—- Planetside Paris X —-

“You know I have a fiancé,” Commander Olivia Carrillo pointed out, not for the first time to the amorous cowboy and leader of the gang that had captured her and Lieutenant Sesi Oari.

“Not once I find him and shoot him,” the man said sipping the moonshine that the gang had made in large oak casks stored at the edge of camp. Something like a fiancé was, to him at least, only a problem if you let it become one. He smiled, feeling that the date was gong well and said, “Pass the muskrat, please.”

Carrillo had not eaten for days now given that the food on offer seemed to be the same food that she had been forced to prepare and consisted of whatever small mammals that she was (mostly) able to skin. Vegetables were not part of the diet.

The man gestured to the stars, “You know the stars are in shapes. That there is called the ‘Big Dipper’ because it looks like a big spoon.”

Given that they were so far across the universe that the stars were not the same ones that had been on earth, Carrillo only was able to nod as if what he was saying made sense and not just a learned historical fact from another world. She’d seen the actual ‘Big Dipper’, her father had pointed it out when she was young and by now she’d been to several of the stars that made it up.

“You know one day we may be able to shoot a bullet up to the stars and kill one of them,” the man bragged, a strange desire to shoot a star. Carrillo nodded, not pointing out what stars actually were and that firing at them had little effect.

In the bushes there was a snap of a twig and the man drew the phaser on his hip, “Stay here pretty. I’m going to go check that out.”

He stood and headed into the brush, and then the world dissolved around Carrillo.

It reassembled itself on the runabout Apollo, where Lambert, and most of the rest of the mission team was waiting. Lambert hugged her and pulled her from the transporter pad and a moment later Lieutenant Sesi Oari appeared.

“Lambert forgot about the transporters,” Murf the engineering officer said, grinning as she nodded at the two returned officers.

“I didn’t forget, we just didn’t put transporters in our shuttles,” Lambert said, “So I didn’t think of them.”

“I need to get out of this dress,” Oari said.

“I need food,” Carrillo said, “Team meeting in ten minutes. Quick shower and change for Oari and I, where’s Voosha?”

“Distracting the cowboys, we didn’t want to beam you out right in front of them,” Murf said.

“A wise choice,” said an elderly Vulcan that Carrillo had not noticed at first she wore old rags and nodded.

“Ambassador Spock,” Carrillo said, never having seen the Ambassador she assumed it was him.

“No, though he has been mentioned often by your crew, I am Lieutenant Junior Grade Spuak of the USS Paris,” he said nodding.

“So while we were doing laundry you all found an old Vulcan, great,” Oari said.

“Okay explanation time in ten minutes,” Carrillo said, itching to change out of the dress that she’d been in since being captured.

Ten minutes later she sat down at the dinner table in the runabout with a large plate of tacos and a tumbler full of clean water. With a mouth full of taco she ordered, “Alright what’s going on.”

Siegel took the briefing, “The village is not native to the planet, but rather the descendants of the crew of the USS Paris. The planet’s actual population is across the sea and has yet to discover this continent.”

“So no contamination,” Carrillo said.

“Yet,” Siegel explained, “without doing a full survey I’d have to guess in about a century or two we’d see the local population encroach on the town.”

“Okay who are you and why don’t they know anything but dumb cowboy stuff?” Carrillo said gesturing at Spuak.

“I am a member of the crew, and the only Vulcan on board. The crew was irradiated during the crash and forgot who they were, they had a popular novel as a cultural guide, and established the town based upon that,” the Vulcan explained.

They continued on for a bit, reporting the successful destruction of the USS Paris and what they’d figured out.  about the planet that they’d temporarily named Paris X due to the fact that that had been the name of the old Miranda-class ship that had crashed there.

“In the morning we need to get the book, and get off world,” Carrillo said.

Lambert asked, “Why not just beam it out now?”

“If a supposedly holy book disappears into nothingness it’s going to cause more issues. If we steal it, and are seen stealing it, we can minimize disruption to the settlers,” Carrillo explained to her pilot and fiancé. She smiled, “Then we send back an Excelsior-class or something to transport them off world in holodecks to preserve their culture, such as it is.”

“Won’t they evolve along the lines of humans?” Murf asked.

The Vulcan shook his head, “Humans were significantly more populous at this point in their history. Our village lacks the diversity and numbers to achieve such growth. They have grown in my life from a population of one hundred and twenty-five to approximately two hundred and forty.”

Siegel nodded, “By this point humanity had millions of people, perhaps billions. This civilization is roughly after the American Civil War, you had America with a significant population on top of Europe, Asia, and Africa.”

Murf shrugged, she had not really paid much attention to human affairs until she had joined Starfleet and forced to write a history paper on a founding world she’d chosen Tellar.

Turning to their earlier conversation Carrillo pulled up a schematic on a screen in the wall, a visual representation of the town captured from scans. She gestured to the church tower and a hill, “These are our two highest points. Oari and Lambert will be in one of these each with a phaser rifle on stun. Make sure we’re not shot.”

The two nodded. They had the highest scores with firearms in the small team.

Carrillo continued, “Murf and Spuak get the runabout flying. We may need quick extraction. Voosha and myself will steal the book. We get out of town and Murf beams us out. Then she beams out the fireteam and we go home. Any questions?”

“You joining the crew?” Murf directed the question not at her commander, but at the Vulcan who shook his head.

“I will retire and return to Vulcan. I had a daughter and will see if she still lives, as well see if my wife is still around. As it is I have given my entire life to this single mission of protecting my ship, I do not foresee being of any further use to Starfleet,” he said, and if Carrillo did not know better she’d think that she had heard a touch of sadness in his voice.

“It’s hard going back,” Lambert said, who’d time travelled from the same period of time that Spuak’s ship had been lost, “They’ll keep asking you about this Kirk fellow. It’s like an obsession with them.”

Olivia Carrillo took another sonic shower, not feeling clean enough from the first. She entered the commanding officer’s quarters which was slightly bigger than the rest of the crew to find Lambert reading a PADD in bed. Though they’d agreed to wait their time with the first doorway to Underspace they’d encountered had nixed that after facing a lengthy return home. Now in the close quarters of the runabout, and with one extra crew member now, sharing a bed was the obvious solution.

“I heard you tried to rescue me with a phaser rifle and a bad attitude,” Carrillo grinned, teasing him.

“I went all Rambo,” Lambert said.

“What’s Rambo?” Carrillo asked puzzled.

“An old American movie staring Leonardo DeCaprio about a war vet,” Lambert explained.

“Never heard of it,” confessed Carrillo.

“I watched it in my cinema class back in the Academy,” explained Lambert, “It was my art credit.”

In her loose fitting shirt that came past her knees Carrillo climbed into bed next to him, “You mean you just watched movies? Nice. I took Klingon poetry.”

“What stood out about that?” Lambert asked, Klingon culture had only been worth studying to defeat them in his day.

“I can’t remember anything. Lots of blood in their poems though,” Carrillo said.

“You ever see Star Wars?” Lambert asked.

“No, what’s that?” Carrillo said, “Sounds Klingon.”

“No Klingons it’s about a space wizard who flies around,” Lambert explained.

“Sounds fun, does he do any fixing of the Prime Directive,” Carrillo asked.

“No, I don’t think they have a Prime Directive, they do hit people with laser swords though,” he said.

“We’ll have to watch it,” Carrillo said nodding off.

Lambert kissed the top of her head then lay her down, before turning in himself.