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From: waltner@asgaard.acc.stolaf.edu (Tubawarrior)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: HUNTING GROUNDS Chapter 3
Message-ID: <1992Mar12.064954.7505@news.stolaf.edu>
Date: 12 Mar 92 06:49:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992Mar12.064954.7505
Sender: news@news.stolaf.edu
Organization: St. Olaf College; Northfield, MN
Lines: 307


Hello everyone!! :)

My sincerest apologies for the LONG time between chapters; I've been sweating
out a tough semester here at Olaf, and I've had to put a few things aside 
(including, unfortunately, my writing).  Anyone who missed the first two
chapters can ask for them by e-mail.  I'll try to get things out faster if I
can.

 



 				HUNTING GROUNDS
				   Chapter 3


The landing party assembled at the transporter room minutes after Victor
had summoned the three persons he chose.  Victor issued each party member
a phaser and a tricorder.  Just before the party was ready to leave, Sulu
walked through the doorway.

"Stay in constant contact with us," Sulu ordered. "We have no idea what's
down there.  Stay together, find the colony's log, and beam back up.  Don't
fool around."

"We should be fine, Captain," Rh'eldak said.  "If anything happens, you can
beam the lot of us up."

"All right then," Sulu replied.  "The coordinates have been fed into the
computer, Mister?"

The Transporter Chief looked down at his control panel.  "According to this,
Captain, the party will land in the center of the colony, next to the 
administration building."

"Perfect," Rh'eldak said. "Let's not waste time, everyone."  The party began
to take their places on the transporter pads. 

"Good luck, all," Sulu said.  He then nodded to the transporter chief and
muttered "Energize."  In seconds the party was gone.

"Keep a close eye on them.  I want them beamed up at the first sign of trouble."
Sulu said to the transporter chief.

"I will, sir."

"Very well then.  You know your duties," Sulu remarked and left the transporter
room.

As Sulu walked down the long corridor towards the turbolift, he couldn't help
but feel a twinge of doubt.  (Am I doing the right thing?  We don't know what
might happen. . .Nonsense.  That's why they're Starfleet officers.  They know
the risks, just like I did. . .maybe I should have gone. . .Why?  Rh'eldak 
knows computers better than I do.  So does Sesik. . .Doesn't matter, anyway.
I've made a decision, and I'll follow it thr--)

He almost ran over Doctor Lindstrom just with his thinking.  He brought himself
to reality with a start.  "Oh, I'm sorry, Doctor.  Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Captain.  The question is, are you?"

"Of course I am.  I was just deep in thought.  Again, I apologize."

Doctor Lindstrom replied, "Don't worry about it.  I've got some coffee brewing
in my office.  The real stuff, not the junk the replicator calls coffee.  Care
for some?"

Sulu balked.  "I really should be on the bridge..."

"You know as well as I do that there's nothing you can do on the bridge right
now.  If you're needed, they'll call you.  So come on," she said with a smile.

Sulu hesitated, but finally gave in.  "As you wish.  I haven't had a chance to
talk to you in a while anyway."

"That's the spirit.  And if you're a good boy, I may even give you a balloon,"
Doctor Lindstrom teased.

"I think I'm a little old for that, don't you?" Sulu said with mock seriousness.

"No," Lindstrom replied, with much less mockery than Sulu expected.  "One is  
never too old to stop having a child inside you.  We'll talk more in my office."
she said, and started walking back down the corridor.  Sulu followed right
behind her.

Soon the two of them were sipping coffee and talking again.  "You know, Hikaru,
you've been awfully high strung this last week.  Is the mission getting to you?"

"I'm fine, Doctor.  Really."  Sulu lied.  

"Are you?  You're usually much more laid back than you are.  A lot of the 
officers have said so."

"So now my officers are talking behind my back.  Wonderful."  Sulu retored 
quickly, much more so than he would have liked.

Lauri fixed an icy glare at the captain.  "You know full well that's not what
I meant, Captain.  And that kind of attitude is exactly what I'm talking about.
You're a good captain, Hikaru.  You don't have to jam the rules down the crew's
throats because they respect you enough not to break them.  And you know why 
they respect you?  Because you respect them.  You add 'Please' and 'Thank you'
to your orders, not just to be nice, but to make the crew feel good about 
themselves and believe that they're doing good jobs.  And the crew notices
when you aren't yourself." 

Hikaru thought for a moment.  Then he sighed.  "You're right, Lauri.  I haven't
been doing those things,"  He paused, gathering his thoughts and debating with
himself just how much he wanted to verbalize.  "It's just that this mission is
so strange, and I'm not even sure if I'm doing the right thing.  What if
Rh'eldak or Sesik get hurt or killed down there??  I'm responsible for sending
them."

"They're Starfleet officers, Captain.  It's their job.  You know that," the  
doctor reminded him.

"I know, I know.  I was going through that before.  Mapping empty space is one
thing.  This is completely different.  No matter what, I'm accountable.  I'm
the one who has to face the families if something goes wrong.  I wonder if this
is how---" 

"Don't."  Lindstrom interrupted him.  "Don't compare yourself to anyone else.
I don't care who it is.  You're Hikaru Sulu, a unique person, and the only
standards you have to live up to are your own.  You'll only end up being
miserable if you try to live up to another man's standards."

Hikaru was stunned.  Only then did he realize why he felt like nothing was
working the way it should.  The ship and the crew hadn't changed; he had.
He was trying to run the _Excelsior_ the way that _Enterprise_ had been run
when he served there.  It wasn't his style of command.  He remembered telling
himself so many different times, 'That's not the way I'd do it.'  Now he
was trying to do exactly what he vowed he wouldn't.

"Is it that obvious?"  Sulu asked the doctor.

Lauri nodded.  Then she reached out and touched Hikaru's arm.   "I'm worried
about them too.  But you're not helping yourself or them if you aren't Captain
*Sulu*, the best damn captain there is, in my book."

Sulu grinned.  "Thanks, Lauri.  I needed the talking to.  Do I get my balloon
now?"

"Well, now that you mentioned it,"  Lauri opened her desk drawer and produced
a large bag of balloons in many shapes and sizes.  "Doctor's office isn't 
complete without 'em.  What color??"

Hikaru could only laugh.

			  ----------------------

It was like beaming into a ghost town.  Everything was there except people.
Strange, how a place could look so modern and familiar and yet feel so alien.
As the party materialized, the wind began to move through the buildings, kicking
up dust from the disused walkways.

"The administration building is right here," Rh'eldak said.  "Let's see what 
we can find out."  The six of them walked into the building and began to look
around.  Again, the same "ghost town" feeling pervaded.  Dust was covering
everything from lack of use.  After wandering around the building for a short
while, the group discovered the computer center.

"Here we are," Rh'eldak said, encouraged.  "Now we might be able to figure
out what's going on here."  He moved over to the computer and started working
with it along with Sesik.  Victor and his unit stood by the doorway, observing
the area and staying alert.   

(Maybe I overreacted,) Victor thought to himself. (But better safe than sorry 
is a security person's creed.)  "Anything useful, Rh'eldak?"

"Plenty, Victor, but too much to go through here."  He flipped out his     
communicator.  "Rh'eldak to _Excelsior_,"

"_Excelsior_ here," came Lieutenant Rand's reply.  "What's up?"

"We've found the colony's computing center, and we'll have to download it to
you so we can get through it all."

"We'll be ready to recieve shortly, Commander," came the reply from Rand.

"All right, hold this channel open, please," was Rh'eldak's response. "Sesik,
adjust your tricorder so we can send a signal directly to _Excelsior's_
computers."

"Yes, Commander," Sesik said, and busied himself with the task. 

Within minutes, the memory banks of the colony had been transferred to  
_Exceslior_.  "Well,"  Rh'eldak said, "that's about all we can do here.
Anything else before we beam up?"

Robert Ellingson spoke up to the group for the first time.  "Perhaps we could
look around the colony some more.  With a little footwork, we might find a
clue that would give us a lead as to what *happened* here."

"That is exactly the reason we accessed the colony's computers," Sesik stated
flatly.  "There is no reason for a manual search that I can see."

"I don't know, Sesik," Victor responded.  "Most often, computers only observe
details they are programmed to look for.  We may be able to find something
they didn't." 
  
"Let's see what the captain says about it," Rh'eldak offered, opening his
communicator.  "Rh'eldak to Captain Sulu."

"Sulu here.  How's it going?"

"We've completed the download, sir.  We were wondering if we should look around
and see if we can find any clues as to the colonist's disappearance." 

Sulu thought for a moment.  Then he responded, "Go ahead and look around for a
while, but keep in touch.  Whatever happened to the colonists might happen to
one or all of you, and I'd rather avoid that."

Rh'eldak grinned.  "We would as well, sir.  Rh'eldak out."  

The landing party began to search the colony, looking for signs of anything 
out of the ordinary.  After an hour, they had searched every building and the 
grounds around the colony and had discovered nothing.

Victor was talking with Rh'eldak on the northern edge of the colony as the sun
was setting.  "We may as well gather the party and get back to the ship.  This
seems fruitless."

"I would agree," Rh'eldak agreed and flipped out his communicator.  "Rh'eldak 
to landing party.  Please gather back at the administration building to beam
up to the ship."

Ten minutes later the party was beginning to form at the designated site.
As the last few crew members arrived, Victor asked, "Where's Yolanda?  She's
the only one left."

"She should be coming," Trebrex said roughly.  "She went to investigate
something just as you ordered us back here.  She said she'd catch up." 
 
"You should *not* have left her alone," Victor reprimanded as he reached for
his communicator. "Pennington to Yolanda, what's your status?"

No response.

"Sesik, tricorder scan.  Where is she?" Victor said curtly.

Sesik checked his tricorder.  "Commander, Yolanda is not within tricorder scan."

A chill ripped down Victor's back.  "Dammit," he muttered under his breath.
"Pennington to _Excelsior_, pinpoint Ensign Yolanda on sensors."

There was a pause that seemed to take days in Victor's mind. (Come on, she's 
just out of tricorder range...everything's fine...she must have dropped her
communicator or something...)

The response was exactly what Victor was trying to convince himself not to 
believe:  "We can't locate Yolanda on sensors.  It's like she dropped off the
face of the earth."

An instant later Victor felt the tingly sensation of the transporter effect on
his body.  He wanted to scream, but his molecules were already being hurtled
up through space towards the orbiting _Excelsior_.  Once materialized, Victor
wasted no time expressing his feelings.

"Send me back down there NOW!"

"I'm sorry, sir, Captain's orders." replied the trembling transporter chief.

Without another word, Victor bolted from the transporter room and ran to the 
closest trubolift.  Rh'eldak had called after him, but Victor chose to ignore
him.  The lift seemed to take days in Victor's mind; eventually, the doors
opened to the main bridge.  He zeroed in on Sulu in the center seat.

"Why did you pull us out?!?!  One of my team is missing, and I can't do 
anything about it up here!  I demand to be beamed back down!"  Victor was
still breathing heavily from the dash to the lift.

Sulu turned his seat to face Victor and fixed a piercing glare on him.  He
spoke with an even, calm voice, yet Sulu's eyes were doing lazer surgery
on Victor's face:  "I pulled you out because I do not want to lose anyone
else before we can protect ourselves from whatever's taking people from the
planet.  There is now quite a bit we can do up here, now that we have the
colony's log downloaded into the computer.  If we can find a pattern to work
with, we may be able to track down the missing colonists and Ensign Yolanda.
And nobody, *nobody* demands anything from me on this ship.  Have I made 
myself clear, Lieutenant Commander?" 

Victor gulped.  "Aye, sir," was all he could get out.

Sulu grinned. "Very good.  Now let's see if we can do something to get them
back.  Do what you can with the sensors.  Start a full sweep of the planet, 
acre by acre if necessary, but I want a clue to go on.  Look for *anything*
that might be out of the ordinary.  Mineral content, atmosphere content,
geological patterns, whatever.  Just find something that you can follow."

"Aye, sir," Victor said and went to the Tactical station to begin his work.
Before long, Rh'eldak and Sesik came through the turbolift.  Sulu turned to
them and said, "I need both of you to start processing the colony's log so
we can find a pattern to look for so we can figure out what's going on down
there before we lose anyone else."

"Yes, sir," Rh'eldak replied.  "We'll use the main briefing room as our 
research station."

"Relay your findings to Mr. Pennington at regular intervals," Sulu ordered.
"Between the three of you, you should be able to discover something.  I don't
want to sit on my butt more than is absolutely necessary."

"Agreed, sir," Rh'eldak said.  He and Sesik then dissappeared into the lift.

 
				--------------