STAR TREK: THE LAST GENERATION

It was a relatively normal day on the NSF flagship, the Compromise. Captain Bowen was sitting at the helm controls playing a game of network Doom on the main viewscreen. Lieutenants Hick and O'Ferez were planning the centrepiece for the former's wedding. Dr Graham was off moon-hopping in the shuttlecraft Corona. Commander Sigma and Chief Scholes were discussing each other's nipples in 10-Foreplay.[1] Counsellor Fetter had just very badly lost a drinking contest with Transporter Chief Techie. Commander Forde and Lieutenant Crabb were discussing the pros and cons of fitting a pump-action nuclear grenade launcher to a phaser rifle. Ambassador Buj was in a tizz because Lieutenant Styles was late and therefore unable to show her how her socks went on. The crew were generally doing what it was they did.

Euan finished his game and returned the viewer to its normal configuration, checking to make sure that they weren't about to run into anything. He got up and turned his back to the screen, meaning to return to his cabin and polish his GPs. He stopped.

The bridge crew raced to Euan's side all found their eyes were drawn to the viewscreen. With a single exception they were all speechless.

With the exception of the CMO, the entire senior staff of the Compromise were arrayed about the bridge, all looking at the screen. Displayed there was a large object.

No, that is misleading. A large object could be maybe two or three hundred meters in length. This object was enormous - it filled the viewscreen from side to side and top to bottom. There was an awful lot of it.

The surface appeared to be metallic with occasional rivulets of light cascading across it. It had to be at least ten kilometres tall and easily twice that wide. There appeared to be no seams or joins of any kind, and it did not emit any energy at all.

'I don't know, sir,' replied Colleen, shocked by the moment into showing at least verbal deference to Euan, 'Its design does not fit any known vessel.'

'It hasn't responded to our hails. Other than that, I can't say, our sensors are unable to penetrate its interior. All I can tell you is that it is eleven point eight kilometres tall and twenty-three kilometres wide. It's basically cylindrical, and has no entrances or exits which I can detect.'

'What?' asked Euan and Colleen in unison, as they turned back to the screen from Colleen's console.

It was true, as they brought their gazes back to the vessel they saw a pale blue beam of energy lancing from it to a point in space just to its right.

Graham was not very happy. He had spotted a great moon, just perfect for him to get away and read a nice book[2] on, and had offered to take Parker for a walk. The moon was peaceful. The reason being that its atmosphere was completely incapable of sustaining life.

Graham hadn't minded, there was another moon just four hundred kilometres to its right. This one had a pleasant little bar on it, to which Graham went, hoping to get himself a Guinness. He was sure he hadn't been here before, but the bartender with the long plait was quite adamant, and when someone who is adamant has a chainsword that they appear more than ready to use, you listen to them.

Maybe what I did when I was there is the reason that she had half of her right ring-finger missing, Graham mused as he made his way back to the shuttle. Once there, he discovered that Parker really had needed a walk. After cleaning up he had decided to return to the Compromise and bother Euan. He was half-way back when his scanners detected a large mass dead ahead, and now that large mass was shooting at him.

'Shields at fifty-three percent,' the motherly voice of the Corona's computer informed him.

'Crukking great,' Graham spat as he tried to dodge the beam that was lancing out toward him.

Parker was whining in the corner. He hadn't meant to, but he'd needed to go and the door was closed. It wasn't his fault and he was being punished by having Graham drive him somewhere. It wasn't fair.

'It's Graham,' called Ruth from her security console, 'and he has one other lifeform in the shuttle with him.'

As if to confirm this, it was at that point that Graham's face appeared on the screen.

'This is your Captain you're talking to, Graham,' Euan pointed out. Quite needlessly, as it happened.

Ruth did as she was told. She was a bit hurt that he wouldn't let her vaporise the target. Technically it was her job, but he was Captain. Besides, he was actually quite good at this sort of thing

The small crosshairs appeared on the main screen and Euan moved them to where the beam appeared to be coming from. He selected fifty-percent phasers and fired.

'All right.' He grit his teeth. They'd only just got the things after four years' wait, and already they were down. Trust these guys.[4] 'Have we any other weapons?'

Ruth thought about her private stash, but most of the weapons it contained violated at least three different treaty conventions each, and the CMO was hardly worth a court-martial.

Graham was now even less happy. He was frightened. In fact, he was shitscared. His only joy was that it didn't appear that he would be so for long, but as that was because he would, in all probability, be dead, it was small comfort.

All the eyes on the bridge looked up at what they expected to be Graham's fiery death. Sure enough there was a bright flash as the beam hit the plasteel hull of the shuttle. However, when it faded, the ship, and presumably the CMO, were still there.

Graham looked up from where the explosion had thrown him to. He was at the back of the shuttle, just short of the emergency transporter pad. As he watched, a thin beam of light arced through the gloom of the shuttle. From his position on the floor Graham observed it progress slowly around the cockpit. He saw it cover every inch of the control panels before it began a slow path toward where he lay. It was moving easily slow enough for him to avoid contact. He could dodge around it and activate the emergency beam-out.

'What the hell is going on?' Euan said, staring incredulously at the view screen, and the oddly intact Corona.

'I have no idea, sir,' said Colleen. She, too, was rather surprised by the whole event.

'I don't care if that's their version of snogging, and they thought that the Corona looked like a good lay, I want Graham back right now!' Euan proclaimed.

'Well, because he's...no, that's not right. Because we need his...no, that's not right either. Because he has... nope, not that. Because he owes me five strips!' he finished, rather lamely, Leila thought.

The beam crept up his arm. It felt slightly warm, and he was sure he could see his bones where it touched his skin. It slowly made its way up to his shoulder and then to his neck. It had barely begun to touch his head when it suddenly shot to the other side of the room.

'Now what the devil's going on?' Graham asked the air, shocked out of profanity.

As he watched, the beam began moving again. This time, it was moving toward the far corner, where Parker lay, quivering and whining. It touched the dog's paw, and he shrank back as if hit. It changed colour, becoming a deep purple, and Parker seemed to calm down. It touched his head, and turned a brilliant green before disappearing.

As soon as the beam disappeared, the power returned to all his systems, and Graham was able to move. He looked back at Parker, but the dog seemed fine, and so he laid in a course for the Compromise. He looked back at the thing, just in time to see it explode into a billion pieces.

'No, sir,' replied Ratbat. Actually, they could do a great many things, but none would really help the situation.

'So we are stuck with a huge vessel out in space of unknown origin and capable of withstanding everything we can throw at it. We can't rescue Graham. In fact, we don't even know if he's still alive. Parker's trapped in there with him and there's nothing we can do?'

A small chirp, like a robotic sparrow, told Euan that he was now talking to anyone in the immediate vicinity who was listening.

'Now here this, unknown vessel, you have made acts of war against the NSF. We are not going to tolerate this, so PISS OFF!!'

Just as Euan said this, the screen was filled with a brilliant white light as the vessel exploded.

The bridge crew all turned, slowly, and stared at Euan. He looked at the screen, looked at each of them, shrugged his shoulders and fainted.

'How are you?' Euan asked Graham as he descended the steps of the Corona and fell to his knees, kissing the decking of the shuttle bay.

'That? Oh, it's easy. I had a shit of a day and it got worse because some alien ship attacked my shuttle, rendered it immobile and zapped me with some weird ray. 'im too,' he said gesturing to Parker, who was running about the shuttle-bay and bumping into the force-field which held the atmosphere in a vain attempt to chase the stars, 'and that's it,' he finished, and strode of in the direction of 10-Foreplay, where he could hear several Guinni calling him.

All Euan could do was stand there, and watch him go, patting Parker's head absently.

One of these days, he thought to himself, they'll listen to me, and the shock of it will kill them.

'An' then tis hu- hu- hyoooooooge fing came down an'... an'... an' fing,' Graham finished slurring.

''Ow is 'e?' Ratbat enquired, pointing to the recumbent figure that was the ship's CMO.

'Fine,' said Emma, the Klingon bartender.[5] 'He came in about four hours ago, and now he's almost drunk.'

'Well,' piped up Leila, 'He's not getting any drunker. Euie wants to see him, and he's really uptight about it. Apparently Graham was supposed to meet him in his ready-room three hours and fifty minutes ago, and he's still there waiting.'

The blonde Klingon[6] bent over to Graham. 'Did you hear that?' she asked. 'Euan's waiting.'

'Fair 'nuff,' Graham said from the floor. 'Let th' little schmuck wait, I'm still drinkin'.'

'C'mon Graham, you don't want to piss Euan off do you? Remember the Vlastafloorians?'

Graham shot up from the floor faster than you could say 'I've-seen-vid-footage-of-my-captain-doing-unimaginably-horrid-things-to-a-two-metres-plus-feline-alien-warrior-race'.

'Don't get in my way!' he yelled as he shot through the door, suddenly as sober as a judge. Albeit a very drunk judge.

Leila turned to her chiropteran companion. 'That was not very nice, Rats. You know he still has nightmares.'

After hearing Graham detail everything that had happened to him, Euan was still not very happy with the whole event.

'Well there isn't.' Graham was not very happy with being given the third degree by someone who was younger than him. Even if that someone had apparently just destroyed five million tons of unknown alien vessel, just by shouting at it. In fact, Graham was generally unhappy. After he and Euan had examined his encounter with the beam, they had both decided that it was most likely some kind of mind-test.

'Look, Euan, right now I'd rather be off doing something in one of my customised holodeck programs, so if you've finished?'

As Graham left the room Euan turned back to his computer. It displayed for him a reading of any unusual energies which Graham may have been producing during their discussion. He checked all of them against the readings that they had got from the vessel's beams. They didn't match. Then, he turned up the air conditioning.

Ratbat was walking back to her room, ready to turn in for the night[7] after a long discussion with Leila on the topic of breasts.[8] After three hours they had finally decided that they both thought that it was not worth paying an extra fifty cents at KFC just to avoid throwing out a bone.[9] As she was making her way to her quarters, wandering for not the first time why she bothered to walk anywhere in the age of transporters, she passed Parker, who was going the other way.

The medium sized German shepherd-blue heeler cross stopped and looked up at her, sitting on his haunches and doing his jackal impression.

'Articulate speech.' She tittered to herself and made to walk off. Then Parker did something which made her stop and stare at him.

With his head to one side, and a look on his face like a Houdini who has been asked to reveal his tricks, Parker drew in a breath and said:

He then walked of down the corridor, leaving Ratbat to stand there, open-mouthed, in his wake.

'Die in death, evil Decepticreep!' yelled Euan as he made Sideswipe dive on top of Megatron.[10]

Euan was up off the floor and out of the door in a flash. If Ratbat said that something was weird, then you could rest assured that it was. Probably with knobs on.[11]

Euan gazed at his dog. Parker stared with rapt attention at the spot of air eight centimetres in front of his nose. For all appearances, he was normal, and Ratbat was hardly what one might call a credible witness, not where Parker was concerned.

A small amount of explanation is probably due here. When Ratbat first met Parker, she had taken it upon herself to put the medium-sized brindle mongrel in his place. She never missed an opportunity to request of Parker some impossible (for a dog) task.[12] This ranged from 'have an abstract thought' to 'pilot a personned vessel to the moon'. In response to this, Parker had taken it upon himself to remind the small chiropteran of her place. He had therefore never missed an opportunity to lean against Ratbat, push her over and sit on her.[13]

This state of affairs had existed quiet happily for over two hundred years, and now Parker, or Ratbat, had changed the rules.

'I know you've been bugging him for two centuries, but do you really expect me to believe that my dog has evolved speech, just so he doesn't have to speak?'

'No,' snapped the small, angry Sigma, 'I want you to believe that your dog can speak.'

'Well one of us had to say it,' he said testily, and walked out of the Captain's ready-room.

Urac and Euan looked at the spot where the dog had been, looked at each other and then hurried off after him.

When Parker spoke, it was in the voice of someone who obviously has better things to do. It put Euan in mind of his favourite type of movie villain, the one who is all Oxford education and men's fashion, until the hero arrives on the scene, and then becomes a homicidal maniac with more kung-fu moves than a Street Fighter game.

'Just a second here.' Euan sat at his chair on the bridge, oblivious to the looks his little exchange was exacting from the other members of the crew.

The heretofore unspeaking canine shrugged its shoulders and walked over to him. It sat on his foot and leaned, rather hard, against his leg.

'Well,' said Parker, 'the beam was some sort of probe. It touched Graham's mind and scarpered as fast as it could, then it touched mine and it decided I was worth connecting with. The main probe downloaded all its memory and computational capacity to my brain and then self-destructed.'

'Because it wants me to take control of the Compromise, modify its engines and take us to the far corner of the galaxy where we will rendezvous with a delegation from the planet of Drebroryne VII. They're having problems with their atmosphere and they do not posses the technology to repair it. We do. In exchange for this information, they will share with us their extensive scientific knowledge. They are a people of stellar crafters.'

'Because this is the Federation's flagship, and we can't have it careening across the galaxy just because some planet of star-makers forgot to change to non-CFC propellants.'

'For what reasons?' asked the Captain, without spite. If the Diplomatic Officer disagreed with him, it was usually for a good reason.[16]

'This is clearly an extremely advanced species. I think it is important that we offer them a place in the Federation.'

'Yes, sir,' answered Valentina truthfully, feeling a little guilty at the way her reply caused her Captain to visibly wilt. 'If it is a trap, we can use the modified engines to retreat, or we can try to negotiate our way out of it.'

'And what chance would we have against an actual ship, when all our weapons couldn't take a bloody probe?' asked Terri, eager not to be left out of the conversation.

'Fine, but I still think we shouldn't allow Parker to gain total control of the ship.'

Oh, psiakrew, thought Ratbat, when a powerful being refers to us as something-lings, it ain't good.

'Let me guess, Parker,' called Colleen to the roof. 'You've already taken control.'

'You humans are really good at stating the blindingly obvious, aren't you? That aside, I am now modifying the engines and we will be underway in only a short time. Should any attempt be made to remove my link from the computer, the results will be disastrous. Thank you for your cooperation.'

''E might be linked to a twenty-seventh generation AI computer with a 6421326527849563154986 processor, but 'e still can't recognise a rhetorical question.'

'OK.' She thought for a while. 'He's linked himself to the main processor of a Pre-Menstrual-class starship. He has at his disposal the most advanced sensor systems known to humankind and he has the power to take us anywhere.

Bobbi didn't look up, poring over a padd. Terri leaned over and poked her with a finger.

'Oh.' She became aware of the world around her again. 'What do you think about Basia as a name?'

'Robyn,' he said, 'given the situation, do you think you could possibly forget you're with child, just for a moment?'

Bobbi shot a dirty glare at him. 'Can I what? Bowen - my stomach is now the size it would be if I was eleven months pregnant, rather than six, as I am.' She grabbed it as if she meant to throw it at him. Mercifully, she didn't try. 'My tits feel like they're about to rip themselves from my body and drop to the floor, my spine probably looks like a piece of dowelling with a termite colony in it, my ankles are ready to become pulp and right now I'd like nothing more than to eat Graham's beard with mayonnaise and lime!! No I don't think I'm likely to forget I'm with child!!' The last sentence was delivered in a scream that probably would have been enough to defeat not only Parker, but the entire Borg collective, Romulan empire and Maquis had they been there.

Suddenly, Bobbi smiled warmly at everyone. 'Sorry about that. Mood swing. Um, what was the question?'

Euan looked extremely hesitant, but spoke anyway. 'The engines...Parker...how long?' he croaked.

'I'm not exactly sure how he's doing it, but according to these readings, he should be finished his work in about two hours. After that, if the calculations that he has fed into the computer are correct, we should have roughly two and a half minutes of travel to move a distance of,' she paused and hit some buttons, '85000 light-years.'

There was a pause as people worked out the rough speed that this meant they'd be travelling.

'Two million, five-hundred and fifty thousand light-years per hour!?' Ksenia breathed.

'But won't that destroy the ship?' CMO Henstock asked in a moment of rare clarity.

There was another pause, this time an embarrassed one. Ksenia and Bobbi looked at each other.

'I know what you mean,' remarked Euan. Everyone on the ship knew Parker's ability to run headfirst into walls and not realise why the air was so solid. In fact, the only thing that prevented him from being superseded as Ship's Animal was that Cotter was too busy trying to further his acting career, and Puma was too smart.

Suzy, from where she was buffing Val's hair, shrugged. 'Well if we don't actually know what he's done or how he's done it, what can we do?'

'Look, if he's managed to do all this complicated stuff to the engines, he must be capable of communication on at least a basic level. I mean, he's already told Ratbat off, so there must be something going right with his brain.'

Ksenia scowled a little at the Counsellor, a bit disconcerted that she'd managed to come up with an uncharacteristically intelligent suggestion.

'Well?' Leila asked the air. 'I know you're listening, Parker. I can always tell when I'm being listened to.'[18]

The computer's speakers gave a sigh, of the type a parent gives when their child asks for the seventeenth time where bath water comes from. 'Yes, what do you want?'

'Actually, there is something I suggest you do. But I want you to listen very carefully. From what I know of you people, it's something you might find incredibly difficult, but I nevertheless implore you to try.'

Everyone on the bridge could swear that they were just coming round once more, but no-one actually seemed to possess any memory of recently being unconscious.

'Was that...' Euan's voice sounded nine or ten octaves higher than usual. He tried again. 'Was that the new engines? Bridge to engineering.'

Bobbi leant over the pool table. Or tried to. She ended up having to stand kind-of side-on and crane her neck unhealthily. 'Scholes here. You won't believe this, Euan. This new set-up's amazing. We just crossed a distance greater than the Bajoran wormhole without even breaking up a sweat.'

Ensign Clarke read from the other side of the display. 'It's all just like the dog--'

Bobbi looked. 'It's a massive amount of new data. It's all atmosphere profiles, meteorological details, applications for our ship systems...'

'It's hard to say. We're a long way from any Federation navigational beacons. Judging from our course and what I can gather, though...' She tapped various parts of the Okudagram in front of her. '...We're somewhere in the Beta Quadrant. Not in any of the territories we know there, though...'

Colleen's console buzzed at her, waking her up. She stared at it. 'Sir...now I'm been fed a heap of new information. A lot like Bobbi just had...details on what to do with the Compromise's equipment.'

'Those are the procedures you must take to repair the atmosphere of this world.'

Ruth tapped[19] the tactical station. 'Hey! Never mind giving us seven kinds of instructions all over the place! What about the brilliance and knowledge your guys promised us!?'

Ksenia nodded. 'That sounds fair.' Anything sounded fair, of course. She was a woman of science and she'd just been promised knowledge by a race who could make a Parker a formidable intelligence. Getting spoon-fed needles while being beaten over the head with a concrete fridge would have sounded fair. She made for the turbolift. 'Forde to all available science personnel, and anyone else who's got a free moment. Meet me in my lab forthwith. Forde out. Colleen - can you pipe that down to the computer in my lab. I want to check this method over thoroughly before anyone does anything.' With that, she was gone.

There was a pause, as if Parker were on the bridge, watching her go. 'You see? Such enthusiasm. She's so promising compared to the rest of you.'

At that point, Ratbat leant across to Val. 'Are you sure this isn't a violation of the Prime Directive?' she asked.

Val shook her head - a little too fast, the bat-woman thought. 'Nonono. You see...um...they actively came to us, appointed Federation representatives, and in full awareness of who we were, requested our help and proposed a trade. It's all covered.'

'Fair enough.' Ratbat leant back in her chair, and filed away that fact for future reference: We only don't talk to aliens when we ain't gonna get nothin' out of it.

In engineering, all was abuzz. It would be their instruments and implementations that would do most of the following task, and they needed to make sure everything was right.

Chaedy slid down the fire-pole, clutching a padd between her teeth. 'These calculations really could be improved,' she said, approaching Bobbi and sticking said padd under her nose. 'And I'd never do these modifications this way. Listen - just give me seven minutes at the deflector dish, that's all I ask.' She nodded definitely, then disappeared in a sprinkle of blue lights.

Ensign Schwinghamer emerged from the transporter station in the rear alcove. 'Sorry,' Noomy told Bobbi, grinning, 'but I was just performing a routine diagnostic, and it suddenly told me that it had beamed Chaedy to the other end of the ship. I can't imagine why that would happen.'

Checking her monitor over one final time, Louise saw that what the Compromise would be doing was essentially speeding up a process that the Septdrebrorytes themselves has started. Their atmosphere, without going needlessly into the exact chemistry of it all, was mostly made up of the wrong kind of gases. The population of the planet had made a start at trying to convert it, but it was an uphill battle. Especially seeing as, for all its other myriad advances, Drebroryne VII wasn't quite so hot when it came to environmental control.

The Compromise would launch seven satellites into various fixed orbits around the planet. Not only would they prevent any rise in the percentage of the unwanted substance in the air, but they would also more rapidly take on the task of repairing the damage that was already done.

'Laura - I've just been authorised to give the final signal. Ksenia's happier than a pig in--'

Euan watched the viewer as the satellites slid forth from the launch bay and shot toward their places around the globe below. No, to be strictly accurate, Euan watched bits of space on the sides of the screen, and Ksenia's backside in the middle. Not that he was settling on Commander Forde as Butt of the Week or anything - it was just that she had insisted on standing right in front of his chair to watch the proceedings, and had refused to be shifted. Euan wasn't particularly inclined to try, either. He hadn't seen Ksenia Ever Romaniw Forde this enthusiastic about anything in a long time. Come to think of it, getting gooey-eyed and smiling insanely wasn't a mannerism she was particularly prone to.

'Satellites taking position...' reported Colleen. 'Satellites activated. Atmospheric repair rate already at 110% of previous speed.' She turned around. 'They're working.'

'Good...' purred Ksenia. 'Good...' Just from listening to her, Euan was forced to wonder if this hadn't been how her counterpart the Science Mistress had got started. 'Now, all we need to wait for is--'

Ruth spoke up. 'We're being hailed,' she announced. 'The Septdrebroryte government.'

Ksenia just made a noise that the bridge crew had hitherto thought her incapable of.

Parker Bowen, also known as the Navigator, paced around near the computer core where he'd psychically connected himself to the machine. Despite the vast amounts of intelligence the probe had granted him, there hadn't actually been much for him to do while the crew went about the practical business of fixing the planet that had made him so wise.

He paused at that thought. Now that he was the way he was, it was hard to conceive that he'd ever been anything else. He remembered everything of course - not being able to talk, running into walls on a regular basis, using parts of the phaser range as if they were fire hydrants - but now that he had an IQ that looked like a credit-card number, his motivation for ever doing those things was beyond him.

Having wandered to the side of the room where he had set up the hardware necessary to keep most of the process running, he sat down on a control panel.

This time, the Compromise gave an almighty shudder as it travelled, meaning that many of the crew thought that they were unconscious for the natural reason that they had been.

Ensigns Robinson and M^cClelland, who had been heading for the computer core to see just what the canine genius had done to it, only to find themselves flung against the door to the chamber, peeled themselves back to a more sensible standing position.

Kim was thinking that the engineer had chosen a rather bizarre time to offer her a cigarette, when she saw the reason for her friend's statement. Actual smoke, seeping through the door to the computer core. Cautiously, she keyed it open.

The pair shielded their eyes as the air-purifiers did their job and cleared the smoke away. And when they could see again, all there was there was a pile of damaged equipment, a scorched but working computer core, and Parker - as stupid as he ever was grinning happily because some humans had come down to play with him.

Dr Graham and Nurse Wylie jumped aside as a rather irate blonde woman chased a dog down the corridor. Parker, for his part, was enjoying the game, even though he didn't know those words like 'ignoramus' and 'what did you have to do that for?'.

Graham shrugged. 'Ah, she'll calm down. Maybe.' In truth, it was amusing to see Ksenia making a series of rapid movements like that.

The emergence of Suzy from the door on the other side of them told them that they had, in fact, paused outside Ambassador Buj's quarters. Suzy's face betrayed that whatever she'd just done, she hadn't found it pleasant.

Suzy glared up at him.[21] 'Every four weeks or so, it does not pay to be Val's dogsbody.' She shuddered, and joined the others as they continued walking along deck 10.

'What exactly was it that happened?' asked Nicole. 'First I hear we're halfway across the galaxy[22] about to be blessed with all kinds of wisdom - then, next thing that happens is Ksenia in a less-than-conducive mood towards a given section of the canine population of the ship.'

'Despite being clever,' Graham took up, 'he was still Parker. He went and sat on the emergency reverse control he'd set up for himself. All of the new engine specs were wiped and we got chucked back to our point of origin faster than you can say "tip of the hat story".'

'That, and all of his extra intelligence ended up back in the computer, where it self-deleted.' They stopped at the point in the corridor where Nicole's quarters rested on one side, and Suzy's on the other. The door to Suzy's slid open to reveal Niki.

Nicole laughed, thinking about the end of Parker's reign. 'Really, you've got to wonder why a race as advanced as that decided they would search out the universe for help, and eventually choose Parker.'

Graham yawned. 'No you don't,' he told her. 'Don't need to wonder anything. Sorry,' he added. 'I'm tired, and it's been a long day. We all want to get back to our loved ones.' He looked at Suzy. 'You go back to your wife,' he nodded towards Niki, then turned to Nicole, 'you go back to your son.' He nodded in the direction of her quarters. The officers agreed, bidding their goodnights and leaving him.

And me? he added to himself. I want to go back to my Guinness. And on that, he continued his path towards 10-Foreplay.

[1] There was a legitimate reason (and for once, it wasn't because they're just plain old mammarially-obsessed).

[2] The sort of book Graham reads need not be described. Let's just say that if its pictures were painted, then the artist would need a lot of pink and brown.

[3] You read right, Ruth said something sheepishly. You want to bring it up with her?

[4] Owing to the heat of battle, Euan had strangely wiped all memory of him giving Chaedy permission to experiment with their workings because Bobbi had been curt with him that morning.

[6] Why a blonde Klingon when their hair is usually brown, grey or black? Because, as they say, 'today is a good day to dye'.

[7] The writers wish to point out that they do know that there is, strictly speaking, no night or day in space, but it's a bio-rhythm thing. For that matter, it sounds stupid to ask someone what they're doing 'in the latter part of this arbitrarily-decided twenty-four-hour period'. (Particularly when they end up saying that they're washing their hair anyway.)

[9] Told you. Talking pregnancy with Bobbi all day had actually had the effect that Ratbat would more readily talk about bits of chicken than lactatory organs.

[10] Not one to avoid an argument, this writer wishes to point out that he prefers the Gen2 Megatron tank to the Walther P38. Even if it is bright green. If you don't, tough, that's what the Captain is playing with.

[11] Although, in Ratbat's opinion, nobs themselves are pretty weird. Oh. There was a K there. Right. Sorry.

[12] It is important to note here that these actions had nothing to do with malice on the part of Ms Sigma, it's just that she thought it funny.

[13] An action occasionally duplicated by a few drunk humans over the years.

[14] Like there are other ways to ask.

[15] Diplomat Buj was one of the few people on board the Compromise who actually meant respect when they called Euan sir. The upshot, however, was that she didn't call him it very often.

[16] Not as in the case of Graham, for example, who always disagreed with Euan because he thought he was a prat. A likeable prat, but still a prat.

[17] A graduate of the Mr Worf school of conversational participation.

[18] Almost accurate. Leila was actually self-assured that people were listening to her absolutely all of the time. While this meant that, yes, if someone was listening she would know about it, it also meant that if she was being ignored, she was positive she had everyone's attention.

[19] Well, Ruth would say 'tap'. You or I might say 'viciously slammed'.

[21] There had been a time when she wouldn't have needed to do this, but that's another story.

[22] She doesn't mean it literally, Phil.