Startrek: Keash and Derf

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Escaped but not safe.

After having spent a good thirty minutes at warp 4, without any trace of the Orion raiders, Keash set the automated systems to work and went into the living area. He found his son sitting relaxed on the large couch and deeply engrossed in whatever was on the PADD he was looking at.

When Keash got noticed by the little boy the face lit up like a summers day and he jumped over into Keash's arms with joy. "Are the bad people gone daddy?" Ahrund asked hopeful. "Yes of course they are. You know i wont let anything happen to us if i can, and you know i can do a lot." Keash replied while he walked over to the replicator. "one chocolate-milk, cold, mug" Keash ordered and the little boy lit up even more happily "Is that for me?" he asked.

"Of course it is, i can't stand milk. You know that" Keash said and took the mug from the replicator slot. He walked over to the couch and table setup in the center of their living quarters and after setting the mug on the table he let himself crumple down onto the couch with his kid stil in his arms. Laughter filled the inside of the IMV Breda after that as Keash and Ahrund descended into a tickle/cushion fight for a while.

After that they are some dinner and then prepared the kid to go to bed. An improvised short story about a father and son merchantman traveling through the stars later the kisses and hugs were exchanged and lights went off. Ahrund was in bed and would soon be blissfully asleep.

As soon as Keash was out of sight he allowed the frown, that had threatened to break through all the time he'd just spent with his kid but thankfully didn't, crease his brows and gave expression to the concerns he had hidden along with his frown. The little skirmish with the three Orion raiders had felt completely wrong to Keash somehow, even though he still couldn't put into words or thought what was wrong precisely.

Keash went back into the bridge area where he plunked himself into the comfy padded leather chair while stabbing some keys on the consoles before him to bring the interfaces to life and ready. Then he asked the computer to display the sensor logs of the raid and watched it unfold in visual, sensor-data and tactical overview displays simultaneously.

Then he watched it again. And it wasn't until the third time through he found what was wrong with what he was seeing. "Dammit their warp nacelles, they're cold. Not a single infrared flare that should indicate the location of the plasma coils inside a warp nacelle which would, for hours after having been in use, have a temperature of between 400 degrees and 2000 degrees Celsius.

The images in the infrared spectrum showed the hottest part on the Orion ship to be the Impulse exhaust manifolds removing any doubt that the ship hadn't warped in from another distant location. It had come from somewhere nearby, close enough to come and go to on impulse engines alone. As the Orians had never been known to have carrier sized ships the presence of an outpost or base would be the only viable option left.

Considering what that information could mean to Keash and his son he wasn't sure if it was good news or bad. A base nearby could be an indication that the ambush raid wasn't specifically targeted at the IMV Breda and or Keash. It could on the other hand mean that the likelihood of running into more of them would increase significantly and that those raiders would more than likely have been informed of his small altercation with the three raiders a few hours earlier. Looking at the local star chart, their current course and the destination he knew that going back anywhere near the same route would be asking for trouble.

After what happened that day any day upon which he'd meet another Orion pirate could be to soon but surely at least two years would need to go by for the average Orion would no longer have an active eye out for Keash and the IMS Breda. That left Keash with a problem. The OutThere colony at which the cargo the IMV Breda's cargo hold were filled with needed to be delivered was only reachable via 2 routes due to the odd cataclysmic history of the star system it was located in.

The planet on which the colony was built was the only survivor, accept for the star itself, of the destructive forces unleashed when a rogue red giant star had passed almost through the orbit of the outermost planets. The gravitational pull had jerked some planets out of their orbits and most of them either collided and broke up or simply broke up due to the rogue star's sudden jerk on them.

The result was an asteroid shroud covering almost the entire star-system with planetary remnants ranging in size from a few meters to a few kilometers in diameter. Two "lanes" were clear enough to allow approach of the planet and one lead back the way Keash was now coming from. The other went the almost exactly opposite direction and had it's clearance inside the space of another, potentially difficult to deal with, species. A species Keash knew well, and had almost always had been in conflict with.

The Klingons.

One particular incident which in Keash's eyes was a minor infraction of the biological subset of laws was taken rather differently by the Klingon Empire.

Who knew they were that uptight about cute furry little balls?

Ever since he barely escaped Klingon space with his life and a shuttle full of disruptor holes he had made it a point never to be in any place where the Klingons could claim jurisdiction, and take him back to Qo'Nos for trial.

It seemed though he had a choice to make, between the Orions and the Klingons. Neither were appealing options.