***Zorakk

Future Shock
First version

Chapter Two – David

Captain's Log, stadate 3/9817.02 3;Captain 3;what a hoot. I had never considered myself the 'captain' of the Tomahawk interstellar trucking rig, but I guess now that Brian has joined my 'crew' that is exactly what I am. Crom! What have I let myself in for? Me, card carring member of fist [Freebooter InterStellar Truckers], a gypsey-trucker with no roots or support system. I had taken on responcibility for a very precious young boy – whom I already loved more than life itself.

It had been much different sixteen years ago when I had first met Douglas, my first serious BL relationship. I'd been fresh from my mandatory six-years of service with the Imperial military. I'd been a photon grenadier in an Imperial Marine grunt infantry regiment, I'd even risen to the rank of buck-sargent and was in line to become a squad leader, but I'd decided the military life was not for me.

I was just graduating from advanced training as a quantum-warp engineering mechanic and had started working for a Star Nomad run maintance company on Telluria IV when I met Douglas. That was way back in the Paeolithic, 2382. HaH! but nothing compaired to your streach of time, my faithful reader. I still can't believe that any of you fossils from the 20th Century hypersleep experiments are still around. You're pretty lucky you know – fewer that 8 in a hundred survived to be found after the legendary uss Enterprise detected the first capsul in 2364. A handfull of these hypersleep coffins [which had been in ultrahigh earth orbit] fell into a wormhole generated by the Membari invasion of the Terran solarsystem in 2143, and were transported hundreds of light years across the galaxy. Over the past 20 years a few dozen more of those hypersleep coffins were found, but in most the mortality rate was 100%. For you to be here and listening to my tall tale is 3; well, it defies explination. It's just one of those things we have to chalk up to the Odd Gods of the Galaxy.

Another thing I have to congratulate you on, not many of your fellow fossils were able to make the leap from their old earth-centered lives to the current galactic society; but most especially that there are such things as Boy Lovers here and we are a minority, but not a reviled and perscuted criminal one as in the dark ages where you come from. Most of the fossils wound up in a Federation 'attitude adjustment center' with Betazoid psych-techs reaching into their minds and 'adjusting' them to better fit with our current civilization.

What? Question? 3;

Oh, that's right, you say that we've picked up a few more itinerant disembodied spirits out there in pseudo-cyberspace due to the way this is being presented in episodes. And most don't realize they're now in the 24th century and don't know me from Adam. But pay attention because this is the last time I'm going to run this down.

My name is Pete Reynolds. Life has been good to me and I would not trade my life for that of any of the superwealthy nobility at the Terran Imperial Court. I'm one of the odd hybrids you see and hear about on isn every so often, half Corellian, half Amerind – Cherokee Nation, half Imperial Klingon, half human-fusion Klingon and for spice, half Romulan. Now if you've been counting and all that adds up to substantially more than your prepaired to accept, just think of it as a list of the more prominent races in my genetic backround.

I came by this multihued pedigree because in addition I'm a member of the Eagle Clan of the Star Nomads. More on that later, now it's time to shock the new fossils out there by announcing that I also have a long time attraction to pre-pubescent little boys 3; and, what the hell, little girls too, after all this is the 24th century, the century of equality and all that even though it is still a dangerious place in many sections of the galaxy for boy lovers. The general population has slowly come to acknowledge that there is a difference between the motivations and emotions of a true boy lover and those of our more sadistic cousins, the preditory pedophyles. Oh yes, they're still here and still making life difficult for the rest of us by raping unwilling children, rather than seeking out those who truly need our special attention [Crom help us, there are plenty of those out there, both straight and pre-gay] and who are willing to share sexual experiences with a gentle lover.

Fortunatly there are now entire worlds ruled and maintained by enlightened boy lovers. A true Boy Lover can these days submit to the week-long telepathic testing and evaluation session administered by highlevel MenTalts on Betazed and obtain a license. It's degrading to have to obtain a license for ones sexuality, but it IS a farsight better than being persecuted by the state, and until we can lick the pedophyle preditor problem, I susposse it will have to suffice.

I am also a Star Nomad independant contract trucker. My orbital truck, which Brian has named the Dream Walker, is a relativly small 180 ton gypsey interstellar truck. Theoretically I can lug up to 50 tons of cargo, if I can find a way to cram that much into the Starquest's 378 cubic meters of cargo hold. Again theoretically, the Dream Walker should have a crew of three, but I'm winging it myself, with Brian as a inflight trainee, because the Dream Walker's cash flow is always virging on zero or negitive. I have a Master Astronaut certificate, issued by Imperial Terra which is recognized virtually everywhere in the known expance of our universe.

The Dream Walker is a Tomahawk-class Interstellar rig running along a now pretty well established triangular route, from Ba'jor and ds9 to the wormhole and through it to the Treaty Station on the Gamma Quadrant side; then back through the wormhole and to the Triangle Sector Warp Gate and through it to the Klingon Trade World at Sherman's Planet. My customers like my service because I'm fast, cheap and I keep my mouth shut. I'm not wealthy, but I make a comfortable living working only nine months a year. I take one month in four off to putter around the galaxy and induldge my couriosity and exploration urges. That's what I was doing when I met Brian. But now its back to the grindstone.

My home base is, of course, ds9, as it is for fully 80 percent of the Federation's independant truckers along the Kardasian boarder. From there I can almost always pick up a full load of lox or lh going to my second stop, the Gamma Quadrant treaty monitoring station. Built as it is on the face of the small nickle-iron asteroid that supports the physical instrumentality of the base, it is always in the market for celss gasses which are virtually dirt cheap on Ba'jor and ds9. After off-loading the liquid hydrogen or oxygen, it's just a quick hop back through the worm hole to the Triangle Warp Gate.

The Triangle Sector is that knot of about 800 stars in a loose galactic star cluster where the unheard of happens, a Terran, Romulan and Klingon warp gate all exist within a hundred light years of each other. As you might guess the Triangle Sector is a hot bed of intrigue and espinoge with most of the major Federation-Romulan; Federation-Klingon and Klingon-Romulan wars of the past two centuries taking place in this relativly close packed volume of stars.

After exiting the warp gate to the Triangle Sector itself it is then a leisurly week at warp five to Sherman's Planet and Space Station K7, where the famous "Organian Peace Treaty" was signed over a century ago laying the groundwork for the Khitamurr Accords that formally ended hostilities between the United Federation of Planets and the Komerex Klingon.

I said I'm a Star Nomad, and the name is discriptive. Our people left old earth at the dawn of interstellar travle in the opening decade of the 21st century and most of us have lived a gypsey life ever since. Oh sure, we have colonized a few planets, including Valhalla which circles Mu Cassiopea in the Core Worlds, where our heavy industry and ship yards are; but for most the Star Nomad way of life is one of hopping from star to star, bringing trade and culture to the frontier worlds who are not yet rich enough to attract the larger shipping companies.

This lifestyle of course leads to a rather through mixing of racial types, thus the mixture of Terran human, Klingon and Romulan blood, which I mentioned courses through my viens. I am 34 years old Terrestial Standard, and am 1.98 meters [6"4'] tall, massing 98 kilograms [216 pounds]. I'm also a boylover, which makes me a member of a minority but not a criminal minority, as you 20th century earther would like to think. I met Brian three weeks ago on Starbase 288 where he was living with his aunt, an aunt who did not appreciate the treasure he is and was willing to transfer legal custody and gaurdianship over to me. Brian, who you will meet later is a beautiful, bright little nine-year-old who has totally won my heart.

There, that should bring you up to speed on most of the important facts you missed in Chapter One of this Odyessy, now back to the mainline story, I was giving you a little backround into my first serious relationship with a boy named Douglas on Telluria IV.

Anyway, I was involved with Douglas for six years, from midway through his ninth year to well into his fifteenth. And yes, it was with the fully informed consent of his mother, who was a single mom [that's one hold over from your era that we are not especially proud of – too many children still live in 'broken' homes with only one parent] trying very hard to make economic ends meet.

Douglas was a very affectionate little boy, we progressed in our relationship from 'playing doctor' to lite oral sex fairly quickly, but mostly it was about shared good times at the tri-dees, going on special trips together, and just being there for each other. Douglas was one of the vast majority of boys who needed a little semi-homosexual activity in his early adolescent life, but eventually drifted to blend in with the 95% of humanity that is strait. We mutally agreed that although we would remain friends, that our days of nude-intimancy were over.

There are similarities between Brian and Douglas that are so close my heart aches, but as I said, this time it is much different. I am really on my own out here, not like when I was a kid on Mars, or in the Marines, or on Tulluria IV. There I had family, friends and others to help. Here and now on the Kardasian boarder I am truly on my own and totally responciple for Brian's well being. I'm not sure that the life of a gypsey-trucker is right for a small boy. I'll have to look around carefully at this winter's ingathering of the Clan to see what kind of more settled life I can start as a fourth career.

Brian, yawning and totally naked, walked into the control cab and sat down in the navigator's couch. "What'cha doing?" he asked.

"Oh, just thinking,"

"Yeh," he giggled, "I can smell the burning insolation."

In our first week together, Brian had come to realize that I was serious about us staying together, he had begun to relax and loose up. In the following two weeks, I had discovered that the nine-year-old was a master of the one line zingers.

BRANGAH-BRANGA-BRANGA! WHOOP!! WHOOP!! BRANGAH-BRANGA-BRANGA!

I involuntarily jumped and Brian instinctivly dived for the navigator's station and began to wrap the acceleration harness around himself, as I had tought him to do in a crisis. I was still trying to determine what had made the computer's alarms go crazy. Searching the densly packed instrument array in front of me, my eyes fell on the Warp Engine sub-systems monitor. It was a awarsh in red light.

Brian's sexy big brown/amber eyes were wide with fear. "W-what's wrong?"

BRANGAH-BRANGA-BRANGA! WHOOP!! WHOOP!! BRANGAH-BRANGA-BRANGA!

"This is definitely not good!" I thought. "Computer, disable audio alarm, and reset." The crowded control cab of the orbital truck Dream Walker was suddenly silent as the 100-db alarm klaxon fell silent.

"Has there been a warp core implosion? Are we going to explode?" Brian asked. He could see the engineering christmas tree as well as I could. We hadn't progressed that far in his training in the operation of the truck yet, but he knew that red on an indicator indicated a fault or something that needed attention.

"Brian, you've been watching way too many holovids. A warp core breech is so rare that there hasn't been one in the past century, even in combat."

"Then what is wrong?" he asked, still not convinced.

"Let's find out," I said, motioning for him to get out of the accelerationg harness and come over to me. The nine-year-old crawled into my lap, and an involuntary shiver shook his small frame. As I enveloped him in a bearhug, I could actually feel his heart pounding inside his skinny chest.

"Bri, Bri, there's nothing to be scared of. We've just droped out of warp, that's all."

Another shiver ran through his body and I realized I was a little aprehensive also. Although warp core breeches were only statistical anomolies in the real world, a ship's warp drive was perhaphs the most complex and sophisticated piece of electro-cybernetic machinery ever devised by man; an it was far from fool-proof and I had gone long past the 10,000 hour inspection and maintance point.

"Let's see if we can determine what went wrong," I said, smiling for Brian. I got up, with Brian clinging to me like a spider monkey, and went over to the flight engineer's station and sat in front of the engineering diagnostic test pannel and typed in the command for the main computer to coax the much older duetronic engineering systems computer into determining what had caused the warp drive to shut down. The diagnostic spreadsheet loaded alright. Then almost immediatly generated the error message:

GENERAL ENGINE SYSTEM FAULT – SYSTEM HALT

"Hmmn," I said with mock seriousness, stroking an imanginary beard. "Hmmn, Vell, Herr Doktor Brian; vot ve haff here ist eine problem mit der varpenpropullsorensystemski. It ist kapoot!"

Brian laughed and playfully socked my arm, which was the entire idea of the 'Mad Doctor' routine. A lot of the boy's fear was begining to disapate now.

"What do you think we should do now?" I asked Brian.

"Call for a tug," Brian laughed.

I laughed also, "Yeah, right!" I said grinning. "If we were Starfleet and didn't have to pay for the towing charges. Nope. You'll have to do better than that."

Brian thought for a moment, "Try to re-initialize the system?"

"Bingo!" I said proudly, Brian was without a doubt among the brightest kids I'de ever known. "A lot of times, especially if you're way past time for a maintance check, the warp drive will encounter some condition in subspace that is incompatable with the warp bubble, and it just collapses. The result is we drop out of warp."

"Can I do it?"

"You know how?" I asked.

To my surprise Brian pointed to a large double circuit breaker on the main engineering panel which was in the triped position and had a large red indicator beside it.

"Yes, that's the engine master reset, that's where we start."

"Now?" Brian asked, his fingers poised over the circuit breaker. I nodded and he snapped the breaker into the engaged position. Instantly the christmas tree's ocean of red indicators turned green or amber [in start-up mode]. Significantly several main subassemblies remained with red warning lamps illuminated.

"That is a good sign," I said, studying the densly packed indicator panel. "It means that the problem is not with the engineering systems computer." That would have been a mess, I thought as the diagnostic began to scroll numbers and symbols down the small 14" screen embeded in the flight engineer's station.

About midway through the test, the problem was found:

<Pan 0928 SPN 3: Warp Field Stabilizer Test: FAILED>

<Diagnostic Fault Wr-43 at memory location FF0003 73A4C1 AA401E>

<System Error.>

<General Protection Fault.>

<SYSTEM HALTED>

"Alright, Engineer Shimosuwa now what?"

Brian twisted around in my lap and arranged his nude body so he was facing the engineering console. Tentatively, he tapped out a few lines of command into the engineering computer's keyboard. He was rewarded with a dozen screens of data on what the diagnostic program had found.

Brian sighed. "The problem is that I don't understand a third of what the computer is telling me."

"Yeah, but I bet their aren't too many nine-year-olds who could get this far," I said impressed. I studied the computer's diagnostic and recomendations and sighed. "It's bad, but not terminal thank the Odd Gods."

"What is it?" Brian asked.

"Last month, just before I met you, I was returning from a highly luceritive run to one of the Bajorian fortress-colonies still in the Gamma Quadrant dispite the displeasure of the Founders and their Jem'Hadarr thugs. I was jumped by a Jem'Hadarr gunship and had to really overtax the warp drive getting away."

"Wow!" Brian said impressed. "Tell me more."

"The maintance droid is going to be a few hours doing some patch together work so we can get to a port. Why don't we take some Pictures and I'll tell you while we work."

"Okay!" Brian said enthuiastically.

Uh-oh, I feel the need to step outside the story once again, my 20th century cohorts and explain to you the significance of 'Pictures' with a capital 'P' as opposed to just normal run of the mill holographs. Pictures refer to holoscans of Brian in the nude. In my prior explinations of how Boy Lovers are treated today as compaired to your century, I've probably painted the picture brighter and more tollerant than it is. The United Federation of Planets, was formed in 2087 from a group of vastly different alien cultures. It was hard enough to agree on things like trade and mutual defense, and so the founders wisely left such taboos as sex completely alone, Federation courts have ruled time and again that no government, no matter how benign should be allowed any say in sexual relations between sentient creatures.

This enlightened position has been adopted by most of the Federation's member states, including the Terran Empire, and the Star Nomad Alliance. The trouble for the Boy Lovers [like me] among the human population comes from trying to define 'Sentient' and answering the question "are children 'sentient creatures'?" and when should a government interven in sex, to protect the helpless, and of course are children helpless? These are still hot legal questions in the human galaxy, and one of the quasi-legal issues is the question of freedom of expression [guaranteed by virtually every human government] versus what you fossils would call kiddie-porn 3; but then I understand from my study of history that the question is at least as old as you fossils. Anyway, since nude holography is legal in some places, and illegal in others it creates a quite lucrative market for nude holography, especially on the galaxy wide web's cyber underworld.

Since Dream Walker's budget is always a bit anemic, and since Brian is so very cute and even 'normal' holoscans of him in playsiuts generate sales, we have taken to posting holographs on the gww. These Bri and I refer to a Pictures [with a capital 'P'].

Brian and I walked back to the sleeping area of the Dream Walker, and since Brian was already nude, I suggested that he get dressed again.

"Why?" the boy asked puzzled.

"Well, today I was thinking we'd do a strip-layout."

"Hey! Yeah, like in that Chippenditty holovid," Brian grinned.

"No, I was thinking of just a series of holographs, I'm greedy, we'll get more for a series of two dozen holographs than for a five minute holovid." I said.

"Okay," Brian said. "What should I ware?"

"Just underpants, shorts and teeshirt, no need to bother with shoes and socks." I answered while getting the holocam set up. I have a really good studio-quality holocam, it produces as its output both a pristine tiny hologram 3 centimeters [1¼ inch] on a side for viewfinder and focusing functions, and of course the standard 128-bit digital signal for recording on an isolinear chip. The compression algorihm is pretty good and so I can get two dozen holoscans on a single 620-meg chip.

"Ready," Brian said sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed.

I set up our neutral blue backround for the holograph, basically just a big pale-blue sheet, but it works as well as the much more expensive and bulky holographic screens. It drapes over everything in the backround, bed, truck bulkheads, etc; and it gives a neutral backround for superimposing a custom backdrop, say a day in the woods, which is my own personal favorite.

"Okay," I said finally satisfied with the set up of the equipment, "I think we'll start our series with a couple of basic shots."

"Where do you want me first?" Brian asked.

"Just where you are," I said swivling the holocam around on its tripod to face Brian, who was still seated cross-legged on the bed. "Smile pretty," I said, engaged the neon-laser flood lamps and made a few minor focusing adjustments while watching the 3 cubic centimeters of viewfinder and finally satisfied with the composition, squeezed the hand trigger. The laser lamps flared for a 1/1,000 sec flash and the holoscan was recorded for posterity on the isolinear chip.

Brian blinked several times, "Geeze!" he swore, "Those laser lights are bright."

"Come on, Brian. I told you not to look at them 3;"

"I wasn't," he said. "But they're still too bright."

"Okay, but be sure not to look at them. I don't know how much the human retina can take, but let's not take chances, ok?

"Okay," Brian said. "What's next?"

"Hmmn," I thought. "I think maybe standing over here," I said and indicated a nice flat area of the blue backdrop that would be perfect for the woodland lake and waterfall scene I had in mind, and would not take a lot of post production work to smooth out wrinkles in the backdrop, as the shot on the bed would. I guess that was the advantage of the more expensive holographic screens, huh?

Brian came over and I posed him. It was getting easier to work with Brian as he began to anticipate what I might want in a scene and started to take on some of the composition work himself. In this shot I was striving for the boy who after a long hot day hiking in the woods comes upon a pristine lake in a wooded glade with a distant waterfall feeding into it in the backround.

Brian poised himself, as if standing on a low bank overlooking the lake below. I was set up 2/3 rear quadrant shot for a spectacular shot of Brian's cute little butt and his slender arms and legs in this shot.

"Okay," I said. "Ready?"

"Quiet on the set," Brian giggled, "Camera, action!"

I triggered the laser strobe and holoscan No. 2 was on the chip.

"Pete, you said you would tell me about your last trip for Quark while we were taking Pictures," Brian reminded me.

"So I did," I said. "Alright, about six months ago, I got mixed up with a Ferengi merchant, named Quark on ds9. He was in a very profitable position for a Ferengi, poised as he was on the rim of the Bajorian wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant. Actually, I knew that damned Ferengi was trouble, but the deal he was offering was SO sweet that I ignored my queezy feeling as he started talking about going through the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant and dodging Jem Ha'darr patrols.

"Its been 20 some years since the Dominion absorbed the Kardasians and tried to conquer the Alpha Quadrant in the Federaton-Dominion War of 2372-76. After the conflict ended, the treaty recognized the ligitimatacy of the Kardasian government set up under Dominion rule; but in exchange Bajor was allowed to build a string of fortress colonies in several starsytems strategic to the Gamma Quadrant entrance to the wormhole. Among the Federation built facilities was a huge spacestation similiar to Deep Space Nine which monitored the Gamma Quadrant side of the wormhole. Both stations were administered by a triumperate consisting of a Dominion member, a Federation member and an administrator from Bajor.

"Lately however the Founders have beefed up their Jem Ha'darr presence and have begun to unofficially blockade Vymann-kor, one of the Fortress-worlds that the Bajorians had built. This of course is where Quark wanted me to go and pick up a non-discript 5 tons of something, which he assured me would fit in the cargobay of my Tomahawk.

"Anyway, the long and short of it is I made it to Vymann-kor, and picked up Quark's cargo, all packaged in a neat durrasteel container. But coming back out, a Jem'Hadarr fighter jumped me and I had to seriously redline the warp drive to get out ahead of the fighter. The son-uva- bitch followed me right through the wormhole and had to be chased off by ds9's weapons grid."

"Wow!" Brain said appreciativly. "Do you think we'll have any adventures like that this time?"

"No," I said firmly. "Quark assured me this was just a docking with a freighter and a quick trip down to Bajor to deliver the cargo. Now back to work," I made whip noises and flicked my wrist as though cracking a bullwhip over Brian's head.

The next holoscan we did was of Brian pealing off his shirt and then one with his pants half way down and a very seductive look on his sweet little face.

"Ah," I said to Brian, "Now for the piece de resistance, the stripping of the young boy completely naked. Pull down those underpants! And smile," I encouraged him. "I don't want it to look like you're a slave being forced into this; that's for the 'Slave Boy' series."

Brian put on his best 100 megawatt smile and wriggled out of his underpants as I flashed the laser strobes.

Our warp drive problems not withstanding the meeting with the unknown freighter in the outer Bajorian solar system went well. Basically it simply involved opening the Tomahawk's rear cargo hatch and letting the three guys from the frerighter in vacuum armor shunt a connex containor over the one hundred meters seperating out two vessels and then securing the connex. The contract that Quark had forced upon me called for on-planet delivery to a small Bajor kobbutz out in the Rittmahn Wastes of the Xarganthian continent, it also specified payment in full and in gold-plated latinum on delivery. That was the only reason I had accepted the 'on-planet' clause. The Bajorians are paranoid about alien landings after the Kardasian invasion in the early part of the century. Mostly they have all of their off-world trade carried out on Deep Space Nine. There is also a large contingent of both Federation and Bajorian customs officials there, and I suspect that is why Quark wanted to spend the extra latinum to get a planetfall.

Brian was in back, in the cargo module, making sure that the single 3 meter by 5 meter [10x16½ feet] connex container of Quark's cargo was securly tied down. Sometimes atmospheric re-entries for a craft as small as a truck can be rough.

"Everything tied down good," Brian said as he came forward again and sat in the navigator's couch, pulling the acceleration harnes down around him. He was wearing his favorite playsuit, a single-piece coverall with short sleeves and made out of nearly indistructable synthetic fiber that was silky soft on the inside and tough as cured leather on the outside. It was light blue on the upper half and black from the waist down, mimicking a Federation Starfleet uniform, it even had a cloth patch that looked suspiticiously like a communicator pin over the left breast.

"Ready to take her down on the deck?" I asked.

"Can I do it?" Brian asked, his big brown eyes begging.

"Maybe next time," I said and buckled the acceleration harnes around myself, and slipped on the omnicom headset. I settled myself in for entry into a planetary atmosphere, taking the collective in my left hand and the cyclic in my right, while settling my size 13 boots on the aileron pedals. I took a breath and looked over at Brian who held his thumb up. We started our re-entry.

Dream Walker came in assfirst with the ion-drive venturis glowing blue-white as we finished the deceloration from interplanetary velocity to re-entry. As our velocity dropped below 5 kilometers [3 miles] per second, I flipped the nose of the truck over and dived strait down for the surface.

"Uh-oh," Brian said, studying the qlr detector screen at the navigator's station. "Pete, there's a Bajorian Solar Guard cutter challenging us."

"Put it up on the speaker," I said.

Brian had learned quite a bit in his three weeks with me. He expertly reached over on the central instrument complex between our acceleration couches and turned a switch.

" 3;alien vessel, this is the Bajorian Solar Guard cutter Wankade. You are ordered to heave to and prepare to be boarded. Unknown alien vessel, this is 3;"

"Cool your jets, cutter," I said reaching into my flightsuit's top left pocket, taking out the isolinear chip Quark had assured me would answer all Bajorian official questions of my actions; and plugged it into the iff socket of the omnicom.

"Pete!" Brian said worriedly, "They're powering their forward phasers. Do something 3;"

Brian was watching a group on instruments which comprised my elint/ecm [That's electronic intellegence and electronic counter measures to those of you who do not recognize acronym] cluster, a bit of hijacked Star Fleet technology that allowed my seemingly normal civilian grade sensors to do several advanced [and for civilian craft – illegal] functions. One of these was to detect the increase in neutrino flux that accompanied the powering up of a directed energy weapon like a phaser cannon; another was to detect the unmistakable qlr signature of a weapons tracking array illuminating my poor old Tomahawk.

"Wow, the Bajorians are really spooked these days. We must have set off a few alarms in Bajor Solar Guard sector hqs because they don't often scramble a cutter to do an intercept – we're not even inside the 10,000 kilometer [6,000 miles] outer defense zone yet."

"They don't seem to care," Brian said hunched over the elint/ecm screen on his right and aft. "Now they are paining us with missile tracking sensors. I think it's past time to do something!"

"Not to worry." I set the rig's iff transponder to squirt the clearence the Feringe had gotten for me to the cutter.

There were a few anxious seconds while the cutter bore down on us, its missile launch ports open and phasers fully charged. Then the omnicom spat:

"Victor Poppa three eight eight six November Kilo, do you copy?"

"Victor Pappa three eight eight six November Kilo, go." I said into the headset's boom mic.

"You are guilty of an illegal high-gee re-entry, a felony under Bajor law 3;"

I began to sweat for the first time, the Solar Guard was taking this far too seriously. I wondered how good that clearence Quark had given me was 3;

" 3; however, in deference to your clearence by arch-vedic Mihran, the Bajorian Solar Guard will not press charges. You are officialy warned to transmit clearences in a timely manner in the future."

The hundred meter 12,000 ton cutter came within a half kilometer of us in its arching return to a heading for its orbital station. That's almost a sideswipe collision at orbital velocities, I figured it was meant to intimidate us.

"Wow-oww!" was Brian's comment as he got to see the cutter up close enough to read its markings and see the individual viewports embeded into its durillium hull.

We crossed the Xarganthian Coast just south of Kilkamec at 125,000 feet [38,000 meter], just begining to exit the leo inner defense zone. Remembering the cutter's warning [which I took very seriousl] to transmit our clearence in a timely fashion, I decided it was time to wake up the local ground ils controller.

Brian was already fumbling with the latest hard copy of the Bajor Sector Aerospace Area Control soi, which we had downloaded from ds9's lcars, and found that the nw quadrant of the Xarganthian continent was controlled by the Kilkamec Star Port Authority.

I let Brian dial the innitial contact frequency into the omnicom and gave the boom mike a with my index finger.

"Bajor Aerospace Control, this is Victor Poppa three eight eight six November Kilo, do you copy?"

"Victor Pappa 3886 from KilkCom, go."

"Bajor, I'm an independant with a consigned cargo from Vymann-kor to kobbutz Rittmahn; from Vedic Hijarski at Defense Command, Gamma Quadrant to Office of Special Intellegence, ka'butz Rittmahn 3;"

"Sorry Victor Poppa, kobbutz Rittmahn is a restricted destination. I show no authorized civilian traffic this afternoon."

"Yes, I know, Bajor, but my landing permit follows." I plugged in a second isolinear codechip from Quark into the Dream Walker's Omnicom and pressed the send switch and transmitted the second part of the authorization that the Feringi had supplied me with that had turned the Orbit Guard cutter around in its tracks.

"Wait one, Victor Poppa."

I twiddled my thumbs and slowly rocked the Tomahawk's steering vanes to ease my boredom as the landforms of Ba'jor came ever closer to me at almost 5 km/sec.

"Victor Poppa, you are cleared to kobbutz Rittmahn, desend immediatly to Angles 35 and contact kobbutz Rittmahn Control on 119.685 mHz."

"Roger Bajor control, Victor Poppa out."

"At least they didn't try to shoot us down," Brian chortled, having recoved from his fright.

Less than five minutes later I was reducing my airspeed even further and making more and more use of my countergravs to stay in the air. The Tomahawk is not an aerodynamic design, it has only vestial stubby wings and rudder functions. She's built for efficiency of loading and for essentially deep space operations, it is only because of her powerful countergrav generators that I can do the things I do with the Tomahawk in an atmosphere with gravity tugging at her.

I set the Omnicom for the kobbutz Rittmahn frequency and made contact with the control tower. They were expecting me, I was told. Vedic Hijarski had shot Bajor Space Central a QuantumLink Radio telegram to expect me and asking them to notify kobbutz Rittmahn upon my arrival.

I winced as I heard the name of Quark's phoney Vedic. Did he really have to be so flamboyant? It was only the Bajorian's devotion to the Prophets that let them turn a blind eye to virtually anything done with the blessing of a Vedic. Mihran was bad enough, but at least it sounded kind of like a Bajorian name, but Hijarski?

Too late to worry about in now, I guess, anyway, the controller had accepted the Vedic's authority to authorize a landing at a Bajoran Defense Directorate field instillaton, and according to the headers on the permit files, kobbutz Rittmahn was involved in couter intellegence work. I'd certinally be glad to get this last of my backlog of Quark's consignment cargoes out of the way. The money was good, but now I had Brian to think about also. Quark's couriors had a distressing tendency to end up dead or in Federation [or worse] detention.

I came in low and fast over the grasslands south-west of the main landing field and flared the noes up almost 80 degress to shed the last of my re-entry velocity.

"YEE-HAHH!" Brian yelled as I stabilized the Tomahawk and brought it's velocity down to under 100 kph [60mph].

"Like that, huh?" I grinned at Brian.

"YEAH! I can't wait till you teach me 3;"

I turned to make the final aproach to the main landing strip, now totally dependant upon the Tomahawk's powerful antigravs for lift and the coutergrav field to make manuvering in an atmosphere possible with the small steering jets. I hovered over the main strip and finally brought all four landing slids down together on the concrete and nikolyte of the main landing ramp only a few meters away from the port's lso.

The Landing Signals Officer signaled his satisfaction with my landing and directed me off to the northwest with his light batons toward a ramp leading down toward a huge hangar with the insignia of the Bajorian Federal Republic on it and rittmahn machine parts painted on its side in fifty foot [15 meter] high letters.

I held up my thumb to indicate that I understood and raised the skids up about a hundred and fifty centimeters [5 foot] and slowly drifted toward the indicated ramp. When we got over by the large warehouse, a group of Bajorian stevedores came out and all I had to do was open the rear cargo hatch and watch over the Tomahawk's internal video monitor while the Bajorians brought in an antigrav pallet and muscled the large connex on to it. When they were finished, I sealed the rear cargo hatch and hovered back out to the main runway of the base. I wanted to refuel before lifting off again and called the control tower to ask about refueling.

"Wait one, Victor Pappa." The tower operator said and there was the sound of a hurried conversation in hushed tones, just beyond the normal range of the omnicom's pick up. "I'm sorry, Victor Poppa 3886. Permission to refuel is denied. You are cleared to immediate liftoff, destination of your choise, but you must leave now! Without delay."

Brian immediatly sat forward in his seat and stabbed a small finger at the propellant supply indicator. Good call, Brian, I thought as I glanced at the propellant levels in the Tomahawk's tanks. Not enough to make orbit and rondevous with ds9.

"Negitive, controll, I need to refuel first. Insufficient propellant to achieve orbit."

"Victor Poppa, I say again, by order of the security vedic you must leave kobbutz Rittmahn at once. Suggest you do a sub-orbital burn to Kilkamec."

I was about to complain about how 15 minutes couldn't do any harm when Brian nudged me and pointed again, this time at the elint/ecm cluster. A lage red indicator light had winked on and the signals analysis screen showed the telltale signature of a tracking sensor. This told me that somewhere a phaser cannon had powered up and its targeting sensors were now painting my truck. Someone was deadly serious about not wanting us around. I must be getting slow in my old age not to have picked up on the edge in the tower operator's voice.

"Er 3;roger, control. Commencing lift off – destination Kilkamec City," the tell tail remained glowing hot angry red on the elint/ecm overhead board. I reved up the neids and to quote an ancestor of mine, "Got the hell outa Dodge!"

I fought paranoia, the urge to hug the ground and go into evasive manouvers as I sped away from kobbutz Rittmahn – but within thirty seconds the sensor telltale went out and I breathed a little easier. What the hell had that little Ferengi conman gotten me into?

Several minutes later I was lined up on the final approach to a small suburban flight field just south of the urban center of Kilkamec City. Brian was busy using lcars and looking up the Bajorian Aerospace Assistance Association encyclopedia.

"If I'm reading this map right, this is Xanthe-hove 3;" Brian said.

"Don't worry, you're reading it right, Bajor is a civilized world, while we're here, we are tied into the planetary nav-grid, pull up any map and lcars will automatically tell you where we are in reference to the map," I explained. "See that blue and gold circle and cross-hairs on the screen?"

"Yeah."

"That's us. Now what's it say about Xanthe-hove?" I asked as I swooped in low over a few small villiages and such and came upon the landing field

"It's listed it as a class "F" port, no instrument assisted landings, and no live attendants, only automatic refueling and communications hubs," Brian said.

"Good," I muttered. After the bum's rush at kobbutz Rittmahn, I was not anxious to run into anyone else right now anyway. I pulled up and shed airspeed in a long wide arc over the area. We were below 1,000 feet [300m] and both Brian and I could see people on the ground coming out of their houses and pointing up at us. I guessed Xanthe-hove was a quiet little rural landing field used by the local wealthy to park their air planes and perhaphs a few light spacecraft like the Tomahawk; but the arrival of a stranger would be bound to cause a commotion as I again lined up on the field.

"What about it, Brian? Want to try your hand at landings?"

"Really?" Brian asked excitedly.

"Well, not quite solo yet," I said. "But c'mon over here and sit on my lap."

Brian immediatly squirmed his boney little frame ontop of me and grabbed at the cyclic.

"Hmmn. Your legs aren't long enough to operate the ailerons, so I'll do that."

I explained the operation of the Tomahawk's manuvering controls to Brian. As I think I've already said, he's probably the brightest nine-year-old I've ever met; and the controls were not too different from the vr-arcade sims that Brian loved to play. He did a very good job of bringing the Tomahawk down and equalizing our momentum with the ground and finally letting the Tomahawk settle onto a suitable concrete slab and let the truck's unloaded 70 tons settle down on her four oversized landing skids. As Brian released the countergrav field the full mass of the truck settled on the hydrolics of the landing skids and there was a satisfying audio signal from the system's status board that indicated that the hydrolics had sucessfully taken over the load from the countergravs and it was safe to shut down main power.

"Congratulations, BRIAN!!" I said enthusiastically, squeezing him in a bearhug.

"Thank you, thank you," Brian smiled, taking mock bows from my lap. He immediatly hopped off my lap and darted over to the Flight Engineer's station. "I almost forgot!" he said. "Shut down the main drives and set the apu to standby."

"Good kid," I said, streaching leasurily in the pilot's couch. "Go ahead and do it."

After completing the shutdown of the drives and placing the main photonic batteries in standby mode, Brian tapped the propellant levels indicator. "We just made it, less than four minutes propellant left."

We climbed down from the Tomahawk's main airlock hatch and out onto the dusty, windswept ramp and I showed Brian how to do a post flight walkaround inspection. This walk around is to ensure that re-entry has not jarred loose anything, or compromised the truck's thermocoat of high temperature heat shielding.

The small port was in a huge clearing in wooded grove, the landing field was perhaphs a kilometer long and a quarter that in width. The field itself was ankle high in grasses and weeds. Along the west edge was a diserted two lane blacktop road. Across this was a small grouping of houses. A sagging perimiter fence ran along the inside of the field against the blacktop and the southern end of the field was littered with parking ramps, like the one Dream Walker was currently occupying, hangars, some open and empty, other sealed tight, and various other non- discript buildings.

From one of these non-discript buildings about the size of a small hangar thirty meters away came the sounds of a vr holo-vid game of some kind. Suddenly a group of young boys, perhaphs 8- to 13-years-old exploded from around a corner of the long low field maintance building. The boys shouted and waved toy lasers around in simulated military operation, maybe reinacting some famous battle of the Kardasian occupation.

The whole pack skidded to a halt perhaphs five meters away as they saw us. There was some innitial shuffling of feet indecisivly, and then one of the older boys came forward and ignoring me completely addressed Brian:

"Hey, kid. Wanna play?"

Brian looked over his shoulder at me questionly, "Can I?" he asked.

"Of course. Take off," I smiled and like a morning fog the kids including Brian were gone. Off to combat the evil Kardasian foe.

I walked over to the slab's control and comm pannel and took out my cash card and put it in the slot. There was a soft tinkle of a chime and the services pannel came to life. I punched in the code for refueling of the neid's propellant tanks with top quaility liquid atomic hydrogen and told the port-droid's cpu to do a full diagnostic on all systems; but to hold for authorization on any repair work.

I went back into the Dream Walker to finish up all the house keeping chores that accreued at the conclusion of a contract delivery. Normally, my business is all cash on delivery, but Quark's loads are different. In most cases the people I'm delivering to would as soon cut your throat as pay out good latinum, so I bill Quark and let him add the delivery charges onto whatever he's charging the customer. This method, however, requires that I maintain pretty complete records of all my expences. So, much as I detest all the work involved, I maintain a multi-entry log book.

I was about to close the logbook program when the port's droid signalled for my attention. The diagnostic I had ordered had found the warp drive problems and was asking if I would authorize repairs which would cost 3;

"Holy carbonized fish parts," I muttered as I saw the estimate of repairs plus parts. It was a good thing that Quark was picking up the tab on this.

I authorized the repairs and then called Quark.

The Ferengi's somewhat dazed continence appeared on the screen. I had the distinct feeling that he was not expecting to hear from me."

"Oh! 3;er 3;Reynolds. How'd it go?"

"Not bad, except for nearly being shot down by the Bajorian Solar Guard, and then getting the bums rush from Kobbutz Rittmahn, under threat from a phaser cannon fifteen seconds after droping the consignment. Anyway, I'm here for payment Quark. With expences it comes to 216 bars, 41 slips of latinum." I slipped my cashcard into the data socket on the omnicom.

"W-H-A-T??!!" the Ferengi explouded, "that's almost four times what we agreed."

"Yeah, but it includes repairs to the warp drive that ducking those Jem'Hadarr fighters last time caused." Quark snarled something about I should send the bill for that to the Founders, but as I watched the readout on my cashcard, it jumped almost 217 bars of latinum. "Thanks Quark," I said.

"Are you available for another charter? I need a fast, discrete courior to deliver 3;"

"No, hold it, Quark. I'm back on vacation as of this minute."

"Huyew-mons are always on vacation," he said and broke the connection.

After finishing with Quark, I leaned back in the pilot's couch and focused the external optical sensors on the landing field. It being a warm early Sunday afternoon the field was crowded with kids of both genders, both pre-teen and teenagers who obviously viewed the landing field as their playground. The kids kept swarming around each other forming and unforming alliances. It was rather like watching a flock of birds in random flight. For the most part the youngsters remained in the open part of the field in the central region of the facility, but periodically a group would break and come boiling across the grass toward the landing pad the Lighter was parked on.

The group that had kindly 'adopted' Brian into its midst was playing a variation on Laser Tag. In the original game, it is just a free-for-all, with the objective being just not to get 'hit', but almost immediately after its first release, the game had been adopted by underage soldiers across the galaxy. Laser Combat was a hell of a lot of fun. I had even induldged in it a time or two. It allows the individual to vent his inborn blood-lust in a non-lethal fashion. Each participant wares a playsuit with laser-light sensitive target sensors woven into the onepiece outfit; and each participant carried a small laser pistol which emitted a 50 mw laser beam, not enough to burn with, but more than enough to set off the sensors in the playsuits.

Thereafter it was up to each wanna-be infantry platoon leader to lead his troops to victory. Yes, good clean fun. I was glad that Brian was being given the opportunity by the local Bajorian kids to participate. I got up and went to the galley quickly for a cold one, and returned to the control cab, busying myself attempting to pick out Brian in the riot of children on the field.

So here we were on Bajor, gateway to the Gamma Quadrant. Since end of the war between the Dominion and the combined sentient races of the Alpha Quadrant, nearly twenty five years ago, Bajor had become one of the Federation's wealthiest trading planets. And as such, it had attracted a fair cross-section of Federation races. Kilkamec City was the Bajorian 'free city' where the galactics from both sides of the wormhole had set up their trade missions and concession stands.

Here also were the Bajorian run bars, casinoes, flop houses, pawnshops and brothels that invariably sprang up around such places. In other words a more wretched hive of skum and villianry would be hard to find. But Brian, bless his little heart, was oblivious to all the graft and corruption around him and was having the best time he could remember exploring an alien city. I simply tagged along where ever the nine-year-old led just to make sure that he was safe.

When the Primary Sun had begun to set, the Laser Combat game had broken up, but Brian, who is a night own at heart, begged to go exploring in Kilkamec City, and so we had chartered a robocab and set off for the wilds of downtown Kilkamec City.

We passed by a holovid theater with a triple bill of action-adventure features.

"Can we go, I, please!"

"Yeah, I guess so, if you want to."

Four hours and two holovids later we emerged from the movie theater. I was totally exhausted. Brian, however was still reved and ready for at least another six hours of wondering around Kilkamec City.

"Have a heart, Brian. I'm pooped, and we've still gotta get up bright and early to lift off for ds9."

My first indication that Brian too was begining to run down came seconds later as he stiffled a huge yawn. "Well, ok, if you want," he said agreeably. We strolled over to a public commweb terminal, intending to summons a robocab and go on back to the rural areodrome and catch some sleep before lifting off for ds9 bright and early tomorrow.

It was while we were waiting for the cab that Brian first saw him and pointed him out.

"Who's that?" He asked, trying his best not to point.

He didn't have to. It was immediatly obvious who he was talking about. A dozen meters away on the corner of a side street was what I thought was a girl at first – but I was mistaken I saw immediatly, this was a young boy. He was dressed in gaudy purple spandex shorts that were so tight that I could easily see his pre-adolescent pubic bulge containing his penis and testicals, a pink half tank top that exposed him practically to his nipples and stiletto boots. He was about ten or so I thought. With dark brown hair that would hang down to his shoulders, but was currently arranged in a pony tail. He stood on a street corner in a seedier part of Kilkamec City that we had wandered into, as Brian had explored. The boy did not look at all happy and very uncomfortable.

Sitting out by the cabstand, we watched him for a while. No, he was definitely not comfortable and very scared.

"That kid is in trouble," Brian said.

"Yeah, I know. How do you feel about it, do we help him?"

Brian paused and considered this seriously, "How can we not?" he asked. Bri was right of course, I'd known from the instant I saw the kid that I'd try to help, no matter the risk.

Soon the new boy noticed that we were watching him. I heard someone yell something in an unintelligible alien grumble. The boy looked across a side street at a large black Caddy ground-effect autocar parked unobtrusivly on the side street under some overhanging tree limbs. If you did not know the gev was there, or were not specifically looking for it, it would be easy to miss it – as I had done.

He shook his head slightly and he had a pleading look on his face. The door of the autocar opened and a big hairy leg came out. The boy stepped back and looked like he wanted to run. A hand came out of the car and pointed at me. I was definitely not comfortable with this.

"Brian, this may not go well," I said. "If I tell you, I want you to run as fast as you can, back to the theater and tell them to call the constables."

"I don't want to leave you 3;" Brian started to protest.

"You won't be, I'll be running right behind you!" I said.

Meanwhile, the new boy turned toward me and crossed the street without lifting his eyes up off the street in front of him. I wanted to get up and tell Brian to run. This was one of two things. Either it was a real slave-boy prostitude – something I had read about, but never really believed in the core of my being – or it was some kind of sting operation operated by who knew. Either way, things were going way too well with Brian for me to want to jepordize things.

As the new boy approached Brian said: "You should look before crossing the street. You could get hurt."

"So?" The brown-haired boy's voice was full of false bravado.

"You don't look so happy right now," I added.

"So?"

"Want to talk about it?" I was really begining to feel empathy for this very freightened little boy. I had made up my mind that this could not be a governmental sting operation, no one was a good enough actor to fake the waves of terror and need for flight that this boy was broadcasting.

"No." A long period of silence followed. Brian looked helplessly at me, his brown eyes pleading with me to do something.

A loud car horn broke the silence. The boy looked over his shoulder at the car across the street. "Do you want some company tonight?" He wasn't at all enthusiastic about it.

"I guess we could use someone to talk to."

"Okay," he said. "It's a bar of latinum all night, or twenty slips per hour."

I dug into a pocked and took out a golden ingot of gold plated latinum 3 centimeters [1¼ inch] long and a centmeter high and wide and handed it to the boy. He slowly walked over to the gev and there were some growls and a few shouts and waiving of fists; and then the brown-haired boy was walking back toward us.

The robocab arrived just then and I got Brian in and then our guest and followed him in myself.

"You hungry?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

A real orator this one I thought. "Then we should go."

The robocab pulled out into traffic and we left the seedy corner behind as I gave the droid driver instructions where to take us. First to an all-nite shopping center and then on to the aerospace field.

"I think we have something I can cook up at home." I didn't tell him that 'home' was a Tomahawk interstellar truck parked on a small rural aerospace field just south of Kilkamec City, or that about all we had left in the pantry were old combat e-rations.

"But before we go anywhere you need some decent clothes to wear. Those make you look like a hooker."

He shrugged his shoulders. "They should," the boy growled angrily. "That's what I am!"

"You aren't exactly happy about this are you?"

"Hell NO!"

"I want to tell you that I won't make you do anything you don't want to."

"Been there, done that!" the little boy said cynically.

Brian twisted around to a kneeling position in the front seat. "Pete is kewl, you'll see."

Our guest just stared out the window at the passing urban scene.

"What's your name?"

The boy looked at me for a minute, before he droped his eyes to the floor of the cab. In that minute, though I could see his eyes were bright, electric-arc blue.

"David Hiller," he said simply.

"Glad to meet you," I said. "My name is Pete, and that's Brian in the front."

David raised his eyes and fixed them on Brian, trying to understand the situation he was currently in. Finally he sighed and sat back in the seat. He seemed to relax a little, as though he had decided that If Brian trusted me, he could also.

"How old are you, David?"

The boy again gave me a searching evaluation, as if he were gauging whether or not I could be trusted with real data – or if he should make something up. "I'm eleven," he said finally, "I just turned eleven last week."

"I'll be ten in eight months," Brian said, but fell silent when the new boy said nothing.

The robocab pulled into a deserted parking lot of a semi-rundown all-nite mall with a large general merchandise store anchoring it. The garish neon sign over it said: K-Mart.

"Like I said," I turned to David. "We can get you some better clothes here. Why don't you get out of that 'costume' – we can't have you looking like a two bit whore."

With just his oversized undershirt on and the hooker boots off, David looked almost like any other little boy wearing an adult size T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it.

"You look better already."

"Thanks." He sounded a bit better now.

"Can I get some stuff, too?" Brian asked.

"Yeah," I said, "I guess you're wardrobe is also pretty thin."

Inside we went straight to the boy's department.

"Let's see. You need a decent pair of pants, a shirt, at least one playsuit, socks, shoes, underwear 3;"

Brian and David tried on several pairs of pants with several shirt combinations, some all- purpose playsuits and various other accessories, I found an ensemble that I really liked on my two proteges, and both boys also found stuff that they liked.

All things considered, the shopping trip was a sucess, the whole thing came to only a hundred fifty solars. It was a good thing that the K-Mart was tied into the Bank of Bajor so that I could use the Federation credits I had on deposit, I'm not certian after paying for Dream Walker's overhaul that I had even this much latinum left. Anyway for the hundred fifty we got:

Two pair of black denim pair jeans one size eight and one size twelve that fit the boys like jeans should, a white silk short sleeve shirt, not usually found at K-Mart's boys department, in size 12, and a nice pale blue [Brian's favorite color] button down dress shirt in Brian's size; 2 pairs of imitation Starscream sneakers [the real ones, imported from Terra itself would have cost a king's ransom here on Bajor three warpgate jumps from the Terran Core Worlds]; two size 12 playsuits, one in tiger-stripe camoflage design and one charcoal gray, two size eight playsuits, again in tiger strip camo design and charcoal gray, a dozen assorted white and colored socks with a six pack of size 8 and size 12 Funpals.

The small mall also had an all-night barber shop, and David pulled on my arm. "Can I get this poney-tail cut off too?" He wanted to know.

"That's up to you. Do you want to?"

"Yes."

"Okay, then I guess we'll pay a visit to the barber."

A half hour later, walking out to the robocab David, with a more masculine hair cut and a much more boyant and bubbly disposition wanted to put everything on, leaving all vestages of his recent past behind him.

"Not yet David, we need to wash those first. And you too."

"Why?"

"Because," I said "you never know what those clothes have been treated with when they get made. For that matter, who knows where they were made. They might have been manufactured on a world with a toxic atmosphere. Some of those toxins could be in the fabric 3; And you need a bath, I'm not going anywhere with you smelling like perfume."

Brian roared with laughter and David blushed deep crimson red. "Okay." he said subdued.

The ten minute ride out to the aerospace field was spent in small talk. Brian and David were fast making friends, and I used the time to studyt David. Definatly older than Brian, about ten was my innitial guess but he could be as old as twelve, depending on his genetic backround. He had shoulder-length sun-golden brown hair and bright, intellegent blue eyes.

He was 144 cm tall [4'8"] and weighed about 33.45 kg [75 pounds]. The latter two guesses were based upon the assumption he was eleven and a normal Terrestial human, which he certianly appeared to be. His walnut brown hair was in a rather longish cut, coming down to his shirt collar, but it was no longer in that pony tail which combined with his slim build had given him the appearence of a young girl instead of the very good looking boy he really was. Like Brian, his normal vocabulary seemed a weird mixture of juvenile slang and sophisticated adult level. I'd read somewhere that this was the normal outcome of kids who had few playmates their own age and associated mostly with adults.

"Here's the bathroom," I said to David. "You get in the tub and scrub yourself clean while Brian and I get supper started and put the new clothes into the wash."

Closing the bathroom door I went to the Tomahawk's tiny laundry room and tossed the new clothing into the wash tub and set the controls for wash-n-ware. The truck's little washer would take several loads to accomplish the task, but then so would dinner. Meanwhile, Brian had been poking around in the cold pantry.

"Err 3;Pete? We really don't have anything but ice cream in here 3;"

"Try this," I said after digging into the oversized drawers of the galley storage area. Brian was right though, we were seriously understocked in the grub compartment with two healthy growing boys on board. I made a mental note to lay in supplies when we docked at ds9. I tossed Brian a foil packet about 15 centimeters long and 4 centimeters thick [6 x 1½ inches].

"What is it?" asked Brian.

"Combat E-rations," I said. "Not too bad really."

When David came out of the bathroom wearing a huge towel wrapped around his waist, I could hear his stomach growl.

"Hey kiddo! All clean and stuff?"

"Yeah, it felt good. Are the clothes done yet?"

"In the dryer as we speak they will be done soon. Here, sit down and eat up! You have not lived till you've tasted Terran Imperial Marines combat rations ."

Brian was already sitting at the Dream Walker's small meter square table in our 'ward room' as David came in from the adjoining galley. The young boy tore the combat ration pak open and stuffed the beef jerky-like stick of emergency rations in his mouth. "Not bad," he said, his mouth full.

David nodded and opened the package and tenativly took a bite. "Pretty good," he agreed. Brian turned over the foil wraper of the E-rations. On the foil was the red, white and blue banner of the United States and the words:

"Yeah, I know." David said, "I read about it in a comicbook. This stuff is suppose to keep for a century. More if its stored in a vacuum."

"Oh yeah? How?"

"They sock it with gamma rays to kill all the bacteria.

"Yuck, you mean the stuff is radioactive?"

I had joined the two boys in the galley by this time and laughed, "No, Brian, the gamma rays go right through it and kill all the bacteria and then keep on going. It takes a special kind of material to become radioactive itself."

"Oh," Brian said.

"Whatcha get?" David asked. "They have 12 basic meals."

"It says 'Type C Turkey Dinner', so I guess it's thanksgiving," Brian said.

"Good enough for me!" David said, "let me have another of those Rations, Combat Emerengcy, Type II."

We all had a second round.

"Hey, okay," Brian said. "I got fried chicken and french fries. Authenetic junque food!"

"I got 'steak, salad, baked potato, and biscut' " David said reading right off the foil pack.

The boys nearly inhaled the ration sticks and sat around smacking their lips.

"Okay, who's up for ice cream?"

"Me--me--me!" both boys were squirming all over each other waving their hands in the air. David's towel was slipping a bit and I cought a glimpse of his exquisite boyhood. As I sat two heaping bowls of ice cream in front of the two boys, they both attacked the ice cream.

I was still chewing on a ration bar. I looked up from my 'steak'. "Damn! You must have been hungry." All they did was nod as they wiped ice cream from their chins.

The buzzer on the dryer rang indicating the load was done.

"Ahh," I said, sitting back in my chair. "Time for the fashion show. You two go get your stuff out of the laundry room and come show me how they fit. Moments later, the two boys were back, Brian was waring the tiger-stripe camoflage playsuit and

Brian came over and sat beside me as David came in from the bathroom.

David stood there in front of me. All of four feet and some change, sandy brown hair, with a lot of bronze-red mixed into it, not golden brown like I thought. Rich blue eyes that reflected his intelligence. His skin was fair to the point of being pale. You can spot a spacer right away ground side, because of the heavier exposure to uv radiation tends to brown the skin pretty well. Because David was so pale, it was obvious he'd been here on Bajor for some time, yet he was obviously a Terran human. I wondered how this had come to be. No matter, he looked spectacular in the new clothes.

"WOW." Was all I could say.

The silk shirt fit him like a glove.

I could see his shape under it but it did not squeeze him. His pants gripped his butt like a lover. Holding, cradling but not skin tight. I let my eyes wander up and down his beauty and came to rest on his feet. I knelt down and tied his left shoe. "Don't want you to trip bub."

"Thanks. Thanks for every thing, the clothes, the food. It almost makes me forget why we are here 3;"

I placed my finger on his lips stopping him. "I meant it. I will make you do nothing you don't want to. If all we do is spend the evening watching a movie and cuddling, I will be happy."

"But.."

Again with the finger. "No. For now there is no 'but' – just enjoy and feel safe that I won't hurt you. I know you're freightened, but Brian can tell you, I will not hurt you. I subscribe to the Federation's Children's Bill of Rights."

"What's that?"

"Let's see when I got my licence, I could recite it from memory. That's been a while, but let's see if I can still do it – alright?"

David shrugged, still puzzled.

"Okay," I said, "Here goes: The Children's Bill of Rights. I understand that my body is my own. No one has a right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body.

I understand that sex is among the most powerful physical drives my being is subject to. This drive is normal and good, it is neither moral nor immoral. I understand that it is my right to satisfy this drive however I see fit, provided only that I do no harm to another.

I acknowledge the fact that I am a child and that I am vulnerable to outside pressures exerted by the adults around me. I promise that I will always listen carefully to the advise of my parents and those adults that I love and trust.

I have the right to say NO to anything that scares me or makes me feel uncomfortable when it comes to personal interactrions with other people 3;"

David looked at me, "Do you really believe that?"

"Oh there's more, then there was the Oath that I had to swear to get my licence as a Boy Lover. I'm pretty sure I can still recite that one: I have read and acknowledge the truth of the Children's Bill of Rights.

I will never use force, either physical or emotional against a child; I will always express nothing but affection and respect for the child I am associated with.

I understand that although sex is a big part of life, it is not the only thing that is important. I promise to faithfully attend to the responcibilities of friendship also.

I realize and acknowledge that children are gifts from God and that my relationship with them, either as a parent or lover is built upon a spiritual foundation, not just a physical one. I promise never to do anything to violate the trust given to me by a child.

I understand that the violation of any of these principles will be grounds for the immediate revocation of my licence and privlages granted thereby. I further understand that violation of this covenant is punishable under criminal and civil law."

"Wow 3;"

Both David and Brian were impressed with the solumn words of the oath. Brian had never heard of licenced Boy Lovers either. When he had come up to me in the vr-arcade on Starbase 288 he thought he was being very naughty and living on the edge.

"David," I said softly, "We – Brian and I – want you to join our little family."

David shot a surprised look at Brian, who nodded. "Y-you want me to come with you – you mean when you leave Bajor?"

"Uh-huh," Brian said.

David turned to me, and it was my turn to just smile an nod.

The young brown-haired boy burst into tears, "I-I can't" He said. "The thing I was worrying about I can't forget any more."

I suggested that the boys get ready for bed and as David got down to his underware, I scooped him into my arms, and with Brian following, I carried him into the sleeping area and laid on the bed. Brian on one side, and I on the other – David was sandwiched between us. Brian stroked David sympathetically.

"Tell me what it is, maybe we can figure something out," I said.

"I really am a faggot-whore. I like doing it with boys. Not the butt fucking, but I like to be sucked 3; and I like to play with other boy's wieners."

"David," I started, searching for the words that would sauve over the gaping emotional wounds in David's psyche. "You know that Brian and I enjoy playing with each other like that," I said. "All boys mess around with each other sometimes," I said as comfortingly as I could. I hugged him again. "It's a natural part of being a little boy. It's way too early for you to say one way or the other if you're gay, xt-sexo, bi-sexual or hetro. You have to be a grown up before those things mean anything – and you decide that. While you are a kid you can experiment with anything and its ok."

David looked up at me, face twisted into a mask of pain. "I'm trying to tell you it's true. I do like boys. I never get excited about girls; and aliens 3;? Yeech!"

Brian leaned over and put his arm around David's shoulder. "You can play with my wiener if you want 3;any time you want. I think its fun too – and I want you to be happy again."

He looked at Brian, "Thanks, Brian," he said. Then he looked like he was trying to stop crying.

"You know what I am. I'm a whore. I get paid to let people fuck me. I belong to Jamal, and if I don't do what he says – Jamal is gonna beat me up again.

"I don't see any 'Jamal' here," I said softlly,

" 3; So if you don't fuck me tonight he's gonna beat me up." The tears were starting to flow again. "But I don't wanna get fucked! It hurts! But I don't wanna get beat up! I don't know what to do! I don't want you to hurt me but if you don't I will get hurt anyway."

"I wont hurt you." I said

"Nor me," Brian echoed solumnly.

"But if you don't he will! Maybe even worse."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"A week today"

"How many men have "fucked" you?"

"One."

"Jamal, right?"

He nodded. "It hurt so much! He just threw me on the bed and hit me – cause I wouldn't suck his cock! He tore off my pants and shoved his dick in my butt! He hurt me so bad I screamed for him to stop but he wouldn't!"

Now the tears would not stop. I just held him and waited. I wanted to kill this Jamal. How could anyone do this to a child. This Jamal person was a real monster, one of the 'preditor pedophyles' I had heard of and had always dismissed as christian propaganda. All this beast cared about was his own pleasure. He was willing to hurt this little boy, maybe even kill him to satisfy his own needs. For an instant my head whirled, there was a rushing in my ears and I caught a glimpse of what motivated the 'other side' {those few throughally anti-boy-lover bigots} in their jhad of hatred and bloody retribution against people like myself.

Yes, my fossilized readers, if you are truly a member of that tiny minority of infinatly insane pedaeophobes you too can find comrades out there in the infinate expance of the explored universe. The Vulcan's have a saying for it – 'infinate diversity in infinate combinations': idic. Perhaps you came from a background such as David has just narrowly excaped 3; how then could I, a boy lover, try to condemn you for your insane hatred of us all? I can't all I can do is to be ever vigilent and try to help children like David.

Brian had cuddled up against David and was holding him in his arms, tears were rolling down his cheeks. I was very proud of Brian and his compassionate reaction; he had the emotional constitution of a fine member of a future generation of boy lovers. Even though I secretly suspected that when his time came, Brian would choose to meld with the 95% of strait humanity in the galaxy at large.

"After he did it to me, he said I had to suck his cock." The word was even uglier coming out of David's beautiful mouth. "So he locked me in the closet and told me I wouldn't eat till I sucked him and anyone he told me to. I got so hungry I told him I would do anything he wanted me to – anything at all." David looked at the ground. "He took me into a room with a lot of other boys in it. He told me to get on my knees and suck them all 3;"

David hesitated. "And I did. All of them, even the little baby. He made me swallow the cum from the older boys. That was all I would get too eat till I learned how to suck real good, he said. He put me back in the closet. Every day he would get me out and make me suck off a bunch of people. The only thing I had to eat was their stuff. I was so hungry I would have let him do my butt again. then today he took me out and gave me a 'test'. He made me suck his dick. he shoved it down my throat and I couldn't breath! I thought I was going to die! He just kept shoving it in and out till he cummed. After that he finally let me have a bowl of oatmeal. I never liked oatmeal before, but I gobbled down every last mounthfull. He made me dress up like you saw and took me out. He told me what to charge and if I didn't come back with my butt full of stuff he was gonna fuck me till I was dead!

"I DON'T WANNA DIE!"

I just held the boy. Brian cried softly.

My mind was on fire. I was ashamed of what had happened to this boy and I was enraged at it as well. I lay on the bed holding a boy in my arms trying to figure out what to do. Realistically all I could do was comfort him. I probably could have alerted the Bajorian authorities, but it was obvious that they assigned a very low priority to such problems. I could – and would – notify nambla and ibln of the problems here on Bajor 3; nambla, the oldest boy lover organization on Terra has its roots in deep pre-space times and has many of the aspects of a shadow government, including an assasination bureau. But Bajor was a rich and powerful member of the Federation's plans for the defence of the Alpha Quadrant against the Dominion, and it was highly unlikely that any real pressure would be brought to bear, politically or economically 3; and the chances of getting nambla's Assasination Bureau to assign one of its very limited number of mechanics to 'fix' this problem were not good either.

Soon though, David's sobs subsided. "So you gotta fuck me," he said resolutely

"I will never fuck you." I said resolutely.

"BUT!"

"No. I will never do that. I told you about my Oath as a boy lover. I take that very seriously. If push came to shove I would terminate this Jamal-creature before I let anything happen to you."

His eyes got wide.

"If we do anything to each other, you will decide what you want to do. IF I stick it in you it will be by your decision, and I will never 'fuck' you. If we do it, I will make love to you."

He looked puzzled. "I don't get it."

"S'okay," I murmured, stroking his hair, "you don't have to. But I need your contact number for Jamal." I said, sitting up and moving across to the sleeping area's mini-couch.

"No! No, you mustn't 3; 3;" David sat bolt upright and Brian looked startled and freightened.

"Okay, okay, calm down," I said "But I can't believe that your parents or someone isn't worried about you."

"They're not," David said instantly, his face twisted into a scowl.

"Well, I'm worried about it. How about humoring me and giving me their commweb number if you won't give up Jamal's." I said, taking a small portable commweb from the receptical just to the left of the archway leading to the Tomahawk's central core walkway. "I'm calling just to let them know you're okay and see what they say."

David made a rude noise. "C'mon Pete, you know as well as I do that if I give you a comm number, you can find out virtually everything from the planetary-web – everything about anyone from name to last three fuck-dates."

"Well, maybe so. In theory – if I were Federation Security or a private investigator – but I'm not. Believe me David, my only interest is in letting your people know that you are safe."

"They're not worried, Pete," David said solumnly. "Jamal bought me from my step- mother, a Bajorian Jiggsigg junkie. He paid her 35 slips of latinum and a week's supply of Jiggsigg – she doesn't even have a comm number and I doubt if she knows I'm gone."

"I see," I said thoughtfully. I still wondered how he'd come to be on Bajor in the first place, but that could wait for now, I senced that David was cruising on the edge of breaking down again; and I wanted to spear him that if I could. "There was no one to help?"

"Like with so much else to do, the cops would give a bleep about a kid like me," David sighed gustily and then reluctantly gave me a Comm number. "But it'll only cause trouble 3;"

"Who's this?" I asked looking up from the commweb.

David glanced at Brian, and shrugged. "Jamal's."

I sat down on the edge of the bed, opened the portable comm-web and dialed the number.

"Pete!" Brian' voice was edged with terror. Startled I looked toward him.

"Cut off the video pickup! We don't want him to see us – I know!"

Instinctivly I touched a control button on the bottom of the commweb and the tiny video led over the ccd screen went out. I've learned to trust Brian's hunches. He's right more times than he's wrong.

"Hullo?" a gutterle male voice said after the third ring. The small 6 cm [2½ inch] screen showed an unshaven hairy obesse Bajorian about 50 with thick eyebrows and a perminent sneer etched across his philisteen features.

"Hello, is this Jamal?" I asked.

"Who wants to know?" the voice asked roughly. "What's wrong with da vid?"

"My name's Pete and I picked up a kid you might know: his name's David. I just wanted to let you know he's okay and see if there was anything you wanted to tell him," I answered.

"Oh ya did, huh? Listen you cocksucker I don't give a flying fuck if da little faggot is alive or dead, I gots lots of 'em. You paid da latinum, he's yours till sunup. Then ya put 'im back on da corner. Da snivlin' li'l mutie's gotta earn his keep aroune here. Ya hear me snotnose?"

"I don't think so. You see David's decided to stay with me," I said.

"WHAT!!?? Why I'll have yo killed, ya thievin' two bit hustler, I have friends in the resistance, dey'll hunt youse down like a Kardasian slugworm! I'll have him back, and that other little piece of ass you had with you. They'll both die of some horrible xt-clap or some other xt-std before dey see de twelfth birthday. You betta just be smart and hand dem over. Den mabbe I let you live."

"In your dreams fatboy," I growled.

"WHAD YO SEZ!? I kill you ––––"

"Sue me," I said and pressed the disconnect switch. I looked at the "transmission terminated" icon on the tiny ccd screen for a while with an obviously shocked expression before I pressed the off button and watched the brief flash of light as the ccd cells of the vidscreen discharged. A slow rage was building in me and he had to consciously try to avoid throwing a non-productive rage-tantrum right there. How dare that subhuman slime say such things against a pair of sweet little boys like David and Brian? To hell with the bureau of assasinations, I'd waste this piece of dogmeat myself.

David looked pained. "He said he didn't care, didn't he?" David's face was an unreadable mask of intense emotion seething within his being.

I nodded.

"He called me a faggot didn't he?" David asked in a quiet voice.

I nodded again.

"And a mutant 3; that part was true at least. I'm a filthy mutie," David said.

As I looked at the two boys beautiful faces I saw large tears begin to roll down their cheeks again, almost simeltaniously. That was all it took, I could hold out no longer. I sat on the bed next to them and put an arm around each boy. "Hey Brian, David, it's okay guys. It's gonna be okay."

Brian threw his arms around my neck and crawled into my lap. The nine-year-old buried his face against my shoulder, crying in huge, wrenching sobs.

David, for a few minutes, managed to just lean against me with tears rolling down his cheecks freely, but soon he was openly bawling again also. I hugged them and let them cry. Through his sobs, David swore for the first time in front of me. "That son of a bitch! That fucking son of a bitch. I hate him! I tried like crazy to please him --- so he wouldn't hurt me any more; but I couldn't do anything right. He beat the shit out of me every other day! I hate him! I hate him!"

I hugged him tighter, petting his soft brown hair.

At last, the emotion spent and the crying over, David released his hold on me and sat up. "I should just off myself and be done with it!" he said.

"David! NO!" Brian litteraly screamed through his tears. The atmosphere in the room became suddenly electric and I could sence more than see a pale blue-green aurorae surrounding Brian and reaching out toward both myself and David.

Now of course I know all about MenTalts and the amazing things that are possible to the human mind, but I'd never encountered one before, a true MenTalt is a one in a million reordering of the human genome to produce something 3; well 3; diffrent but still human, and as far as I knew there was nothing in Brian's medical or genetic records that indicated that he might be a T+ talent, but the past few seconds were fast making a believer out of me. There was a distinct possibility that Brian Shimosuwa was a MenTalt, and judging from this display, a fairly high potency level one also.

"Don't ever even think or say that!" I exclaimed, holdind David even tighter. "I promise no matter what you tell me and Brian, you can stay with us as long as you decide to."

"Amen," Brian sobbed through his tears.

"What about when you have to leave with your ship?"

"Well," I said momentarily taken aback by the starkly analytic question. "I won't lie to you, that could be complicated with the Bajorian authorities, but when the time comes, if you want to come with us, I promise you will."

David hugged me tightly and then relieced me and looked right at me, his gorgeous electric-icefire blue eyes brimming with tears. If it had been any other circumstance, I would have been instantly erect at the thought of this little boy coming with us and beating his meat with Brian in front of a holocam. But this wasn't erotic. This was deeply sad.

Brian snuffled and wiped his runny nose on a kleenix from the pop-up dispenser beside on the bed's wde bookcase headboard. "And I – I think I may be a mutant, not a useful Talent that can be trained, but a dangerous mutant. I wanted to tell you when we first met, but you were so kewl, I wanted to stay with you. And the Federation Security Agents will come and take me away and put electrodes in me and cut me open to see what makes me tick. My aunt told me."

Both David and I sat their and simply staired at Brian. If this was some plan of his to get David's mind off suicide, it had worked well. The eleven year old's tears had dried up completely as he tried to comprehend what the words Brian was saying meant in the cold hard reality of the multiverse.

"Brian that is absolute nonesence! What makes you think you're a mutant?" I asked.

"Watch!" the 9-year-old commanded, pointing to the used complementry kleenix in the wastebasket a meter away. A distracted look came over Brian's face and then his eyes seemed to blaze electric amber for an instant, as the yellow flecks in his brown eyes reacted to whatever his mind ordered. The deteris in the wastebasket suddenly burst into flame and then settled down into a single large orange-yellow flame as it burned the paper and cotton fibers of the used kleenix.

"Warning!" lcars chided. "FIRE!"

"Hoe--lee Sh---" I said softly, still staring at the now flickering flame. "lcars, standown."

"And I can make myself invisible," Brian said matter-of-factly.

"G'wan 3;" David muttered.

"I don't mean really invisible, like bending light or something; but I can make people just ignore me, and not pay any attention to what I'm doing, and just forget that anything happened. But it takes time to prepare, and it leaves a humungus headache. That's why I couldn't use it too often, I have to have time to prepare 3;"

"Aww, Brian, I know how you feel 3;" David said and hugged Brian.

I looked at Brian, his face was anxious. "That is some demonstration," I said. "I think the invisible trick could be called telehypnosis, and the trick with the kleenix would be telekenesis. Neither of these things make you a monster, or dangerious, they just make you very special. As far as I know you need to be a T+3 to make telekensis work consistantly."

"What's T+3 mean?" Brian asked.

"When humans first went out into the galaxy and started to meet other people, they learned that what is called "psi" or extrasensory preception is common among about half of all sentient life – especially among non-humanoid forms. We humans like to measure and compare things, and psi was no diffrent. So back in the 21st century they established a group of tests and measurements that could compare the relative potencies of diffrent people withg psi-powers. They called these special people "MenTalts" which stands for MENtal TALenTs, and established a scale called the T scale. Because we thought of it, we set ourselves at the center with T=0. From there the table is logarithmic – do you know that word?"

"Of course!" Brian snorted. "I'm not a baby, I passed my Phase One tests last year!"

"Ooohhhhh – tuff guy, Phase Two are you. We'll find out when you start back to school next month," I grinned.

"School!?"

"Yes, school. Anyway, the T-scale is logarithmic and goes up to T+8 or down to T-4. Plus numbers are greater than Terra norm, and minus numbers are less than norm. Example: Betzoids are all T+2 and some are T+3 or T+4 3;"

David shifted and laid out full length on the bed and said: "Pete, you said you would not 'fuck' me, but you might 'make love' with me. What's the diffrence?"

"Hmmn! That is really a tougher question than it sounds like," I said. "OK. You can break sex into several parts. It in itself is an act. But it is what is inside the people that are doing it that makes it different. What Jamal did to you was rape. You did not want it and he forced it on you, he hurt you even when you told him no. THAT is illegal, you know what it is like on your side of it and that tells you it is the ugliest of things that exist. Do you understand all this?"

He nodded in agreement. "I'm the middle of Phase Two he grinned."

"Yeah, school for you too," I grinned.

"Fucking is simply one person getting what he or she wants without caring about the other. No love or caring involved. but both people agree to it. Having sex is where two people want to have pleasure but they aren't really in love with each other they both want to have pleasure and they decide to use one another to get it."

So what's 'making love' mean?"

"That is the most beautiful of acts. The exact opposite of rape. It is where two people decide to give pleasure to each other. Neither caring for their own satisfaction, just their partner. The ultimate goal is to make the other as happy as possible, even if it means denying oneself."

"You said you want to make love to me but not fuck me. How can you do that?"

"I want to explore your body and find all the things that make you feel good. I want to take you to heaven and never come back. If you don't want to do anything to me I would be just as happy. My pleasure means nothing to me, Just yours. I might not be able to do any thing about what is going to happen tomorrow, but I can make sure you feel loved tonight."

I looked at the two boys, "Come here, guys," I said softly, watching the boys leap up from the bed without even a hint of any hesitation. They crawled into my lap and snuggled against me, I put my arms around them and sighed. "None of this alters how I feel about you guys at all, I still love you both, very much."

"Really," David asked.

"Yes, I mean it."

"Pete, you're the first man that has said he loved me since my dad died. He and I used to wrestle and play around with each other," David said wistfully, wiping the tears away.

"I like to wrestle too," Brian added shyly.

Suddenly I launched myself at the bed, on a trajectory that carried me into the middle of the queen-sized bed. I reached out and enfolded the two boys in my arms, carring them along with me and finally flopping down on the bed. "Me too," I said simply.

David and Brian squeeled with laughter and both began to squirm and attempt to free themselves from the my powerful grasp. David managed to wriggle out of my grasp.

"N'yahh, N'yahh! Can't get me!" David chanted.

I ignored David and increased his hold on Brian, being careful not to apply too much pressure to the 9-year-old. "Papa bear has captured baby bear number 1, and will soon get number two," I predicted.

"Not this baby bear!" David laughed. While I was busy with Brian, David manuvered around and came up quickly behind me and skillfully applied a headlock to me. Unfortunatly, his forearm was too short to sucessfully complete the manuver. I quickly pinned Brian' legs between my own, then released my grip with my right hand on Brian and reached around to peel David off my back and flip the eleven-year-old down beside Brian. I then pinned the boy's legs beside Brian's and wrapped my massive hand around the boys' four wrists and streached the two little boys out full length.

"That didn't take too long, baby bear #2," I grinned.

Brian was waring his old gray short shorts from the first day I had met him. He had started to use these as pajammas now. These shorts had a broken zipper, which I had noticed earlier; and now the pants snap had also come undone, revealing the snowy white of Brian' underpants. I reached over and pushed Brian' shirt up and began to tickle the nine-year-old's tummy.

"You can undress me if you want," chirped Brian.

"Want me to?" I asked.

"Uh-huh," the little boy grinned.

David also squirmed around and smiled playfully up at Pete. "Me too," the boy said.

I scooped Brian into his arms and stood up, walking over to the bed, laying him down on the bed. I knelt beside Brian and removed his shirt, marveling at the smoothness of his little boy chest; then slid the boy's shorts over his hips and down his legs. I then returned to David and lifted him onto the bed also.

I reached under the boy's undershirt to caress one of Brian' nipples which became quickly erect, springing for attention. Then I rubbed my hands all over David's beautiful chest and upper tummy, feeling every ripple in his tight yet silky skin. David closed his eyes and sighed in pleasure as my hands explored his sides and the small of his back.

"Hey, do me!" Brian explaimed

I set about removing the boys' sneakers and socks one at a time, tossing them into a corner of the room. I ran my fingernail lightly down David's chect from just under his chin to his belly button and then transfered to Brian, repeating the manuver as the 9-year-old shivered in extesy under my messaging.

I unbuckled David's belt and unziped his pants and slide them down his long slender legs. A shiver ran through me as I pulled the pants totally free of David's legs and looked at the ten-year-old laying there in just his underpants. I then returned to Brian and slowly removed the boy's undershirt, so that both little boys were laying there in just their underpamts.

The white cloth of Brian's underpants contrasted with the bronzed-pink color of his suntanned skin.

David's penis, now unconfined by the constriction of his pants, had caused the material of his undershorts to tent out quite impressively.

"Hah!" David laughed at Brian, "C'mon Brian, you're falling behind." The ten-year-old momentarily pulled down the front of his underpants and his young penis sprang free before the boy again pulled his underpants back into place.

"I know!" Brian said distressed, "I can't get it alive. Can you help?"

I bent over Brian and softly rubbed the simi-erect front of the 9-year-old's underpants, slowly Brian' penis began to swell.

I could tell that David was already fully erect, even through the thin cotton of his underpants. I stood up and stripped down to my own shorts and then laid down beside the two small boys. I gently rubbed the tiny bulge in front of David's shorts.

At last I could wait no longer and I rolled Brian and David over on their tummies. I sat up beside them and grasped the elastic of Brian' underwear, slowly pulling the boy's underpant down to mid thigh level, exposing his tiny pink fanny. Then I reached over Brian and pulled David's underpants down and completely off, tossing them in the corner of the sleeping area.

Wriggling around and kneeling at the foot of the bed strattling Brian and David's slender legs between his own, I began to knead the soft warm flesh of their fannies like bread dough, interspacing this with tickling the crack between the cheecks of their rumps. Removing Brian's underpants, I then turned the boys over on their backs.

I watched as David's wiener, now free of his underpants, sprang up alive and throbbing. David's penis was as beautiful as the rest of him – hard, excited, a flawless shaft and perfectly formed circumsized head. There it was, almost 9 centimeters [3½ inch] of boyhood perfection, standing proudly at a ninty degree angle pointing toward the ceiling. It was the prettiest piece of boymeat I could have imagined.

Brian was streaching his arms over his head and arching his back, thrusting his hips upward slightly in an attempt to make his own more modestly erect 7 centimeters [2¾ inch] of penis seem larger.

David laughed and smacked the younger boy on the belly flat handed, causing him to double up momentarily before Brian retaliated by gabbing at David's wiener, and the two youngsters began to wrestle on the bed.

I pulled my boxers all the way down and allowed them to drop to the floor beside the bed, and joined my two young friends on the Tomahawk's queen-sized bed.

"Now what?" David asked innocently in a lull in his mock combat with Brian. Brian's face was radiant with expectation and he reached over and hugged David around the shoulders. "You'll see," the 9-year-old chortled.

"Wait and see," I said agreed mysteriously.

"Wow!" David said, looking intently at my rather modest 19 centimeter [7½ inch] cock which was also fully erect. "I thought Jamal was big. Can I touch it?" David asked cautiously.

"Only if I can touch yours," I replied, and laid down on the bed full length beside David.

As David reached over and started rubbing my penis, I reached over and gently grasped Brian's erect wiener. The 9-year-old's wiener became even firmer as I gently masturbated the boy.

"Now, Brian," I said, "You start doing David."

The boy nodded wordlessly and reached over for his friend's member and began rubbing the skin back and forth over the glans of his penis. This made David squirm momentarily and sigh in pleasure. I had a momentary flashback to my own childhood, marveling that at these boys age I didn't know what hard-ons were for, except that they were fun to play with.

"Whooo," David muttered as an electric thrill ran up his arm from his fingers and genitals simeltaniously to set off twin shivers of extecy in his brain that then shot up and down his spin several times. He momentarily lost co-ordination of his body as the dry pre-adolescent orgasm hit. The youngster paused in stroaking my dick, but I was too busy with Brian to do much about it at the time. I rubbed the skin of Brian's circumsized penis up and down over the exposed glanis.

"Uhhh," Brian moaned. He went into a frenzied passion of lust. His long slender legs twitched and lost strength and the young boy could feel an explosive feeling rise up from the base of his balls and exploude through his wiener. I felt the jerking of the young boy's penis and his entire body as he also experienced an intense pre-adolescent dry orgasm, just as David had at the minipulation of his member by Brian. Brian had a dazed look on his face as he leaned against the older boy, his legs still wobbly from his earth-shattering experience just a moment ago.

David suddenly recovered from his post-orgasm daze and realized that my dick was as fully at attention as it had been throughout the last few minutes. David gasped my hard meat in his young hand and began strokingsoftly. He was watching my dick slide up and down in his hand. He started slowly, taking two or three seconds to complete a single stroke. Then he began to accelorate the pace, it was wonderful and I felt my juices building to the climax.

My load fired almost to the ceiling, eventually splattering down on my chest as David kept milking me. When I was finally spent, I rolled out of the bed and went to the bathroom and used a hand towel moistened with warm water and wiped himself clean. I crawled back into bed with the two young boys and this time pulled the bed's blankets up over them. I reached up and turned out the reading light which an intergral part of the queensize bed's bookcase headboard, and then rolled on my side and put an arm around the two nude boys protectivly. Brian cuddled next to me, laying beside me, he put his head on my chest. I could feel the softness of his hair on my nipples as the boy snuggled in next to me. David wraped himself around Brian, spooning him and sighed, draping his arm around Brian's waist and using his hand to cup the nine-year- old's penis and testicals.

"Thank you," I said and brought my face near to first Brian' and then David's. I softly kissed the two young boys lips and was surprised when David returned it passionatly.

Brian looked up at me across his chest. "That was incredible, Pete!"

"I'll never forget it for as long as I live." I said truthfully.

"Me either," David agreed. "That was a circle jerk, right? I've heard of them but 3;" he let his voice trail off.

"Yes," I sighed contentedly, "A perfect one, everyone got off. Now sleep 3;" We three companions dozed off in each other's arms, exhausted and happy.

I wasn't sure what had awakened me, but I suddenly found himself awake, my heart pounding and with a growing sence of unease as I slowly sat up in the bed. Out of habit I glanced at the Tomahawk's chronometer on the bulkhead beside the open inner hatch to the air lock. 0545 local time – about an hour before sunrise. I slowly crawled out of bed, being careful not to awaken David or Brian, and sat on the edge of the bed pulling on my boxers and then walked barefoot over the thick pile carpet of the Tomahawk's biosphere toward the big double viewports in the control cab.

Sencing that I was awake and up, lcars began to bring the biosphere up to daywatch standards from the inactivity of the evening. I felt warm air softly blowing from the vent at floor level, taking the chill out of the air.

Outside the Dream Walker's viewports, twilight was already begining to give way to predawn light as Bajor's bright G1 primary star began to rise above the horizon. The smaller, much fainter M3 companion was at the closest point to Bajor in its orbit, but was only a very bright ruddy star hanging low on the eastern horizon.

I watched for a minute the cloud of birds which rose from their night's roosing in the woods to the east of the areospace field and marveled at the coordination of the flock as several hundred of the avians whirled and dove in a complex arial dance to greet the new morning.

The Tomahawk's planetside weather module, built into the clear titan crystal of the forward viewport glowed softly deep within the crystalas the computer stimulated several dozen light emitting segments to displaya readout in the extreme lower right of the navigator's side viewport.
 
Temperature: -2 C [28 F].
Wind Velocity: 28 km/hr [17mph].
Windchill Factor: -7 C [19 F].
Relative Humidity: 24%
Barometric Pressure: 27.78 (falling)

Perhaps that was it, I thought as I walked back to the bed. Somewhere I'd read that extream changes in air pressure could trigger changes in brain chemistry, and cause symptoms like anxiety. Maybe it was that – the extreamly low barometer making me feel so uneasy, so vaguly apprehensive. I intended to get at least another half-hour cuddled up with Brian and David in the warm bed before actually getting up. I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute and thought about heating some water so that the three of us could have hot chocolate when we got up 3;

Without warning, the outer airlock door explouded inward with a loud crash and an actinic flash of some type of explosive charge.

"What the hell?!?" I roared and dove toward a small, non-discript drawer in the inflight storage unit a meter from the edge of the bed, where I kept my personal arsenel.

An insane laugh filled the room and I staired, momentarily paralyized 3;

Through the airlock hatchway came a vision out of hell itself!

It might have been human at one time, but no longer. Something had radically mutated both the physical appearence and the mental/emotional structure of the creature which paused in the hatchway for an instant, snuffling at the air. It was now totally alien. It was over six feet tall, its body completely covered with course curley ashe-gray hair. It's snout and jaw had fused to become slightly elongated to resemble a wolf's muzzle. It had an enormusly potent set of teeth, including three centimeter-long [1¼ inch] upper and lower fangs. Its eyes glowed hot, angry orange-red; long boney fingers ended in slashing tallons which savagly ripped out at me as I stumbled backward, falling across the bed and my two terrified companions.

Werewolf! was all I could think of as I struggled to regain my footing while at the same time dialing a lethal setting on the Marine military phaser pistol in my hand.

The beast bellowed its rage and lust for blood. It came through the fragments of the airlock's outer hatch on cloven hoofs; a reptilliann tail switched to and fro behind the nightmare as it paused for a second, surveying the room.

David scrambled to his feet and ran for the far corner of the room, attempting to lead the horror beast away from Brian and I. The creature lundged at David, its jaws gaping, dripping saliva; its claws slashing at the boy's skinny chest. The creature came after him with uncanny speed and raked its tallons across David's bare shoulders. The eleven-year-old screamed as the claws dug deep into his flesh. The jaws snapped shut with a loud KLACK!! and then opened again in hungary anticipation.

ZWOWW!!

The morning twilight which was began to seep into the room through the viewports was washed out by a brilliant pulse of actinic blue-white energy from my phaser pistol.

The nightmare roared in pain and fury as the phaser beam touched its upper shoulder; It turned toward where I was still sitting on the bed, one foot on the floor and rapidly dialing a higher intensity setting on the phaser pistol.

Brian hid half behind the me, his eyes wide with fear.

The creature took a hesitant step toward Brian and me.

David screamed: "FIRE!"

ZOW! ZOW!! ZWOWW!!!

I pressed the trigger three times in rapid sucession. The first shot hit the creature, ripping a 7 cm [3 inch] wide crater in its fur-covered body, setting some of the course fur ablaze. The second shot also hit the creature, this time in the upper left quadrant of the skull, destroying the creature's left eye and blasting away much of the skin and fur from the white bone of its skull. The third shot caught the creature in the midsection, again doing grevious damage to it. The creature turned and raised its talloned claws to strike at David again just as I shot it again, this time right between the ribs with the paser set to full lethal intensity – just one step below the ultimate setting – demateralise. The phaser blast caused the beast to jerk once and fall over backwards, to lay sprawled in the airlock among the blood and body parts that the earlier lower phaser settings had blasted off it.

Brian was at once kneeling beside David, crying with both fear and relief that his friend was still alive.

"Thanks, Pete." David managed in a weak voice. He winced as the younger boy gently touched the claw wounds across David's shoulder and thin chect. They were moderatly deep and begining to ooze red blood that trickled down his chest.

"I think," Brian said, "that I'd better get a medipak on this."

"And then we'd better get out of here," David said.

"I don't think so," I said hesitantly. "I don't know how long it'll take to get someone to repair that airlock hatch. We can't take off with it like that. The Tomahawk has a builtin override, the engines won't engage unless the airlock is fully gas-tight."

"But-" David tried to object. "What if it had friends?"

"Forget it. I know we have to use full phasers on them now. Next one fool enough to show up will not get half as far as this one did."

Pulling on my clothes, I said: "You're going back to bed untill we can get a doctor to look at those claw tears. Brian, will you stay with him and make sure he does get in bed?"

"Aye, aye, sir." Brian saluted.

I absently returned the salute and walked over to the shattered airlock hatch. I bagan trying to extricate the creature from the airlock.

"Okay, Doctor Brian," David said and grinned, crawling under the covers and then pulling them down so as not to get any blood on them. The wound on his shoulder had almost stopped bleeding, but the deep claw rakes across his chest were still welling up freash blood slowly. Brian got a warm damp towel from the bathroom and washed down David's chest and shoulder, then went to the inflight storage lockers in the caro section to get a medipak.

Minutes later, Brian returned and popped open the medikit, which looks like a huge plastic baggie. Brian spread it out over David and the medipak's ai-diagnosis circuitry went to work, examining the boy and determining the extent of his injury and automatically configured itself around the wounds on David's chest and shoulders. Brian ran his thumb quickly along the piezoelectric activator and there was a soft pop and a faint, almost inaudiable humm as the medipak began treatment.

"You're lucky," Brian commented as he looked up from the diminuative led readout on the medipak. "The pak says it can get you back up to 100% healthy in about 4 hours. That means we'll be on Deep Space Nine in time for supper."

The detonation of the explosive charge the thing had used to gain entry had awakened the entire villiage which was slowing begfining to cluster around the southern end of the aerospace field, and of course it wasn't long before the village constable showed up.

"Ay-yup, looks like a Gon'jahh alright," the eldrely Bajorian constible said kneeling beside the carcas that I had dragged out of the airlock.

"What's that?" I asked.

The Bajorian shrugged. "I dunno. It was probably a man 3; once. But somehow he been mutated 3; probably the result of some kind of biowar weapon that the Kardies were using during the occupation. We run into these things ever so often. We call 'em 'gonjahs' which means 'cursed ones'. They mostly live by themselves in the highlands. Rarely see them this far down in the valley."

"This one used an explosive charge to blow open my airlock," I said.

"Oh ay-yupe, they're smart enough to use technology. Sometimes they're used as expendable hitmen for the Asassin's Guild. You haven't stirred anyone up – say in Kilkamec City – have you son?" the Bajorian eyed me suspiticiously.

"Not that I know of," mentally crossing my fingers and wondering if that 'Jamal' cheractor was a member of the Bajorian Assassins Guild.

"Well, I'll have Doc Baker come over to look at your boy, he's Terran too, retired Starfleet; and I'll ask Tal Narkotz, our chief artificer to come see if there is anything he can do for your airlock hatch; but to me, it looks like you'll be staying for a few days until he can get parts shipped out from the main starport at Kilkamec City. Ay-yupe."

The Bajorian constible strolled back over to his gev and turned off the flashing blue strobes on his roof and floated off down the field silently on whisper mode.

Back inside, Brian had started some breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast, which now totally depleated our pantry until I could go shopping. I sat down in the sleeping area's chair and Brian brought me a plate of scrambled eggs also and then sat on the edge of the bed with David.

"So, Dave," I started, "Feeling any better?"

"Yes!" David said and sat up – immediatly wincing as his sudden movement caused a spike of pain to shoot down his spine.

"Pete," Brian asked.

"Yeah?"

"Tell us a story?"

"Yeah!" David agreed enthuastically. "From when you were in the Marines."

"Hmmn," I began, "Well there was the time the co tried to settle this war out on the frontier between two primitive interplanetary – no stardrive – races. We almost all bought the farm that time 3;"

Next chapter only in the third version

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