laughed and said oh, you're so funny
I said Yeah
(But I can't see anyone else smiling here...)"
"Common People, by Pulp." That was Rat's voice. "Got to number 2 in the UK 
chart in 1995, old calendar. One of the all-time great anthems for the 
dispossessed."
Kirk opened his eyes and hauled himself upright, slowly.
"Welcome back. You had us worried there." Gull gave a fleeting smile.
"I'm... messed up, for want of a better phrase. Think I may have a touch of 
concussion."
"Be grateful. You're still alive. That's quite a trick round here." Gan 
grinned at him.
"Spock, I- I can't remember a lot of things. I need a rapid-fire debrief on 
everything that happened since we took Craig, Enzel and Sudek aboard."
"The containment lab was established and, on arrival at the Corrollia, we 
obtained samples from the ship. The crew of the ship were all in varying 
states of mutilation, in some cases apparently self inflicted. The 
Corrollia was destroyed, atomised down to powder, on the orders of Mr. 
Staks-"
"The security man. I remember him, now. I seem to recall calling him a 
lunatic."
"You used several... colourful terms in reference to Mr. Staks. He was of 
the opinion that Doctor Craig might be a traitor."
"One of Cartwright's paranoia merchants, wasn't he?" Another eyebrow hitch.
"Yes. Following that argument, he indulged in what Mr. Scott described as 
'sulking' for several hours, only emerging when we received the emergency 
transmission from this planet."

Sitting on the bridge, hearing the bleep.
"Sir! I have a distress signal, audio only!"
"On speakers."
"-aft! Hailing Federation Craft!"
"This is the U.S.S. Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk commanding-"
"WE NEED ASSISTANCE! Under attack - pinned down - We can't hold out long-"
And then, the thunder of gunfire, and screams...

Kirk shuddered.
"I remember."
"Three good people died to get that message to you, Captain. Their names 
will not be forgotten." Gull spoke, his eyes glinting darkly.
"You ordered us to respond to the signal. Staks took offence, pointing out 
that the Zed Kappa alert took precedent. You told him, in no uncertain 
terms, where to - as you put it - 'shove it'. We arrived in orbit of this 
planet twenty-nine hours later."
"Sudek reported a breakthrough en route, didn't he?"
"Yes. He identified a major component of the disease's action as being 
similar to the effects of the poison of a reptilian creature native to the 
planet Romulus. It induces paranoia, aggressiveness and eventually 
psychosis within a matter of days. In his opinion, the virus was engineered 
to emulate those effects. The Romulans do have a significant lead in the 
field of surgical alteration and biogenetic engineering over Federation 
science."
"Necessary, for their constant trade in espionage and counterintelligence."
"Doctor Enzel reported the discovery, shortly after, of-"
"I remember. A euphoric hallucinogen. A double-whammy, I think Doctor Craig 
called it. If the drug is in your system, the effects of the virus are 
neutralised, and the drug may even inhibit viral reproduction. Once it's 
out, you become psychotic in search of another fix. Insidious."
Gull shrugged.
"Sounds like you've enough problems already. Much as I hate to be the 
bearer of ill tidings, you're in a whole new pile of shit now."
"Spock." Kirk's voice was a ghost, his face pale. "The signal from the 
Enterprise. Before we were shot down."
Spock nodded. "Doctor Enzel was found dead in his quarters. He was attacked 
with a sharp blow from behind. Doctor M'Benga recorded a verdict of 
wrongful death."
Gull hawked and spat.
"I'd say you were pretty much up to your neck in the brown stuff. And 
sinking."
Rat gave an unsavoury grin.
"You wanna tell 'em? Or shall I?"
Gull glowered at Rat.
"Gentlemen." he said, his voice bitter, "You've just managed to drop 
yourselves into the vanguard of a planetary civil war..."



--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (3/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:51:44 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Lines: 216
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter III

"This is Dustball. Officially it's Survey Reference NT/117/136/2, but it 
got christened Dustball after the survey team's captain steadfastly refused 
the rather dubious honour of having such a worthless pile of shit named 
after him. Imports, none. Exports, none. Primary industries are water-
collection, Mining, and nanotechnology. Weather ranges from hostile to 
lethal. The surface is mostly metal oxides, carrying such a high degree of 
magnetic and static interference that most radio and subspace communication 
is affected. No way you could beam out from here, not unless you planned on 
arriving in several pieces. One significant city, three hundred and seventy 
kliks south-south east. Other than that, it's mountains to the north, dust 
deserts to the east, and Devil's Hole to the west."
"Devil's Hole?" Kirk put in.
"As near as the survey team could tell, the crater was caused by a big 
meteorite that came down about three thousand years ago. I'm talking real 
big, here. Devil's Hole is two and a half kliks deep at it's lowest point, 
and over five hundred kliks across. It's the planet's primary weathermaker: 
when it crosses the terminator either way, it kicks up four hundred mile-
an-hour winds that tear across the place and rearrange reality to terminal 
effect for anyone stupid enough to go out in one. Rotation period for this 
planet is six and a half standard days, divided into one searing day and 
one freezing night of round about three-and-a-bit days each."
"Why in the ninehells of Valeria would anyone choose to colonise this 
place?" Kirk shook his head, numbly.
"Insanity. We think. The planet's been colonised for twenty generations 
now, and the founder of the first colony was a man named Koraz. As history 
tells it, he was bold pioneer. A closer examination points out that he 
murdered two of his children to prevent them threatening his powerbase, 
being finally bumped off by his third son, who we know for a fact was at 
least as insane, if not more so. The name has passed down, along with 
despotic control of the planet's resources, both human and otherwise. The 
original Koraz had a pet nanotechnologist, who cooked up an interface jack 
to connect the brain directly to a computer. Or vice-versa. The current 
populace has twenty generations of blind loyalty and computer influence 
racked up : most of them can barely think for themselves. Every sensory 
input can be edited, given time : propaganda can be pushed directly into 
the mind with no chance to read between the lines, to see the bigger 
picture, or analyse rationally."
Spock raised an eyebrow.
"We have little other than your word to take for this. From our current 
level of knowledge, it is impossible to analyse the propaganda content of 
your own words."
Rat laughed sharply. In the background, more music was playing. For a 
second, Kirk concentrated on the lyrics.
"In the headlights 
of a stretch car
You're the star...

Don't you be shy
Makes the crowd to cry
Hold Me,
Thrill Me,
Kiss Me,
Kill Me..."
Guitars thundered into power chords, a dark and moody sound with wailing 
violins underscoring a tense tone to the music.
Rat shrugged, smiled thinly, and said darkly, "Long hair, subversive music, 
violence... A couple of centuries ago, we would have been called Beatniks. 
Or Teds, Or Mods, Or Rockers, or Hippies, or Punks, or goddam communist 
trash. Society likes to label those it disagrees with, pigeonhole them, and 
leave them to die. That's the nature of a revolution : it goes round in a 
circle and ends up exactly where it started. It changes the name, but 
nothing else.
"So what exactly are you out to do? If you're not out for revolution, what 
*do* you want?" Kirk asked.
"Oh, the usual. An end to eleven o'clock curfews, the abolition of the laws 
against partying, the right to kick back, drink some beer and smoke some 
stogies, A Better Tomorrow, Peace, Equality, Liberty and Justice for all. 
Nothing special." Rat's voice turned bitter in an instant.
"We want an end to the fighting, Kirk. And there we reach our problem. 
Because this is not a fight over territory, or resources : this is a 
collision of two utterly opposed systems of belief. There is no middle 
ground to be established, no agreement to be reached. We will be 
victorious, or we will be vanquished, but we will *never* surrender." Gull 
spoke with quiet, measured intensity. The silence after he spoke was 
profound.
This is a man who could achieve the impossible, thought Kirk. What turns a 
mere mortal into such a man? Armed with his word alone, an army would 
charge into battle. Some actors had it, and all too few leaders of men : 
the compelling power in the soul that reached to you and demanded your 
attention, your allegiance.
And, Kirk reflected grimly, far too often, the men possessed of that 
compelling power went further, and demanded your unthinking obedience. And 
the bedazzled masses went to war. For a second, he saw the swastika on the 
red armband, and the cities of Europe in flames. Then the face of Kahn 
Noonian Singh came to his mind, and his so-nearly successful attempt to 
wrest control of the Enterprise from Kirk. Was Gull a saviour, or an 
enslaver?

Kirk and Spock faced each other across the shack's flimsy table.
"More information is required for analysis before I can calculate any 
useful data." Spock said, calmly. Kirk nodded once, a decisive affirmation.
"Stop me if I miss anything. After we arrived in orbit, we contacted the 
colony. They asked us to send a medical team to help with the aftermath of 
a raider assault. They told us raiders had attacked the complex and the 
communications officer had sent the distress signal in a moment of panic. 
We sent down McCoy and Uhura with medical, security, and communication 
teams in two of our shuttles. Last reports indicated matters were well in 
hand, routine crisis cleanup." He paused, biting his lower lip. "McCoy 
confided in me, a short while before this whole affair blew up, about 
some... psychological problems he seemed to be having. Recurring nightmares 
and psychosomatic pains. But you know Bones : he damn well insisted on 
going..."
"Doctor McCoy - for all his illogical behaviour - is an exceptionally 
selfless man." Spock intoned calmly. His eyebrow hitched, as it habitually 
did when he or others surprised him. "For a human." He amended after a 
moment.
"I won't tell him you said so, don't worry." Kirk said, a ghost of a smile 
touching his lips. "To continue. Enzel said he was on the verge of making a 
breakthrough, when we got another signal from the surface. Uhura told us 
they had been placed under arrest, and Doctor McCoy had been taken away for 
interrogation. I assembled the team and we debarked on the Galileo."
"You engaged in a small display of fisticuffs with Mr. Staks beforehand, 
Captain. When he attempted to have us demoted and locked up for sedition." 
Spock corrected. Kirk smiled again.
"Ah yes. I recall knocking him senseless." He sighed. "There'll be hell to 
pay for that later, I suppose. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. 
Then, we were just dipping into the atmosphere, preparing to make landfall 
at the city's main square, and the transmission came through that Enzel had 
been found dead. Then all hell broke loose."
Spock hitched his eyebrow again.
"To be precise, Captain, four rocket-propelled missiles were launched 
against our craft. The shield generator was already heavily overloaded 
keeping out the crystal dust carried in the jetstream winds. The impacts 
damaged the shuttle beyond repair, and we crash-landed."
"And how." Kirk rubbed his head. "So, where do you think our current 
companions fit in?"
"Unable to speculate at this time, Captain."
Kirk nodded.
"Alright. We've been thrown in at the deep end. Sink or swim. Let's go test 
the waters, shall we?"

Outside, they viewed the shanty-town of shacks and lean-tos, the doors 
baffled with heavy curtains against the omnipresent dust.
"This is as close to hell as I ever want to get, Spock." Kirk said, feeling 
a chill in his heart. The scene was one of squalor unparalleled by anything 
Kirk had seen in his career. But the people, he noticed, jarred oddly with 
their hope-draining surroundings. They strode purposefully, heads up, with 
just a hint of arrogance to their step. Their mouths were covered with 
filters or scarves, but where eyes showed they very nearly glowed with 
purpose and direction. Their clothes, though tattered and patched, seemed 
to be a rag-tag statement of identity, rather than the wretched wrappings 
of degraded hoboes. And everywhere was music, a constant background of 
noise that Kirk had been subconsciously filtering out. He stopped to 
listen. It was an aggressive tune, a sneering, leering, devil-may-care 
slash of sound.
"Friends say it's fine,
Friends say it's good,
Ev'rybody says it's just like rock 'n' roll...

I move like a cat,
talk like a bat,
Sting like a bee-
Babe, I'm gonna be your man.

And it's plain to see,
You remember me,
Yeah I'm your boy,
Your Twentieth century toy..."
"Without a doubt the strangest group of people I've ever come across." Kirk 
said, distractedly.

They wandered through the camp for nearly half an hour, and soon became 
heartily sick of the pervasive dust. Kirk learned to keep his mouth closed 
and avoid licking his lips, and made makeshift nostril filters from torn 
strips of his badly tattered shirt. At length, they arrived at the Medical 
tent.
A raggedly-dressed doctor took them to see Chekov.

He lay on his back on a rough pallet, breathing irregularly. A drooping 
rainbow of cables connected him to a primitive oscilloscope.
"His condition's unchanged. I've given him an injection of Mark sixes, but 
they can't do much for him beyond preventing further tissue degeneration 
and some very minor reconstruction work. They've only got the 
Dextrose/Saline I.V. drip to work from : until he's healthy enough to eat 
for himself, I can't promise anything." He motioned that they should follow 
him on his rounds. Kirk frowned.
"Afraid I didn't follow much of that."
"The Colony's medical treatments are mostly carried out by Nanotech robots 
: fully functional robots the size of a small bacteria or virus. A small 
colony of them can be programmed, injected, they do the job, deactivate and 
flush out in the faeces. Some can even reproduce, building new versions of 
themselves. The Colony typically uses Mark seventeen. We're rather far 
behind in terms of R & D."
Spock hitched an eyebrow.
"Nanotechnology was employed in this manner some years ago, I believe. In 
our culture it has been superseded by the use of sterile beam and ray 
technology. A competent surgeon can often outperform even the most 
sophisticated AI routine, which is limited by the available information."
"Very true. And Nanotech has one particular problem in this environment : 
it burns out very quickly. Of several million injected into Mr Chekov here, 
only a few hundred thousand will survive to the completion of the program. 
Until we can beat the repro-inhibitors and get perfect reproduction in a 
test-tube colony, N-tech remains a bit of a stopgap measure."
"So?"
"So, If you're religious, I'd suggest offering up a few prayers. Otherwise, 
cross your fingers and hope." The medic shrugged. "I'm not a healer. I'm 
just a machine operator. Without better equipment, I can't do anything for 
him. Living out here teaches you the difference between who you think you 
are and who you really are. There's no room for masks and disguises."
"Well... thanks for trying, at any rate. He'd be dead if it weren't for 
your," Kirk cleared his throat, "Machine operation."
The Medic grinned.
"Thanks for making my day. Now If you'll excuse me, I've got three people 
to deal with. One of them is peppered with fifteen-gauge buckshot : as you 
can imagine, he's rather eager to be seen. See ya." He ducked behind a 
curtain, and it swished back into place with a soft rustle of fabric.


--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (4/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:52:07 GMT
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter IV

Kirk saw Rat sitting on a rocky outcrop and signed to Spock to continue his 
reconnaissance alone. He spat on his hands and rubbed them together, gauged 
the slope, and began to climb. Less than two minutes later, he was standing 
atop the pillar with Rat sitting quietly at his feet.
"Pretty Good, Captain. You took that overhang like a pro."
"I like to climb. You against the rock and gravity, all alone."
Rat snorted a short laugh.
"You the spiritual type, Captain?"
"Not really."
"Me neither. Not much. But sometimes, I get this feeling, like something 
bigger than any of us has just moved a silent hand over the throng. Call it 
Fate, Call it God, Call it Karma, Call it blind coincidence, but just for 
that second, I start believing that maybe there's something out there that 
plays with us like wanton boys with flies."
"Lear, Act four, scene one. As Flies to wanton boys, are we to the Gods;
They kill us for their sport."
Rat nodded.
"That's the one. I don't know about you, but when I start thinking deep 
thoughts like that, I go get blind drunk and cry into my pillow."
Kirk shrugged.
Rat shifted over to make room for Kirk to sit down on the tiny hump of 
prairie grass growing there. The bandolier of shotgun shells over his 
shoulder rattled quietly.
"Gull's got faith. Gull believes. In what, I don't know for sure. That's 
what carries him, what keeps him going. Me? Shit. If I keep on waking up 
every morning, then by default I keep on living. This war goes on and on, 
the slow grinding of attrition takes its heavy toll, and I keep on living 
by default. We all walk a narrow precipice. Only, a few of us choose to 
walk a little closer to the edge. You want to know what makes us tick? We 
carry one word in our hearts, one single word. For that, we will fight them 
until the last round of ammunition is gone. And then we'll fight with our 
knives until the blades break, and then we'll fight with fists and feet and 
teeth until the last one of us lies bleeding on the ground. And even then, 
with our last breath, we'll raise the battle cry. Freedom, Kirk. That's 
what drives us. For that, we'll lay down our lives."
Music wafted up from below, a folky strumming with a mean edge.
"I am the passenger,
And I ride and I ride,
I ride through the city backsides
I see the stars come out of the sky,
Yeah the bright and hollow Sky
You know it looks so good tonight...

I am the passenger,
I stay under glass
I look through my window so bright
See the stars come out tonight
See the bright and hollow sky
over the city's ripped backsides..."

"What's that all about?" Kirk asked.
"That's The Passenger. The Iggy Pop version, not the Hutchence remake. It's 
about a way of life : cruising, just sitting there drinking it in, a 
passenger on the road. Of life, or a real road, that's up to you."
"Why are you so obsessed with this music? I don't recall ever hearing 
silence around this place."
"You're not likely to. Not true silence, anyway. The Music helps us define 
who we are, it reassures us we are not alone in our beliefs. We all have 
our favourites."
"What's yours?"
"My big influences are Handel's Dies Irae, Faure's requiem, and Motorhead's 
Ace of Spades." He smiled, thinly. "I'm your average Life's-an-abyss-let's-
throw-ourselves-in type of guy. I've been there, seen it, done it, and it 
leaves a bad taste in my mouth."
"Cynicism tends to be self defeating." Kirk noted, casually.
"This is deeper than cynicism, Captain. I'm what you might call world-
weary. I'm Twenty-two : I've lived six years on the edge between life and 
death, and I've seen too many people go over. I've seen less new faces and 
more dead bodies with every passing year. We're reaching the breaking 
point; two more months, maybe three, and we will cease to be. That sort of 
thing really tends to put a crimp in your day."
Kirk let the silence stew for a few minutes. Below, he could see the camp 
going about its business, ripples of people washing around the tents and 
shacks like dark waves. Rat rose to his feet and moved to the edge of the 
Pillar of rock.
"On the other hand." Rat said, a lift to his voice, "Living on the Edge 
teaches you like nothing else that every second counts. Carpe Deum, Amen. 
This moment will never be again. From this moment, there are dozens of 
roads stretching ahead. One where we win. One where we lose. One where I 
give in and throw myself over this edge, One where I don't." He stretched 
out his arms and leaned forward, as if poised to take flight. "If we lose 
sight of the power, the beauty, the *poetry* of just one moment, good or 
bad, how can we appreciate the majesty of a lifetime?" Kirk stood up, 
momentarily afraid.
"Well, I haven't lost my eyes yet. The wind is from the south, and I can 
still tell a hawk from a handsaw." He grinned, looking predatory. He 
breathed in, arching his back, and raised his fist to the sky.
"I'M NOT DONE LIVING YET!!!" he howled, his face halfway between anger and 
ecstasy. He pushed up on his toes and jumped, not over, but upwards, 
punching the air exuberantly.
He saw Kirk's worried face, and covered his mouth. Then the laughter boiled 
out of him, and he slumped to the floor.
"I'm sorry," he managed past his laughter. "I do this about once a week, 
just to remind myself that while I'm here, while it's now, I can make a 
difference. Just a little bit of catharsis, clean out all the cynical shit 
I've got in here." He tapped his head. "God, that's better. Come on; I need 
to do a bit of flying. And you need to start learning to use a skysurfer 
anyway, If you're going to stay here for any length of time."

"There's only two ways to get around this far into the desert. One is by 
Strider, i.e., a sixty-foot tall exoframe. There aren't many left now : 
they were used to construct the city initially, so most of them are relics. 
But, they're heavily armoured, and most of them have been modified by one 
of the Koraz's down the line for combat. But even a Strider can have 
trouble with Dust basins and rocky terrain : they tend to sink, or fall 
off, as applicable. And they're easily tracked. Planes were tried, but the 
dust clouds make most of the atmosphere hostile to anything as delicate as 
a jet engine. Hovercraft kick up too much dust to be useful, tracked 
vehicles run down too quickly, and to get far on foot you need to be well 
provisioned and equipped with excellent navigational equipment. So we use 
skysurfers. They use antigrav to make the board practically inertialess and 
steam jets for propulsion and manoeuvring. The rider uses his own weight to 
control the roll, pitch and yaw of the board." He noticed Kirk's pensive 
face. "Don't worry. It's simpler than it sounds. Lean left to turn left, 
right for right, back for up and forward for down. Now you've got a choice 
: Stunter, or Smithson?"
"Which is which?" Kirk said, looking at the two boards in front of him.
"The stunter's my favourite design. It's the trimmed-down one : about the 
size of a skateboard, cut-down and hotted up. Very manoeuvrable, but 
uncomfortable for long periods. Easy to learn, difficult to master. The 
Smithson's Gull's favourite. Size of a surfboard, less responsive but more 
stable. The shape makes the board itself a lifting body; it acts like a 
fuckoff big wing, which means you can really pull some shit off on this if  
you know how. One time, Gull came screaming in on one of these like some 
kind of banshee, kicked it vertical and smacked one of Koraz's goons full 
in the face with the tail end. Knocked him over fifty meters back. Sheer 
brilliance, Kirk. Sheer, unadulterated brilliance." He paused a moment, 
lost in reminiscing. 
"Call me Jim. I'll try the Smithson."
"Cool. Let's Rock ‘n' Roll."

"I need to be myself,
I can't be no-one else,
I'm feeling supersonic,
Give me gin and tonic,
You can have it all but how much do you want it,
You make me laugh...
Give me your autograph,

Can I ride with you
In your BMW,
You can sail with me 
In my yellow submarine,
You need to find out
‘cause no-one's gonna tell you what I'm on about,
You need to find a way
for what you wanna say
But before tomorrow-

‘cause my friend said he'd take you home,
He sits in his car, all alone,
He lives under a waterfall,
Nobody can see him, Nobody can ever him call-
Nobody can ever hear him call.

You need to be yourself,
You can be no-one else,
I know a girl called Elsa,
She's into Alka-Seltzer,
She sniffs it through a cane on a supersonic train
And she makes me laugh
I got her autograph,
She's done it with a doctor,
On a helicopter,
She's sniffing in a tissue,
Selling the Big issue
When she finds out, no-one's gonna tell her what I'm all about..."

The music was infectious. It got under your skin, made your pulse jump and 
gave you the feeling that somehow, despite all the evidence, the world made 
sense. Kirk could feel it working on him, and for a moment, he caught a 
glimpse of the almost spiritual relationship these people had with their 
music. Just as Rat had said, it defined their existence, but it did 
something else. It expanded their borders, told them in guitar and drums 
that there was no limit to what they could achieve, where they could go. 
Then he nearly lost his balance again and pitched forwards, diving towards 
the ground. He kicked back hard on the tail of the board and turned the 
dive into a swoop, hunched low to the board as it whipped across the dust. 
He pulled up, levelled off, and brought the board gently to a halt 
alongside Rat's hovering Stunter. 
"Nice recovery, Jim. You've got the Surfer Spirit, just not the practice."
"How many people do you lose on these things every year?"
"If you mean just from flying fuckups, hardly any. The board's got a 
computer and a proximity detector wired into it : it's smart, to a degree. 
Last year we injured three, lost none : our worst was losing two about five 
years back. But you've got good balance, and a good grasp of aerodynamics 
and flight principles; once you learn the limit to which you can push 
yourself and your equipment, you'll be a real surfer."
Kirk flicked the nose of the board from side to side.
"Want to race?" He asked, a gleam in his eye.
"Cool. Let me just pick some music to fit the mood."
The hiss in Kirk's earpiece became a churning guitar riff, loaded with 
aggression.
"Out of the misery,
to wash my soul,
Out of the crowd with a new age sound
an' I'm the king of rock ‘n' roll.

Check in the mirror,
and I don' mind,
Same old cracks in my face still there
they're just a little more defined-

So I'm making the distance,
A boy in the business,
I mean, in time,
to let it shine,
let it shine,

Well, 
I wanna go where the people go yeah,
I wanna go where the people go yeah,
Take me there, anywhere,
just so long as there's an atmosphere we'll be round, round, round,
C'mon down,
We all wear down."

"Three, two, one, - ah hell, Go!"
Kirk squeezed his hand throttle hard, and the board leapt forwards. Rat 
fell behind almost immediately; the stunter, Kirk realised, couldn't pack 
the power the Smithson managed. But on the turns, he'd have to watch 
himself.
*Concentrate* 
The rush was incredible. The air howled past, and the board thrummed 
contentedly under his feet. This was living; this was the edge of 
existence, balanced between life and death on a sliver of metal. He 
crouched low, resting the fingertips of his free hand on the board, keeping 
his profile as small as possible. He leaned into the first turn as tight as 
he dared, feeling the centrifugal force press against him. Rat was gaining 
ground. He dipped the nose of the board, falling towards the earth, then 
pulled up sharply to thread back-and-forth between the chimneys of rock 
towering on either side. For a moment, he felt mercurial, euphoric, almost 
overpowered by the unbelievable feeling of riding the air. But there was a 
race in hand, and there was nothing James T. Kirk liked more than a 
challenge. He squeezed the throttle, urging just a little bit more power 
from the strained engine. He focused all his concentration on event and 
response, flicking the board between the rocky spires, not *thinking* about 
the moves, just reacting. Then the row of spires came to an abrupt end, and 
he was leaning hard to turn towards the camp again. He tipped nearly to the 
horizontal, just recovering in time for a straight-line course towards the 
strip of open land. Rat was close on him now, barely ten metres behind and 
inching closer. Rat had the skill and experience to make the deficit up. 
This was going to be a close race.

They reached the strip of empty ground in a few seconds. The camp was 
neatly bifurcated by the long stripe of churned-up dust between the living 
shacks on one side and the communal buildings on the other, as if the camp 
had been cut in half with a giant knife, leaving a scar of rusty earth 
running like a river through the centre of the encampment. Kirk made a 
mental note to ask Rat why it was there, when the rest of the buildings 
were so pressed in on each other, presumably to make best use of the 
limited amount of level terrain. He dropped until he was hanging bare 
inches above the dust, a vortex of red powder hissing up behind him like 
smoke. He hugged low to the board, closing on the great arch of rock that 
signalled the end of the course. Rat, undeterred by the thin whirlwind of 
crimson Kirk was trailing like a banner, was almost on him. Rat was drawing 
level, now, and reached over to pat him on the back. They screamed through 
the arch side-by-side.
Kirk eased off on the throttle and came to a gentle halt. Rat kicked his 
board almost vertical, hanging for a second in the air, then flipped the 
nose through a hundred and eighty degree turn and coasted back down to 
Kirk's hovering position.
"That was quite a workout you gave me. Pretty Good stuff.
"I couldn't make out who was in the lead at the end there. Who won?"
Rat grinned. "Who cares? The race is the important thing, not the result. 
‘He marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game.' And 
you're a fucking Grand-master, Kirk. Little bit of practice, and we'll make 
a surfer out of you no problem."
Spock was jogging towards them, covering his mouth with his hand to keep 
out the dust.
"Captain." He said, formally.
"Mr Spock." Kirk nodded back.
"Gull," Spock said, sounding uncomfortable with the name, "Would like us to 
attend a Council of War." 
Rat dismounted from his board with a practised leap.
"Let's not keep the man waiting." He said, cheerfully.

--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (5/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:52:29 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter V

"Firstly, forgive me for the rather unorthodox metaphor. The situation on 
this planet is in the social equivalent of dynamic equilibrium. We fight 
them, they fight us, but in the end the overall balance is the same. The 
introduction of our new friends is catalysing that reaction, and the 
balance is shifting. Rat, I need you to slice into the City's computer and 
search and retrieve anything you can on the situation there. Then, we need 
to bring everyone in : all the roving patrols, all the combat teams, we 
need them back here. We break out everything we have, field-strip and clean 
all the weapons, push forward the servicing schedules on the skysurfers 
that are out of action, shift to the combat roster and analyse our T.O.&E. 
We have to be at full combat readiness within fifteen standard hours, 
because until Rat gets us some hardcopy on Koraz's plans and any military 
movements, we have to assume that what we know, they know, and that they 
are staging up for a full offensive. Meanwhile, the weather report. Gan."
"We've got mucho problemo on the weather front. In about forty standard 
hours, Night will be falling. Devil's hole crosses the terminator in about 
thirty-eight, thirty-nine hours, and we get a standard evening breeze. But 
when day breaks again, then we're going to be up to our necks in shit." She 
trundled an antique computer over to the desk.
"This is a first-approximation analysis, and all the figures are might-
be's." She typed a command on the computer's membrane keypad. The screen 
began showing a planetary-body simulation centring around their current 
location.
"The orbit of this planet was pretty carefully documented by the original 
survey team and the first settlers. The planet is tipped at what I'm 
informed is a fairly fearsome angle to the normal. The poles are thirty-six 
degrees out of true, compared to good old earth's mere nine degrees. It 
also occupies an elliptical orbit, making a complete circuit only once 
every two-ish standard years. Right now, we're about as close in as we ever 
come, and to complicate matters we're going to experience some astronomical 
oddities too. The asteroid belt is pretty thin, but it's there, and we are 
going to cut right across it in, guess what, about fifty hours. Now here's 
the interesting bit. According to all the original surveys, there was no 
water to be seen on the surface, but there were features that would be 
expected for a wet environment. And according to the computer, that water 
is still there. Under our very feet, no less. There are large underground 
seas. When we pass through the asteroid belt, the planet, moon, sun and 
asteroids will combine to form what the computer calls a ‘gravitational 
node.' Near as I can figure, basically the centre of gravity of the planet 
changes a very little bit - enough to kick up boiling, torrential floods, 
driven by the winds from devil's hole over most of the surface. In short, 
this planet is looking at the storm of the millennia come dawn. I ran a 
primitive sim past the computer; it can't even get a handle on the kind of 
time period that would pass between these planetary Big Wednesdays. At 
least four centuries, possibly as much as a millennia. That's it : I'm all 
talked out."
Gan took her chair again, looking cheerfully exhausted.
Gull rolled his head and sighed.
"In short, we are looking at one do-or-die moment approaching. This is the 
crunch; explode or fizzle out forever. Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Spock, I'd 
like to talk to you for a moment. The rest of you know your duties : snap 
to it."
The others filed out of the hut looking grimly determined. Rat shrugged off 
his jacket and shirt and walked over to the hut's primitive-looking 
mainframe. Kirk noticed a small disc of metal about three inches below the 
nape of Rat's neck, just before rat plugged a fibre-optic cable into it.
"I'm slice. See you in a few minutes." He said, before closing his eyes and 
relaxing into a chair.
"Rat's one of the very few. He got out after he was plugged into Koraz's 
little network of misinformation : the jack on his back connects to the 
spinal cord and feeds the computer signals direct into his mind. He's not 
only a superior surfer and a fine soldier : he's our best hacker, too." 
Gull said, quietly. 
He leaned forward and rubbed his eyes.
"Captain, I need to ask you a very difficult thing."
Kirk held his hands open for a moment, looking attentive.
"I cannot die. Shit; no sorry, that probably sounded wrong. I *must* not 
die. I dread what might happen." He lapsed into silence, and steepled his 
fingers.
"When I first came into this group, they had nothing. Scraping by was their 
motto. They were content to live out here, risk the elements, in exchange 
for personal freedom. There were more than a few who were uncomfortable 
with the status quo in the city, but the concept of freedom can be like a 
cocoon, insulating you from the suffering going on so very near at hand. It 
can coddle and deceive. It can, in the end, be more suffocating than 
oppression. How does it go again?" he knit his fingers together and pressed 
on. "‘In Italy, under the Borgias, they had civil war, murder, thirty years 
of violence and bloodshed, and yet they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da 
Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had five hundred years of 
peace, democracy and brotherly love, and what did that produce? The cuckoo 
clock.' That was my starting point. Humanity always responds best when it's 
back is to the wall : necessity is truly the mother of invention. I 
organised them into an army; stole weapons, raided supply bunkers, turned a 
colony of misfits into a rebellion. But that spark has taken all too well, 
and I lie awake nights worrying if I can control the fire. They look on me 
almost as a messiah, and that scares the living *shit* out of me. Rat I can 
count on : he knows the score, he understands. He's... he lost everything 
he ever had already- his family, to the ravages of time, his friends - even 
his lover, to Koraz. Gan, Lliadril, a whole cadre of my most trusted 
people, know that I'm just a lucky man with more grasp of the economics and 
tactics of guerrilla war than most. But the bedazzled masses... I hate to 
think. If I die out there, I worry that they'll treat me as a martyr, start 
a jihad that will burn the civilisation out of this place and leave only 
bodies and ruins. It only takes *one* *bad* *day* to reduce the sanest man 
alive to lunacy : it takes far less to turn a companion, a friend, even a 
brother, into a homicidal religious maniac. That's why I went to such 
lengths to get that message to Starfleet : not to aid us in the fight, but 
to ensure that afterwards, we arrive at some better peace, not plunge 
headlong into a holy war. That's your job, captain. To make sure I leave a 
legacy to be proud of if I die."
Kirk nodded seriously.
"I worried about you, I'll admit that. I was concerned you might not be 
able to relinquish your hold on these people if you won."
"I worried over that, too, in the early days. Whether, when the moment 
came, I would be able to let go and step away, like a father teaching his 
kid to ride a bike. It would be so easy, so *safe*, to hold on to the 
reins, to become an oppressor through nothing other than the best of 
intentions."
"You know what they say the path to hell is paved with." Kirk nodded.
Gull laughed.
"Exactly."
There was a moment of precious silence, then : each understood the other 
perfectly, and was reassured. But all such moments are fleeting, and 
perhaps for the best; for how can any man savour a summer's day without the 
knowledge of a storm?
Rat ended that moment by disconnecting the cable from his back.
"Gull," he said in heavy tones, "We have a serious problem."

"Striders are staging from Lansom Point in a generalised seek-and-destroy 
sweep. The whole city is wrapped up, sealed down and ready for the worst. 
The outlying defensive stations are on urgent status, with resupply trucks 
en route stacked to the gills with ammo and weapons. And Koraz has one of 
Captain Kirk's crew - medical doctor name of McCoy - in the interrogation 
suite. Plus he's got a new project on-line. Zipped up real tight, 
countermeasures in effect all over it. Things are looking nasty. On the 
brighter front, the medlink says Chekov's coming out of his trauma. And 
I've got a few Ideas."

Kirk and Spock met Chekov on his way out of the medical centre. He looked 
pale, but noticeably improved over his condition scant hours ago. He 
saluted crisply.
"Ready for duty, sir."
Kirk smiled.
"How do you feel, Chekov?"
"A little shaky, Captain. And I've had a thought about the... murder."
"Continue." Kirk said, listening attentively.
"I only caught a fragment, but its sticks in my mind. Doctor Enzel was 
attacked from behind, but his larynx was crushed."
"I believe, Mr. Chekov, that I can shed some light on that. When I served 
under Captain Pike, I was myself bought up on suspicion in a similar 
incident. The technique is unique to one planet in the known galaxy; A 
Vulcan method from a less civilised time. One handed strangulation."
"M'Benga would have recognised it. He interned on Vulcan, don't forget." 
Kirk noted.
"Not... necessarily. The technique is a taboo subject. It belongs to the 
old days, before the parting of the ways. It is only taught to certain of 
our people; the sons and daughters of important persons, and then only if 
the parent consents to the training. If Doctor M'Benga did recognise the 
method, then he may be in danger. If he did not, then there is only one 
candidate who could have committed the murder." Spock's face was nearly 
impassive, but Kirk could tell he was wrestling with his emotions.
"Sudek." Kirk said, bluntly. "It does add up."
"He was the illegitimate offspring of a Romulan Tal'Shiar officer, one of 
the secret police of the Romulan government. It is a... peculiar aspect of 
the old animosity between our cultures. Vulcan female prisoners are 
frequently subjected to rape by their Romulan captors, and forced to bear 
the child - a child who must bear, for the rest of his days, the stigma of 
shame. Such an experience would conceivably inspire a psychopathic hatred 
of the Romulans."
"I know the old crack, Mr. Spock. Genius dwells on the Borders of Insanity. 
Leading him to frame them in a biological crisis situation by incorporating 
indigenous Romulus DNA sequences in the makeup of his terror-weapon. There 
would be an outcry. And the Federation would go to war." Kirk finished.
They stood silent for a minute, considering.
"Communicators are useless in this environment. We've got to raise the 
Enterprise, and that means the City transmitter. We're in on the upcoming 
offensive, Gentlemen, whether or not we like it." Kirk said, grimly 
determined. "So. Mr Chekov, I need you to meet with Rat and Gull. Bring a 
Starfleet tactical interpretation to the situation, see what we can come up 
with. Spock, you can apply yourself to analysing the Table of Organisation 
and Equipment."
"Captain, with respect - I only completed the basic course on Security." 
Chekov said, quietly.
"That's as maybe. But you're the best we've got. Consider yourself brevet 
promoted to the station of Chief of Security. Do me proud, and I'll 
seriously consider making that promotion permanent. This is a crisis 
situation, and the clock is ticking. Let's go to it."


--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (6/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:52:51 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter VI

Spock seated himself at the camp's central computer and began working, 
putting his formidable mental powers to a task they had never been intended 
for. Rat unfurled a deeply creased map across the table and sat back.
Gull took a deep breath.
"These six outlying fortifications are the Point Stations. They form part 
of the early warning system for the City, as well as its first line of 
Defence. This one here-" he indicated one of the markers with a finger- "is 
Lansom Point, our biggest worry. From there, the city's entire Strider 
Compliment - Three teams of Three Striders each - is on a combat sweep 
patrol, Looking for us. We could Bypass them, but they'll still get here - 
and there are nearly seventy non-combatants in this camp, those too ill or 
untrained to fight, the base medical personnel... there's a hell of a lot 
of equipment too, which we can't really afford to lose, but it's the people 
that worry me. So we have to force an engagement with those Striders early 
on, prevent them slipping through. If we can pass that, we've got a minor 
bonus; there are convoys of Ground vehicles en route to the Point forts, 
and if we can ambush one of those convoys we can strip it of useful 
equipment and ammunition, resupplying us for the main assault on the city. 
Our objective is property damage, pure and simple - cut the power lines, 
destroy the computer nodes outside of the main core, break up transport and 
communications throughout the region and attempt to paralyse the 
opposition. If we can do that, we can force them to fight us as a mob and 
not a co-ordinated force, giving us the tactical advantage. Then, we have 
to break Koraz's little palace wide open and kill the main Computer Core. 
Assuming we can succeed - and that's potentially a very erroneous 
assumption - that will give us enough freedom of movement to secure all the 
major objectives in the city - Off-planet antenna, hydroponics plants, 
Medical facility, and the armoury. With control of the communications 
system, food supply, first aid and weapons supplies, we'll effectively 
control the populace, without the need to lock them down and declare 
martial law. If we can break the computer core open and smash it up, we've 
got ourselves an easy and relatively bloodless victory. If we fail, the 
casualties will be lunacy, on both sides. So, our breakpoints are; engage 
the Striders. If we can't take them down, we are gone. Circumvent Lansom 
Point and ambush the resupply convoy - without ammo and weapons, our 
operational base isn't wide enough. Draw a dead-centre line on the palace, 
fritzing the comm layout of the local area, and punch through to the core. 
If any of those goals cannot be attained, we will have to abort and 
evacuate to a safe location. Any observations?"
Chekov considered the map carefully, analysing the contours and trying to 
build up a mental picture of the terrain.
"This pocket here would make a good ambush site for a Strider." He 
announced, tapping the map with a finger. "You could use some sort of sonic 
device to loosen the sand under it, sink it deep enough to immobilise it."
"What sort of sonic device?" Rat asked, sounding sceptical.
"One of our communicators on overload should do the job: just adjust the 
base frequency to the right value and you can shake it down."
Spock nodded curtly, assenting to Chekov's hypothesis.
Rat grinned. "Nice one."

They talked for the next hour of tactics and equipment, of schedules, 
formations, and firepower; and, when they finished their analysis, a good 
few taut faces relaxed. The challenge had not lessened, but they had 
resolved the best way to meet it - and, with an almost flippant air, they 
dismissed their former worries. Kirk watched them go, and turned an 
inquisitive eye to Gull.
"As far as they're concerned, there's nothing more to say or do until the 
battle is joined. We know what we're going to do *then*, so *now* we 
relax." Gull said, pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing gently at 
it.
"So what do we do now?"
"We're going to give a little concert."
Kirk almost laughed. Gull spread his arms wide.
"Hey," he said with a lopsided smile, "that's us for you. We're also going 
to pipe it to the City for everyone to hear. Anything to stir up a little 
home unrest, pip us a few psychological points. Because sooner or later, 
we're going to stand toe-to-toe with Koraz's little army. We've got to do 
our best to stack the deck, load the dice, whittle those odds down by any 
means necessary - because we can't afford to fight this one clean and fair. 
We're going to have to be *nasty* to stand any chance of winning. I just 
hope we can reach the end of this business feeling like we actually gained 
something."
Kirk put a hand on Gulls shoulder.
"Any commander of men with half a heart frets about how much will be lost 
in battle. Old war-horses talk about the fire of battle; and battle does 
burn. But you can't forge anything without a fire - and your friends out 
there are good, clean metal, all the way through."
Gull smiled appreciatively. "Thanks." He said, shortly. "Now. I've got to 
get some things organised, but Rat and the others would be thankful for an 
extra pair of hands or three, over at the strip. And you should go see 
Wildwind soon, too - you should be armed, with all that could be happening 
shortly. So snap to it - if you'd be so kind."
Kirk raised an eyebrow.
"While there are some who'd have me hiked bodily out of Starfleet for this, 
the situation does deserve. As of this time, all the resources I can amass 
are at your disposal."
"One does not like to give orders to a Starfleet captain." Gull said, 
slightly mockingly.
"Call ‘em suggestions, then. And for Gods sake, call me Jim."
Gull grinned. "Done."
They left him poring over the computer, typing orders and assignments with 
alarming rapidity.

Out on the stretch of broken ground that divided the camp in two, Kirk 
found Rat waving energetically at a hovering skysurfer, who was slowly 
lowering a hefty-looking speaker into place.
"Hold these, will ya?" Rat shot out of the side of his mouth, and handed 
Kirk a roll of cable. "SLOWLY, YOU ASSHOLE!" he yelled, and the falling 
skysurfer checked his descent.
"Okay, Jim. Get that cable up to the speaker stack and give it to Gan. Mr. 
Spock, Mr. Chekov, That guy up there - Lliadril - will tell you where to go 
to get kitted out. Snap to it."

Kirk made his way up the stack of speakers to Gan, who was dangling, upside 
down, by a length of cord attached to her ankle.
"Hi, Captain." She waved breezily, pushing off a speaker to bob up and down 
in front of him. Kirk glanced up, and saw a board hanging in the air high 
above them. He handed her the cables without comment. She looked at them, 
clicked her tongue approvingly and blew a kiss to Rat, who waved 
noncommittally in return. 
"He's found me some four-oh stranded at long last. Even put DIN clips on it 
for me. Sweet of him." She said as busied herself pushing the cables home.
"How can you stand to work like that?" Kirk wanted to know. Gan shrugged, 
making a normal gesture look very strange indeed through her inverted 
position.
"Given time, there is no condition to which the human body will not adjust. 
I've gotten used to being any way up I chose at any given moment. Tends to 
distract any potential suitors, but that's not much to worry about."
Kirk smiled, looking bemused.
"I'm sworn off the whole relationships thing, at least until we get into a 
stable situation. Until we've got some sort of peace here, I'm your happy-
go-lucky chick-with-attitude. Once I can raise a family without worrying 
whether they'll be shot, then I'll settle down and drop sprogs by the 
bucketload. Sit by the fire, suck down a beer, send the kids to bed early 
and get down and dirty with a certain verminous cur who's screaming abuse 
at Zhodra for nearly dropping a lamp." She span around, listening as the 
sounds of Rat's lung-busting roar floating up from below.
"Oh, and captain? Tell him, and I'll be playing percussion with your 
reproductive organs tonight." She added, smiling sweetly.
Kirk grinned. "Your secret is safe with me."
"Right. Now. Climb up that stack there and help Skeez with that loose 
cable. See you."
Kirk sighed, spat on his hands, and shinned up a support girder towards his 
next job.

It took the best part of an hour for some order to come out of the chaos of 
rainbow cables and black boxes strewn across the makeshift stage. Kirk was 
swinging along a support rope to reach the ground when he spotted Spock and 
Chekov returning to the site, carrying a swathed bundle. With an ominous 
sense of foreboding, he hurried his descent, and arrived at the dust floor 
a few moments later.
"Keptin." Chekov greeted him, sounding grim.
"What do you have for me, Mr. Chekov." Kirk said, bluntly. This felt wrong, 
somehow.
"It's more Hikaru - I mean, Mister Sulu's field than mine, if you take my 
meaning." Chekov said, apologetically, as he unwrapped the bundle. "There 
is a nine millimetre pistol for all of us to carry as a sidearm." He passed 
out the clumsy-looking weapons. Kirk turned it over in his hand, feeling 
his unease eating at his stomach.
"This is a three-oh-three calibre rifle with what Wildwind called a ton-up 
rig - extended barrel, extended magazine, telescopic sights and 
skeletonised stock. And this is a sawn-off fifteen-gauge pump-action 
shotgun. Mister Spock has declined a further weapon, and I wanted to see 
which you wanted."
Kirk picked up the rifle. He'd handled rifles and shotguns on his father's 
ranch, passed down by a grandfather who refused to believe that a phaser 
was an effective deterrent for vermin. The rifle in his hands was not such 
a whimsical item; the needle-like, overlong barrel and lumpy magazine made 
it look less crafted, less smoothed than the short-barrelled twenty-two his 
father had taught him to shoot tin cans with. It looked as though it had 
been designed with only bare functionality in mind. The scope glistened 
like an insect eye over the top of the barrel. For a moment, Kirk saw the 
rifle as a mosquito - a mad, one-eyed mosquito with a stabbing proboscis, 
skeletal wings folded back, legs grouped uncomfortably tightly under the 
eye. This was not a weapon he could bear to use. He passed it back.
The shotgun was not like the double-barrelled affair his grandfather had 
had hanging over the fireplace. Its barrel gaped, its cut-down size making 
the calibre of the barrel seem even bigger. It was a weapon with a clearly 
defined wrong end, a wrong end few people would willingly look down. It 
looked more brutish even than the rifle, more lethally efficient, more 
unpleasant. At least, he reasoned, it didn't pretend to be a work of art. 
With a sigh, he slung it over his shoulder. That act, he realised, had an 
unpleasant finality to it. He had taken on the mantle of these people, 
donned the weapons that were their stigmata. Watching Chekov sling the 
rifle and Spock - with distaste boiling just beneath the cool exterior of 
his face - slide the pistol into his waistband, he knew that this was the 
point of no return.
They were set upon their path.
"Alea Jacta Est." He said quietly.



--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (7/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:53:19 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter VII

The sun loomed over the horizon, a dull red coal hanging in the burnt red 
skies. The red light steeped into the scenery, drawing long, knife-edged 
shadows on the dust. It was a stark, crimson-blooded scene, with a 
peculiarly brutal beauty to it. Spock was staring toward the sunset, an odd 
look on his face. Kirk could imagine what he was thinking of.
"Remind you of home?" he asked, trying to imagine what a Vulcan sunset 
looked like.
"Very much so." Spock said, in a faraway tone that was entirely unlike him. 
He shook himself, abruptly returning to his accustomed pose.
"What is occupying my reasoning at the moment is the forthcoming conflict. 
The parallels to the parting of the ways in Vulcan mythology are - " he 
paused for a moment, and Kirk mentally filled in the unspoken 
/uncomfortable/. Spock concluded with a reserved "interesting."
Behind them, the huge stage was complete. Rat coasted down from the skies 
on his board, looking old and tired in the blood-light of the setting sun.
"Well, the game's afoot. The roving teams are in, the battle orders are 
out, and the situation is as under control as we can make it. Now I know 
how Caesar felt when he crossed the Rubicon."
Kirk nodded. "Felt the same way, earlier." He indicated the shotgun at his 
side.
Rat made a sour face.
"Rankles, don't it. If I never see another gun in my life, I'll be happy. 
Pulling the trigger feels too inconsequential for something so powerful."
He unshipped his own shotgun and loaded it with a swift movement. Without 
seeming to look, he brought it to bear and fired, one-handed. A crab-like 
creature scuttling over the rocks fifty feet away flipped off the rock and 
fell writhing into the dust. Rat sniffed and spat in its direction.
"When I was a kid, I used to do the tin-can alley routine. Other kids used 
to call me Dead-on. When I first came out here, I used to miss anything 
living I fired at by a big margin, even Scuttlers like that one. It took 
the death of my closest friend to change it. Sometimes I wish I'd never 
been cured of that particular failing."
Kirk blinked in the light.
"Gull mentioned-"
"Everybody knows about it, Kirk. She was my companion, friend and lover for 
six months. Then I froze when she was grabbed during a raiding mission, and 
lost her forever." He hung his head. A bead of moisture rolled to the end 
of his nose, dropping into the dust. It might have been a tear, or just 
sweat.
"It might have been alright, If I'd known she died a clean death. Shot, 
stabbed, anything that might have meant she fell in battle. But they took 
her back to the City. Koraz took her apart, piece by living piece, over a 
live link. She took a million years to die."
Kirk felt bile bite at the back of his throat. A bitter look broke briefly 
through Spock's logical armour.
They stood and watched the sun dropping toward the distant hills, each lost 
in thought.
Behind them, the river of churned dust slowly filled up with laughing, 
joking bodies.

Spotlights snapped into life, thrusting daggers of light into the darkening 
sky. A cheer rippled through the audience, and Rat turned.
"I have to get up there, I'm afraid." He said, the old resolve sounding 
once more in his voice. He fitted his feet into the straps of his stunter, 
and flitted skywards. On the stage, coloured lights were pulsing as the 
spotlights swept over the crowd to centre on the stage.
Gull entered the light, quietly, head slumped low. The audience's roar died 
away to expectant silence.
"Rudyard Kipling wrote, in For All We Have And Are, the following words." 
He cleared his throat, and looked up.
"What stands, if freedom falls?
Who dies, if England lives?"
He looked out across the gathered multitude, searching every face. Kirk 
felt shivers run up his spine.
"Abraham Lincoln, in a speech he gave on the first of December, 1862, said 
this of freedom.
‘In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, - 
honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve.'"
He paused again, and the audience held their breath.
"On the sixth of January, 1941, Franklin D Roosevelt remarked on freedom 
thusly.
‘This world is founded on four essential freedoms. The first is freedom of 
speech and expression - everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of 
every person to worship God in his own way - everywhere in the world. The 
third is freedom from want - everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom 
from fear... anywhere in the world.'"
He struck a determined pose.
"Do you want to know what I think about freedom? Freedom is alive. Freedom 
grows, expands, develops, supersedes, fed by the cries, dreams, hopes, and 
aspirations of the underdogs of a million worlds. It is immortal, 
invincible, inviolate, the beacon to which we look, the example to which we 
cling, the destination to which we travel, the destiny to which we strive. 
Freedom is a virus, infectious, unrelenting. Freedom is loathed by 
dictators, feared by despots, abhorred by absolute rulers. Freedom breaks 
the bonds of slaves, the bones of tyrants, the backs of the corrupt. 
Freedom is our watchword and our cause.
Freedom is our dream and our vision.
Freedom is in our power to grant, and in our power to take away."
The audience waited, still.
"We must be assured of ourselves - we must know the truth in our hearts. We 
cannot allow ourselves the luxury of disconnecting our minds, going with 
the flow, because that path leads only back to where we began. Those 
willing to sacrifice freedom for security gain neither. We are the bringers 
of freedom, not the harbingers of oppression. Those who will fall in the 
hours to come must know that they leave behind them the legacy of freedom. 
Nothing stands, if freedom falls. If we live, but freedom dies, we are 
contemptible in the sight of all that is good, and right, and honest, and 
true. Those are my thoughts on freedom, and those are the goals we must 
fight for. All else is but thunder and noise, signifying nothing."
Behind him, the lights came up on Rat, Gan, and Lliadril, clutching 
instruments as if their lives depended on them. Rat picked at the strings 
of his guitar, and the notes rang out across the desert.
Far away, in the city, speakers carried the noise, and the hurrying masses 
stopped, confused. In her cell, Uhura raised her head, searching for the 
source of the sound.
Gull took the microphone, and began to sing, his voice mournful.
"The higher you build your barriers,
The taller I become.
The further you take my rights away,
The faster I will run."
His voice leapt higher, soaring into the next words.
"You can deny me,
You can decide,
to take my life away-

No matter, ‘cause-"

Now his voice was a rolling cadence of strength, lifting the spirit as he 
sang. The gathered audience took up the refrain, and far away, in the city, 
Uhura added her voice to the chorus.
"There's something inside so strong,
I know that I can make it,
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong.
I thought that my pride was gone,
But there's something inside so strong.
Something inside, so strong."

Gull continued, and the voices of the throng built ever louder as the words 
spoke through.
"The harder you try to drown my voice,
The louder I will sing.
The more you try to deny my words,
the truer they will ring.

You can deny me,
You can decide,
To take my life away -

no matter, ‘cause-
There's something inside so strong,
I know that I can make it, 
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong.
If you thought that I can't go on, you're wrong
‘cause there's something inside so strong,
Something inside so strong."
Kirk saw Chekov singing along with the rest of them as the song rose above 
them, lifting higher into the air, defiant and proud and hopeful, taking 
their spirits with them. He could feel his own heart jumping to the music. 
This wasn't crowd-control psychology, it wasn't brainwashing, it was the 
shared hopes and dreams and aspirations of this rag-tag group of misfits 
given voice.

In his fortress-palace, Koraz raged as his advisors as they struggled in 
vain to shut down the signal, to kill the flow of music from the speakers. 
All over the city, minds were wandering away from the humdrum of their 
time-clocked, precision-oriented lives, wondering at the words of a 
songwriter long dead, but whose spirit lived on. The seed of freedom had 
been planted. All that remained was to clear the weeds from the ground, and 
reap the harvest.

Out in the desert, the song came to its end, leaving the audience stirred 
to their souls.
Rat took the microphone from Gull and watched as Gull left the stage.
"He always did have a way with words," he remarked, almost casually. There 
were some small pockets of laughter, but most were anxious to hear what Rat 
had to say.
"I'm afraid I have no great speeches to deliver, no rhetoric to fire your 
hearts. All I have to say is this."
He strummed the guitar, slowly at first, picking up speed rapidly as the 
others came in behind him until the air was alive with aggressive thunder.
"I'm alive in the city,
and there's no easy way out.
The day's moving just to fast for me.

I need some time in the sunshine,
I've got to slow it right down,
Day's moving just to fast for me.

I live my life for the stars that shine,
people say it's just a waste of time.
Then they said I should beat my head,
that to me was just a day in bed.
I take my car and drive real far,
Not concerned about the way we are.

In my mind, my dreams are real,
Not even concerned about the way we feel,
Tonight,
I'm a rock and roll star
Tonight,
I'm a rock and roll star..."

The music pumped raw, in-your-face aggression, devil-may-care attitude. It 
snarled its message; be young, be alive, be who you are. Be free.

It ground to a halt in a fury of noise, leaving the audience screaming for 
more. Rat picked at the strings again, and the guitar soared.
"Her love rains down on me, easy as the breeze.
I listen to her breathing, it sounds like the waves on the sea.
I was thinking all about her, burning with rage and desire,
We were spinning into darkness, and the earth was on fire.

We could take it back,
We might take it back,
some day.

So I spy on her, I lie to her, I make promises I cannot keep.
Then I hear her laughter rising, rising from the deep.
And I make her prove her love for me, I take all that I can take,
I push it to the limit, to see if we will break.

We can take it back,
We will take it back,
Some day...

Now I have seen the warnings, screaming from all sides,
It's easy to ignore them, and God Knows I've tried,
All of this temptation, it turned my Faith to Lies,
Until I couldn't see the danger, or hear the rising tide.

We can take it back,
We will take it back,
Some day..."

The guitar faded, still ringing clearly above the throng. 
The music went on and on for hours as the sun sank below the horizon.

The impromptu concert was over, and the chill was beginning to set in. The 
mass of skysurfers had departed, heading back to their shacks in 
preparation for the coming storm. Rat was supervising the break-up of the 
stage and the speaker stacks, looking tired but exuberant. He noticed Kirk 
watching and wandered over, a slightly sly grin on his face.
"Did you know, Jim, that the loudest concert ever given hit one hundred and 
fifty decibels in the fifth row back? The Mod band The Who were responsible 
for that. Deafened a generation of fans. Now that was bloody loud. At One 
hundred and Eighty decibels, the human eardrum ruptures, and at two hundred 
and ten decibels human flesh turns to the consistency of whipped cream. But 
by then, you can't even hear the sound. I don't think we broke a hundred 
here, but we probably had a more desirable effect." He paused, watching the 
last of the speakers being manhandled away under the harsh-edged light of 
the searchlights. 
"Pretty good show." He nodded, finally, looking pleased with himself. "I 
dropped a note in the second chorus of Liberty Song, but I don't think 
anyone noticed." He examined his watch and bit his lip.
"About thirty minutes before it gets inhospitable, forty, forty-five before 
it gets lethal. I think the time to call it a night. While the storm's on, 
nothing moves out here, not even Koraz's fanatics. Once the wind dies down, 
we stage out for the assault. In our case the calm before the storm is a 
storm, which would give logic students the galaxy over an apoplectic fit."
Kirk glanced at Spock, who raised an eyebrow. As the searchlights began to 
shut down, the wash from the lights vanished, leaving them in darkness. 
Kirk looked up, and saw the stars above. Which one was the Enterprise, he 
wondered, feeling oddly cold.
"There's the junklight." Rat said, indicating with a barely-visible finger. 
"That's the asteroid cluster reflecting the sun's light back at us. Big 
Wednesday is definitely on its way."
"What exactly is Big Wednesday?" Kirk asked, wondering where the term had 
come from.
"Back on earth, when a big storm came in on the North Shore or any of the 
other surfer hangouts, they called it a Big day. The best - or just the 
most suicidal - of the surfers would go out and try to ride the waves. 
Killed an awful lot of good surfers who thought they were better than they 
were. Let's hope we're as good as we think we are, and not just suicidal."
The wind was already picking up. Rat looked round.
"Time to get indoors, I think. If you'd care to accompany me?"



--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

From netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!EU.net!peer-news.britain.eu.net!strath-cs!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Mon Jan 22 15:41:21 1996
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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (8/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:53:40 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter VIII

They made their way through the encampment with the wind building behind 
them. It had reached an almost unbearably shrill tone by the time they 
dived headlong into Gull's headquarters. The temperature was dropping like 
a stone.
"I think it could be safe to say that the weather's a mite inhospitable 
out." Rat said, looking oddly cheery. The walls of the shack were beginning 
to shake. "We've got about four hours of this before it calms down enough 
to get outside and underway by the light of the silvery stars."
There was a flurry of taps at the door, and Rat threw it open. Gan and 
Lliadril burst in, looking bedraggled. Rat slammed the door shut quickly, 
but already a small river of dust had swept in.
Gan picked at her hair.
"Ugh." She said, disgustedly. "Windswept hair sounds very romantic in 
novels, but its a bugger to comb out."
"I should imagine that Romantic Heroines had a small army of hairdressers 
on stand-by, considering how quickly they seem to recover from meeting 
their heroes on the moors." Lliadril shrugged indifferently. Gan grinned at 
him, and he made a small bow.
"Fine and dandy. Get the heating fired up; We'll be approaching zero within 
minutes." Rat said curtly. Lliadril nodded, suddenly serious again. 
"How cold does it get?" Kirk asked, feeling the chill beginning to set in.
"Around minus eight, minus nine centigrade, counting the wind chill factor 
in. Typical temperature once the wind drops off is about two or three. 
Nippy, but not really dangerous. But we're wasting good crash time here; 
grab as much sleep as you can. You're going to need it." With that, Rat sat 
down and closed his eyes. A few seconds later, he was snoring quietly.
"That's Rat." Lliadril shrugged, smiling. "If it wasn't physically 
impossible, he'd sleep standing up. I used to think he faked it, just for 
morale, but no-one could possibly make that disgusting noise consciously."
Rat opened one eye.
"I mastered the instant nap a long time ago. Now stop talking already. Some 
of us are trying to sleep." He closed his eye again and dropped off.
"Enviable skill," Lliadril whispered, "but noisy. Laugh, and the world 
laughs with you. Snore, and you sleep alone."
Kirk chuckled good-naturedly, before selecting his own patch of ground to 
snooze on.
A few moments later, the room was quiet. Only the buffeting of the wind, 
the low moan of the heater, and the occasional snore from Rat, disrupted 
the calm.

Kirk was woken by someone gently prodding at his ribs. He jumped, and 
rolled to his feet.
Rat was standing in the centre of the shack, carrying his shotgun loose in 
one hand. He had an unsightly red mark on his face where it had rested too 
long on the back of the chair, and the slightly crumpled look familiar the 
Galaxy over as the stigmata of those who sleep in their clothes, but his 
eyes were sharp.
"It's roll time. Our observation posts just reported in; We've got a dust 
column inbound. Looks like one of the Strider Teams is headed straight for 
us."

Ten minutes later, Gull and his lieutenants were leaning over the map and 
looking grim.
"As far as Charlie team can tell, There are two lighter Striders foraging 
ahead as scouts while a heavy unit follows behind. The lighter units are 
based on the PackHorse chassis, and the heavier looks to be one of the big 
Construction units. Armament unknown, but we can assume they're packing 
plenty, and a good deal of ammo. But, the *Good* news is that they don't 
seem to be mounting missilette pods, or any other self-guiding ordnance. I 
think they were expecting us to be caught off guard." Rat indicated three 
crosses, grouped in a V, on the map.
One of the lieutenants, a gangly youth with a bright green mohican that 
Kirk didn't recognise, shrugged.
"No way, Hosea." He said, working the action of his pistol. Rat glowered.
"Now you've got a live round in the pipe, Scarecrow." He barked grimly. 
"Clear the breech before you get over-excited and kill somebody."
Scarecrow, looking chastened, extricated the shell from the chamber and fed 
it back into the clip.
"Good. Now lets get this straight, people. I expect this message to go down 
the line unaltered. The time for fooling is past; we're on danger-time, and 
the situation ain't getting any better. We can't afford cockiness, 
overconfidence, or horsing around. Because every man we lose hurts our 
odds, and the house has stacked the deck on us this time out. Don't go 
thinking we hold all the aces; we are fresh out of high cards. The only way 
we can win is through bluffing until our backsides bleed. So stay sharp. I 
want all groups prepped for combat and in the air in twenty minutes. Go."
The surfers left the shack at double-time. Rat rolled his shoulders.
"Hells bells, Gull. This one's going to get nasty." He sighed.
Gull nodded. "And some. What's the weather like out?"
"Enough light to navigate by, enough chill to freeze the knackers off a 
brass monkey. Just a regular night out with the boys." Rat shrugged.
Gull nodded decisively. "Good enough. Let's roll."

"Is happiness Real
Or am I so jaded?
Can't see or feel,
Like a man been tainted.

Numbed by the effect - aware of the muse
Too in touch with myself - I light the fuse

I'm the Changingman - walking on shifting sands
I'm the Changingman - waiting for the bang
- as I light a bitter fuse

My time is all owed - only I still borrow
What I can't be today,
I can be tomorrow

The more I see, the more I know
The more I know,
The less I understand

I'm the Changingman - walking on shifting sands
I'm the Changingman - Waiting for the bang
I light the bitter fuse..."
The guitars wailed as the flying-vee formation of Skysurfers swept through 
an arc and headed south-by-south-east. Kirk was acutely aware that the 
normal level of banter was subdued. Under crash-helmets, the faces of the 
surfers were grim.
"Gull to all birdboys. Kill your lights and turn with my heading." He swung 
the board a little to his left, and the others formed up behind him. 
Without the torches and headlamps, only the faint light from the stars gave 
any illumination. The other surfers were visible as faint shadows against 
the paler sky above.
"Scarecrow, Lliadril, Peel off and circle round to the left. Gan, Rat, you 
take the right. Pincer units, make your height one-fifty. Everybody else, 
go to ground. Chekov, Kirk, Spock - to me."
The mass of surfers broke into three separate units and moved apart. Kirk 
threaded his way through the surfers to Gull's board, with Chekov and Spock 
tailing in his wake.
"Time to run that little gimmick you suggested." Gull said, keeping his 
voice low. He handed Kirk a pair of binoculars.
The view through the binoculars showed a striding figure heading towards 
them. When Kirk's eyes sorted out the perspective, he whistled quietly.
"He's a big fucker, isn't he?" Gull whispered. Kirk nodded, passing the 
binoculars to Chekov.
"Cossack's got his lights out." Chekov whispered. "I think he knows we're 
here. What's he carrying?"
Gull took the binoculars back and peered through them.
"Looks like a pair of heavy machine-guns on the left arm, six-inch cannon 
on his right. Mortar or grenade tubes on the shoulders, I can't really 
tell."
The radio hissed.
"In position." Rat reported. Gull, still looking through the binoculars, 
stiffened.
"He shifted his aim. He's listening in on our radios." He said, urgently.
Kirk turned to Spock.
"Rig the communicator to broadcast an overload pulse on the surfer's 
frequency. Gull, tell your people to turn their sets off and not turn them 
back on until you give a signal." Kirk whispered.
Gull nodded. "Gotcha. All birdboys, radios off. Go when a flare is fired."
The stalking Strider shifted his aim again, homing on Gull's transmitter.
"Ready, Spock?" Kirk asked.
"Sir." Spock nodded.
"Hold on... *Now*."
The communicator whined, and the Strider staggered. Gull fired a flare into 
the sky, and the three groups of Surfers burst into life. They converged on 
the stumbling Strider like a flock of enraged bats, battering the cockpit 
of the machine with a volley of small arms fire. Kirk saw a figure drop 
from his board, landing feet first on the roof of the cockpit and grabbing 
on to the lock-wheel.
"Nice one!" Gull clenched his fist. The Strider was flailing around, now, 
trying to swat at the flurrying surfers. In the light of the flare, Kirk 
saw that it was Rat struggling with the lock-wheel of the cockpit, 
wrenching it open. The hatch opened suddenly and Rat dived inside. There 
was a sharp crackle of pistol fire, and the Strider ground to a halt, 
standing frozen like a bizarre statue. The surfers backed off. Rat stuck 
his head out of the cockpit and waved.
"Radios on, everyone!" Gull yelled. The call was carried through the ranks.
"Rat here. The Strider pilot's out of it. Caz reports."
"Marka's ricked his ankle." Scarecrow reported, after a pause.
"Nothing this side." Gan added.
"Are you seriously telling me we just took out a Strider-" Gull began
"Didn't lose a man, Gull! Not one!" Gan yelled, exuberantly.
"Oh, YEARSSS!" Scarecrow howled. The radios came alive with whoops of 
victory.
"Can it!" Gull called. "Nice one, everybody, but stay sharp. We've still 
got two live targets in our area."
"Gull, Kirk - get up here." Rat said. "I've got an idea."

"You're nuts, you know that?" Gull said, grinning from ear to ear.
"The fact is, we have a one-hundred percent intact Strider at our command. 
Primed, loaded and ready. I'm all for using it."
"Who's going to run it, though?" Kirk asked.
Chekov floated up to them, looking serious.
"I'll give it a shot." He said, determinedly. "I'm no use on one of these 
things anyway." He indicated his board.
"Why ask why?" Rat grinned back. "Come on in, and I'll give you the crash-
course debrief."
Chekov lowered himself into the cockpit, and helped Rat pull the dead pilot 
from his straps. They pushed the body over the edge and turned back.
"Okay-" Rat began, but Chekov was shushed him with a wave of his hand.
He ran his eye over the controls and strapped in. 
"Throttle here... rudder pedals for steering... firing controls there... 
This the eject switch?" He asked. Rat nodded, clearly impressed. 
"Alright... This headset must rotate the torso, from head movements... That 
looks like a damage readout to me... that's the radar... and that's the 
radio." He flicked a switch and the radio fizzed. "Broken. Total overload. 
Must have sounded like Hell's very own choir in here when it went. Good 
work, Mr. Spock." He loosened his collar and finished tightening up the 
straps. "Get everyone clear, and I'll give it a test-run."
Rat nodded. "Okay everyone, back up." He snapped crisply into his 
microphone before hauling himself out of the cramped cockpit. He gave 
Chekov the thumbs-up before closing the hatch and sealing it shut.

The Strider began to inch forward, turning in a slow figure-eight. The arms 
flexed and pointed skywards. The machine-guns flared, a throaty bellow even 
a hundred meters away.
"I think I've got the hang of it." Chekov reported over his surfer radio.
"I'm inclined to agree." Rat signalled back.
"Form up behind Mr. Chekov. We're moving out, stat." Gull ordered.
The surfers formed into a three-tiered stack behind the Strider as it 
strode forward. 
"Well, Jim, It's first blood to us. Good work." Gull smiled.
"Let's not get cocky." Rat cautioned. "There's a lot still to be done 
before we can clap ourselves on the back and put our feet up."
Kirk nodded.
"I've got two traces on the radar, bearing two-five-four. Coming in fast 
from our right." Chekov reported, abruptly.
"Swing round to intercept, everyone. We have to assume that what we pulled 
last time won't work again. Chekov, try to hit them in the head with your 
first shots. Just remember they'll be trying the same, and they've more 
experience than you. Don't take any unnecessary risks." Gull barked out.
"Pincers, move out." Rat added. The group split again, the two pincer 
groups swinging wide to attack from the sides.



--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (9/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:53:58 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Lines: 220
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter IX

The two striding Striders showed up clear in the steadily growing light. 
One of the huge machines - a twin to Chekov's own - was pounding ahead of 
the other, which lumbered behind. The larger, slower machine bristled with 
ordnance, the gun muzzles like yawning black chasms. Flares went up, 
bathing the scene with a ruddy orange glow. Bare seconds after the first 
flare burst overhead, A concussion - more felt that heard - nearly swept 
Kirk from his board. Before his ears had stopped ringing, A second, louder 
blast nearly deafened him. The twin of Chekov's machine was limping, flames 
still licking around its leg from the blast of Chekov's six-inch cannon. 
Another blast shook the earth; Far to his left, a heavy shell cratered the 
landscape. The rattle of small-arms fire from the dodging surfers was an 
ever-present undertone to the cacophony of war. Kirk cut on a low, 
screaming path past the stumbling Strider, swinging perilously close to the 
swatting arm to land a pair of shots on the exposed innards of the 
machine's leg, where Chekov's shell had stripped away the armour plating. 
Rat came in from the other side, teeth set in a rictus. A grenade tumbled 
through the air between him and the machine, before erupting in a shower of 
red-hot shards. There was a metallic groan and the leg of the machine 
buckled, sending the huge pillar of metal tumbling. It hit the ground still 
failing for balance. A dozen surfers flung themselves at the cockpit of the 
machine, guns blazing. Rat's warning yell had barely cleared his throat 
before the machine burst open, spewing flame from every joint. Then, with 
an almighty roar that threw Kirk backwards, reeling for balance, the 
ammunition in the machine cooked off. The machine, and the surfers smashing 
fanatically at the cockpit glass, ceased to be. In their place, the ground 
opened up, as if affronted by this cataclysm of fire, and swallowed the 
fireball whole. For a moment, there was a shocked silence. The whistle of a 
falling shell shook Kirk from his stunned reverie and sent him scrambling 
from the area. Behind him, the shell tore the ground apart.
Chekov's Strider was still forging ahead, thumping bodily down the direct 
line of the other Strider's cannons. Both his arms were raised, like some 
gargantuan metal zombie with its wrist wreathed in fire. The sound of 
ricochets was searing.
Rat was screaming abuse now, and the Surfers were co-ordinating their 
sweeps, rushing in from alternate sides, battering the cockpit with 
everything to hand.
"One in the pipe!" Chekov howled, and Rat nearly burst a blood vessel with 
his roar of "Everybody CLEAR!"
The other Strider was shaking itself, as if trying to clear its head. The 
echoes of the impacting bullets would be hellish in the close confines of 
the cockpit, Kirk realised. Then Chekov's six-inch cannon spoke again, 
accompanied by the insistent /whumpfff/ of the mortar tubes on the 
shoulders firing. The chain of explosions nearly blinded and deafened him. 
When he could see again, by the hellish light of the flares above, he saw 
that the opposing Strider was listing badly to its left, sparks racing over 
the tattered armour of its torso. The cockpit's faceplate was cracked and 
blackened with soot. The twin machineguns roared, and the faceplate burst 
open under the hail of hot metal. Something - probably the ejection pack - 
blew out, and the monstrous machine toppled, its head wreathed in flame.

For a moment, Kirk waited for the inevitable explosion. But none came. Rat, 
who had bailed into the dust when the head had exploded, poked his head up 
cautiously.
"Must have been carrying some sort of internal fire suppresser. I don't 
think she's going to blow on us. Small mercies, heh? Caz reports."
"Ramjet, Buzzer, Icycalm and Driver were by that thing when it went." 
Scarecrow reported, sounding choked.
"We lost T-phon." Gan reported. Kirk remembered the name, from that muddied 
flight back to the encampment, what felt like years ago.
"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, FUCK! EVERYBODY FUCKING LISTEN UP! We just lost *five* 
good people! We were lucky not to lose the fucking lot of you! Keep it 
under control, Because *I'm* sure as hell not going to scrape you off the 
fucking landscape! Everyone got that? GOOD! Now form up!" Rat's face was 
thunderous. He covered the bead microphone in front of his mouth with a 
hand and turned to Kirk. "Moses, what's happening to us. This is falling 
apart."
Kirk shook his head.
"Considering the odds, we were lucky. It doesn't make it any easier, but 
we've got to move on."
Rat shrugged. "Act now, grieve later, right?" He didn't sound very 
convinced.
Kirk nodded, sadly. "Grief passes. Right now, you'd probably give your life 
to have them back. But right now you have a job to do. It sounds cold, but 
its just /the way things are/. I found out - a long time ago - that 
allowing yourself to doubt, to falter, in a moment of crisis costs you too 
much. It cost me the life of two dear friends. You just have to do what you 
have to, and worry about the consequences later." He paused, remembering 
the grave on the light-years distant planet, intended for him, that now 
held the bodies of his friends. That moment might have changed him utterly, 
if he had allowed it to. 
"It's easy to back off from making a decision." He finished. "Or to be 
bitter about it afterwards, to look back and wonder if maybe, if you'd done 
something different, things would be better. It takes courage to face it, 
to fight on." Sudek, he realised, had made the wrong choice at that crucial 
moment. To raise your fist and swear ‘An eye for an eye' was an 
uncomfortably seductive route. To turn the other cheek took *guts*.

The mood of the group was subdued as they forged towards the city. Even the 
music in the background was subdued and mournful. The singer's voice echoed 
over the radio, accompanied by the slow, haunting notes of an organ.
"There's no time for us.
There's no place for us.
What is this thing that fills our dreams, 
then slips away from us?

Who wants 
to live 
forever?

Who wants 
to live 
forever?

There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us.
This world has only one sweet moment 
set aside for us.

Who wants 
to live 
forever?

Who wants 
to live 
forever?

Who dares to love forever?

All love must die."

A guitar's strings sang a soaring melody, lifting the tone slightly, 
sounding stronger.

"You've touched my tears
With your lips
You've touched my world 
with your fingertips

And we can have forever
And we can /love/ forever

Forever is our today...

Who wants 
to live 
forever?

Who wants 
to live
Forever?

Forever is our today

Who is forever anyway?"

The music slowed to a halt, leaving a profound silence in its wake. For a 
moment, the calm held, but the sharp crackle of Chekov's radio broke the 
moment.
"Three blips, inbound. Dopplered at seventy kph, on an intercept course. 
Looks like we'll meet them just after we cross that dust basin."
"Everybody slow up. Get that communicator trap set up. And everybody, keep 
a handle on it. Pincers, break for cover around the basin rim. Chekov, go 
hull-down behind that ridge, give yourself some protection. The odds are 
going up."
Kirk and Spock slalomed through the decelerating pack, clearing the front 
of the group a few moments later. Kirk tossed his communicator to Spock, 
slowing down and concentrating on the sounds around him. He heard the 
distant thud of the Striders before long, and switched his attention to 
Spock. Down on the basin floor, Spock finished setting the communicator and 
put it down neatly on the ground. The low whine of the board's engine 
reached Kirk as Spock turned in a wide semicircle and flew back to him.
Without a word, they flitted back to the hiding surfers.
Gull sidled over to Kirk.
"All set?" he whispered.
Kirk nodded. At that moment, a piercing beam of hot tungsten light broke 
over the crater rim. Out of the false dawn, another Strider came pounding 
over the rim, swinging its weapons left and right, searching for a target. 
For a moment, it held position at the rim, then signalled with a broad 
sweep of its arm. Two more machines strode over the rim, watching the sides 
of the crater.
"Not yet..." Gull hissed, watching through the binoculars. The other 
Strider, still standing on the crater rim, suddenly came to a decision. It 
strode after its two companions, kicking up vast gouts of dust as it 
proceeded down the slope.
"Just a little longer..." Gull whispered through clenched teeth.
The striders formed up into a triangle, covering the sides.
"They know that to attack them, we'd have to outline ourselves against the 
sky. They're trying to force us into a poor attacking position." Gull 
hissed. "Just a moment longer... let them get edgy... NOW."
Spock flipped open his own communicator. Suddenly, the ground beneath them 
began to rumble. The air itself seemed to be shaking. Down in the crater, 
the three machines were losing their footing, sinking into the dust.
"GO!" Gull yelled, and the surfers burst over the rim, blasting at the 
striders with everything they could bring to bear. They swept over and past 
the machines, and Chekov fired the six-inch cannon. One Strider burst open 
as the shell struck, its ammunition adding to the conflagration. Another 
machine, buffeted by the shockwave, tumbled into the dust. Another 
choreographed sweep of Surfers planted grenades across its back, but at a 
cost. The one Strider still standing managed to fire its machineguns, and 
the stream of metal cut three surfers down in mid air. Then Chekov's guns 
spoke again, and the last machine tumbled to the ground, snapping its legs 
with a screech of agonised metal. A flurry of small-arms fire decimated the 
cockpit, and the great machine fell silent.
"Three more blips! Coming in from the West! Everybody lock and load!" 
Chekov yelled, and Gull swore.
"Right pincer, break for cover on the Southern crater wall! Everyone reload 
- it may be the last chance you get." Rat barked out.
Kirk began fishing shells out of his bandolier, loading his shotgun again. 
The thudding of the approaching Striders was already audible.
"They must have been waiting in a radar shadow somewhere." Gull shook his 
head. "We're really in it now."
"They're coming through the canyon system to our Right. If we can box them 
in while they're still in there, we can hold the high ground." Rat 
reported, crisply.
"Do it." Gull snapped. "Everybody bear 269. Pin ‘em down and blow ‘em up."
The surfers blasted into the air in waves, swinging sharply onto Gull's 
heading. Chekov lumbered his machine up to full speed, The arms of the 
machine swinging up. The sound of the breech slamming closed on a six-inch 
round echoed across the cratered plain.



--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

From netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!peer-news.britain.eu.net!strath-cs!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Mon Jan 22 15:41:27 1996
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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (10/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:54:22 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter X

The central group nosed down into the canyon system as the pincer-groups 
swung out and upwards along the sides. Chekov's Strider entered the canyon 
on their heels, pounding on.
"Two hundred meters and closing. There's a bottleneck coming up - increase 
speed. If we can hold them there, we can force a one-on-one engagement." 
Rat reported from above. The surfers surged forward, while Chekov squeezed 
the Strider's throttle even tighter, trying to coax just a little more 
power from the already straining machine.
"That bottleneck's too wide. Chekov, close it up, stat."
"Fire in the hold!" Rat yelled, and Chekov let rip with the thunder of his 
cannon. The side of the canyon burst into a shower of tumbling rock. One of  
the Strider pilots, more eager than his colleagues, tried to come to a halt 
but failed, stumbling wildly into the maelstrom of falling boulders. A 
wild, abortive attempt to fire his guns - perhaps a last gesture of 
defiance - succeeded only in him catching himself in a wild flurry of 
ricochets. A spark caught a fuel line and the machine flailed to a halt, 
burning like the sun.
"Clear out, fast!" Gull yelled, and the surfers took to their heels. Behind 
them, the machine ripped itself apart as the ammunition cooked off, filling 
the narrow canyon with a surging fireball. Kirk felt the fire biting across 
his back, and angled up and out of the canyon. Chekov's Strider hurled 
itself out of the canyon mouth just ahead of the flames, twisting sharply 
to avoid the gout of flame that belched from the canyon. The fire had 
barely begun to die before the radio's chatter filled their ears, orders 
and casualty reports filling the airwaves.
"The two other Striders are singed, but they're trying to climb out. Button 
your britches, gentlemen, and shake the lead out of your boots, because if 
we don't nail them now we might not get another chance." Rat cut across the 
back-and-forth curtly.
"Get charges on the canyon lip. Move it! We ain't got all night!"
Chekov's machine was already pounding up the slope.
"Charges down!"
"Don't bother setting the fuses. I'll get them." Chekov barked, and the 
surfers scattered.
Chekov levelled his Strider's arm, the maw of the six inch cannon seeking 
the roughly-packaged explosives at the edge of the cliff. Chekov saw the 
canvas sack in his sights, and closed the trigger with a snarl. The 
cannon's mouth spewed fire, and the cliff face crumpled. For a moment, 
driven by the shockwave, it hurtled upwards, fanning out into a crescent of 
debris. Then gravity, momentarily distracted by the blast, caught hold of 
the gargantuan blocks and hauled them down, raining slabs of stone on the 
Striders below. From inside the canyon, the clamour of ammunition bursting  
added to the grumble of falling rock.
"Scratch the city's Strider compliment." Rat said, grimly.
"Less one." Chekov added, lightly.
"How many have we lost so far?" Kirk asked, expecting the worst.
"Fifteen. Over a tenth of our force. Not good, even considering the odds." 
Gull responded, resting his head in his hands.
"Everyone, regroup at the crater. You get fifteen minutes downtime as of 
now, and then we're mobile again. Rest while you can." Rat ordered. The 
surfers took to the air in a disordered mass, without the energy to 
maintain any sort of formation. Rat coasted in, wiping dust from his 
goggles.
"On-the-spot analysis - None too good." He reported, peeling off the 
goggles and rubbing his eyes with grubby fingers.
"We're at breakpoint number one. From here on in, things get harder." Gull 
said.
Kirk scratched behind his ear. His fingers came away bloodied. Rat grabbed 
Kirk's head unceremoniously and tipped it, trying to see what the problem 
was.
"Looks like you clipped a bit of shrapnel there. The cut's not deep and 
there's nothing in it, but get Gan to bandage it for you anyway. Could get 
infected." He announced after a moment's contemplation.
Kirk shrugged.
"I guess I missed the impact, what with all the noise going on."
Rat nodded.
"I remember hearing that someone actually ran a marathon on a broken leg, 
once. They just didn't realise they'd injured themselves. I don't know how; 
last time I broke a bone, it hurt like hell."
A burst of music cut their conversation short. 
"It's been a hard day's night,
And I've been working like a dog.
It's been a hard day's night,
I should be sleeping like a log.

But when I get home to you
I know the things that you do
will make me feel alright
It's been a hard day's night..."
"Come on," Gull said, while the guitars played, "Let's get our downtime 
before the clock catches up with us."

They sat on the crater rim and rested, feeling the chill beginning to set 
in. Gan applied a field-dressing to Kirk's cut without a word, looking 
tired and bruised. He nodded his thanks, feeling too exhausted to make 
conversation. She drifted away, wandering over to a small group of surfers 
sitting by Chekov's crouching Strider, warming themselves on the machine's 
slowly cooling armour. 
Gull and Rat were poring over the map again, talking animatedly. A few 
phrases floated to him on the breeze. "... Cut through here... Good ambush 
point there... Concentrate the assault on that point..."
He closed his eyes, briefly. Everyone was dangerously close to 
overstretching themselves. Right now, he could do with a pot of strong 
black coffee and a couple of hours of sleep, but both were luxuries well 
out of his reach for the moment. Next time he beamed down anywhere, he'd 
make sure he carried a thermos of coffee with him.
Gull and Rat reached a decision, and Rat's voice came over the radio.
"Alright, people, I'm afraid that's our lot. Move out."
Across the crater, Surfers mounted their boards again. As the hand-lamps 
and headlights came on, needles of light pushed back the shadows, 
concentrating the night around them. The lights were dazzling, seeming 
twice as bright for the darkness they pierced.
"Form up." Gull said, without preamble. The surfers formed into their 
three-tiered stack behind Chekov's lumbering machine.
Gull drifted across to Kirk as they climbed up the crater rim.
"It's about three hours to Lansom Point. We'll cut across about a third of 
the way from Lansom point to the next point station - Keggen, I think. 
We'll have to take it low and slow to avoid tripping their radar; they have 
ground-to-air missiles and napalm shells in their cannon, ready to fire. 
Chekov will circle to the other side, using the dunes as cover. With any 
luck, he can be through before the Napalm cannon gets a proper bearing. The 
ground-to-air missiles won't be able to lock onto him, we hope."
Kirk yawned.
"How long until dawn breaks and the storm starts?"
"We're in the summer season, technically. The night is about two standard 
days long. It's been dark for twenty-eight standard hours, now. A day and a 
bit. Plus three, to reach Lansom Point, plus one to circumnavigate. Add two 
for the convoy hassle and another one to reach the city. So... we'll have 
less than twelve hours to spare, in order to get our people out of the camp 
and into the city, and the city locked down, before the storms come. Unless 
we can score a quick victory at the city, we'll be cutting it mighty fine."
Music was filtering over the radios, a mean wailing sound.
"Hey there sugar, where ya gonna go?
I'm going downtown, daddy-oh.
What ya gonna do when you get there, girl?
I'm gonna get me stuff fill a God-shaped hole
And hey mister prophet, what ya gonna do?
I'm going downtown for some bad juju.
Are ya going downtown too Mister Gigolo?
Well damn right I am, Daddy-oh.

There is a light that shines
over this city,
Tonight.
There is a light that shines
over this city,
Tonight.

Let it shine...

Oh, Mister High-roller where ya gonna go?
Well real high roller gonna roll real low.
Mister killer man what ya gonna do?
Well me ‘n mister death going downtown too.
ain't one god-fearin' citizen about
There all holed up and they ain't coming out.
What about the preacher to forgive us our sins?
He's a carrion crow with blood on his hands.
Mister politician can you lend a hand?
He's too busy sucking up the guts of this town.
What about God and this Armageddon?
He's all washed out and down in hell.

And they know where to run,
and they know where to go.

And they know where to run,
and they know where to go.

And they know where to run,
and they know where to go.

They look to the skies, daddy-oh.

There is a light that shines
over this city,
Tonight.
There is a light that shines
over this city,
Tonight,
There is a light.

What're all the little kids gonna do?
They're all standing around
What're the kids gonna do?
They're gonna look to the skies, Daddy-oh."

Around them, the cold sands, grey in the subdued light of the stars, rolled 
by. Somewhere among the ranks, a lone surfer began to whistle. Another 
voice took up the song.
"We're in a road-movie to Berlin,
Can't drive out, the way we drove in."
Other voices picked up the words, weaving a chord around the melody.
"So sneak out this glass of Bourbon
And we'll go on."
Now the whole of the group were singing along.
"We were once so close to heaven,
Peter came out, and gave us medals,
declaring us the nicest of the Dead.

Time won't find the loss,
It'll sweep up our skeleton Bones.
So take the wheel and I will take the pedals...

We're in a road-movie to Berlin,
Can't drive out, the way we drove in.
So sneak out this glass of Bourbon,
and we'll go home..."

"Enough with the mournful, already!" Scarecrow yelled, and a sprightly, 
light-hearted strumming broke over the airwaves.
"No-one told you life was gonna be this way:
Your jobs a joke, you're broke, you're love-life's D.O.A.,
It's like you're always stuck in second gear,
But when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year-

I'll be there for you,
When the rain starts to fall.
I'll be there for you,
‘Cause I been there before.
I'll be there for you,
‘Cause you're there for me too...

Your still in bed at ten, Supposed to work at eight,
You've burned your breakfast so far, things are going great
Your mother warned you there'd be days like these,
But what she didn't tell you was when the world has brought you down onto 
your knees, that-

I'll be there for you,
When the rain starts to fall
I'll be there for you,
‘Cause I been there before
I'll be there for you,
‘Cause you're there for me too..."
"Cut the music." Chekov called, suddenly. The music cut off abruptly.
"I've got something on the radar, right at the limits of the scope. 
Dopplered at five kph - moving crabwise to our path, heading for a small 
hill."
"Could be a mobile artillery unit. One of our targets must have made a 
location report on us. Rat, take Charlie team ahead and get me a sitrep 
fast. No heroism, please. Just get me a report." Gull commanded. Rat waved 
a hand in acknowledgement and peeled away from the pack, accelerating all 
the while. Five other surfers - Charlie team, Kirk assumed - followed him.
"Everybody else, stop here. Consider yourself lucky; take the downtime 
while its available. Silence your radios - no chatter. Gull out."


--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

From netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!peer-news.britain.eu.net!strath-cs!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Mon Jan 22 15:41:30 1996
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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (11/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:54:41 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter XI

Rat heard the order as he streamed away, and signalled with his free hand 
to the rest of Charlie team to close up formation.
"Hand signals only from now on." He called when they were close enough to 
hear him. Each returned a thumbs-up.

Clinging to the ground, the surfers piled on the power and made it to the 
hill in less than ten minutes. Dismounted from their boards, they wriggled 
up to the crest of a dune, peering cautiously over the horizon.
In the faint starlight, the squat, insect-like shape of a field unit showed 
faintly against the ground.
Rat turned to Dogie and signed (analysis?)
Dogie shrugged and signed back (missile unit. deep shit.)
(you get back to gull,) Rat signalled. (rest of you with me.)
Dogie signed back frantically. (gull said-)
Rat cut him off with a curt gesture. (they're still setting up. we can take 
them. swing round behind them. knives only. twenty metre spread. and no 
sound.)
The rest of Charlie team nodded. Dogie signed (crazy fucker!) animatedly 
and scrambled back to his board. Rat unsheathed his knife and threw it 
experimentally from hand to hand, getting used to the balance of the metal. 
The rest of Charlie team followed suit.
Rat viciously silenced the doubts in his mind as he scuttled around the 
dunes, barely aware of the rest of Charlie team fanned out behind him. They 
swept round the hill in a wide orbit, and surged up the slope without a 
pause or a sound. Rat saw the sentry, standing blankly at attention, and 
dived on him. The man tried to turn, stiff-limbed like a zombie. Rat's 
knife slid across the man's throat, and he dropped like a puppet with his 
strings cut. Another damp gurgle announced that another knife had found its 
mark, somewhere to his left. They surged on, leaving the bodies where they 
lay. Over to his right, a short-lived shout cut off sharply. Rat swore and 
pulled his pistol, flicking the safety off. Another sentry turned toward 
him, pivoting on one heel to bring his rifle to bear on the charging 
figure, but Rat squeezed off two rounds /en passant/ as he passed the man. 
More gunfire came from his left, the unmistakable rhythm of a Mozambique 
triple-tap pattern; Two in the heart, one in the head. Another sentry, over 
to his left, dropped before he could aim at him, taken out by an observant 
flanker. He put a bullet into the body, just to be sure. 

He reached the missile pod a moment later, and found himself facing an 
unarmed man. 
"Don't even think about it." He snapped, as the man's hand twitched towards 
his holster. The man paused, but his hand didn't move from his side.
"Hands on your head." Rat barked. The man's gaze flickered over Rat's 
shoulder, and Rat whirled round. The ground behind him was empty, and he 
dived instinctively. A flurry of shots missed him by a narrow margin, and 
he cursed his stupidity at falling for the bluff as he twisted aside, 
coming up with his gun ready. An economical single shot dropped the man to 
the dust before he could put a bullet into Rat, and Rat put up the safety 
on his pistol, breathing easier. He examined the controls of the machine 
for a moment, checking for booby-traps. Satisfied, he turned on his radio 
and called the others.
"Clear." He reported. The others responded rapidly.
"Gull, this is Rat. We've taken it out." He signalled.
"Rat. Next time do me a favour and do what I ask. But good work, anyhow."
"Noted. Move everyone up here. It's time for another change of plan."

"We can set this thing to automatic fire. With a little bit of maths, we 
can drop missiles on Lansom Point. That ought to distract them enough to 
make it easier to circumnavigate the fortress. But whatever we're going to 
do, we have to do it quickly. By approximation only, we've not got a big 
window to ambush the resupply convoy before it passes into the firezone 
around the Point."
"Right. Mr. Spock, if you'd be so kind to help Rat out setting that up. 
Meanwhile, Everybody else get in the air and move out. Staggered flight 
pattern. Go."
Rat indicated a panel on the machine for Spock to use and got to work on 
his own. Kirk gave an ‘after you' wave of his hands to Gull, who nodded.
"Stay below, behind and to the right of me. If they can get anything to 
bear on us, we're hoping that by staying spread out we can minimise the 
damage. Keep on your toes; this whole thing'll be for nothing if we both 
get taken out."
Kirk nodded back. Gull squeezed on the throttle and lifted clear. Kirk 
followed suit, leaving Rat and Spock talking rapidly in clipped, jargon-
clogged sentences.

Less than five minutes later, the hill behind them lit up with the staccato 
flashes of launching missiles. A second later, the distant rumble of rocket 
engines reached them, like far-off thunder. Two black specks, outlined 
against the pulsing red light, were flying towards them. The specks gained 
ground on him, and he felt an odd rush of relief when they were close 
enough to identify positively as Spock and Gull. The war unfolding around 
his ears made him nervous for the lives of his friends.

Friends?

He realised without the need for a great deal of thought that this 
conflict, this war, had given him a camaraderie with these peculiar rebels 
that, under normal circumstances, would have been buried under a diplomatic 
mask. After a few more moments of soul-searching, he reached the conclusion 
that this was not, in any way, a bad or regrettable thing. He /liked/ these 
people. 

They continued on their route, leaving the missile pod's fires behind them. 
When the low thunder of the engines ceased, Kirk looked back. The little 
hill, now far behind them, was dark and silent.
"Out of ammo." Gull said, tersely. "Now we really hit the crunch."
It was nearly three minutes before the first explosion came, far to their 
right.
"They're trying to get their range. Everybody scatter." Rat snapped. The 
spiral pattern broke apart into random shards, sliding this way and that. 
Another shell fell closer to them, and the shockwaves rocked Kirk's board.
"This is no time to drag your feet, gentlemen." Rat said, thin-lipped. 
"Pour on the power. I want to see you burn holes in the air."
Kirk squeezed down on the hand throttle of his board, crouching low. 
Another shell burst, behind and to the right. The gunnery officer was none 
too sharp, whoever he was. Napalm was burning where the shell had landed, 
but everyone was clear.

By now, order had given way to pack-mentality chaos. Every single surfer 
had his eyes locked on the moon-silvered patch of sand ahead that marked 
the end of their trip through the fire-zone. Knuckles were white as their 
fingers clamped down hard on the hand throttle, trying to squeeze a few 
extra meters per second out of the hell-red engine nozzles. More shells 
were falling, the low moan of the air parting announcing them a short 
moment before they struck. They seemed to be coming faster and closer than 
before. Either the gunnery crew were only just coming up to speed, or they 
were in the fire shadow of more than one cannon. Kirk dismissed those 
abstract worries in favour of the basic survival instincts. He was dimly 
aware of the others around him, but the vast majority of his attention was 
focused on the low plain of sand, growing larger at a tantalisingly slow 
rate. Another pair of shells cratered the ground to their left; the gunners 
had overcompensated. It would take them a few precious seconds to correct 
that error - more, if the group swung to the right. Kirk reflected, even as 
he swung the nose of his board right, that this felt rather like a charge 
of the Light Brigade, with the exception that the infamously one-sided 
battle of the Crimean War hadn't lasted one tenth of the time they'd 
clocked so far.

The rest of the pack were swinging with his trajectory, grimly jubilant 
now. The unsullied sands were only a few more seconds away, now, the 
unmarked ‘V' of sand stretching ahead, widening away from the firezone cast 
by the fortresses. When they burst out onto that smooth plain, the whoops 
of jubilation were deafening. The surfers peeled off, circling in the air, 
directing a flow of cat-calls and robust Anglo-Saxon at the distant metal 
bubble of the Point Station, accompanied with hand-gestures for the sake of 
the hard of hearing. Gull cut sharply across the banter with a curt 
command.
"Can it! Chekov, you okay?"
"Lost a little armour, but otherwise I'm clean as a whistle. Couple of 
amber lights on the damage readout; took some shrapnel in one of the hip 
motors, lost a few auxiliary systems, but nothing major."
"Get me a radar bearing on anything inbound." Gull responded.
"Three blips, on a straight-line course. Dopplered at twenty kph."
"Sounds like our convoy. Plot me an intercept course."
Numbers flew back and forth across the hissing radio, and Gull lead off at 
a searing pace.
"Rat - Gan - Scarecrow - Lliadril - form up groups and peel off, three 
hundred meters on a parallel course. If they're running true to form, the 
convoy will be heavy tracked vehicles, so taking out the lead vehicle is no 
guarantee of success. They could just roll right over it. Hit hard, fast 
and low. Immobilise, strip the defences, and raid. Go."

The clanking tracks of the bullish, tank-like vehicles kicked up short 
puffs of dust as they rolled over the badly-maintained road. The low-slung 
body of the armoured crawler hugged the road, its sodium-vapour lights 
staring, bug-eyed, down the trail.
"Three heavy land-trains. And I'll stake my reputation on them being loaded 
to the gills with everything from guns and ammo to banana yoghurt." There 
was a small but significant pause before someone coughed politely.
"Scarecrow, you don't *have* a reputation." Rat pointed out, dryly.
There was some muted laughter.
"Cut the chatter. Everybody load. Chekov - shake them up."
The strider's six-inch cannon flared, and the lead vehicle's cabin 
blossomed into flame. The left track splintered apart with a high-pitched 
shriek, and the land-train swerved involuntarily to the left. Grenades 
arced high into the air and pattered to the ground like hailstones. The 
second land-train rocked as the grenades blew beneath it, rolling drunkenly 
up on one track. The roar of Chekov's heavy machineguns added to the 
thunder, and the land-train's belly showered sparks in every direction. 
Oily smoke and steam were pouring from fractured pipes. The third land-
train swerved aside, guns chattering from turrets and slits in the armour. 
Bullets kicked dust from the sand, sending Surfers skywards like a flock of 
dark birds. Rat dived, corkscrewing wildly, towards the rumbling tracks. 
Even amid the gunfire, Kirk heard the pin of the grenade tinkle away. Rat 
pulled up vertically, inches from the towering side of the land-train. A 
second later, the grenade burst open the clanking track, and the land-train 
juddered to a halt, sparks flying from the ground as the locked tracks 
skidded along.
"Left flank, first one; centre group, second, Right flank third. Take out 
those gunners!"
The three groups of surfers converged on their targets, whooping battle 
cries into the cool night air. The random crackle of small-arms underscored 
the cries like demon percussion, throwing pale flashes of light against the 
behemoth sides of the land-trains as tracer rounds drew lines of phosphor 
across the dark canvas of the night.

In a moment, the land-trains guns fell silent, and the battered machines 
stood lifeless, stark against the steadily-lightening sky.
"Take it easy, everyone. Lliadril, Gan, Rat - you know the drill." Gull 
sounded over his radio. He turned to Kirk, covering the microphone with his 
hand.
"The access doors could be booby trapped, or there could be a platoon of 
troops inside, for all we know. Those three'll check ‘em out before we move 
in."
Kirk signalled to Spock, curtly. Spock nodded and flicked his microphone.
"Belay that order. Fall back to a safe distance." Spock said, calmly. He 
unhitched the tricorder from an improvised sling around his waist, flicked 
it on and examined the screen.
"All three doors are wired with explosive charges, to be fired if the door 
is opened without the proper authorisation. I am analysing the circuitry."
There was a tense pause.
"I believe I have identified the authorisation signal. I am transmitting 
the signal now."
Slowly, in unison, the rear doors of the land-trains ground open.
"Continuing analysis. I read no life-forms. No active circuitry." He 
returned the tricorder to the sling.
"I consider it safe to proceed, Sir." He reported, crisply.
"Lliadril, Gan and Rat - take your lieutenants and move in. Get me reports 
on the equipment inside. Meanwhile, Alpha, Beta and Charlie Teams - I want 
roving patrols at 120 degree separations, circular path, point-five radius. 
Go. Everyone else dig in and await further orders. Chekov, take your 
strider a klik or two along the road thataway." He indicated the direction 
the Land-train convoy had come from. "Find yourself some cover and watch 
the road. First sign of trouble, you holler for reinforcements." Gull 
snapped off his radio set and beckoned Kirk and Spock with him as he 
double-timed it towards the Land-train Rat was examining.



--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (12/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:54:59 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter XII

"Not a bad haul." Rat said, crouching on the tailgate of the massive cargo 
bay. "Personnel armour and light automatic weapons, ammunition, field 
rations, spare parts for Hovercraft."
"Nice." Gull said. "Break it down into bundles and start issuing it. Except 
the Hovercraft spares, obviously. Anyone taking an automatic leaves their 
main gun behind, in case we run out of automatics half-way through."
They jogged on to the next land train, Where Gan was swinging one-handed 
from a bar fixed to the roof. She saw them, waved, swung out and let go. In 
mid-air, she turned a somersault to land on her feet, grinning.
"Bonanza. Check these out." She scrambled up the shelving, grabbed a bulky 
box, and jumped down again.
The box was olive-green, with white stencilling on the top. The code meant 
nothing to Kirk.
"One multi-purpose missilette launcher, complete with Three HEAP, two HEAT, 
and Five HPS missiles. There are a dozen of these, plus spare ammo crates, 
a dozen miniguns, crates of mines, grenade launchers *and* grenades, and 
two field-stripped artillery pieces, four-barrel pom-poms with twelve 
crates of ammo, everything from starbursts and smoke rounds through to CBW 
warheads. All with instruction manuals."
"I feel like a kid in a candy store. Once the others have got their kit 
from Rat, split them into groups and distribute the heavier stuff. When the 
patrols come in, split Beta team into half and assign one half to Alpha and 
one half to Charlie. Then put them to work on getting those artillery 
pieces together. I can't wait to see what Lliadril's got for us."
They jogged briskly over to the third truck. Lliadril was standing, feet 
shoulder-width apart, hands clasped in the small of the back.
"Gentlemen." He said, with a dramatic flourish. "Feast your peepers." He 
flicked on a switch, and lights flicked on along the length of the land-
train's cavernous interior.
"Two - yes, *two* - half-track Armoured Personnel Carriers. Two inch 
hardened steel armour, topped with a composite layer including active 
plates. Caesium-vapour headlights, turret mounted searchlights. Complete 
radio hookups. And, alongside the searchlight, twin miniguns. Plus smoke 
and riot gas grenade tubes. Plus two hardened gun-ports, one each side." He 
said, indicating the squat vehicles with a flourish.
Gull smiled darkly. "We've got ourselves a war."

Kirk waited in line to receive his kit, keeping half an ear on the 
occasional reports from the roving teams. When he came up to the Tailgate 
of the land-train, Rat nodded briefly in recognition, before throwing him a 
bundle. Kirk caught it and tucked it under one arm before moving on. One of 
Rat's lieutenants took his shotgun and unclipped one of the light 
automatics from the wall, passing down a belt of ammunition clips as well.

The armour consisted of a waistcoat-like section for the torso, with clips 
dangling from the base to hold the two sections - roughly tubular, with 
elasticated sides to ensure a tight fit - in place over the calves. Below 
that were another pair of leg plates, for the shins. From the shoulders of 
the torso plates more sections attached, for the upper and lower arms. Then 
a pair of thin gloves with armoured backs. He was left with four teardrop-
shaped sections in two slightly different sizes, and was wondering where 
they went when he saw Rat pushing two of them into place, point-up, over 
his knees. He followed suit, and found that they latched into the calf and 
shin plates and kept the leg armour as a rigid system instead of allowing 
the two separate plates to go their separate ways. The slightly smaller 
pair of teardrop-shapes fitted over his elbows. He was suddenly acutely 
aware that he looked like a misguided night in medieval armour.
"Any minute now," he grinned at Spock, "You're going to have to stop me 
tilting at Windmills."
Spock's eyebrow twitched, but did not rise permanently.
"If I have correctly ascertained your meaning, sir, then a quotation from 
Henry V would have better served the occasion." Kirk laughed, then. When he 
had quietened down again, Spock continued as if nothing had happened. "Don 
Quixote, as a senile figure of fun, is not a positive image to associate 
with-" That did it. Kirk found himself leaning against the wrecked track of 
the land-train, struggling to regain his breath.
"Sorry, Spock." He sobered, finally. Spock was watching his face gravely. 
The eyebrow hitched just as Kirk began to worry, and Kirk - and several 
other surfers who had gathered to the noise - found themselves helpless 
with laughter again.
"Spock, don't tell me you've had a sense of humour hiding under there all 
those years."
"A sense of humour, Captain? No Vulcan has a ‘sense of humour'. It is a 
human trait." But the eyebrow was still just slightly raised, enough to key 
Kirk that Spock's comments had been intended to make them laugh - even if 
Spock claimed he did not understand humour, he could evidently identify 
what was likely to be considered funny.
Somewhere behind them, a thudding bassline had started up, accompanied by 
electronic screams. An woman's ethereal voice was slurring through some 
unrecognisable lyrics. Then the chorus exploded into rage.
"You Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe!
I had enough get off get off my bed!
You Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe!
I had enough get off get off my bed!
You Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe!
I had enough get off get off my bed!
Baby we don't love you baby we don't love you baby we don't love you YEAH!
Baby we don't love you baby we don't love you baby we don't love you YEAH!"
Kirk shot a glance at Rat.
Rat shrugged. "Hey," he grinned, "Not /every/ song has to mean something 
deep."
Kirk was about to nod agreement when Gull whistled, piercingly. Kirk 
glanced and Spock and then and Rat, and they moved off as one.

Gull was standing between the legs of Chekov's Strider, leaning on one of 
the machine's feet. He waved them over and straightened up.
"This is going too easily, and I don't like it. But we do now have a 
considerable array of firepower at our disposal. Right now, we're jerry-
rigging some missile packs into the Strider, reloading the weapons, and 
doing the best to fix it up that we can do out here in the field, as it 
were. Gan is splitting everyone we've got left - about eighty people - into 
new units, five-man teams with a heavy weapon between them. We can squeeze 
four units into the APCs, and once that's done, we're mobile. Chekov and 
the APCs take the lead. We have to punch through fast and hard, because 
otherwise we'll end up pinned down smack-bang in the middle of a firezone. 
We can't afford any protracted engagements, or pitched battles, because we 
are running out of time. You might have noticed the sky's getting lighter. 
It's do-or-die time."
The radio crackled.
"Troops at your command, Gull." Gan reported.
Gull hawked and spat into the dust.
"That's the call, gentlemen. Battle Stations."

The ragged convoy rolled out, the mammoth bipedal thunder of Chekov's 
Strider at the lead, the gritty diesel roars of the APCs grumbling in his 
wake, the whine of Steam turbines screaming still further back. And above 
it all, speakers shook with the strain as a bass guitar scored out distant 
thunder in musical form while an acoustic strummed.
"It's easier not to be brave
to measure these things by your grace
I sank into easy with you
Alone in the church by and by
I read to you here - save your eyes.
You'll need them, your boat is at sea.
The anchor is out, you've been swept away.
The greatest of teachers won't hesitate-"
Suddenly, an angry thrash of Electric guitar threw the words skywards, a 
scream of determination from the gates of hell.
"To leave you there by yourself, Chained to pain -
I Alone Love You,
I Alone Tempt you
I Alone Love You,
Fear is not the end,
I Alone Love You,
I Alone Tempt You,
I Alone Love You..."

The army of noise rolled onwards, waiting for the signal to add detonating 
shells to their battle-song.

They crested a hill and slowed to a halt, staring. Below them, lit up like 
a spiderweb of neon, the City lay close to the ground. At the edge of the 
city, lights twinkled - distant soldiers firing hopelessly at the outlines 
on the ridge.
Gull tapped his radio.
"This is it." He said, quietly.
Kirk could feel adrenaline tightening his throat.
"Lock and load. Move out." Rat said, his voice tense.
Gull rolled his head. 
"Let's go Kick some. FREEDOM!"
Like a tidal wave, the surfers thundered into motion, tearing the air apart 
with their battle-cry.
A guitar strummed. Then the music started, adding still more noise.
"We spent our money on Guitars,
Write songs about our broken hearts
we're shit city stars
And when we're done we still aware
That we're thought revolutionaires,
Aren't we cool?

Some say we pretend, we live in a dream-world
We don't think so.

Rule number one -
Pretend it's done -"
A split second of silence-
"Okay Now-

Chances are, we might be stars
And Live Forever!
Chances are, we might be stars
Be loved forever!
Chances are, we might be stars
And shine on down...
We fall down."
The wave of bodies and metal was surging forward, unstoppable. Five hundred 
meters to go - Two hundred -
The wave swept straight through the first wave of Koraz's defences as 
though they weren't even there. Suddenly they were in amongst the 
buildings, and Rat was shouting target assignments to the squads over the 
radio. Missiles laid snakeskin trails of smoke to antennas, while the 
yellow flashes of automatics cut power cables. A military transport skidded 
out onto a crossroads ahead, a missile pack on its back. Chekov's Strider 
fired once, and the transport went skywards in a dozen different pieces.
"Fan Out!" Rat called, as they reached the crossroads. The streets were 
narrower, and Kirk found himself packed in tight. Manoeuvring suddenly 
became an entirely different concept, with people on every side. Another of 
the bulky transports rumbled round a corner, and Kirk dived towards the 
deck. A volley of missiles from the transport blew craters in the wall 
behind him, but the surfers were taking the time to aim : missiles and 
grenades found their targets even as the miniguns screamed up the scale. 
The Transport shuddered under the impacts, and abruptly caved. The 
explosion scattered shrapnel high into the air, hot metal rain falling from 
the skies. The radio's noise had become a stream of sharp orders, location 
reports.
"Chekov here. I'm at the power station."
"Nail it."
Far over to his right, somewhere else in the city, Chekov thudded to a 
halt. The building was emptying like an ant's nest that had been broken. 
With a casual, backhand gesture, he pattered bullets off the pavement and 
sent the military team with the bazooka scuttling for cover.
The tide of people leaving the station ended, and Chekov planted a shot 
from his six inch in the domed centre of the building.

The lights went out across the city.

By now, confusion had replaced order, and was rapidly giving way to chaos. 
All over the city, frantic military commanders were trying to talk to their 
compatriots, and were discovering that music clogged their frequencies, 
obscuring the most minor of commands.

It was barely three minutes later when the first white flags started to 
rise over the cowering units, while rifles clattered to the ground. 

"This is too easy!" Kirk yelled.
"They've probably pulled back all the main units to the palace, waiting to 
hit us there." Rat snapped. "Keep alert."

The separated groups of surfers were beginning to converge into one dark 
river, with the two APCs in the lead. The cavalcade of surfers swung 
sharply right, and the palace gates were abruptly upon them.

The APCs didn't even slow down.

The two machines went through the gates side-by-side.
"Knock-knock!" Rat whooped. "Mobile teams, secure the perimeter and hold 
until further orders. Heavy units - break it open!"
"Fire in the hold!" Gull roared, and it seemed as if everything in the 
world blew up.

One entire side of Koraz's palace came down in a thunder of rubble.

When the dust cleared, Kirk found himself paralysed. Staggering out over 
the rubble, hands over mouths and choking, were people in Starfleet 
uniforms.
"Uhura!" He bellowed. "Over here!"
Uhura did a double-take at this ragged figure in combat armour.
"Captain?" She called, peering through the settling dust.
Kirk coasted his board down.
"Report, Lieutenant."
"Koraz has flown the coup. He's headed for the Enterprise."



--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (13/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:55:19 GMT
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter XIII

Kirk called Gull and Rat to him.
"Uhura, this is Rat, and this is Gull. I need a rapid-fire debrief."
"Yes, sir. Once we were down, I started work on repairing the main 
communication array. Then Doctor McCoy threw a fit. Not anger, I mean a 
full-blown grand mal. Koraz had him fitted with one of those jack devices. 
Apparently, with what doctor McCoy knew and the existing knowledge of 
nanotechnology on this planet, Koraz was able to create some kind of super-
soldiers. He wants to take the Enterprise as his flagship. He's... /scary/. 
Absolutely insane."
Rat barked a short laugh. "Tell us something we don't know. Gull, get the 
signals out and people moving, Stat. I'll shut down the computer core here 
after I put out some general surrender notices. Then we've got to get up 
there and sort Kirk's problem out."
Kirk waved a hand. "You don't need to risk your lives on this."
"Bullshit. You helped us, now we'll help you. We /know/ Koraz. If he gets 
access to the firepower of a Starship, nothing's going to stop him. What 
class is the Enterprise?"
"Constitution class." Kirk said, quietly.
"Personnel?"
"Over four hundred."
"Then no arguments. How we're going to get up there is your job. Gan, 
Lliadril - with me. Move it!"

Uhura grabbed Kirk's arm.
"They only took one of the shuttles. The other one is still here. We can't 
squeeze a lot of people in, but it's all we've got."
"Good work, Lieutenant. Get all the personnel with combat experience 
together and have them report to me. Then get me a comm line to the ship. 
Dismissed. Spock!"
Spock ran across the rubble to his Captain.
"Spock, do you remember the incident with the Eymorg?"
Spock coughed. "They required a brain to run their computer. They took 
mine. An odd compliment, I consider it."
"Bones used their tutor-device to give him the surgical knowledge necessary 
to put you back together. He lost it, he thought. What if he didn't?"
"The pattern of neurons would remain, if only in a latent state. The 
memories could be recovered, if-"
"If some kind of mental trauma were to be experienced. A Vulcan mind-touch, 
or an emotional disturbance, or a blow to the head - the details of what 
exactly jogged his memory can wait. We've got to move. Koraz has put a 
troop of super-soldiers on board the Enterprise. We've got a ship to take 
back."

Rat's combat team was already waiting at the shuttle by the time Kirk 
gathered the remaining security personnel together. Kirk recognised a few 
of them as members of Charlie team, alongside Lliadril and a few other 
familiar faces. Lliadril was finishing a brusque set of orders.
"... unship your heavies. We can't risk letting off anything explosive in 
there. Automatics, shotguns, pistols, knives - no grenades. Remember, this 
is a mixed-target environment. Double-check your targets before you fire. 
If I get reports of one single friendly-fire fiasco, Rat and I will 
personally see to it that none of you ever walk again. Captain." He 
acknowledged Kirk with a swift nod of his head. "This is unfamiliar 
territory, for us as well as Koraz. I'm betting he'll be going straight for 
the nerve centres. Captain, if you'd give us a quickfire brief on the 
ripest targets on the Enterprise?"
"Engineering and the Bridge are the two most likely locations. Both have 
full controls for the ship, and from past experience-" A brief, painful 
refrain of ‘I'll Take you home again, Kathleen' crossed his memory -"With a 
little knowledge, you can lock out the bridge controls from engineering. 
There is, however, another side to this conflict. The Enterprise is on Zed 
Kappa status. We have onboard, in a controlled environment, a lethal 
disease of unknown origin. If the cleanrooms are breached, that disease 
will be rampant throughout the ship. For a ship of exploration, we have the 
worst disease demographics in the universe. Any Chemical or Biological 
agent is going to spread like wildfire. The ventilation system has 
failsafes, but the Jefferies tubes don't. On which topic. We must assume 
from square one that Koraz has total control of the Enterprise. That means 
our only safe route to any of the sectors is through the Jefferies tubes. 
Those tubes are intended for emergency routes in the event of power 
failures and as access tunnels to damaged circuitry. As a combat 
environment, they're hellishly close. Bullets will ricochet all over. I'll 
try to get to an armoury centre and kit you all with phasers. If I can't 
get them, for God's sake be careful. Any wild shots are going to cause us 
an enormous amount of grief. That's all I can think of. I'll brief you 
further in situ."
Rat arrived at a run, with Chekov shadowing him stride-for-stride.
"Let's get this show on the road. Move it."

The shuttle, intended for only seven people, was hideously cramped with 
everyone packed in. Kirk broke open the Shuttle's phaser stocks and issued 
those he could. It felt good to rid himself of the bulky automatic and have 
the solid, familiar weight of a phaser in his hand. A weapon that could 
stun, as well as kill. All the same, he flicked it to the highest stun 
setting possible, and briefed Rat's combat team on the use of phasers while 
Chekov steered the overloaded shuttle towards the Enterprise. Staring at 
the white, pristine lines of his only true lady love, Kirk found himself 
homesick for her. If Koraz truly did control the Enterprise, this jaunt 
would be for nothing. A swift phaser blast, a single photon torpedo, and 
they would go from being to nothingness in an instant. 
/How could I forget her?/ he asked himself. Of all the women he had known - 
and there had been plenty, some drawn by his rank, some by his looks, some 
by the air of poise and dash that was the calling card of every captain - 
The Enterprise was his one constant mistress. Demanding, on occasion; 
stubborn, recalcitrant, infuriating, she could be all of these and more. 
But he loved her just the same. From the first moment he had seen her - 
bright-shining, proud, in the glaring lights of spacedock, her name writ 
proudly on her brow, he had known that this was the physical embodiment of 
/la reve d'etoiles/, ‘The dream of Stars' that old spacehounds waxed 
lyrical about. The proudest moment of his life had been receiving the 
plain, matter-of-fact document that had given him his commission as her 
Captain. 
/If I forget thee, my lady,
all be dull in mine eyes.
If I forsake thee, my lady,
stop mine heart, that no other
might take thy place in it./

No Shots were fired. His lady of the stars beckoned him home with open bay 
doors. 

He stepped down onto the deck, and knew that he had finally come home. But 
there was no time for that now. When he sat at the conn of the Enterprise 
again, then he could relax. Now - and not for the first time either - he 
had to prove his right to sit in that chair by trial of fire. He gripped 
his phaser tightly. 

They moved out of the silent shuttlebay in tense formation. The corridors 
were deserted, ominously silent. Chekov lead them quickly and quietly 
through tubes and corridors to an armoury, and gave out the phasers as 
quickly as he could. It felt good to see the rifles being slung onto their 
carriers shoulders. When Chekov located five of the bulkier phaser rifles, 
Kirk felt even better.
"Engineering first. If they haven't got it, then we can shut her down from 
there."

The deathly silence of the corridors was broken at long last by the sounds 
of gunfire and phaser blasts from up ahead as they ran silently on their 
toes towards Engineering. Rat signalled in staccato flashes of sign 
language, and his team formed up into a wedge. When they rounded the curve 
of the corridor, they found a group of Koraz's troops besieging the door to 
engineering, armed to the teeth. Kirk drew a bead on the first one and 
fired. The trooper didn't even stagger under the beam; instead, he pivoted 
on one heel and Rat had to yank Kirk back out of the line of fire as 
bullets chewed holes in the decking. Kirk lost all patience. This was his 
ship. No bunch of brain-dead ground-pounders was going to take her away 
from him. He flicked the setting up to full and stepped out, standing 
sideways on like a fencer. He saw the trooper's dull, empty eyes on either 
side of his sights as he squeezed the trigger, and knew that the man was 
already dead inside, little more than a machine. A halo of light surrounded 
the man as the fearsome energies of the phaser volatized every atom in his 
body, and then he was gone, burned out of existence. Rat and his team had 
followed his example, and in three seconds it was all over. The corridor 
ahead of them was empty. Kirk clicked the wall Comm and was relieved to see 
it burst into life.
"Kirk to Engineering. It's us out here. Come on out."
Scotty, his clothes dirty but unmarked by bullets, was the first out of the 
door.
"Captain, Thank God! We were all but done for down here. Our phasers were 
nearly exhausted!" He pulled himself up, and reverted to a more 
businesslike tone. "When the first shots were fired I disabled all the 
controls, put us on emergency power only. The main action's up on the 
bridge."
"Get the best shots in your team and send the others to somewhere safe. 
Don't waste your energy on Stun shots. Set them to full. These people won't 
stop until you burn them out of existence. At the double, Mr. Scott."
Scotty more than at-the-doubled it. In barely thirty seconds their numbers 
had increased by almost half.

They proceeded quickly from deck to deck, moving steadily and surely to the 
bridge, silent as they moved. When they finally found themselves in the 
tube to the bridge, Kirk found his heart hammering and his throat dry. What 
if they were to fail now, when they were so achingly close to success? He 
banished the thought, calmed his heart, swallowed hard. And with one 
decisive gesture he threw himself over the lip of the tube, rolling under 
the science station to gain himself some cover. At the noise, three 
troopers with the same blank, unthinking faces spun round as one, guns at 
the ready. His burst of pin-point accurate phaser fire dropped one, and two 
more from the mouth of the tube echoed his own and wiped the others out of 
existence.

The bridge was empty.

"Where in hell is Koraz?" Rat howled in frustration.
A thought galvanised Kirk with the intensity of a high-voltage shock.
"Dear God." He said, feeling his stomach boil.
"What?" Rat was instantly alert.
"Just /how/ mad is Koraz?" he said, his voice wavering.
"As a hatter. As a screaming, inbred, eyeball-popping psychopath-"
"The cleanroom. We‘ve got to get to the cleanroom. NOW!"
The shock of realisation showed in Rat's face.
"Dear God, a biological weapon that potent in the hands of a madman-" Kirk 
was shaking. The vision of a thousand lunatic faces, a thousand 
inhumanities written in blood and flesh across the gory plains of a 
thousand worlds, assailed him.
Rat punched him, hard, in the arm. The pain snapped him back to reality, 
and his feet were moving before he could put his mind into gear.

They put no effort into caution and care; they were in a headlong race, 
heedless of the danger. The only thing that mattered was getting there in 
time.
The long hours of his battle were taking their toll on him, and he found 
Scotty ahead of him by a good ten meters. Rat was flagging, too, his 
breathing ragged. They /had/ to be in time. There was no other option. He 
reached down inside himself, and called on every reserve he had.

It was not enough.


--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."

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From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (M.R.Austin)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: TOS : The Borders of Insanity (14/14)
Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:55:41 GMT
Organization: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
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		The Borders Of Insanity
			Chapter XIV

They burst into the cleanroom and saw Doctor Craig lying on the floor, 
bleeding profusely from a cut on her forehead. She pointed at the airlock 
to the inner chamber, the wind knocked out of her.
Scotty threw himself through the door, and found himself face-to-face with 
the hulking form of a trooper, clutching a sealed vial in one hand. Scotty 
raised his phaser and fired, but that action sealed his fate.
The trooper, driven by brute instinct, relinquished his hold on the vial to 
reach for his gun. As Scotty's blast vaporised him, the tiny vial tumbled 
end-over-end to the floor, where it cracked open. A blaring klaxon sounded, 
and the airlock door slammed shut. Kirk faced it, an agonised, wordless 
scream trapped in his chest. /How long?/ he thought. He was not aware that 
he had spoken that thought aloud.
"Fifteen minutes." Doctor Craig said. "We've got to get ourselves a cure, 
and fast." She was mopping her brow with a cloth, searching for a bandage.
"Where is Doctor Sudek?" Kirk demanded, angrily.
"What's left of him is behind that table over there. He went right out of 
his tree when that idiot man barged in. I doubt there'll be enough left to 
send home."
Kirk slumped to the deck, shattered in body and mind. Sudek had been his 
one hope. And now Sudek's body lay in tatters on the floor, his life 
snuffed out thoughtlessly, casually, by a man who did not care who had 
created the disease, but only wanted it for a new and deadly toy.
"Jim."
Kirk's head snapped up. Standing in the doorway, a phaser in his hand, was 
the battered figure of Leonard H. ‘Bones' McCoy. 
"Lithium Carbonate, Doctor Craig. Flood the area with Lithium Carbonate gas 
and we can save him." He snapped
"Wha-"
"No /Time/, dammit! Just do it!"
Doctor Craig leapt to her feet and began working the airlock controls 
feverishly.
"It's like Cholera, in a way." Doctor McCoy explained, rapidly but murkily. 
"It took years of research for someone to discover that Cholera *in itself* 
isn't deadly; it's the *symptoms* of Cholera - the diarrhoea - that kill. 
Treat the symptoms - in this case the lunacy - and you stop the death. 
Lithium carbonate is a mood stabiliser; it'll keep him calm, stop the 
rages, stop his heart going up the scale until it bursts inside him. His 
body will learn to fight the infection within a few days, and we can 
analyse the antibodies and synthesise them in the future. We've beaten it, 
Jim. We've beaten it." His face was crumpled, his words slurred. He slowly 
slid down the wall and pitched forward onto his face, revealing the mass of 
cuts on his back that were laid bare to the air through the tattered 
material of his shirt.

Kirk felt his heart skip a beat. And then fatigue washed over him, and he 
sank down to the decking, in blissful oblivion.

It was later, much later, when they woke him. He lay in his own bed, 
unencumbered by the bulky armour for the first time in what felt like a 
millennia. Doctor Craig, her head bandaged, was shaking him gently.
"Doctor McCoy is awake and clamouring to see you, Captain." She said, 
gently. "If I were you, I'd take my time. Have a shower, for one. Although 
I detest pat diagnoses, you stink."
Kirk propped himself up on one elbow.
"And you were gushing blood the last time I saw you."
"Oh, head wounds always look worse than they really are. Besides, I'm the 
closest thing to a command rank officer you've got until we can get the 
ship back up to operational status and start sending shuttles down for the 
others."
"And I missed the big storm, too." Kirk said, quietly. That, as well as the 
armies arrayed against them, had been a danger he and his new friends had 
faced side-by-side. Had any of them - no, he wouldn't even think it. They 
were natural born survivalists. They would be there, grubby and bruised, 
but cheery all the same.

He showered, feeling his bruises sting under the needles of warm water. He 
cleared several days of stubble from his face with a beam-razor, put on a 
fresh uniform, and stepped out into the corridor feeling, if not like a new 
man, at least suitably refreshed. He headed for the surgery, and found 
McCoy lying on his front, the raw skin on his back covered with bandages. 
Rat was sitting quietly at his side.
"How you doing, Bones?"
"Oh, Just /fine/, thanks." Bones glowered. "My back's so sore I can't even 
sleep on it. Rat here has been filling me in on the gallivanting you got up 
to while I was being horsewhipped into a souffle. At least they've finally 
taken that damn implant out. It scares the pants off me that captain 
fruitloop stuck that thing in my brain."
"Speaking of which, Captain, we still have two missing persons. Koraz 
hasn't turned up, and neither has Mr. Staks." Rat added.
"How d'you know about him?"
"I spent a little while with Mr. Scott - who, you'll be pleased to know, is 
still in fine form. He filled me in on the background to this little crisis 
to while away the time. Did you really deck him?"
"Staks? Yes. I'm not proud of it, but there's only so much any man can 
take."
They shared a silence for a while.
"I really ought to go and see Scotty, Bones." Kirk said, after a while.
"You can take him those grapes." Bones said, indicating a dish of fruit. 
"Can't stand the things, myself." He grinned
Kirk grinned back. "I'll give him your best wishes."

It was strange, not to be able to see Scotty even though he was only inches 
away. But the Scots brogue through the grille was a welcome, familiar 
sound. 
"A bit light headed, Cap'n, but pretty good. They've been transporting in 
meals for me, and even a little pallet. Don't suppose you could get me a 
clean uniform, too?"
"I'll see what I can do, Scotty." He paused, and then finished. "It's good 
to hear you again. I can't wait for your next recital."
"Ach, don't pander to my pride. You don't care frae Robbie Burns, and I 
know it."
Kirk laughed.
"Right now, Scotty, I wouldn't mind if it was Klingon Opera. Get well 
soon."

He turned off the communicator and turned to Doctor Craig.
"Diagnosis, Doctor?"
"For who? I never realised a ship's doctor was such a demanding post. I've 
had to deal with gunshot wounds, a whipping, broken bones -"
"Scotty."
"I know. Only joking. He's doing fine, although he's going to have one hell 
of a cold. We've been flooding the airlock with everything we can get our 
hands on, working on the basis that engineered viruses aren't very strong. 
Natural viruses wipe them out pretty quickly outside of a host. Within 
three days, he'll be out of there."
"It may take considerably longer for you to come out of jail, /Doctor/ 
Craig."
Staks was standing at the door, clutching a phaser rifle and looking 
murderous.
"What the hell are you doing, Staks?" Kirk growled.
"You, Captain, are going into the Brig for striking an officer. And Doctor 
Craig is going to be tried for the murder of Doctor Enzel and as a possible 
Romulan Spy."
"You are out of your /mind/!" Kirk snapped. "I only got a fragment of that 
medical report, but one-handed strangulation is a technique unique to 
Vulcan."
"/And/ Romulus, Captain. I expect they teach it to all their spies."
Doctor Craig spluttered. Then she gasped, and started laughing helplessly.
"Oh, Jehosophat. Talk about the right hand not knowing what the left is 
doing." She managed, hiccuping badly and lapsing into giggles.
"I'm going to reach very, very slowly into my right pocket now." She said, 
still sniggering. "I've got something to show you."
She reached a thumb and forefinger into her pocket, and removed a small 
object.
A white pop-up badge with the emblem of Starfleet security.
Staks' mouth dropped open.
"I'm on Admiral Karlssen's personal staff. I was sent to watch over Doctor 
Sudek, who made some very strange transactions with some Orion Traders a 
while back for a parcel from Romulus."
Staks looked as if his jaw was about to unhinge itself totally.
"I'm betting you're one of Cartwright's men. Close?"
"Spot on." Kirk supplied, enjoying the shocked look on Staks face.
"Thought so. You don't do a very convincing civilian. I suggest you take 
Old Stinky's course again."
"Stinky Benbow? Is he still at the academy?" Kirk asked.
"Yup. Still prowling the halls, leaving the smell of conspiracy and failed 
chemistry experiments in his wake."
Staks was as white as a sheet. His lower jaw was twitching.
"I suggest, Mr. Staks, that you return to your quarters and stay there."
Staks regained some of his old bluster, pushing his thinning brown hair 
back with one hand.
"You are still going to be charged with striking an officer, Kirk."
"I'll make it two counts if you're not out of here in three seconds flat." 
Kirk snapped, all trace of warmth gone from his voice.
Staks rubbed his bruised eye, and decided not to press the matter further. 
He turned on his heel and stalked out.
"Head up, but his tail between his legs." Doctor Craig smirked.
"Doctor - are you a Doctor, incidentally?"
"Oddly enough, yes. I hold three doctorates - straight Medicine, 
Microbiology, and Advanced Genetics. My thesis paper for Genetics is still 
on file at the Academy, I think."
Kirk sighed. "Well." He said, stretching the one word out to fill a whole 
breath. "To mix my metaphors, It's a merry kettle of fish we've stirred up 
here, and no mistake. I'm just glad that I don't have to deal with the 
paperwork."
"No, I'm the one who has to phrase a carefully worded report on this 
situation. I'll play down Staks incompetence, I think, and just make a note 
that we need to set up some new procedures for internal communication 
within the service." She wrinkled her nose. "Oh, Lord. They'll probably put 
me on a committee to sort it out, since it'll be my suggestion. I haven't 
got the stomach for diplomacy. I don't suppose you could lend me Mr. Spock 
for a while? Only Joking!" She said hurriedly when she saw his expression.
There was a tap at the door.
"Come!" Kirk called. An unfamiliar face in a red uniform leaned in.
"Captain?" He asked. Kirk felt an internal alarm go off. That had been a 
query, not a request to proceed. Who was this man?
"Yes?"
The phaser came up and drew a bead on him, and Kirk felt his insides go 
cold.
"Emperor Koraz, true and rightful ruler of Korazholm, arbiter of Justice 
and Light of the Masses. Don't Move."
Craig frowned. "Isn't that title a little bit too, you know, wordy? Have 
you ever considered simply calling yourself God and being done with it?"
"I am God. But that is my true name, not for the lips of unclean 
blasphemers such as yourselves. You will provide me with a sample of my 
rightful property."
"Your what?"
"I have created everything. Therefore everything is mine. You will give me 
that biological weapon or I shall smite you mightily."
It would have been humorous, but for the light in his eyes that told Kirk 
that Koraz believed every word he said.
"Go ahead. Kill us both. You fire that phaser and a security team will be 
en route in seconds. Try it. You'll find their response time impressive."
Kirk shrugged.
"I am going to kill you. You aided the Heathen Scum in attempting to 
overthrow the just and fair God who nurtured them. But first, in penance, 
you will give me the disease."
Nothing I'd like more, Kirk reflected grimly.

There was a loud click-clack noise, and Koraz stiffened.
"Your holiness, You have a fifteen-gauge shotgun in your back. Shall we see 
if a God can bleed?" It was Rat's voice, sour with old wrongs.
Koraz stumbled headlong into the room, on the end of Rat's shotgun. The 
phaser clattered to the floor.
"You killed all I truly cared for. You tortured her to death and made all 
of us listen. You persecuted and murdered my friends and my love. You 
deserve to die."
"I remember her." Koraz said, his eyes wide. "She was a filthy whore, a 
daughter of Babylon. She begged me to abuse her, to make her clean by my 
divine presence. You should be glad that I purified her. Her abhorrent 
stain is on you. But I can make you whole agai-"
Rat pushed the barrel of the shotgun into Koraz's mouth.
"I want to see you die, you son of a bitch. I want to hear you beg for the 
mercy you denied so many. Most of all I want her back."
Kirk found he could not move. He was frozen by the sight of Rat's hand, 
clenched tight around the handle of the shotgun, his knuckles white and 
bloodless. All Rat had to do was squeeze his index finger and Koraz would 
be a cooling corpse.
"But killing you won't bring her back. It won't ease the pain. And most of 
all, it won't be justice. And I want justice, Koraz. Not revenge."
Slowly, he let go of the handle of the gun, and put it up to rest against 
his shoulder.
"I'm not going to kill you, even though you deserve to die. I'm going to be 
standing there when the jury comes out and delivers their verdict. And when 
the door slams on your cell, I'll know that not everyone sinks to your 
level. That there is something in all of us that you let go, something that 
drives us onwards and upwards to better goals and brighter futures. The 
thing we write poems and songs to express, that which frees the captive, 
that which inspires us to give mercy to the merciless, that which we hold 
in our hearts and dream of in dreams." Tears were running down his face. He 
half-choked, and then finished with slow deliberation.
"We are not animals. We are human beings." 
Rat threw down his gun.

It happened so quickly that it could barely be seen. Faster than sight, a 
knife was in Koraz's hand, and he dived at Rat with the blade out, point 
first. Rat must have seen it, but he did not move.
Koraz struck, and Rat toppled like a felled tree, blood gushing from his 
chest.
Doctor Craig cleared the table in one leap. The expression on her face was 
pure, undiluted anger. One foot, driven by muscles as solid as rock, hit 
Koraz square between the legs, and an elbow smashed like a piston into his 
throat. He crumpled to the deck, clutching at his wounds. With the force 
that only true rage can exert, she kicked him full in the face, and his 
head snapped back.
Kirk leapt to Rat's side.
Rat looked at peace. He smiled.
"It's alright. Give me Justice, Kirk."
He coughed blood.
"We have to show him. We have to show him that our way *works*."
Kirk felt his throat clench tight.
"It's been good working with you." Rat's head slumped back. He raised one 
arm to the air and clenched his fist.
"Freedom!" he cried, and the light went out of his eyes.

They stood on the plain, amid the shattered driftwood that had once been a 
home. Around him, on every side, familiar faces shed tears. Kirk saw Chekov 
weeping along with the rest. Gull was comforting Gan, her eyes so red that 
she could have been crying tears of blood.
He cleared his throat.
"We are gathered here to pay our last respects." He paused, feeling tears 
of his own start their slow journey down his face
"What can I say? He was a warrior of the best kind. He knew when the time 
had come to lay down his weapons. In his dying moments, he spoke of the 
enduring quality of humanity - in whatever form it may be found. He spoke 
only of Justice, not of revenge. Of Forgiveness, not retribution. And his 
last word on this earth was his dream and his battle cry. Freedom."
He found himself unable to speak. The greatest speech in the world paled 
into insignificance next to that one word.
Gull straightened his back.
"It does not end here." he said, his voice laced with iron. "This is where 
it begins. All of us have a responsibility - a sacred trust. In his life, 
he fought for it. In his death, he died for it. And I charge you all to 
ensure that he lies for all eternity in the soil of a world of peace and of 
Freedom."
Quietly, music began to play.

"Maybe,
I don't really want to know
How your garden grows,
‘Cause I just want to fly.
Lately,
did you ever feel the pain,
in the morning rain
as it soaks you to the bone.

Maybe I just want to fly,
Want to live but don't want to die
Maybe I just want to breathe,
maybe I just don't believe
Maybe you're the same as me
We see things they'll never see
You and I are gonna live forever...

Maybe,
I don't really want to know
How your garden grows,
‘Cause I just want to fly.
Lately,
did you ever feel the pain,
in the morning rain
as it soaks you to the bone.

Maybe I will never be
all the things I want to be
Now is not the time to cry,
Now's the time to find out why
I think you're the same as me,
We see things they'll never see
You and I are gonna live forever..."

The music faded slowly into the sky, towards the shining eye of the sun, 
while they stood at the side of the grave and mourned quietly for the death 
of their friend.



--
M. Reed Austin <M.R.Austin@Bradford.ac.uk>

"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off
Pending a government investigation into false promises."