***Zorakk

Future Shock
Second version

Chapter Two
David

first part

What was that? Way in the back 3; Question?

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 some of these don't realize they're now in the 24th century and don't know me from Adam. But pay attention, please! Because this will be the last time I'm going to run this down.

Most of you are survivors of a particularly nasty experiment in cryonic-suspention from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The theory was that many people with terminal diseases might be treatible in the future after medical science had time to find a cure for them. The method this group choose was cryonic suspention; and since this was better accomplished in the depths of space, you were launched into space on cometary orbits to await refinments of medical science.

Actually, 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 capsule in 2364. These orbital cryonic coffins had been forgotten and so no one was looking for them.

A handful 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 explanation. 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 persecuted 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 or [shudder] Vulcan psych-techs reaching into their minds and 'adjusting' them to better fit with our current civilization.

My name is Pete Reynolds, and I'll be your guide on your tour of the 24th Century. Life has been good to me and I would not trade my life for that of any of the super wealthy nobility at the Terran Imperial Court. I'm one of those odd hybrids you see and hear about on isn every so often, half Corellian, half Terran Amerind-Cherokee Nation, half Imperial Klingon, half human-Klingon fusion and for spice, half Romulan. Now if you've been counting and all that adds up to substantially more than your prepared to accept, just think of it as a list of the more prominent races in my genetic background.

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 dangerous 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 predatory 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.

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

As I said above, I am also a Star Nomad independent contract trucker. I have a Master Astronaut certificate, issued by Imperial Terra which is recognized virtually everywhere in the known expanse of our universe. My orbital truck, which Brian has named the Dream Walker, is a relatively small 360 ton gypsy interstellar truck, based upon the Danube-class Star Fleet runabout, but modified for more extensive atmospheric operations. Mostly this means that Dream Walker's fmwa warp nacells are slung off of stubby wings instead of nestled up close to the body as in a Star Fleet runabout. Theoretically I can lug up to 120 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 verging on zero or negative.

Perhaps it might serve some purpose to give you a quick rundown of my history as a boylover. I had known since my pre-adolscence days that I much prefered the company of younger boys, and all through my teenage years I was always the captain of a company of younger boys who virtually ran wild in the lower tiers of the vast Star Nomad ship Sagamahara.

Then ten years ago, I had my first serious interaction as a boylover, things were diffrent for me then, I was on my own and had just finished 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 mustered out on Telluria IV, a 3rd generation imperial colonly set on an Earth-prime class M planet, which had very attractive homesteading rights for Imperial veterans, and went to school at the Shivajanus Warp Drive extention on Telluria IV. I had just graduated from the advanced training course as a quantum-warp engineering mechanic and had started working for a Star Nomad run maintenance company on Telluria IV when I met Douglas.

While I was in school, I had taken a job toutering an 11-year-old in exchange for room and board from a single mom with three boys, and another foster kid. Douglas was the foster kid. His mom had some troubles with the local child welfare people and had lost custody of Douglas temporarily. Douglas was at this time eight years old, and the other kids that were living there were all older than he was and delighted in torturing him, both physically and psychologically.

I instinctivly sided with Douglas, the underdog. Douglas looked up to me as a protector from abuse. The following six or seven months that I spent living there were 3; well 3; interesting to say the least. About the same time I graduated from Shivajanus, Douglas's mother, also a single mother, [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.] regained custody of Douglas. Douglas's mom worked as a bargirl at a starport speakeasy called the 'cock-n-bull' – her shift included Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and so I got asked to become a full time babysitter for Douglas – an arrangement that both Douglas and I approved of.

I was involved with Douglas for six years, from midway through his eighth year to well into his fourteenth. We began the physical portion of our relationship on that very first weekend shift. Douglas was a very affectionate little boy, we progressed in our relationship from 'playing doctor' to lite oral sex and mutual masturbation fairly quickly. Over the next six years we slept together nude and played virtually every sex game known to the sentient life of the galaxy, 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 pre-teen and early adolescent life.

Then came a year in which we slowly drifted apart as Douglas entered adolescence and became more and more interested in girls than in our playdates. About five percent of the galaxy's human population is homosexual, the other ninty-five percent is strait, and this same ratio applies to the little boys that we Boylovers are attracted to. This of course means we have to periodically say good-bye to our companions as they outgrow us and move on. Strait parents have absolutely nothing to fear from us. If their kid is strait, a relationship – even a sexual one – will do nothing to effect their overall sexual orientation.

Douglas eventually drifted off to blend in with the 95% of humanity that is strait. We mutually agreed that although we would remain friends, that our days of nude-intimacy were over.

It was about this same time that I got a chance to take over the payments on a circa 2359 Tomahawk interstellar truck, [that's right, this very one, the Dream Walker] and since my relationship with Douglas had run its course, I liquidated all my assets and left Telluria IV.

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 Vandfel-ailsborg or in the Marines, or on Tulluria IV. There I had family, friends and others to help. Here and now on the Kardasian border I am truly on my own and totally responsible for Brian's well being. I'm not sure that the life of a gypsy-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].

But I have Dream Walker running along a now pretty well established triangular route, from Bajor and ds9 to the wormhole and through it to the Treaty Station on the Gamma Quadrant side; then back through the wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant and via several warp gate transfers 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 enough to meet the truck payments, insurance and operating expences, in addition to a comfortable living wage working only nine months a year.

I take one month in four off to putter around the galaxy, taking on odd consignment cargoes as suits my taste and indulging my curiosity and exploration urges. That's what I was doing when I met Brian. But now it's back to the grindstone. My home base is, of course, ds9 – as it is for fully 80 percent of the Federation's independent 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 nickel-iron asteroid that supports the physical instrumentality of the base, it is always in the market for celss gases which are virtually dirt cheap on Bajor and ds9. After off-loading the liquid hydrogen or oxygen, it's just a quick hop back through the worm hole to the Triangle Sector. The Triangle Sector is a knot of about 800 stars of all kinds in a loose galactic star cluster where the unheard of happens, a Terran, Romulan and Klingon warp gate all exist within eighty light years of each other, in an essentially equlaterial triangular arangement [hence the name]. The famous Earth-Romulan war from the days of the Federation's infantcy was fought there, and the infamous Romulan Neutral Zone streaches across this loose star cluster. Almost all of the major Federation-Romulan; Federation-Klingon and Klingon-Romulan wars of the past two centuries have taken place in this relatively close packed volume of stars. The Triangle Sector has a well deserved reputation as a hot bed of intrigue and espionage where Federation Psychology Service, the Romulan Tel-She'aar, and the Klingon Sarrkan Zha regularily clash.

After exiting the warp gate into the Triangle Sector itself it is then a leisurely week at warp five [or a bit under a day at warp six!] 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 descriptive. Our people left old earth at the dawn of the interstellar age in the opening decades of the 21st century and most of us have lived a gypsy life ever since. Oh sure, we have colonized a few planets, including Valhalla which circles Mu Cassiopeia in the Core Worlds, where our heavy industry, centralized government and ship yards are. But for most the Star Nomad way of life is one of hopping from star to star, bringing trade and cultureto the frontier worlds who are not yet rich enough to attract the larger shipping companies.

Many Star Nomads spend their entire lives aboard a wide variety of starships – from small trucks like mine to the huge itc Alpha class asteroid vessels [which are marvels of 23-24th century starship engineering wherein an entire asteroid, sometimes trillions of megatons of inertial mass is brought under the influence of a super-powerful warp field generator].

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 veins. I am 34 years old Terrestrial 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 my current companion, Brian, three days ago on Star Base 288, where he was living with his mother – a singularily dense woman who did not appreciate the treasure that Brian actually is; and [will wonders never cease?!] she was so anxious to get rid of Brian [because her current boyfriend had no intention of raising another man's son!] that she had been willing to transfer legal custody and guardianship over to me. Brian, who you new guys will meet a bit later is a beautiful, bright little eight, almost nine-year-old who has totally won my heart.

I was interupted in my daydreaming by Brian, walking into the contrtol cab yawning and totally naked. He was carring his favorite stuffed animal, a Tyranodonn, named Crunchie with a tattered main-seam – this critter had been with my young friend for a long time. He sat down in the navigator's couch.

"What'cha doing?" he asked, clutching Crunchie to his skinny little chest.

"Oh, just thinking,"

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

In our first few days together, Brian had come to realize that I was serious about us staying together, and he had begun to relax and loose up. In that same time, I had discovered that the little boy was a master of the one line zingers. You could almost hear the snare-drum rimshot.

"Are you coming to bed soon?" Brian asked.

"Yeah, I was just coming," I said and stood up, scooping Brian up with one hand and arm and tossing him over my shoulder, "Come along, slave-boy."

Brian squirmed and shrieked in mock terror as I carried him down the companionway toward the sleeper. Although I thought that I might have trouble in getting Brian to go to sleep, but evidently, the days activities, which had included our first eva [extra vehicular activity] in Brian's new vacuum armor, had pretty well worn him out.

We had bearly crawled under the covers when Brian was already asleep.

I'm not sure which of us awoke first that first Saturday morning we were together after leaving Starase 288 but it was early, the bedside chronometer reported 05:23:41, ship's time. All status indicators were green.

The warmth and feel of Brian's body pressed against mine sent a thrill of electricity racing up and down my spinal chord and spreading out into the radial nerve endings of my chest and belly. I didn't care if he continued to sleep till noon. I could stay like this all day for all I cared. I opened my eyes to look at Brian as he slept – only to be met by his gaze.

"How long you been awake?" I asked sleepily.

The little boy grinned, "I dunno, maybe an hour or so."

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"'cause."

"'cause why?"

I was a past master of the 'why' game, having 'raised' or helped a half dozen pre-adolescent boys already, during my years with Douglas.

"Cause I was enjoying being next to you and feeling the heat of your body against mine. Daddy and I used to cuddle like that a long time ago"

"I liked it too," I admitted.

"Me too," Brian re-affirmed.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Maybe ten or twenty minutes."

"Uh huh," Brian said with that crooked grin of his that was part of what had singled him out in the mall outside of the vr-arcade. I wrapped my arm around Brian's shoulders and he wiggled into a close spoon arrangement as we snuggled together without another word and dozed off again.

And the still later 3;

"Shit!" I heard Brian complain.

"What's the matter?"

"Gotta take a leak."

"So go. I'll be here when you get back."

"Yeah, well there's another problem," Brian half mumbled.

"What?" I asked.

"I can't."

"Huh?"

"I can't," the nine-year-old repeated.

"Why not?"

"You ever tried to piss with a hard on?"

"Oh," I laughed. "Well I guess there's only one way to deal with that 3;"

Brian looked at me as a strange combination of grin and concern crossed his face.

"What?" I asked.

"I dunno if I can hold it that long."

"You won't have a choice. Besides, you said you can't piss with a hard on."

"Yeah, I know, but 3; I don't know." By this time my hand had managed to slip between us and I was already stroking his stiff wiener. Brian quit his protesting and rolled onto his back.

"MMMMMM, that feels soooo good."

"I'm glad."

I continued stroking away on Brian's penis. I had often jerked off in the morning before going to the bathroom and knew that urge to piss can add a different kind of feeling and pleasure. Brian moved his arms down and I felt his hand gently touch, then grab hold of my own stiff member. The position wasn't right for Brian to start jerking me off so he just held my cock, gently squeezing and releasing his grasp.

I pulled the blanket down and then rested my head on his skinny chest. From there I had a perfect view of his wiener as I worked at it. I watched as I repeatedly worked my hand up and down that six or seven centimeters of boymeat. The boy's wiener became even harder as his sympathetic nervous system built toward orgasm. I released his wiener and gently cupped his balls and moved them in my hand, lightly squeezing his scrotum. Brian responded with a soft groan and placed his hand on my head.

As I massaged his balls, Brian's wiener bounced up and down slightly with each beat of his heart. I could hear his heart pounding in his small chest as well as the increase in his breathing. I returned my attention to his throbbing penis and picked up the pace substantially. Brian groaned louder and his hips began to buck slightly meeting each stroke of my hand with a thrust of his own. Brian's grip on my head increased as he pulled me tighter to him.

With each stroke, his hips were nearly clear of the floor now and there was little doubt that he was on the final approach. Brian gave a few final whimpering groans and suddenly thrust his hips completely off the bunk. His legs went stiff and I heard his breathing suddenly stop. His wiener cock began to pulse in my hand. Brian's body collapsed in on itself and he slowly released the bear hug he had on my head and sighed.

"God, that was awesome. I never dreamed it would be that good to have someone else do that for me," Brian panted.

"It felt good doing it too," I said. "I always like playing with little boy's wieners." "Pete?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you want me to do you?"

"Do Kardasians shit in the woods?"

"Huh?" the boy looked puzzled.

"Never mind," I laughed. "It's an ethnic joke at the expence of the Kardasians because of their Dominion status. You shouldn't learn stuff like that 3;"

"Uh, okay," Brian brushed it aside.

"Can you wait till I go out and piss? I don't think I can wait any longer." The boy grabbed at his own wiener.

"Sure," I laughed.

Brian didn't bother putting on any clothes. He just squirmed over me and jumped out of bed, darting through the access door and into the Tomahawk's axial corridore, headed toward the head. I watched those perfect little boy buns of his disappear through the door and moments later I could hear the sound of his piss splashing into the toilet and then the tell-tale swoosh-whish of the vacuum toilet flushing. Seconds later he was back with that smile on his face. The smile that made me melt.

God, he was beautiful! I watched him as he crawled back into the bed and laid down beside me. He looked into my eyes as he positioned himself and I felt his hand sliding down my chest and stomach as he felt for my dick. My stomach tightened at the touch of his cold hand and I gasped out loud.

"Ee-yyoowwww! Cold hand Luke!" I shrieked as his hand found it's target and his smile broadened at my reaction.

"Ah-hah! Gotcha!" he said.

"Well, don't stop now," I added. "It's not that cold."

"So, you like that, eh?" he asked, grinning evily.

"Oh yeah," I groaned as his fingers wrapped around my waiting dick. "OH Y-E-A-H!!!"

Brian laid his head on my chest and continued to stroke my dick. I knew he was watching my it as I had done with his. As Brian worked at my dick I gently rubbed his back. We were both purring like kittens. Precum quickly began dribbling down my dick and over his hand as he kept up his assault on my hard and throbbing cock.

'Yes,' I thought to myself, 'so much better than doing myself.'

"This is wonderful." I said. I could already feel my balls getting tight and a tension building in my dick with each additional stroke. It wouldn't take long. Not that I usually do. Without warning my cock started to pulse and I could feel gobs of cum shooting up it's length and landing on my stomach. One shot went clear over Brian's head and landed on my chin. My legs were stiff, my toes curled and I held on to Brian's head with all my might. I was breathless! Brian kept at it until he had milked the last drops from my stiff dick.

"Good one?" Brian asked. "Yeah, no shit."

"Not shit," Brian laughed. "Cum, you dick head."

"Yuck," I groaned, "Let's go get cleaned up."

We grabbed our towels and headed for the hot water of the autowash. We had only just finished the serious part of the shower and were begining to play in the cascading warm water as the alarm went off. We both scrambled out of the autowash and headed for the control cabin, still butt-naked.

BRANGAH-BRANGA-BRANGA!

WHOOP!! WHOOP!!

BRANGAH-BRANGA-BRANGA!

As soon as we entered the control cabin, Brian instinctively dived for the navigator's station and began to wrap the acceleration harness around himself, as I had taught him to do in a crisis. His wiener was fully erect. I was still trying to determine what had made the computer's alarms go crazy. Searching the densely 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 blue eyes were wide with fear. "W-what's wrong?"

BRANGAH-BRANGA-BRANGA!

WHOOP!! WHOOP!!

BRANGAH-BRANGA-BRANGA!

"This is defiantly 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 accelerating harness and come over to me. The eight-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.

I rubbed Brian's tummy briefly and said: "Bri, Bri, there's nothing to be scared of. We've just dropped out of warp, that's all."

Another shiver ran through his body and I realized I was a little apprehensive also. Although warp core breeches were only statistical anomalies in the real world, a ship's warp drive is perhaps the most complex and sophisticated piece of electro-cybernetic machinery ever devised by man; an it was far from fool-proof and Dream Walker's had gone long past the 10,000 hour inspection and maintenance 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, his small nude body plastered against my own, and went over to the flight engineer's station and sat in front of the engineering diagnostic test panel 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 immediately generated the error message:

GENERAL ENGINE SYSTEM FAULT – SYSTEM HALT

"Hmmn," I said with mock seriousness, stroking an imaginary beard. "Hmmn, Vell, Heir 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 beginning to dissipate 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 Star Fleet 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 maintenance check, the warp drive will encounter some condition in subspace that is incompatible 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 tripped 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 remainedwith red warning lamps illuminated.

"That is a good sign," I said, studying the densely packed indicator panel.

"But how can that be?" Brian asked. "There are still so many red 'fault' lights on."

"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" [35cm] screen embedded in the flight engineer's station. "And that means that we can use the computer to narrow down our search – instead of ceawling around on our bellies through very small access crawlways that are always charged a little from the residual effects of the warp drive."

"Sounds like it might be fun," Brian smiled.

"That's because you haven't had to do it yet. It makes all of your hair stand on end, and the charged field feels like insects crawling all over your body," I shuddered at the rememberence of the last time I had been forced into manually diagnosing a problem with the warp drive. No, despite Brian's enthusium, it was not an experience I would care to repeat any time soon.

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. Tentative, he tapped out a few lines of command code 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 almost nine-year-olds who could get this far," I said impressed. I studied the computer's diagnostic and recommendations 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 lucrative run to one of the Bajorian fortress-colonies still in the Gamma Quadrant despite the displeasure of the Founders and their Jem'Hadarr thugs. I was jumped by a Jem'Hadarr gunship corsaire and had to really overtax the warp drive getting away."

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

"The maintenance droid is going to be a few hours doing some patch together work so we can get to a port. It's all going to be outside on the portside warp nacelle; why don't we take some Pictures and I'll tell you while we work."

"Okay!" Brian said enthusiastically.

Uh-oh, I feel the need to step outside the story once again, for the benifit of our 20th century cohorts and explain to all of 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 [or virtually any other kids I ca talk into it] in the nude.

In my prior, activist's explanations of how Boy Lovers are treated today as compared to your century, I've probably painted the picture a bit brighter and more tolerant than it is. The United Federation of Planets, was formed in 2087 from a group of eight 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 intervene 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 of children 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 playsuits 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, near studio-quality holocam, it produces as its output both a pristine tiny hologram cube, 5 centimeters [2 inches] on a side for use as a viewfinder and focusing functions, and of course the standard 2.1 megabyte digital scaning signal for recording on an isolinear chip. I find that if I set the equipment so that it gives me a nice clean scan with an image that fills about two-thirds of the viewfinder's volume this holocam gives me near-life images, even running a compression algorism 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 background 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 background, bed, truck bulkheads, etc; and it gives a neutral background 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 swiveling 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 125 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 is 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 background.

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 queasy 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 Federation-Dominion War of 2372-76."

"We learn about the Dominion in Phase One," Brian boasted.

"Yes, and I imagine you'll keep on 'running into them' all through Phase II, III, and IV," I said. With the exception of the Four-Years War fought with the Klingons a long time ago, it is the closest the Federation has come to being defeated in a war, and so its pretty important."

"My advisor back on Star Base told me that the Dominion might try again some day."

"They might, that's what makes them so dangerous," I said. "And that reminds me, we'll have to see about getting you back in school. How close are you to graduating Phase I?"

"About a hundred hours, I guess – but do I have to Pete? I think I'd learn a lot more here on Dream Walker 3;"

"Good try," I said. "But you still have to pass the Federation standardized tests. It won't be so bad though, we'll work something out – you'll see 3;"

"Maybe," Brian did not sound very optomistic. "Now back to the story!"

"Let's see where was I 3;?"

"The Federation Dominion war ended in 2376 3;" Brian prompted.

"Oh – yeah! Well anyway, after the conflict ended, the treaty recognized the legitimacy of the Kardasian government set up under Dominion rule; but in exchange Bajor was allowed to build a string of fortress colonies in several star systems strategic to the Gamma Quadrant entrance to the wormhole. Among the Federation built facilities was a huge spacestation similar to Deep Space Nine which monitored the Gamma Quadrant side of the wormhole. Both stations were administered by a triumvirate 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 cargo bay 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!" Brian said appreciatively. "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 inner Bajorian planetary system went well. Basically it simply involved opening the Tomahawk's rear cargo hatch. The Tomahawk's cargo configuration allows for a modular arrangement of it's eight by ten meter [26x33 feet] bay, currently my Tomahawk is configured with a single eight by ten bay. We simply let the three guys in vacuum armor from the freighter shunt a connex container over the one hundred meters separating our two vessels and then securing the connex. The reason we did not use the transmat – which would admittedly have been easier – is the trasmat effect, the local generation of a two-lobed wormhole in three-d space, would immediatily have been detectable from a wide variety of common sensors, and would have drawn a lot of unwanted attention to us.

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 Dahkur Province, it also specified payment in full and in gold plated latinum on delivery. That was the only reason I had accepted the delivery 'on planet' clause.

The Bajorians are paranoid about alien landings after the Kardasian invasion in the early part of the century. It takes a lot of political juice to get clearence for a direct planet landing for a vessel not under the command of a Bajorian crew. Mostly the Bajorians have all of their off-world trade carried out on Deep Space Nine, or through special alien broker firms in Kilkamec City, the Bajorian open city.

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 discrete planetfall. It is very likely that the cargo would not pass a customes inspection. What it was I did not know, except that it was not drugs or weapons. Dream Walker has specialized embeded scanners in the cargo bay to detect these things.

Brian spent a half hour hunched over the mission specialist's control interface which was connecting him via vri [Vertual Reality Interface] mittens and hood through lcars to the cargo-handling droids about a dozen meters to the aft, in the cargo module. As we made our way ever closer to Bajor itself, he was making sure that the single 3 meter by 5 meter [10x16½ feet] connex container of Quark's cargo was securely tied down. The one drawback in the Tomahawk's design was the fact that its cargo area is not easily accessable from the biosphere – this has been a pain more than once, but it is susposse to allow the biosphere to stay an isolated system, seperate from any kind of contamination brought aboard with a cargo.

Sometimes atmospheric re-entries for a craft as small as a truck can be rough, without the hundreds of thousands of tons of rest mass that the larger ships have, atmospherics can be a big factor – with upper atmospheric winds and storms buffeting a ship around – hense all the activity.

"Everything is tied down good," Brian said as he shed the vri equipment and came forward again, sitting in the navigator's couch, pulling the acceleration harness down around him. He was wearing his favorite playsuit, a single-piece coverall with short sleeves and made out of a nearly indestructible synthetic industrial 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 suspiciously 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 blue eyes begging.

"Maybe next time," I said and buckled the acceleration harness 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 venturi glowing blue-white as we finished the deceleration 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 Orbit Guard cutter challenging us."

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

Brian had learned quite a bit in his three days 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 Orbit Guard cutter Wankade. You are ordered to heave to and prepare to be boarded. Failure to comply will be met with deadly force. 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 worried, "They're powering their forward phasers. Do something 3;"

Brian was watching a group of instruments which comprised my elint/ecm [That's electronic intelligence and electronic counter measures to those of you who do not recognize the acronyms] 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 every alarm in Bajor Orbit Guard sector hqs because they don't often scramble a cutter to do an intercept – we're not even inside the 1,000 kilometer [600 miles] inner 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 painting 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 clearance 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 Orbit Guard was taking this far too seriously. I wondered if there was something special going on down on Bajor – an important meeting or something else that had caused a heightened security level for the Orbit Guard; and of course I wondered how good that clearance Quark had given me was 3;

" 3; however, in deference to your clearance by arch-vedic Mihran, the Bajorian Orbit Guard will not press charges. You are officially warned to transmit clearances in a timely manner in the future."

The hundred meter, 12,000 ton cutter came within a half kilometer of us in its arcing 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 pressed his face up against the crystal-transparent aluminum forward viewport of the Dream Walker. Brian got to see a rare sight, the cutter up close enough to read its markings and see the individual viewports embedded into its durillium hull.

We crossed the Dahkur coast just south of Kilkamec City at 125,000 feet [38,000 meter], just beginning to exit the leo inner defense zone and enter the Bajorian atmospheric realm. Remembering the cutter's warning [which I took very seriousl] to transmit our clearance 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, on our way into the Bajorian system. He found that the nw quadrant of the Dahkur Province was controlled by the Kilkamec Star Port Authority.

I let Brian dial the initial contact frequency into the omnicom and gave the boom mike a >> thawack << 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 independent with a consigned cargo from Vymann-kor to kobbutz Rittmahn; from Vedic Hijarski at Defense Command, Gamma Quadrant to Office of Special Intelligence, 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 code chip from Quark into the Dream Walker's Omnicom and pressed the send switch and transmitted the second part of the authorization that the Ferengi 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 Bajor came ever closer to me at almost 5 km/sec [3miles/sec].

"Victor Poppa, you are cleared to kobbutz Rittmahn, descend immediately 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 recovered 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 vestigial 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? A Polish Vedic?

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 instillation, and according to the headers on the permit files, kobbutz Rittmahn was involved in counter intelligence work. I'd certainly 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 couriers 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. As we approached the base, we were aquired by several weapons tracking systems, but there was no indication of active weapons, so I assumed that this was stanard proceedure for the base. Then we were over the landing field and I flared the noes up almost 80 degrees 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 approach to the main landing strip, now totally dependant upon the Tomahawk's powerful antigravs for lift and the coutergrav field to make maneuvering in an atmosphere possible with the small steering jets. I hovered over the main strip and finally brought all four landing skids 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 choice, but you must leave now! Without delay."

Brian immediately 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 then match orbit with ds9.

"Negative, control, I need to refuel first. Insufficient propellant to achieve orbit."

"Victor Poppa, I say again, by order of the security lancer 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 large 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 revved 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 maneuvers 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 perhaps 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."

"You let me do it solo in the parking lot," Brian reminded me.

"Yes, and that's why I think you are ready for this. The reason that I think you'd better sit on my lap this time is we're not in a deserted parking lot, there are other spacecraft and airplanes here."

"Okay," Brian immediately squirmed his boney little frame ontop of me and grabbed at the cyclic.

As I had done back on Star Base 288, I quickly went over and explained the operation of the Tomahawk's maneuvering controls to Brian. The arcade vr-sims that Brian loved to play used Starfleet standard command and control sequencers in the sims, and so Brian was already fairlyfamiliar with the Tomahawk's control surfaces.

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 hydraulics of the landing skids and there was a satisfying audio signal from the system's status board that indicated that the hydraulics had successfully 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 immediately 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, stretching leisurely 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 a wooded grove. The landing field was perhaps 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 deserted two lane blacktop road. Across this from the field was a small grouping of houses. A sagging perimiter fence ran along the inside of the field against the blacktop and then turned south and ran along the southern end of the field which 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 [100 feet] away came the sounds of a vr holo-vid game of some kind. Suddenly a group of young boys, perhaps 8- to 13-years-old exploded from around a corner of the long low field maintenance building. The boys shouted and waved toy lasers around in a simulated military operation, maybe reenacting some famous battle of the Kardasian occupation.

The whole pack skidded to a halt perhaps five meters [16 feet] away as they saw us. There was some initial shuffling of feet indecisively, 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 questioningly, "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 panel and took out my cash card and put it in the slot. There was a soft tinkle of a chime and the services panel came to life. I punched in the code for refueling of the neid's propellant tanks with top quality 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 accrued 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 expenses. 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 Orbit Guard, and then getting the bums rush from Kobbutz Rittmahn, under threat from a phaser cannon fifteen seconds after dropping the consignment. Anyway, I'm here for payment Quark. With expenses 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 exploded, "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 courier 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 indulged 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 vest with laser-light sensitive target sensors woven into the onepiece outfit; and each participant carried a small laser pistol which emitted a 50 mw pulsed laser beam, not enough to burn with, but more than enough to set off the sensors in the playsuits, even in dusty or heavy fog conditions.

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.

As I walked through the perimiter of the village, at various places there was also the smell of remarkably good things to eat. Bajorian quisine is probably among the best human quisene in the galaxy. My mouth began to water and I was suddenly aware of the fact I was ravioniously hungry. Although by Bajorian hospitality costumes, Brian and I could have virtually knocked on any door in the village and invited ourselves to supper, I did not want to push it, Kilkamec City was only a few dozen kilometers up the road and there we could quickly find a restaurant where we could pay our way without infringing on an ancient tradition ment to aid indigent transients.

The Primary Sun had begun to set, and the laser combat game was also begining to break up as parents hollered for their children to come home to supper. Brian stripped out of the laser sensor vest and handedit back to the Bajorian boy from whom he had barrowed it and the mock weapon, thanking him and then and then ran up to me, flush with the excitement of the laser game.

"Wow!" the nine-year-old panted. "I've never had that much fun before 3; and guess what? They invited me to play again tommorow 3;"

"Sounds okay to me," I said. "I had planned on taking off a little time anyway. But now, how do you feel like raising a jetcab and going into Kilkamec City for some supper?"

"I'm as hungry as a Vulcan Lamantya," to which Brian added a fierce trebble growl. "Can we go exploring afterwards, please – just for a little while?"

So, twenty minutes later, after a harrowing ride in the local jitney cab, we were in Kilkamec City, in the Dahkur Hill Country on Bajor, gateway to the Gamma Quadrant. Since end of the war between the Dominion and the combined sentient races of the Alpha Quadrant, over twenty 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 and alien races, including most of the big powers of the alpha quadrant, including the Komerex Klingon, the Terrans, and even the H'Rumbians; and the more exotic races of this area of the Perseus Arm of the galaxy – the Thranx, the Vorlons, the Ferengi and the Membari. In fact even those races which more often than not were at odds with the Federation – the Romulans, Centauri and Tholians had established trade missions in Kilkamec City – the Bajorian 'free city', located between the Trilar Peninsula on the coast and the rugged mountians of the Dahkur Province – it was Bajor's busiest port.

With Bajor fast becoming a center of galactic commerace, rivaling the Orion trade colonies in the Rigil starsystem, where the galactics from both sides of the wormhole had set up their trade missions and embassies, Kilkamec City was about as cosmolitan a city as existed anywhere in the galaxy. Here in Kilkamec City were also the Bajorian run bars, casinos, flop houses, pawnshops and brothels that invariably sprang up around such places. In other words: "a more wretched hive of skum and villainy 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; window shopping at toy stores and military surplus shopes; sampling all of the street vendors wares; and stopping to contribute a few slips of latinum to a begger. I simply tagged along where ever the eight-year-old led just to make sure that he was safe.

We passed by a holovid theater with a double bill of action-adventure features – one of which was about the brave Bajorian Resistance Fighters of Dakor Province against the evil Kardasians [yes, despite the official 'peace' between Bajor and Kardasia, Bajorian memories were long when it came to the Kardasian Occupation, and Kardasia is still a member of the Dominion.]

"Can we go, I, please!" Brian begged.

"Yeah, I guess so, if you want to," I grinned and threw an arm around the eight-year-old's shoulders and guided him toward the ticket booth and entry alcove. Brian leaned in against me and allowed himself to be pushed along. Four hours and two holovids later we emerged from the movie theater. I was totally exhausted. Brian, however was apparently still revved and ready for at least another six hours of wondering around Kilkamec City.

My first indication that Brian too was beginning to run down came seconds later as he stifled a huge yawn.

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

"Well, ok, if you want," he said agreeably, yawned again and streached his arms up over his head. 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.

My first indication that Brian too was beginning to run down came seconds later as he stifled a huge yawn.

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

"Well, ok, if you want," he said agreeably, yawned again and streached his arms up over his head. As we strolled over to a public commweb terminal, Brian cought sight of a vr-arcade, almost hidden between a wharehouse on one side and an office building od some kind on the other.

"I'll be over here, watching," Brian said and let go of my hand to dash acros to the entry way of the vr-arcade. Yawning, I continued on to the commweb and summoned a robocab and go on back to the rural areodrome and catch some sleep before lifting off for ds9 bright and early tomorrow.

I wondered over to where Brian was standing and put my arms around his shoulders, crossing them just over his heart. The vr-arcade was bright, noisy and crammed full of vr-video games and a hoard of kids of both genders, both pre-teen and teenagers, but there were a lot ok kids here, they were definitely the minority. This late in the evening the arcade was dominated by adults, of virtually every Federation race and most of the known non-Federation ones also. On the whole though these were an unsavory lot, most of whom looked like they would cut your throat for a cup of raktajino.

We stood close to the entrance for several minutes – me gazing at the butts and crotches of several preteen Bajorian boys and a couple of boys I figured had to be part Kardasian [because of the distinctive Kardasian skull structures] and 13 or 14 years old. Some of these boys had little tiny butts that hardly showed through their playsuits and/or shorts, and some had nice round butts that filled the seat of their playsuits quite nicely. Nice and squeezable. As I was gazing at these boys, Brian was being just as impolite staring at the wide assortment of galactic races represented by the adult patrons of the arcade. It was while we were standing there waiting for the cab that Brian first saw the boy and pointed him out. "Who's that?" He asked, trying his best not to physicaly point at him.

NEXT PART