STAR TREK: THE LAST GENERATION - Where No Man Has Gone Before

They all sat around the bridge of the starship Compromise. Euan said for about the ninety-eighth time that he should be its commanding officer.

‘I have had enough!’ she shouted, never one to mince words. ‘What difference does it make who gets to be Captain?’

Bobbi turned to the group. ‘Can I have a show of hands from all those who think Lieutenant O’Ferez should be at the conn?’

Everyone put their hands up except Terri. ‘Fine!’ she snapped, and went over to sit in a chair.

‘Other chair,’ said Ruth, without looking up. Terri muttered under her breath and stomped over to the conn chair.

‘And stay there.’ said Euan. ‘See? That was an executive decision. I get to be Captain!’

‘Can I be the doctor?’ Graham asked suddenly. ‘I’ve been studying my gynaecology.’

‘Yeah, you can be the CMO,’ said Euan. ‘As Commanding Officer of this ship I...still...don’t...get... any... attention!’

‘Sorry, Euan,’ Colleen piped up from the operations station. ‘Did you say something?’

‘Senior Staff, USS Compromise, Please report to docking bay for uniform fitting.’

‘Oh, shit,’ said Leila. She’d seen what Deanna Troi had had to wear, and she was seriously thinking of transferring to transporter chief.

‘Could be worse,’ said Ratbat, joining her and the others as they headed for the turbolift. ‘Ye could be serving on a Ferengi vessel.’

‘Hey!’ called Euan. ‘I’m the one who..gives...the...’ he trailed off, then realised he was alone on the bridge. ‘Testaments!’ he swore, then stomped off to the lift in their wake.

The crew of the USS Compromise unanimously decided that the uniforms Starfleet had decided to give them were completely and utterly, without exception, 100% crap.

‘I don’t think this is very practical,’ Euan complained. ‘I want a belt at least! And there aren’t any pockets! Where am I going to keep my GI Joes?’

Ratbat, whose uniform hung off her like a beanpole wearing a marquee, scowled. ‘At least ye can move without the crukkin’ thing falling around yer ankles! They call this a small!’ she said.

Terri poked her head around the door to Leila’s change room. There was a moment of extreme silence, and then she broke into hysterical laughter.

‘What’s it look like?’ asked Graham, whose uniform didn’t significantly cover his abundant hair.

‘If you come anywhere near that door I’ll insert it in you, Graham!’ Leila warned. ‘I absolutely refuse to wear this. It may have looked stylish and provocative on Deanna Troi, but I don’t quite have her figure! And it is so...erky!’

‘Cheer up, Leila,’ said Terri, ‘She had to stuff the top half. Besides, no-one’s making you wear that one...’

‘The hell you’re not,’ Leila said cryptically before stomping out of the room.

Colleen appeared to have put her suit on upside down. When asked why, she just said, ‘Oh, really? I thought the legs were a bit tight.’

Ruth, tripping over the legs of her uniform, which was a little too long[1] , was swearing to herself. ‘I think if they expect us to function reliably they’re going to have to let us wear different clothes!’

‘Good idea!’ said Euan. ‘Lieutenant Hick, get me Admiral Page on subspace!’

As Euan buried his head in his hands, Bobbi, the new Chief Engineer, patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘Ratbat, darling, could you please ring up the Admiral?’

Euan, restored in his role as The Boss, stood in front of the viewer. ‘USS Compromise, NC-2604-Y, Captain Euan Bowen Commanding Officer, reporting from... Terri, where are we?’

‘All right, all right,’ interrupted the Admiral. ‘A simple yes would have done.’

‘You see, the standard Starfleet uniforms are just not practical. They don’t have pockets, I’ve got nothing to clip my Walkman to, and we haven’t been able to get Lieutenant Commander Fetter out of her room. She says that if she has to wear That Outfit, she’s not coming out.’

Admiral Page scowled. ‘I’m sorry, Compromise, but we can’t allow you to wear civilian clothes. You may inform the Counsellor that she needn’t wear the Troi costume, but she has to be in current Starfleet Uniform, as do the rest of you.’

The Admiral glared at Euan. ‘Right, Mr Bowen, one more slip up and we bust you right down to Acting Ensign, clear?!’

‘Right. Now here is your mission. Many years ago, a valuable artefact was lost, and you must find it. Do you think you can manage that?’

Ratbat stood up. ‘With respect, sir, I think that it’s a bit unfair to criticise all of us just because our Captain is an idiot.’

Admiral Page nodded. ‘Noted, Commander Sigma. Now, you must find the missing hairpiece of the great James T Kirk.’

‘On the other hand,’ muttered Terri, ‘if he keeps it up he might get to be admiral.’

‘Joke all you want,’ continued Sir Geoff. ‘But you’ll be court-martialled if you do. This wig is rumoured to have incredible qualities. If these legends are true, it may be one of the most powerful artefacts in the entire universe.’

‘A wig that covered the recedence of one of Starfleet’s greatest...well, something. Listen: all I can tell you is that it’s very important that you find this very special hair. Compromise, this is your first mission: are you up to the job?’

What Euan expected to see when he entered Sickbay was a sterile white room filled with biobeds, scanners, and other medical equipment. What he saw looked like a cross between a fourteenth-century torture chamber, Golden Apple, and the Marquis de Sade’s romper room.

‘What’s going o--’ he began, but was startled into silence when the body in the bondage-harness dropped to be suspended from the ceiling.

‘Euan!’ said a voice. He had barely an instant to look around for its source when Graham dropped down, apparently from nowhere, to hug him from behind. ‘How are you, Captain?’ he asked. ‘You well?’

‘I’m going there anyway. Ruth wants me to help her do the interrogation chamber.’

Euan snorted and looked around the room. ‘Is that really a dead body?’ he asked, disgusted at the contents of the harness.

‘What? Oh, no, that’s just Ensign M^cCulloch, she’s helping me test it for the size. Wake up,’ he told the young woman. He bent closer to her, and a slightly worried look crossed his face. ‘She wasn’t dead this morning...Ah, I’ll wake her up later. Walk with me to security, Euie.’ He started toward the door, but Euan stayed steadfast in the room. ‘What?’

‘I hate to remind you, Lootenant Commander Henstock, but I’m in command now. There won’t be any of that “walk with me” crap.’

‘Well, I hate to remind you, Mister Frothy Buns Bowen, but I’m the Chief Medical Officer. Feel like being relieved of duty?’

One bespectacled redhead with ponytail stared at another for a full thirty seconds.

They turned, beat each other up to see who got out the door first, and trod off down the corridor.

Bobbi, feeling slightly self-conscious due to the way her uniform was specifically loose around the chest area, stepped off the turbolift into Engineering.

‘Um.’ There was a tapping from behind the one of the wall panels, and Andrea opened it.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Crewmember Gault told them. ‘You’re not the poor bastard who has to move the joystick around all day!’ He heard a voice over his headset and screamed, ‘Shit!’, closing the panel behind him.

‘Right...’ Bobbi turned from the wall, interesting as it was, and addressed her staff. ‘...The Captain says he wants these warp engines up and running in twenty minutes. Personally, I’m inclined to disagree with him, but Admiral Crosby says that we won’t get paid if the ship doesn’t move, and I’ve had my eye on a dress for the past six weeks. Lieutenants Flanagan and Malarz, prime the M/ARS. Ms Robinson, set up an ODN link to that pool table thing there - I’m sick of seeing my reflection, it keeps reminding me that I haven’t had any sleep since Kirk was in fashion. Lieutenant Ritherdon--’

‘No you’re not, I just made you a Lieutenant. Go and turn the crank on the warp coil so the lights will go up and down and make us all work faster.’

Chaedy slid down the firepole from the catwalk, and nearly killed herself by falling behind the guard-rail. ‘Hang on, you’re a Chief Petty Officer. A non-com. We’re all ranking officers. How come you’re ordering us around?’

‘Miss Robyn... The Captain’s arguing with the CMO; the counsellor’s sulking in her quarters and won’t come out; the conn officer’s moaning about her love-life; the second officer’s no payin’ any attention to anyone; the transporter chief’s ‘alf-drowned in Guinness, and the security chief refuses to use the surveillance camera to the counsellor’s quarters if she goes near tha’ jumpsuit again. Please tell me you’ve got everything working down there...’

‘Psiakrew. Well, hotwire the damned thing. And don’t pretend you don’t know how. I know it was you that pinched Graham’s car and drove it into a tree,’ Ratbat retorted.

Sitting at her post recounting her exchanges with boyfriend number sixty-one, Terri’s green hair hid her small decorational earring in the shape of a set of keys.

‘Captain’s log, stardate...1. The ship is ready and the crew are set. Only one thing now remains. Space - the final frontier. These...’

At this point Leila interrupted Euan’s log entry. ‘But it’s not really the final frontier, is it?’

‘No. I mean yeah, I know it’s a frontier...but it’s not the final one.’

‘She’s right,’ agreed Colleen. We’ve hardly even touched time travel yet.’

Terri leant backwards in her chair. ‘Or parallel universes. Haven’t done them either.’

‘Or frottage,’ added Graham. Everyone looked at him so he did something gross.

‘Space - one out of a whole bunch of frontiers left. These are the voyages of the oh now what?’

‘It’s not just the voyages,’ Ruth told him. ‘You’re going to make log entries even when we’re just sitting there.’

It was another fifty minutes before Euan could finally make a complete banner in the log:

‘Space - one of a whole bunch of frontiers left. These are things that happen on or around the starship Compromise. Its unspecified-time-period mission; to explore worlds that we aren’t entirely familiar with. To seek out people we haven’t met yet. To go, boldly or otherwise, where someone may or may not have been before!’

Euan flicked off the log and groaned. next time, he would make his entry in the Ready Room. ‘Lieutenant O’Ferez,’ he said, ‘Lay in a course.’

‘Ye’ve laid damn near everything else around here,’ muttered Ratbat, until a hit on the head with a coffee mug from Leila silenced her.

‘You have Geo...you have Admiral Page’s co-ordinates. Set them in and...engage.’

Terri broke off from pressing buttons and turned to look at him. ‘But I’m not even with anyone at the moment.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, leaving a nice and disrespectful pause before she added ‘Sir.’

Lieutenant RK Crabb sighed loudly and tapped her communicator. ‘Security to the bridge,’ she told her chest. ‘Set phasers on Raid.’

‘No, he’s right,’ announced Terri. She pointed toward the ceiling where a small, blue light was hovering about by the top window.

‘That?’ asked Ruth. ‘I thought that that was just someone’s watch reflecting off the ceiling.’

As the blue dot swept down and hovered right in front of her face, Colleen said, ‘I guess not.’

The blue dot crept across the bridge, stopping and checking each one of them in turn except Euan, before starting the whole process again.

‘I think it’s checking us out,’ appraised Ruth. ‘Except Euan. An unidentified life-form with taste.’

‘Well look - Tel, Col, Ruth, Sig, me. All female. And all checked out by the dot here.’

‘Shh.’ Ruth had her phaser out and was trying to stalk the dot as it moved. It had slowed down and was moving back and forth between Terri and Colleen. Ruth’s finger as bare millimetres from the firing position when the dot suddenly changed course, whirled around Ruth, knocking her to the ground, and swooped toward Ratbat.

‘Cruk!’ The first officer ducked, and probably would have copped it full in the face anyway if she’d been normal height. ‘What’s yer game?’ she snapped at the dot.

Euan and Leila had cleared the centre chairs while Ratbat had turned to see it the dot was going to make a return swoop at her. ‘Weren’t you in Automan?’ she managed, but achieved little other than showing her age. The dot did make a return swoop, but it was obvious that it wasn’t trying quite the same tactic as before. It contacted with Ratbat’s body, and, from all apparent angles, disappeared into it.[2] Ratbat herself made a funny noise and fell over.

‘‘ere!’ cried Leila, once she’d realised what had happened. ‘It’s gone up her schmoo!’[3]

Ratbat, meanwhile, had turned a stark shade of yellow - the chiropteran equivalent of turning white.

‘Sickbay,’ Ratbat squeaked in reply. She paused for a moment to look totally untogether, then headed for the turbolift, not quite walking in her familiar manner. Halfway there, her legs seemed to turn to rubber, and she sprawled on to the floor. Leila, always ready to help, seized the prone first officer and slung her over her shoulder. ‘I suppose I’d better take care of you, as usual,’ she said, entering the turbolift. ‘Barry! Take us to sickbay, please.’

Once they had gone, Euan turned to the others. ‘Ruth,’ he said, ‘I want a full security alert. An unknown life-form has just invaded my ship.’

Euan rolled his eyes. They will talk back. ‘Well, fine. But Ratbat is on the ship. After Graham’s finished perving on her, I want a meeting to discuss his findings. In the observation lounge.’

As things settled down a bit, Terri engaged the autopilot[4] and sidled up to Euan. ‘Euan, sweets,’ she said.

‘Captain, sweets,’ said Terri. ‘You don’t think you’re being a bit cold about all this? I mean, Ratti’s our friend, and she got just electrocuted by a radioactive bumblebee, and that’s gotta be pretty crook...shouldn’t you be a bit more worried about than just about the ship?’

Euan sighed. ‘Obviously I’m concerned about Ratbat,’ he said quietly. ‘But like I said, I’m now a captain in the Narrabundah Space Fleet--’

‘...Narrabundah Star Fleet,’ he continued, ‘and that means that sometimes a man has to worry about the greater good. The welfare of his whole ship and crew might sometimes come before the well-being of just one person.’ With that, and trying to ignore that one of his rank pips chose that moment to fall off and drop down his shirt, Euan sat squarely in his chair, adopting the ‘weary look brought upon by the weight of command’ that he’d been practicing so well.

Terri shook her head at this and went back to her seat. The whole thing would be so much easier if Euan didn’t keep going cross-eyed every time he issued an order.

Leila dumped the first officer on the black leather-covered biobed. ‘GRAHAM!!’ she bellowed.

‘Oh, bugger busy! I know you were just watching one of those really sick videos of yours. Sig’s in trouble. A weird blue dot’s just gone up where the sun don’t shine.’

Graham began an examination of Ratbat, who was still in a state of shock. Leila, not quite trusting his medical credentials, watched.

After a few minutes, she said ‘Couldn’t you just use a tricorder to do that?’

Graham, who was currently up to his elbow in the chiropteran,[5] looked up. ‘Hmm? A tricorder? Oh, yes, probably.’

Several minutes later, Leila spoke up again. ‘How long till you work out what’s happened to her?’

Leila finally lost her cool and hit Graham with a coffee mug, which she always carried around in case of emergencies. ‘Stop fiddling with Ratti’s personal equipment and talk to me!’ she shouted. ‘I’m the ship’s counsellor, I’m supposed to help her through this! What is wrong with her?’

Graham withdrew his hand. There was an audible sigh of relief from Ratbat, who had possibly undergone more trauma from the examination than from the actual incident.

‘Ratti, I want my watch back later,’ he said. ‘OK, it’s quite straightforward, really. No argument about this diagnosis. Did you know that the difference between diagnosis and diarrhoea is that you get it in your gnosis instead of in your rear?’ He trailed off, noticing the look on Leila’s face, and the laser scalpel she was holding at groin height.

‘Graham, if you don’t tell me what is wrong with Siggy this minute, I will carve out something very dear to you,’ she said.

After considerable mucking around, which, may I say, is just typical, the bridge crew re-convened in 10-Foreplay. Counsel-- Lieutenant Commander Fetter, having recovered from the initial shock, was halfway down a double-vodka-and-raspberry, and was detailing to Lieutenant Hick exactly why Lieutenant Commander Henstock was completely unsuitable to have as the CMO.

Ratbat, now partially recovered from her rigorous medical examination, was explaining to the aforementioned CMO why lager was not good for a person who was pregnant, and was drinking milk.

Captain Bowen was sulking because no one had noticed that he was actually in charge and not only in charge but banging on his glass with a fork, which always seemed to work in movies.

Lieutenant O’Ferez was attempting to conduct a conversation with Renée, 10-Foreplay’s resident Barfly, which was a bit of a lost cause, since all Renée seemed capable of pronouncing was a string of esses.

Emma, the Klingon bartender, looked around and smiled. Everything was perfectly normal.

Chief Engineer Scholes walked in, and noticed Euan’s plight. Despite being rather petite, she had always been blessed with big, healthy lungs,[6] and a few seconds of concentrated bellowing soon had everyone seated and paying attention.

Euan stood up. ‘Thank you, Robyn. Now, I suppose that by now you’ve worked out why you’re all here.’

‘Yes!’ yelled Graham. ‘When Mummy and Daddy and Rover love each other very much...’ he broke off as Euan’s half-empty glass of Sambuca hit him in the face.

‘We’re here to discuss the recent occurrence with our First Officer. Commander Sigma is now, unfortunately, pregnant. To a blue dot.’

Ensign Murphy stuck his head around the bar door. ‘Told ya you’d lay someone someday, Ratti!’ he yelled, before being politely (and viciously) removed by Lieutenant Crabb.

Euan coughed, straightened his uniform, and continued. ‘Um. This means that we have to work out what to do.’

Terri put her hand up. ‘Why now? We’ve got nine months till it’ll be born!’

‘Six months,’ Bobbi said. ‘Ratbat’s chiropteran. They gestate a lot faster than we do.’

‘Actually, a shitload faster in this case,’ Graham interrupted, wringing Euan’s drink out of his beard. ‘You see, it’s one of those freaky things that happen sometimes. It looks like the whole process is going to be over and done with in about seventy-two hours.’

‘I’ll have to start organising the Baby Shower right away! Come on, Leila, we’d better do it, no one else can.’

She and the Counsellor departed into a corner, got out a huge piece of paper, and started drawing up a list.

Euan sighed. It was useless to try and stop them. ‘Anyway, the thing we have to decide is, what, if anything, can we do about this? Ratbat is now about four hours pregnant, but time is passing. Quickly.’

Euan, having run out of drinks to throw at Graham, sighed. ‘Graham!’ he yelled, ‘It could be that the child Ratti is about to have is some weird alien monster with big squiggly tentacles and teeth as big as your leg and...’

But everyone except Ratbat had decided to join in Graham’s suggestion to play strip-darts, and wasn’t listening.

‘Dinna worry, Captain,’ the first officer said. ‘If something nasty comes out, we can always just shove it in an airlock and get rid of it.’

In their corner, Terri and Leila got up and started getting bunting, balloons, and streamers from a replicator.

Most of the crew were still in bed, and were likely to remain there for a number of hours yet. The baby shower had been, for some, a huge success. For Ratbat it had been a mildly interesting diversion. Now she was wandering around the debris that was left in 10-Foreplay.

‘Interestin' little party, that. I’ve now got three frilly pink cots, seven breast pumps, and six dozen bootees. My friends aren’t predictable in their gifts, now, are they? I just hope you appreciate it!’ she said to the noticeable bulge in her midriff, giving it a small tap.

Terri, the elixir administered, turned to the chiropteran. Her black-circled eyes widened. ‘You’re getting big, Ratti!’

But it appeared that Terri’s early-morning conversational ability was now exhausted. She curled up on a couch, and went back to sleep. Ratbat, now bored, went in search of further entertainment.

Outside the door to sickbay, she paused. There were sounds of movement inside, but knowing Graham and his habits, Ratbat was not too keen to see what was happening. There was entertainment, and then there was just plain smut.

In fact, Ratbat decided after a considerable search, no one was up and about at all. This was really quite slack, she thought. It was already 10 AM ship time, and there had been no sign of any living soul.

She wandered into the Captain’s Ready-Room. On the desk she found Euan, asleep with his arm around a large garden gnome. The gnome looked rather unimpressed at the state of affairs, but no one cares what concrete garden ornaments think. In the corner, behind a filing cabinet, was Renée the barfly with a flowerpot on her head, cuddled up to a lampshade. Ratbat didn’t want to know what had happened.

It was another few hours before everyone emerged from their various sleeping spots. Everyone looked tired and sick, except for Ratbat, who was infuriatingly smug about it.

‘Ye’re not meant to drink when ye’re pregnant. I bet you all wish ye were pregnant, now!’ She did insist on rubbing it in.

Once Graham had been unearthed from a huge pile of latex, feathers and balloons, he consented to give Ratbat another examination, this time, at general request, with a tricorder.

‘OK, Ratti, you are now about four months pregnant. Or would be if you were taking nine months instead of being so fucking impatient. Happy? Can I get back to bed now?’ he said after ten minutes of wincing at the sounds the tricorder made.

‘Oh, come on. Can’t you at least tell if it’s a hideous alien monster?’ asked Leila, who was rather green in the face. ‘Oh, and could you please remove my head for me as well?’

Graham turned off the tricorder. ‘It’s a human,’ he said. ‘A perfectly normal chiropteran human female.’

‘Normal? How can it be normal with Siggy as its mother and a weird blue dot as its father?’

‘What if it’s a weird alien monster that just looks like a perfectly normal human female?’

‘Well, look. In my life I’ve been beaten up, set fire to, emotionally blackmailed, and done over by God. How can things get any worse?’

In Transporter room seven, Lieutenant Emma the Techie was bouncing a contraceptive up and down on the controls, humming a tune under her breath. Being Transporter Chief on a vessel when no one is beaming on or off is extremely boring.

Her comm badge gave a beep. ‘Yes, Lieutenant Techie here, and bored shitless,’ she said to it.

Ruth’s voice came over, ‘Stop complaining, Emma. We’ve actually got something for you to do.’

‘No, we've got a Chief Medical Officer can do that. Right now, we have to beam our Science Officer on board.’

‘Oh, goody, a fucking Vulcan. I can play quoits on his ears!’ There was a pause. ‘Hey, do you know why Vulcans have pointy ears?’

Emma waited until her panel registered that the co-ordinates had been sent down from the bridge, then moved her fingers across the three sliders. As she watched, a small blonde female dressed in the black-and-blue of Starfleet Sciences appeared.

The young woman stepped off the pad. ‘Lieutenant Commander Ksenia Ever Romaniw Forde reporting for duty.’

Emma grunted. ‘Who doing what? Don’t tell me, I’m just a jumped-up lift attendant.’

‘Well, where’s the Captain, then? Where’s the First Officer? Shouldn’t I report to someone?’

‘Um...last I heard, the Captain was sulking in his quarters, the first officer - who’s about thirty-two hours pregnant, but she’s showing already - has gone to the movies with the counsellor, no-one's ever game to ask what the CMO's doing... Shit, just walk around the corridor until you find a door with your job on it, that’s what I did. By the way, what is your job, anyway?’

Emma frowned, mulling over a word she had heard more times than she’d had to apply. ‘Science. As in the application of facts and logic to give viable explanations and rational solutions to difficult phenomena.’

After Ksenia had found her quarters and left her possessions inside, she found herself exploring the ship. Upon entry to sickbay, she thought she’d taken a wrong turn and somehow wound up in Fantasy Lane. There were unidentifiable noises coming from the back room; noises which nevertheless made her fervently wish she was somewhere else.

Upon exiting, she encountered two more of the local complement, throwing popcorn at each other and giggling. Another female lieutenant commander in black-and-blue, and a commander in red-and-black, whose uniform was looking a little strained around the chest and midriff areas. Most likely in a family way, and given what she’d heard about the habits of those who worked on this ship, probably not the only one.

Ksenia stood to attention. ‘Chief of Sciences, Lieutenant Commander Ksenia Ever Romaniw Forde reporting for duty, sir!’

The bat-like one seemed to realise she was actually this woman’s superior, coughed, brushed the popcorn off her uniform, and smiled. ‘Oh. Welcome to the Compromise, Ksenia. Um. I presume you found your quarters?’

Blue leant over to Red, and Ksenia heard a whisper like, ‘She doesn’t remember?’

‘It’s been a long time,’ said the chiropteran, then spoke aloud: ‘Commander Urac Daria Anastasia Sigma, second in command of the USS Compromise...’

‘...And four and a half months pregnant to a blue dot!’ the other officer finished. ‘Hi. I’m Leila. I’m the Counsellor. This place would probably grind to halt without me. What do you think of the Compromise?’

‘I know. You got beamed aboard by Emma the Techie, and then you ran into Graham, right? Don’t worry, we’re not all like that.’

‘But don’t worry,’ the first officer assured Ksenia, ‘You’ll get used to it. Everybody does. Eventually.’

The odd pair escorted the Science Officer to the bridge, after arguing with the turbolift, which wanted the day off. Ksenia had never before encountered a turbolift that talked back. It was probably a new design innovation.

The bridge was quite quiet. The conn and ops officers were arguing about whose turn it was to do the washing up, the Captain was playing with a model Klingon Bird-of-Prey, and the security chief was knitting.

‘Oi! Captain!’ the first officer bellowed. ‘This 'ere's our science officer! What do we do with her?’

‘Vrooom!’ said Euan, zooming the Klingon ship around a model of the Enterprise.

Ksenia turned to Ratbat. ‘What’s this about you being pregnant to a blue dot, anyway, sir?’

‘Och, dinna call me sir, it makes me jumpy. Y’see...’ Ratbat explained the bizarre circumstances of her pregnancy.

Ksenia took it all in, nodded a bit, then commented, ‘You seem to be pretty blasé about it all.’

‘Joudan no da. I’m kidding. No, I think I just still can’t process it properly.’

Leila nodded expertly. ‘She’s in acceptance, that’s the first stage of coping.’

Ksenia’s face said something very different, but her voice just said, ‘OK.’

‘Anyway, our official mission is to find the Hair Hat of James T Kirk and return it to Starfleet Command. Glenda only knows why, maybe they want to play charades with it.’

‘And since yer the science officer, you can go off and think about it for a while. If ye like, I’ll call ye when I’m about to give birth. It should be in about thirty-six hours. Now me and the Counsellor here are going maternity clothes shopping.’ For the first time in her life, Ratbat now had a bustline to speak of, and was the object of Bobbi’s jealousy.

At the shops, Ratbat and Leila ran into slight difficulties, in that none of the bras available had been designed with four nipples in mind. Ratbat had been blessed with more quantity than quality in the chest area, and this made buying lingerie rather difficult, not to say embarrassing.[8] The woman in charge was actually quite rude about it.

After about half an hour of mucking around, the shoppers settled on a simple black cotton affair,[9] and a red-and-black version of the Starfleet maternity uniform.[10] The new outfit donned, they went in search of food.

‘Eh? Oh no, I like my pizzas like this. I had the cravings this morning before you were awake. Sardines dunked in dilithium crystals. Well nice.’

Ratbat patted her uterine protrusion. ‘You’re giving your mother strange tastes, you know that? Do you suppose eating highly radioactive crystals can be hazardous to your baby’s health?’ she asked Leila.

That evening, the engineering crew got together for the weekly Five-Hundred tournament on the pool table in Engineering.

‘Is it just me,’ asked Andrea, ‘or does our captain suffer from an extreme lack of respect?’

‘Actually,’ piped up Chaedy,[11] ‘it might not be completely bonkless. I’ve heard...’ She looked over at her department head, then fell quiet.

‘Is it because you’ve really got your eyes on the doctor?’ asked Chaedy.

‘You’re right, though,’ Karen told Andrea. ‘I think he only got the job because he sulked until they gave it to him.’

‘Take it. Anyway, I don’t think it’s that no-one respects him,’ continued Bobbi. ‘I just think it’s that no-one listens to him.’

The ‘boop’ sound that accompanied a page came from somewhere, and they all shut up on the off-chance it might be important. ‘Captain to all decks...if there are any guys on board, could they come up to the bridge, because I’m starting to feel threatened.’ Chaedy shook her head.

There was another ‘boop’, then Dr Graham’s voice came over the comm system. ‘Sickbay to all decks. If there are any girls on board, could they come up to sickbay, because I’d like to threaten them.’

‘Graham - what have I told you about using the comm system for prank calls?’

‘Well, I should have. Starfleet Command weren’t impressed the other day, when they heard that you’d hailed an approaching vessel and asked if Hugh Jarsol was there.’

‘Anyway, Euie, that’s not a prank call. A prank call is like the other day when I was looking for Lieutenant Wall.’

‘Smart-arse. Euan, remind me to give Lieutenant Ritherdon her physical tomorrow. I think she needs an enema...Klingon-style.’

The next morning, Ratbat was looking and feeling extremely large and ungainly. She had woken to find that her pyjamas hadn’t quite stood up to her expanding during the night, and, come to that, she’d had to replicate herself yet another uniform, not to mention another pair of bras. She wondered if it wouldn’t have just been simpler to lock herself undressed in her quarters for three days.

She was also currently half-out of her uniform, since Ksenia, as science officer, had insisted on examining her. Partially because the whole thing was a new scientific phenomena, and partially because Graham had last been heard of taking the shuttlecraft XXXX out to play chicken with a comet.

‘God, you’re huge,’ said Ksenia, placing her hands on Ratbat’s fundus. She had had to hold them over the heater for several minutes, as the first she had tried, her skin had touched Ratbat’s, and the chiropteran had leapt halfway across the room after feeling cold hands.

Ratbat looked down at herself. She had her outer jumpsuit unzipped past her waist, and her undershirt and workshirt rolled all the way up. Within those boundaries, everything was kind of...enhanced. ‘I’d kind of noticed. I didn’t just think that this was a particularly bad spot.’

‘Well, I’d hate to be around when it burst, if it was.’ She turned her tricorder around so it was no longer pointing at her own elbow, and ran it over Ratbat.

‘Well, that’s the thing...like Graham says, it seems to be a normal human female. Well, a normal chiropteran human female, anyway.’

‘Only no-one’s ever heard of them. Do you know that baby chiropterans are actually born with their fangs already grown?’

Had she been in a better position to, Ratbat would have crossed her legs at that point. ‘I think I want a caesarean,’ she said.

‘Then you’ll just have to hope there’s an emergency, because Starfleet regulations--’

Ksenia nodded, and Ratbat redressed. To think I used to get coy about being seen in my underwear, she thought. Now it seems to be open season to anyone with blue shoulder-pads.

‘You’re the equivalent of about...seven months pregnant,’ continued Ksenia, pausing only to deliver a very out-of-character middle finger to the window. ‘Normally I’d recommend you take some time off, but I can’t do it since I’m only the science officer...’

‘...and besides, you’re not allowed to start your maternity leave when you’re only about two days pregnant. Nice.’ She uneasily got off the bench and waddled from the room.

The second officer was wandering around in her usual vague manner when Ratbat, having requested Crewmember Gault to take the turbolift a little slower, was catapulted on to the bridge.

Ratbat disentangled herself with difficulty from the console where she’d landed. ‘That geezer doesnae know the difference between slow and fast! D’ye think it’s good for pregnant women to go at mach 7?’ she bellowed at the lift.

‘About ten or eleven o’clock tonight. That’s what they think. It’s my first - and only - so it could be a bit dodgy.’

Ratbat scowled. ‘It’s not my fault, this was the only style they had maternity uniforms in. I only have to wear it for another twelve hours or so.’

Ratbat scowled at her, unable to decide if it was an insult, frank observation, or backhanded compliment. She decided she was too tired to go into pregnant lady hysterics, and let the thing slide. ‘Maybe I ought to get someone to take a picture of me while I’ve got a bustline, so I can make Bobbi jealous...’

The Captain, the CMO, and one of the security officers ran into the room. ‘Graham’s in! Graham’s in!’ chanted Euan.

Graham lunged at him, and tipped his arm. ‘There! Jaan’s in! Jaan’s in!’

They looked out the viewing port. There were stars out there, quite a lot of them. It looked like diamond had been shattered and sprinkled over black velvet.

Ratbat stroked her bump. ‘I wonder which one of those you come from...?’ she said, almost to herself.

‘Oh no, I’m not going there again. Not after the other night. Seeing Graham doing the limbo in his underwear was quite a hideous sight.’

The bar was reasonably quiet. Bars usually are at ten o’clock in the morning. Emma the Klingon was wiping the top of the bar busily, probably to conceal the fact that she didn’t actually have anything to do at this stage. There was the odd body lying around, presumably still left over from the Baby Shower, but on the whole, it was a nice place to be.

The CMO, the Captain, and the Security Officer galloped into the bar, shooting at each other with water pistols filled with green cordial.

‘Look, Ruth, I don’t want a fully armed security team in the room when Ratbat’s trying to give birth! It’s going to be a traumatic experience enough without your trigger-happy morons there!’

‘But Ksenia, it could be a security emergency! What if the baby’s a weird alien monster....’

‘We’ve been through this before. It’s a human female, and that’s it. Now go away and leave me in peace!’

Ratbat stopped dead in the corridor. Out of all the pregnancy phenomena she’d experienced so far, that hadn’t been one of them.

She felt the sensation again, a lot harder this time. She grabbed her stomach. ‘Oohhh, ‘eck. You want out, don’t ye?’ Her only answer was a third round that more than built on the first two.

‘Cruk!’ The shock of this was enough to send her staggering against the wall, at which she promptly sank into a sitting position.[13]

It was in this position that Lieutenants Crabb and Leuning found her half an hour later.

Between incoherent expressions of pain, Ratbat managed to fix her with a very nasty glare. ‘I’ve got this enormous belly, my uniform’s soaked, and I’m crashed on the spot in a shitload of pain from my lower half! What the cruk do you think is happening?’

Ruth and Nic looked at each other for a moment, then back at Ratbat. Nic shrugged.

Ruth immediately jumped up, and punched her comm badge. ‘Security to the corridor outside 10-Foreplay! Set phasers on maximum! The weird alien monster is about to make an entry into the world, and we want to get it when it does...’

Nic shoved Ruth out of the way. ‘Cancel that! Don’t be silly, sir, we have to get her to Sickbay. This corridor isn’t exactly the best obstetrics ward on the ship!’

‘What does it matter where the baby’s born? I was born on a kitchen table!’

‘Send a stretcher party to the corridor outside 10-Foreplay. Commander Sigma’s gone into labour!’

Lieutenant Techie’s voice came over. ‘I’m not doing anything important. Why don’t I just beam her there?’

It was now ten-thirty that evening, and Ratbat was feeling considerably unwell. Graham had run headfirst into a cupboard whilst playing tips with Euan, and was now suffering from concussion, so it was up to Ksenia to deliver the baby.

‘Ye don’t have to remind me to do everything!’ gasped Ratbat between contractions. She hadn’t really envisaged spending her third night on board stark naked with a rather camp scientist, trying to use muscles she didn’t really know she had to push a whole other person through an orifice she’d never really planned on using, but it could have been worse.[14]

‘I’m supposed to say that. It says so here.’ Ksenia held up a book labelled ‘Midwifery made easy’.

Ratbat was about to comment, but her womb decided to give her a push, and knocked all the wind out of her.

‘Ooooh! This is horrible!’ the first officer moaned. ‘Can ye no give me some drugs?’

‘Breathe yoursee...’ Ratbat’s voice rose in pitch, until it became a high-frequency wail that shattered a glass in the next room.

And as Ratbat gave a scream like the victim in a vampire movie, her daughter was finally brought into the world.

‘Well done! You did it.’ Ksenia cut the umbilical cord and wiped the newborn down a bit, then she wrapped the baby up in a surgical towel and took her around the seat to show her mother.

‘Here you are, little one, this is your Mamma...’ she trailed off, as the aforementioned Mamma appeared to have fallen asleep. ‘Oh well, welcome to the Compromise. You’ll get used to it eventually. Everybody does.’

‘The thing I don’t understand, Ratbat, is why the baby was born wearing a watch,’ said Euan.

It was several hours later, and Ratbat had cleaned herself and her daughter up, and was now seeing visitors.

‘It’s Graham’s. You see, when he first examined me it came off...anyway, I’m really glad it’s out now. When the alarm went off in the movie theatre, I didn’t know where to look.’

Euan laughed and tickled the junior chiropteran. ‘Are you having fun breast-feeding?’

Ratbat winced. ‘I tried it. The little bugger’s got teeth already! D’ye know how hard it is to get a band-aid to stay on yer bosom?’

‘Right, I can see ye don’t have any experience of bosoms. Dinna worry. I’m still trying to get used to this mother business.’

Ratbat smiled. ‘Anja Sophie Gates Sigma. After all my favourite people in television.’

Leila laughed. ‘Typical! Did you hear about that family that had eight kids and planned to call them William, Patrick, Jon, Tom, Peter, Colin, Sylvester and Paul?’

The new single-parent family made its way on to the bridge. ‘Hello, Ratti!’ said Colleen. ‘Is this the little one?’

‘Oh, all right.’ Ratbat handed Anja over. Colleen unwrapped the blanket from her face.

It was nearing the end of Anja Sigma’s first day on the Compromise.[15] So far Ratbat had held her upside down, accidentally left her in the turbolift, and decided to bottle-feed her.

‘Oh, don’t worry. If you ask me, she’s getting to be quite a big girl already.’

‘When she was born, she was about that big.’ Leila held her hands about thirty centimetres apart. ‘And now look!’

Ratbat thrust Anja in Ksenia’s face, almost dropping her. ‘Here! What do you think?’

‘What do I think of what?’ asked Ksenia, taking the baby to save her from falling.

Ksenia scanned the child. ‘Yes...according to this, she’s nearly ten months old! But she was only born twenty-four hours ago!’

Leila put her arm around the panicky mother. ‘Now come on,’ she soothed. ‘Just because she’s growing at a hell of a rate doesn’t mean she’s not still your baby girl.’

Ksenia applied a hypospray to the back of Ratbat’s neck, and the chiropteran went limp.

‘Nice one, Ksenia. Let’s get her and Anja to bed. If she’s grown a lot in the morning, we’re going to have to decide what to do about it.’

Ksenia placed Anja in her cot while Leila lowered Ratbat into her bed, noticing that the pyjamas next to it had a huge rip in the front.

‘He probably shouldn’t have been born,’ retorted Leila. ‘But the longer he’s out, the worse things might get.’

‘Fine,’ Nicole sighed, turning to Ensign M^cCulloch. ‘Fiona, hand me the stimulant, please.’

As Fiona handed Nicole the hypospray, Ksenia noticed something. ‘Why do you have strap-marks on your neck?’ she asked.

‘Huh? Oh, I was in theatre this morning,’ she answered. Ksenia was about to pursue the matter further, then saw what the rest of sickbay was like, and decide she could live quite happily without knowing about the theatre part of it. Nicole emptied the hypo into Graham’s neck.

‘Waaah!’ Graham started. ‘It can’t be mine! I never even--’ He stopped himself, and looked at the room properly. ‘Oh. Um, yeah. Hi, guys. Er, girls. How they hanging?’

‘If I recall, you used that as a pick-up line when you first met her,’ Leila said snidely.

Graham shrugged. ‘It might have worked. Anyway, what’s wrong with the kid?’

Ksenia sighed. ‘Well, as far as I’m able to determine, she’s a perfectly normal chiropteran. It’s just...’

‘Well, she’s got unusual readings psychic aura emanations. And her metabolism seems to be undergoing some subspace fusion.’

‘Just because it’s technobabble doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘It means, you jumped-up enema glove, that she’s still using Ratbat’s genetic structure as a basic template, but she seems to be somehow corrupting it with her own aura.’

‘Er...probably not... Anyway, as Chief Medical Officer, you should know stuff like this!’

Graham shrugged. ‘I don’t do auras. Science officers and telepaths do auras. I don’t do auras... I do stool.’

‘Oh, my god, she’s almost three!’ At this point, Ksenia decided to take Anja down to the lab to run some tests.

‘Are you sure you should take her away from Ratbat? Isn’t there something about the mothers not taking them back if you handle them?’

This is usually a good start, but this time it meant that all she saw was the ceiling.

Ratbat groaned and pulled the blanket over her head. ‘I don’t want to know!’ came her muffled voice.

Leila patted the lump in the bed. ‘Oh, come on, it’s not that bad, surely. OK, she made a bit of a mess, but...’ She paused. ‘I’ve missed the point, haven’t I?’

‘Well, Ksenia is running some tests, and she and Graham should work out what the problem is soon.’

‘Graham, put that down! You’re just going to break it!’ Ksenia was getting a bit frazzled at Graham’s complete inability to work properly at anything.

She elbowed him in the stomach. ‘Go away! This is a delicate scientific operation, and you’re putting your great big paws all over the sterile dishes!’

Euan stood back. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit jumpy about it. I don’t want some weird squiggly alien monster on board my ship.’

‘That’s a point,’ said Anja. ‘Where is my mother? Shouldn’t she be here?’

‘Well, yes, technically, but she’s unconscious at the moment. That makes it quite difficult.’

‘I’m not, actually,’ came Ratbat’s voice from the doorway. ‘Morning. Are you little Anja, then?’

‘Oh, great. My only daughter asks me if I’m her mother! Typical! Just my luck. Yes, darling, I am yer mother.’

Ksenia took Ratbat aside. ‘Um. Ratti, I think we’d better have a word...Where Anja can’t hear us,’ she said very softly, chiropterans having extremely good hearing.[16]

The two sat over a table in 10-Foreplay. ‘So...my daughter isn’t really my daughter, she’s some weird alien monster, right?’

‘No, not exactly,’ said Ksenia. ‘She’s still your daughter, but she isn’t exactly...human.’

Ksenia sighed. ‘This is going to be difficult, I can tell, but the truth is... Well, the truth is, without beating around the bush, that Anja isn’t...exactly...well, she’s a bit...different...’

‘Vampire? Oh great, I’ve given birth to a vampire bat! What wonderful news! Does she turn into garlic at the full moon as well?’

‘Ratbat, please be serious. I mean it. She’s not the usual hæmovore vampire, she’s a bit different.’

‘She’s a credibility vampire; she sucks things dry of all their realism and believability. It’s a kind of telepathic thing, I can’t explain it.’

‘Oh.’ Ratbat looked into her glass. ‘Great. I went through ten hours of labour[17] for this? I think...oh, Glenda, Ksenia, I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it!’

Ratbat had started shaking, and Ksenia held her hands. ‘Well, it’s true,’ she said. ‘You have to accept that she’s an unnatural phenomenon, and...’

‘Unnatural! My baby girl? She’s as natural as anyone! I was there when she was born! I know she’s natural!’

‘I was there too, remember? Now look, she is still part of you - she has your genetic structure, and she is still sort of your daughter. But you were…well, you were used. I’m sorry, but…it - she - started off as this little energy thing, then came to you to be a set of genetic suggestions to copy, and a handy facility to put them all together.’ Ksenia couldn’t tell if Ratbat was staring out of shock, or because she thought she was mad. She pressed on. ‘But you have to accept that even though she looks and feels like your offspring…in reality, she may be a danger to the entire ship.’

Ksenia watched the chiropteran barge out of the bar. The Counsellor, just coming in, was almost knocked over by her speedy exit. Leila righted herself, and looked after the retreating First Officer. ‘What’s your problem?’ she called. Receiving no reply, she went to join the science officer. ‘What’s got into our illustrious second-in-command?’[18]

Ksenia explained the situation to the Counsellor. ‘And now she’s got all clucky and maternal, and won’t listen to reason.’

‘Well can you blame her? If you ask me, Ksenia, you didn’t exactly break it to her gently.’

‘You should have let me do it; I’ve got training in this. I know how to say really obvious things at crucial moments which somehow make the person feel better.’ Leila laughed. ‘You know, it’s funny. Ratti and I have been friends for centuries, and I never thought she had that much of a maternal instinct, but I guess she’s saved it all up for now.’

Leila scratched her head. ‘I’m not sure if there’s anything we actually can do. She’s got all protective of Anja, and if she thinks that we’re threatening her daughter in any way, she’ll turn on us as well. We have to be nice and supportive and understanding. And then, when Anja’s got used to us and isn’t on her guard, we can phaser her head off.’

Ratbat and Anja, who was now about fourteen, were together in their quarters. Ratbat was crying on her daughter’s shoulder.

‘Don’t worry, Mama,’ Anja soothed, ‘They can’t take me away from you, even if they think I’m a weird alien monster. I’m still your baby girl, and I always will be.’

Ratbat sat up tearfully. ‘But they’ll all hate you because you’re different! I know what it’s like, I remember Primary School!’

As Anja spoke, she ran her fingers through Ratbat’s hair, gripping her skull[19] quite tightly behind the ears. A puzzled expression came over Anja’s face.

‘Er...Nothing, I was just patting you.’ Anja stood up. ‘I think I’ll...go for a walk. I might be able to reason with the Captain.’

The Captain was alone in his Ready Room, trying to work out if he was going to let the Good GI Joes or the Bad Cobras win. The desk was littered with scraps of paper with guns neatly drawn in the margins. It was into this scene that Anja Sigma walked.

‘Yes...we grow up quickly in my family.’ She sat down on the desk, and leaned over toward Euan. ‘Very quickly...’ Her face was almost brushing his.

Anja grabbed him by the collar, pulling his face near hers. ‘I want you all to accept me...I know I’m growing up very fast, but that doesn’t mean I’m not human...I am a human...a woman...’ They were nose to nose by now.

‘Gurgle!’ said Euan. Her hand was running through his hair, caressing his head, gripping it...

Anja snorted and got off his desk. ‘Hah! You weren’t any good anyway!’ She turned on her heel walked out.

Euan looked perplexed. ‘But I didn’t even try anything,’ he said to himself.[21]

That afternoon, Ratbat decided to emerge from her quarters and search for her daughter. It had been several hours since Anja had departed to reason with the Captain, and her maternal instincts were screaming loudly.

She wandered into the Captain’s Ready Room, where he was in the middle of playing a fevered game of GI Joes-vs-Transformers.

Ratbat left Euan enthusiastically denying any involvement with Anja, and went to search further.

Outside the door to the bridge, she encountered Lieutenant Commander Fetter and Lieutenant O’Ferez, seated on a couch gossiping, as was their wont.

‘Hello,’ she said to the pair. ‘I’m lookin’ for me sprog. You seen her?’

‘Er...Oh, I see,’ said Leila. ‘She came to see me about something really silly and trivial, then did that weird hair-stroking thing, and left. She seemed very worried about something. Is she all right, Siggy?’

‘She came to visit me, too,’ volunteered Terri. ‘Me and Colleen were discussing hair-styles for her wedding, and Anja said she could help us. But she didn’t stay long. Just did a bit of fiddling around and then left.’

‘How long have you and Colleen been planning this wedding for anyway?’ Leila asked.

Terri shrugged. ‘Oh...about five, seven years. It gives us something to do on our nights off.’

‘Yeah...Hey, did we tell you about the new design for the bridesmaids’ dresses....?’

She finally encountered her daughter in Engineering, where Andrea was currently holding her in a headlock. Anja was struggling her hardest, but not getting anywhere.

Ratbat was horrified. ‘Ensign Benson! Put down me daughter this second!’ she bellowed.

Andrea dropped the struggling chiropteran, and stood to attention. ‘Sir, I wish to report one count of being bloody irritating and obstructing an engineering officer in the execution of her duty. Sir.’

Ratbat sighed, and helped her daughter to her feet. ‘Anja, what have you done?’

‘And no beating about the bush. I’ve had enough of that from Ksenia. What’s been going on?’

Anja stalled for a minute, then exploded. ‘I hate this bloody ship! Not one of you has any credibility at all! I may as well have just passed it by!’

‘There I was, just happily trundling along through space. I thought at the time there wouldn’t be any point in trying you out, and even then I picked the officer I thought had the most credibility, but none of you have any! Not one! Not one at all!’

And with that, Anja broke free from her mother’s hold, and took a running jump over the guard rail.

‘ANJA!!’ shrieked Ratbat, as her only child dived headfirst into the warp core.

Andrea grabbed the chiropteran as she made to follow her daughter. ‘Stop it! There’s nothing you can do!’

The noise attracted the attention of the Chief Engineer. ‘What’s going on...? Ratbat? Are you all right?’

Bobbi received fifty-five kilos of distraught First Officer on her chest, as Ratbat burst into tears. ‘She’s gone! Anja’s gone!’

With difficulty, Bobbi managed to reach her comm badge. ‘Counsellor Fetter? You’d better get to Engineering. I think Ratbat needs your professional assistance.’

‘What exactly is it you do?’ Chief Robyn Scholes asked Emma Harris, the Klingon.

‘But what do you do? The replicators make all the drinks, the counsellor’s here for people to talk to about their problems, and there’s a domestic transporter to put the drinks on the tables. Where do you come into it?’

‘Hmm.’ Bobbi turned from the bar and looked over the rest of the lounge. Crew members were scattered all over the room, going about their business while they waited for someone to actually give them something to do. Commander Sigma and Counsellor Fetter, who was now wearing a turtle-neck sweater beneath the atrocious jumpsuit, sat at one table, talking, while Lieutenants Hick and O’Ferez sat at another, talking about them. Dr Graham was standing by the wall, telling Transporter Chief Techie his first Guinness story. Bobbi overheard some of it and shook her head. It wasn’t true, what he was telling her. When she heard the story, the talking baby-cham had only been able to speak French, not Yiddish as well.

She spotted who she was looking for over by the viewing port,[22] and went over to Captain Bowen.

‘This is the lounge. We’re not on duty now. You don’t have to call me Captain in the lounge. Or in the bedroom,’ he added.

Euan blinked in confusion. This business of trying making a move on someone using a planned method, rather than relying on chance and accident, was harder than he thought. He decided that his best course of action was to take more lessons from Graham. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied at last.

A chime sounded, saving him from saying anything even more awkward. Pausing only to check that none of the clasps had fallen off his collar pips, he followed everyone else to the bridge. Bobbi saw the Counsellor, Science Officer and First Officer stay at their table by the window, and went over to them.

‘Hello,’ she said. Ratbat, she noticed, was rather grey around the eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘I just watched my daughter kill herself by jumping into a starship engine,’ she sniffed. ‘I don’t think I’m even approaching all right.’ Her face disappeared into her hands again.

‘I’ve tried to explain it to her,’ Ksenia told Bobbi. ‘She was just a...catalyst. Used so that thing could try to eat its way through the crew.’

‘Anja wasn’t a thing,’ Ratbat said slowly. ‘Anja was my daughter. She was my little girl.’

Ksenia sighed. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Fine. I’ll let you handle this,’ she said to the Counsellor, then got up and left. Bobbi slid into her vacant chair next to Ratbat.

‘Whatever happened,’ she told her. ‘It was just...her nature. You couldn’t have done anything.’

Ratbat continued to stare out of the window. ‘It’s just that...I always thought that I didn’t want children, you know...That I had no maternal instincts. Then Anja came along, and...’ She sniffed again. ‘...I don’t know. My first go of taking care of someone like that, and how long does it last? Less than a week.’

Leila returned the chiropteran’s attention to the table. ‘You’re not getting bad mother syndrome, are you?’

‘Or bad catalyst syndrome.’ It was a poor attempt at sarcasm, and her voice cracked with it.

Leila knew it was a stereotype, but she had to ask. ‘Are you going to try for another one?’

Under the table, Ratbat stole a glance at what she thought the others didn’t know she had - a photo of Anja, aged about ‘fifteen’ - the only one she’s been able to take in her little girl’s short, if eventful, life. Returning her gaze to her friends, she gave a sad smile.

[2] Do we need to spell it out here? You see, the dot had...hm...it...well, look, we really don’t want to go into a 100% accurate explanation here. Let’s just say that the dot was the first life-form (or light-form) to take that particular route. You’ll just have to use your imaginations. PS: It’s not ‘arse’ but is somewhere thereabouts.

[4] Her method of turning on the autopilot was to simply stop pressing buttons and wander off. The ship would, of course, continue to fly, just not in a very useful manner.

[5] This phrase is merely meant as a way to imply that Graham is very busy with his examination of Ratbat, and while that examination is of a distinctly feminine nature, the figure of speech should not be taken literally, given that (A) It may cause you to think unwarranted thoughts about Graham, (B) it may cause you to have unwarranted thoughts about Ratbat, and (C) it may cause you to gouge your own eyes out. Recycadelic Cacti Productions accepts no responsibility from anyone trying to re-enact this non-existent act, if for no other reason than if you did such a thing solely because you read it here, you would be unbelievably sad.

[6] This isn’t a tabloid. When we say ‘lungs’, we mean ‘breathing organs’.

[7] Eeeaaagghhh - Word known only to those who wake up in the morning after doing tequila slammers for three hours straight and then eating cabbage vindaloos. It means ‘What on earth did I do that for and will those ants stop stomping around so loudly?’

[8] Which meant that Ratti was sometimes quite grateful about being small in that respect.

[9] Actually, two simple black cotton affairs, in slightly differing sizes.

[10] While the regular uniforms (as has been much noted) spent a very long time being vilified and altered into active service, the maternity uniforms were up and ready to go from the start. This shrouded suggestion that one might be put to far more use than the other would later become the subject of a defamation lawsuit between Starfleet and a major contraceptive company.

[11] And when Lieutenant Chaedy Ritherdon pipes up, she pipes all the way up.

[12] Not that it looks any different whether a starship sails through the day or through the night.

[13] Leaving a large unsightly smear, which is really going to impress the cleaning staff, as she went.

[14] Offhand, she couldn’t think how, but there could have been other nasty things happening...you know, involving fish-hooks and banana skins and eels...

[15] At least, her first day on the Compromise and outside her mother.

[17] Ksenia decided that now wasn’t the time to tell her that seven of those ten hours hadn’t so much been labour pains as the side-effect of a lot of ill-advised consumption of wasabi vindaloo.

[20] Doesn’t it sound archaic to use ‘feet’ in the twenty-fourth century?

[21] For the sake of both of their well-being, none of Euan’s future conversations to Ratbat included ‘and then your daughter tried to seduce me’.

[22] She wondered if it would be called the viewing starboard if it were on the other side of the ship.