FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 2380
                            SAENAR, SALUSIA
              RIVERSIDE DISTRICT, EAST OF QUEEN SHIVA PARK

        The android designated 33/S GRP-HN1, and known to much of the
galaxy (at least for the last few minutes) as the Butcher of Musashi,
was running with a purpose, putting his superhuman physique to good use
despite the hobbling injury to his right thigh.  With their surface
vehicle destroyed and their spacecraft too big to maneuver in a built-up
area, the people chasing him had no chance of catching up.  He could,
with a little luck and a little determination, reach the Queen's Palace,
which stood on a hill at the corner of the city, before them, and if Her
Majesty were at home, why, then they could -all- have some fun.
        The only thing that stood between him and his goal now was the
bridge over the River Saen, a delicate high arch of duracrete and
tritanium that carried only traffic bound for the palace.  Sure, there
were guards at the palace gates, a quarter-mile or so beyond the bridge,
but so what?  There were other approaches once he was across the river.
He hadn't been rigorously drilled and had part of his programming
altered for this mission for nothing.
        Several blocks back and losing ground, Benjamin Hutchins - the
man whom GRP-HN1 was designed to look like, for purposes of framing him
for an infamous crime in the year 2288 - toggled a map overlay onto the
tracking-mode display of the old-fashioned Starfleet tricorder he'd
"borrowed" from Spock and cursed.  Still running, he dragged out his
communicator, flipped it open, and hailed his ship.
        "Here, Captain," replied Lieutenant Commander Maximilian Hunter,
whom he'd left in command.
        "The Butcher - the other me - is headed for the Palace Bridge,"
said Gryphon, only slightly out of breath.  "None of us will catch him
in time.  It's up to you guys to stop him."
        "How?"
        "Use your initiative, Mr. Hunter.  Just don't let him cross that
bridge - and try not to vaporize him.  I need him alive.  Hutchins out."
        Putting the communicator away, he bent to the task of pouring on
more speed.

        "Unknown Predator-class vessel, you are in violation - "
        "Shut off that damn noise," Hunter snapped irritably, and the
crewman filling in for the absent Lt. Leeds cut off the hail.  "Gang,
we've been tasked with stopping a man from crossing a bridge without
vaporizing him.  Ideas?"
        The fill-in comm officer said, "Destroy the bridge before he
gets there?"
        Hunter grinned.  "I like the way you think, Tarolo."  Punching
commands into the helm, he took the Surprise out of hover mode, winged
over, and made for the river.  "Here we go!"
        "Uh, point of order, Lieutenant Commander Hunter?" said
navigator Rick Sterling while checking with Salusia's GPS network to
make sure they were heading for the right bridge.
        "Proceed, Lieutenant Commander Sterling," Hunter replied mock-
formally.
        "The only weapon we have that can reliably take out a bridge
will waste half the city and probably sink us," Sterling pointed out.
        Hunter's antennae flexed thoughtfully.  "Good point.  Let's see
if Lt. Finney has any suggestions."

        "Finney," the Surprise's security officer answered, halting by
the riverbank several blocks downstream of the bridge and watching the
Surprise swoop past overhead as she did so.
        "Jamie?  Max.  Listen, we need to blow that bridge.  How can we
do it without incinerating most of the city?"
        Jamie thought about it for about half a second and then
demonstrated the mastery of her craft that had made her the Invincible's
armory officer for two five-year missions running.  "Have Hank pull the
antimatter bottle from torpedo #1.  The cascading explosives by
themselves should do nicely."
        "Great.  Thanks.  Max out."

        "Target locked," Sterling reported, head bowed over the
navigation station's backup weapons controls.  "Our man is 500 meters
from beginning to cross."
        "Hank?" Hunter called down through the open emergency floor
hatch leading into the ship's torpedo bay.
        "Two seconds!" Henry Lang's voice called back.  A moment later
there was the whir and clunk of the ship's single torpedo tube loading
and locking.  "Torpedo ready!"
        "Fire!" Max cried.
        "Torpedo away!" Rick replied.

        For a second, both HN1, as he sprinted toward the bridge, and
the crew of the Surprise themselves wondered whether they had just made
a terrible mistake, for when the doctored torpedo emerged from the tube,
it looked just like they always did.  Putting on the brakes, HN1 saw the
torpedo in its orange corona of light, so distinct as the stress of the
moment dilated time that he imagined he could see the markings on its
casing, just as it struck the side of the bridge's main arch.
        Then it exploded - not with a sudden annihilating flash of
antimatter, a bigger, more brutal blast than any nuclear weapon could
ever have produced, but in a most impressive fireball in its own right,
one that obliterated the entire center span of the bridge and sent the
wreckage of both ends, sheared off at the piers, plunging into the
gorge.  The blast raced up the Kingsway, blowing HN1 off his feet and
sending him tumbling back nearly a block; but if it had been an armed
photon torpedo warhead, he and most of the Riverside district would have
been vaporized instantly.
        The Butcher picked himself up, stared in disbelief at the ruins
of the bridge, shook his fist at the Surprise as she raced away (with a
pair of Crown City Defense Command interceptors hot on her tail), and
cursed roundly.  Then he turned and darted into an alley, hoping to lose
his pursuers in the tangled backstreets of Riverside.

                              /*  The Who
                              "The Seeker"
                _Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy_ (1971)  */

                      Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                                presents

                      UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE

                                Manhunt
			Part 6: Must Converge

                          Benjamin D. Hutchins

                 (c) 2009 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


        For weeks, since before Gil Grissom went to Xawin, the Crown
City Constabulary and the RSMP both had been encouraging people to keep
their children inside, thanks to the work of the killer the press was
quick to dub "the Saenar Ripper".  Whoever he was, he'd murdered at
least seven children in the past five weeks, catching them unawares in
alleys and backstreets, in one case in broad daylight but usually at
night.  The toll would have been higher, the authorities believed, if it
weren't winter, when the city's young would be more likely to be inside
after dark anyway, just because of the cold and the snow.
        But there were those children with no people to keep them
inside, and no inside to keep in.
        Sara Sidle was 18 - being Salusian, that meant she was not yet
quite beginning adolescence - and had always been considered an
unusually serious child.  She'd been thought so by her teachers and her
peers even before the terrifying evening, three years before, when her
father went berserk and her mother killed him.  Since that time, her
dark-eyed seriousness had quite transcended her age, causing her to be
labeled "withdrawn", "sullen", even "borderline autistic" by the
succession of foster parents into whose hands her mother's imprisonment
had placed her.  The most recent set, pompous and unpleasant people by
Sara's admittedly rather exacting standards, had gone so far as to
suggest to the Family Services caseworker that there might be... how can
we put this delicately?... something wrong with her mind.
        There was nothing wrong with Sara's mind; it was her heart that
was broken.  Unwilling to accept that her mother should go to prison for
what was, to Sara, no crime - and yet inevitably affected by her
father's death - she found herself unable to form any kind of attachment
to the rotating series of usually-well-meaning strangers into whose far-
flung homes she was thrust.  When the Palachens had made that outrageous
suggestion to the caseworker (thinking Sara was upstairs and wouldn't
hear them), that was the last straw.  She'd left that day, quitted the
grimy Kumbari port city of Quaivex for good, and returned as a stowaway
on a freighter to what she felt was the only home she had left.  Saenar
was cold, but Saenar was clean, and Saenar was her town.  She was
comfortable there.  For more than a year now, she'd survived on its
streets and byways, living by her wits and the judicious exercise of her
considerable intellect, with a considerable dash of the kindness of
others.
        It might be cold, and it might be dark, but Sara Sidle was not
afraid of the dark, and she had acquired plenty of blankets and clothes
against the cold.  The snow was no big deal either; it couldn't get past
the piece of thermoplastic that Mr. Gates, who ran the checkout counter
at the Kingsway branch of the Crown City Public Library on Tuesdays and
Thursdays and sometimes let her sleep in the stacks when the weather was
particularly foul, had given her.  Mr. Gates was a sweet old man.  He
let her take books out even though she didn't have a library card, and
split his lunch with her when he was working and she came in.
        As for the killer, well, Sara wasn't afraid of him either.  An
officer off some Federation ship had misplaced his Type 1 phaser in the
market square the previous summer, and by good fortune and industry it
had come into Sara's hands.  Though battered and scarred by the hard
treatment it had undergone before Sara got hold of it, the phaser still
had a bit of energy in it and - thanks to the Internet and the public
terminals at the library - she knew very well how to use it.
        At the moment, Sara was huddled in her blankets, under the
thermoplastic, tucked into the angle of a right-angle corner where the
one of the buildings flanking her alley near the library was a few feet
wider than the one abutting it from behind.  The other two sides of her
little space were cloaked by a simple but effective windbreak and tent
flap built from pieces of shipping crates and a three-foot length of
concrete reinforcing bar she'd scrounged from a construction site.  She
was reading her latest library acquisition (A. Petrarca's "Elementary
Wedge Physics for the Inquisitive") by the light of the small battery
lantern some fool had thrown away a while ago.  If you had a phaser,
some wire, and a little tape, you didn't need a CE dry battery to make a
lantern work.  Such a miniscule drain was no great hardship to the
sarium krellide cell in even the smallest phaser.
        Sara found the book so engrossing that she'd completely tuned
out not only the cold, but also the strange noises drifting into the
alley from Queen Shiva Park, just a couple of blocks away.  She had just
gotten to the part about time dilation and hyperintelligence theory when
someone suddenly yanked the flap of her shelter open and thrust his head
and shoulders inside.  She recoiled, more surprised than afraid, and
dropped the book as the intruder - a young Cheltari man, maybe in his
early forties - gave her a cheerful leer and forced his way inside a bit
further.
        "Good evening," he said in a bizarrely normal tone of voice,
given what he was doing.  "We're going to have a nice time together, you
and I."
        Sara hadn't been a child overly given to panic even before she
started her odyssey of foster homes and vagrancy.  That odyssey had
effectively erased any lingering tendency toward the vapors she might've
had.  Rather than scream or backpedal uselessly against the concrete
wall behind her, she snatched up her phaser - killing the light as the
makeshift leads parted - and plunged into the alley through the side
curtain of her shelter.
        Sturdy of spirit or not, she was still a preadolescent child,
and she couldn't suppress the shriek of dismay that welled up in her
instinctively when the stranger's hand closed around her ankle and
dragged her back.  She knew the phaser would be useless, would refuse to
fire, until she closed the casing where she'd had to pry it apart to run
the leads for the lantern, but she needed both hands to do that, and
right now the one that wasn't maintaining a death grip on the weapon was
busy scrabbling for purchase on the snowy tarmac of the alley in an
effort to keep from being pulled clean back into the shelter.
        Off in the distance there was a deep, reverberating BOOM,
followed by the sound of rending metal and falling concrete, as if a
building had been blown up.  Sara heard her attacker say, "WHAT the,"
and for a moment his grip on her leg loosened.  She tried to get loose,
but that seemed only to recall the man to his task; he reaffirmed his
grip and started dragging her more violently backward, eager to be done
with his work and gone before the authorities descended on the district
to investigate that explosion.
        A second later, after a final sharp tug, his hand was gone from
her ankle and Sara heard the intruder produce a startled cry of his own.
Throwing herself forward, she crawled the rest of the way clear, rolled
onto her back, and looked up in horror to see another man, this one
apparently human, stocky and dressed mostly in grey, holding her would-
be attacker clean off the ground by his neck.
        "Who the fuck are you?!" the young Salusian demanded, his voice
cracking with fear.  "Ease off, I've got no quarrel with AGGHHHKKKK."
        Sara had read a book once about the myths of Old Earth - she had
never met an Earthman, but she found them intriguing, if only because
her monarch had such an evident fondness for them - and she knew what a
vampire was.  She hadn't thought they were real, though, until she saw
the man in grey tear her erstwhile attacker's throat open with his teeth
and drain his blood in great sucking gasps.  She found this so
terrifyingly transfixing that she forgot all about repairing her weapon;
she just lay there, eyes huge and white-rimmed in the gloom, and watched
the Saenar Ripper die.
        HN1 threw the limp carcass carelessly down onto the sheet of
thermoplastic, knocking the props from under it and causing the whole
bodged structure to collapse with a crash, wiped his mouth on the back
of one sleeve, and smacked his lips.  "Ahh.  I needed that."  His eyes
lit on the figure, heavily bundled in mismatched and ragged clothes but
still unmistakably juvenile, sprawled on the ground next to the remains
of the shelter, and his face - which would probably have been reasonably
handsome, for an Earthman's, if it hadn't been smeared with blood -
lifted in delight.
        "Hello!" he said happily.  "Dessert!"
        He took a step toward her.  Sara scrambled back, remembering the
phaser, but her hands were clumsy with fear - this apparition frightened
her far more than the Ripper had - and wouldn't obey her simple
instructions.  The phaser rattled uselessly, its casing refusing to lock
together.
        "Come here, morsel," said HN1 mockingly.  "I'll make it easier
for you than I did for that cretin."  He smiled, baring unnaturally
pointed teeth (for a human, anyway).  "I promise."
        Click.  Whine.  Yellow light.
        Sara raised the phaser and pressed the firing plate.
        Badly damaged and mostly depleted, the weapon spat only a
single pulse, a small disk of blue-white energy, before fizzling out;
but Sara's aim was good.  The discharge struck the Butcher in the left
eye and blew the synthetic flesh off the entire upper left quarter of
his face.  Screaming, he reeled, clapping a hand to the smoking injury;
then, when no second shot was forthcoming, he steadied himself with a
snarl that was more anger than pain.  Lowering his hand, he revealed
that the duralloy skull beneath the fake skin was still intact, though
the optic that had lain beneath his false left eye was a sparking ruin
now.
        "You'll have to do better than that, my little digestif," he
remarked, smiling horribly.
        Sara drew breath to scream - really scream, the way she pretty
much never did - but before she could, the sound of another voice
(actually, the part of her mind that remained forever analytical noted,
it was more or less the -same- voice) bellowed with wordless rage from
the narrow end of the alley behind her.  A moment later that voice's
owner bounded by, leaping clean over the prostrate child, and plowed
into HN1's midsection in a furious flying tackle.  Both men tumbled end-
for-end in a tangled mass of brown coat and grey tunic, separating at
the widest point of the alley and coming up facing each other.  The man
in brown still had his back to Sara, and she could see that he was not
terribly tall but very broad-shouldered, much like the Vampire.
        A moment later, she felt a hand on her shoulder.  Flinching, she
made to duck away, but the defective streetlight that sometimes shone
down from the corner above her shelter, and sometimes did not, chose
that moment to click on, and she saw that the person who had touched her
was not still another attacker.  He was a policeman, a kindly-faced
Cheltari in the brass-buttoned green jacket, polished crossbelt, and
brown campaign hat of a Royal Salusian Mountie.  Sara had an ingrained
distrust of police after the experiences of the last few years, but she
had always had a special place in her heart for the Mounties, and at the
sight of him, she felt so profoundly... so profoundly -rescued- that she
let herself become the child she really was again and threw her arms
around him, burying her face in the rough serge of his chest.
        "It's all right," he said, his voice low and so soothing she
could almost have passed out from relief.  "You're safe now.  I won't
let anyone hurt you."  Rising, he drew her up with him and led her
gently away from the violence-filled alley, out to the street, where a
small group of people - most of them, Sara still possessed enough wit to
notice with surprise, wearing Starfleet uniforms - waited.
        Placing her with them, Gil Grissom knelt down to look her in the
face - not such a task, she was tall for her age - and smoothed her
dark, disordered hair.  "You stay here.  These people are friends.
They'll look after you.  All right?"
        She didn't want him to leave, the first person who'd shown her
kindness in the last tumultuous few minutes, but she knew he was a
Mountie, and they always had work to do.  Summoning her tattered self-
possession, she nodded and said in a barely audible voice, "Okay."
        Grissom patted her shoulder, stood up, and said to the Starfleet
officer he'd placed her in front of, "Take care of her."
        "I shall do so, Inspector," the man - tall, thin, with the most
wonderfully deep voice - replied, and Grissom turned and hurried back
into the alley.
        Sara looked up at her newly designated protector with wide,
solemn eyes, her composure rapidly returning.  She had initially taken
him for a human, but he had pointed ears and sharply upswept eyebrows,
and with a little thrill she realized what he must be.
        "Are you a -Vulcan?-" she asked, awestruck.
        The officer looked down at her.  "I am," he replied.  "My name
is Spock."  He put a hand on her shoulder and asked with a sort of
infinitely calm kindness, "What is yours?"
        She blinked.  "I'm Sara," she said.

        On the roof of one of the buildings flanking the alley, Valeris
ran behind Raoul Duke, listening with intense interest as the journalist
dictated at a furious machinegun pace into a portable recorder.
        "An ordinary man would have collapsed by now," Duke was saying,
his cigarette holder jagging up and down with the motions of his jaw,
"but this is no ordinary man.  He can't quit because in a situation like
this there's no quit in him.  The replicated swine who destroyed his
life is within his grasp and he's not going to let go, not even if
hanging on kills him.  -That's- what it is to be Gryphon today."
        "Dr. Duke," Valeris asked suddenly.
        "What?" Duke replied, jumping the gap between two buildings and
then crouching at the edge of the roof and leaning out for a better view
of the brawl raging in the alley below.
        Valeris followed, settled next to him, and then asked, "How did
you know he would be here?"  Duke looked back over his shoulder with a
what-the-hell-are-you-jabbering-about look on his face, sweat glistening
on his forehead despite the cold night air, and she explained, "When we
left Earth, Captain Hutchins had not yet arrived on Meizuri, much less
Salusia.  Yet you knew this would be the place to intercept him.  How?"
        Duke grinned, his teeth glinting in the glow of the streetlights
below.  "Because this is where he had to be.  The answers he needs are
here."
        "I don't understand.  This planet is the beating heart of this
galaxy's civilization.  A wanted man would have to be crazy to come
here."
        "-Exactly,-" Duke said triumphantly.  "In times like this, the
crazy thing is the only sane thing to do.  When danger is all around,
the -smart- bastard dives straight into the vortex."

        Even burdened with his heavy ethercam, Edison Carter kept up
with Duke, running across the rooftops on the opposite side of the
alley.  Keeping up with Duke wasn't his -goal-; he neither knew nor
cared that his print colleague was even over there.  He was bent on only
one thing: getting his camera lens trained back on Gryphon and his
doppelganger as quickly as possible.
        "One more," Theora Jones's voice said in his ear as she guided
him via satellite.  "Mind the gap," she cautioned as he leaped across
the last building-to-building space.  "There.  They're at ground level
in the alley to your left."
        Edison went to the edge of the roof, aimed his camera down, and
focused.  "I see them.  Ready for feed."
        "Returning from analysis in five."

        Grissom entered the alley again just in time to see Gryphon lose
the second phase of his fight with HN1.  Tri-ox or no, Detian or no, he
was still only human, and with the Butcher freshly energized by his
kill, his strength and speed were far superior.  Gryphon skidded to a
halt a few feet from the wreckage of Sara's shelter, flat on his back,
gasping in pain.
        "Ha ha ha!" the Butcher exulted.  "Who's next?"  He smiled
cheerfully at Grissom as the Mountie knelt next to Gryphon, pressing a
field dressing to the upwelling wound where HN1's blade had been driven
into his shoulder and withdrawn.
        "You, sir!" HN1 declared expansively, wiping his knife and
sticking it in his belt.  "Perhaps you would like to try your luck
against the infamous Butcher of Musashi?  As a Salusian, you may stand a
better chance than that poor meatsack, though if you're not of the
Imperial line I shouldn't put money on it if I were you.  You're not,
are you?  It's so hard to tell nowadays, bastardy being the Salusian
national sport and all."
        Grissom raised an eyebrow, almost Vulcan-style.  "So you admit
that you're the Butcher of Musashi?"
        (Up above, Edison zoomed in on HN1's face, almost holding his
breath with anticipation, and he was not disappointed when the android
replied.)
        "Admit it!  Hell!  With pride!"  The Butcher threw his head back
and laughed long and loud.  "It was a thing of beauty!  One of the
little bastards even grabbed my leg.  I did him first.  WHAMMO! - ha ha
ha ha!  An ElectroMag packs quite a punch up close.  Not clean like a
phaser.  I hate phasers.  I like a big mess.  Especially now that my age
has caught up with me.  I've developed quite a taste for blood."
        Gryphon dragged his protesting body to the corner where Sara's
shelter had stood and pulled himself to a sitting position against the
wall.  "GENOM made you," he said through pain-gritted teeth.
        "Of course!"
        "To frame me and destroy morale."
        "Well, they didn't send me to play Santa Claus at the
Christmas party, loverboy."
        ("Just keep rolling, just keep rolling,)" Theora repeated in
Edison's ear, like a mantra.)
        The Butcher's eyes misted over with twisted nostalgia.  "Ah,
those were the days.  You should've seen the look on your face when I
ran past you in the hallway!  Ha ha ha - what a rube!  Never even
figured it out.  And the look on the bitch's face when I took a shot at
her!  You know I let her live on purpose.  I hoped maybe she'd do the
job right and off you when you came around the corner, but just like a
woman, she bungled the job.  Still, I got the satisfaction of know that
she's suffered every day since then.  You know, I bet she hasn't slept a
full night's sleep in ninety-two years! On some level she must -know-
what a -dope- she is.  Really, how could she mistake me for you all
those years?"  He shook his head in mock sadness.  "What a dull-witted
-bint.-  Hot, yes, but -really.-"
        Gryphon pulled himself a little more upright.  "Shut... up," he
snarled.
        Grissom straightened, unfastening the flap of the cylindrical
holster he wore at his right hip.
        "We can still end this peacefully," he said.  "There's no need
for us to descend to bloodshed."
        "What do you think we've all been doing SO far tonight, Officer?
Playing fucking racquetball?" the Butcher sneered.

        Up on the roof above, Valeris realized that the Salusian
officer, though brave, couldn't possibly stand a chance against a
monster like the synthetic assassin he faced.  With the captain wounded,
the Enterprise group maintaining a defensive position out on the street,
and the others still battling the GENOM troopers in the park; with the
Surprise unable to maneuver in these tightly-packed warrens...
        She looked in wide-eyed surprise at Raoul Duke as she suddenly
understood the last thing he had said to her.
        "... straight into the vortex," she said quietly.
        "Huh?" Duke said, but by then she had mounted the coaming at the
edge of the roof and jumped into space.

        "I don't want to draw my weapon," Grissom told HN1 calmly.  "If
you let the situation escalate that far, it can only end poorly."
        The Butcher's face went red, his mood suddenly switching from
mocking exultation to rage.  "Bring it, furface," he snarled.  "I'll
take your popgun away from you and FUCK you with it - wha?!"
        A black-and-gold blur dropped out of the sky above him and
landed on his shoulders like twenty hundredweight of bricks, bearing him
straight down to the ground.  Valeris felt the impact jar through her
whole body (pain raising a haze before her vision as a bone in her left
leg, bonded after the crash of the Invincible but not fully healed,
parted again).  Falling clear, she half-rolled, half-stumbled to her
feet.  Teeth gritted, fighting her still-disordered mind to muster the
concentration necessary, she summoned up all the close combat skills she
knew and limped in to press the attack.
        Nearly HN1's equal in strength, Valeris was an experienced hand-
to-hand combatant in her own right.  In addition to her Starfleet self-
defense training and a smattering of the ancient Vulcan art of suus
mahna, she had at her disposal all the dirty tricks and painful
surprises a person learns in ten years behind the bars of a military
stockade - a stockade where prisoners incarcerated for treason are not
particularly well-liked by those who are merely murderers and rapists.
        She wasn't at her best, though, even allowing for the broken
leg.  She did not -regret- what had happened to her at the psychic hands
of Raoul Duke.  She felt more free, more -alive,- than she ever had in
her life.  But she did find it difficult to concentrate, and against a
foe like the Butcher, concentration was critical.  Before long, she
found herself slammed up against a cinderblock wall, her toes barely
touching the ground, with one of the android's forearms jammed
underneath her chin.  Sneering, the Butcher leaned close to her,
watching her face go slowly olive.
        "You're no good to me," HN1 hissed.  "All that copper.  Feh.
Still, you're a pretty thing, aren't you?  Such a symmetrical face.
Kissable, even.  I'll be nice and leave it so they can have an open
casket.  Do Vulcans do caskets?"
        "Ghhk hvvn rr nnnff," Valeris replied.
        The Butcher looked intrigued.  "What?" he asked, relaxing the
pressure on her throat slightly.  "I couldn't quite make that out,
dear."
        Valeris stared straight into his remaining eye, and he noticed
that her two pupils weren't quite the same size.  She smiled as sweetly
as a person in her situation could smile.
        "I have your knife," she said.
        HN1 recoiled, roaring in pain, as she jammed his survival knife
into the middle of his body with all her failing strength, then broke it
off.
        "GAAAAH!  Vulcan WHORE!" the replicant bellowed, smashing her
against the wall again.  "You think that'll stop me?  I've had so much
worse.  I may look like you, meatsack, and I may bleed, but I'm a
superior being."  He stepped back, letting her crumple to the ground.
"I was built to kill and programmed to love it.  And I do.  I did from
the very first day."  He threw his head back, eyes shut, as if
overcome by the memories.  "Oh God!  It was beautiful.  All those
kids, and they all thought I was Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Rambo
and Kerry Eurodyne rolled into one.  And then... WHACK!  Oh, my God,
the memories alone keep me warm at night!
        "Thank you, Largo, for an eidetic memory!" he roared into the
sky, his arms thrown wide.  "It - was - so - GLORIOUS!  All the blood!
The brains!  The young lives snuffed out!  I'm writing a book!  I'm
going to Disneyland!  I want the movie rights!!"
        Grissom had heard enough.  His hand went to his belt again,
preparing to draw, but before he could do so, there was a metallic
scrape behind him and a burly, brown-coated figure pushed past him,
striding as if unwounded toward the ranting replicant.
        "Hey," said Gryphon.  The Butcher stopped yelling, turning to
face the revivified Earthman with a look of shock.
        "Shut the fuck up," Gryphon went on, and before HN1 could make
any kind of response, Gryphon hit him in the face...
        ... with the chunk of rebar that had been holding up one
corner of Sara's shelter.
        The Butcher staggered, and Gryphon, finding that that first hit
had felt pretty good, hit him again.  And again.  And again.  Within
three blows HN1 had ceased trying to fight back at all, and it was no
longer a fight; it was a deeply aggrieved man sunk far down in a fugue
of fury, administering a good old-fashioned trade union beatdown -
pounding his foe into a broken, blood-soaked heap and singing "I've Been
Working on the Railroad" under his breath as he swung the redneck katana
over and over.  Eventually, he raised the bar and it wouldn't come down;
surprised out of his reverie, he looked back over his shoulder and saw
that Gil Grissom had stepped up and taken hold of the weapon a foot or
so above his hands.
        "Benjamin," he said quietly, "he's had enough."
        "I don't think I have," Gryphon replied.
        Grissom didn't let go.  "I think Her Majesty would be just as
happy if her Knight-Commander -didn't- turn out to be a murderer after
all."
        Gryphon stared at him, furious - how could the man call THIS
murder?! - and then turned his attention back to his huddled, quivering
nemesis, coughing up blood on the grimy pavement, and had to admit he
had a point.  He relaxed his arms; Grissom let go of the rebar, and
Gryphon first lowered it, then let it fall to the ground at his feet
with a clang.
        "Well," he told the Butcher, "they won't have any trouble
telling us apart now."
        "ghh... go fuck yourself," HN1 gasped.
        Gryphon took a step back, then got a hopping start and kicked
his android double unconscious.
        Then, resettling his coat upon his shoulders with a jerk on the
lapels, he turned to Grissom, said, "He's all yours, Inspector," and
crossed to help Valeris to her feet.  "Are you okay?"
        "I will recover," the Vulcan replied.  "Besides," she added,
leaning on his shoulder, "you should see the other guy."

        Above, Edison finished shooting the Mountie arresting what was
left of the Butcher, then delivered a terse wrapup from the field before
throwing back to the studio for further analysis.
        "Great job, Edison," Theora told him.  "I think that was easily
the story of the year."
        "And we were the only network in sight," Edison replied with an
easy grin as he straightened up, hefting the camera's familiar weight.
He looked around, his grin fading slightly.  "Theora?"
        "Yes?"
        "How do I get off this roof?"

        Gryphon walked slowly out of the alley, delivered Valeris
silently into the hands of Dr. McCoy (who needed the distraction to
temper his utter dumbfoundedness at the day he was having), and then
turned to regard the little group of people standing out on the sidewalk
with him.  Jim Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise group eyed him
warily, as did Zoner.  The Sterling twins and Scott Bernard, who had
come along with them, were smiling, but seemed a little on edge because
of the Starfleet people's wariness.  Off in the background, Spock was
handing over his small charge (who seemed, at this distance, a bit
reluctant to leave the Vulcan) to a very upright Mountie woman with the
shoulder boards of a superintendent.
        As Gryphon stood and regarded this group, his own "landing
party" arrived, running up the street and falling in behind him with
their weapons ready.  For a few moments, the two groups stared at each
other, a tense feeling of potentially imminent conflict in the air.
        Gryphon turned, giving his shipmates a tired smile.  Saavik
nodded, raising a hand, and put away her phaser; after a moment, Vanessa
and Jamie complied (the latter slinging her rifle with a look of
reluctance).  Saavik unhitched Gryphon's katana, which she had recovered
in the park and put back in its abandoned saya, from her shoulder and
handed it to him.
        Turning back to the Starfleet contingent, Gryphon took a slow,
easy step toward Kirk, then another, holding his sword casually in one
hand by the scabbard.  The Enterprise security officers tensed, ready to
intervene if he attacked their captain, but he raised his hand in turn,
signaling them to back off, as he stepped out of their line to meet the
fugitive.
        "Captain Kirk," said Gryphon.  "We haven't been properly
introduced.  Captain Benjamin D. Hutchins, USS Invincible.  Thanks for
your help back in the park."
        Kirk inclined his head graciously.  "You're welcome, Captain.
Perhaps you can clear up some confusion for me.  We know your ship and
crew come from a parallel universe, but are you, in fact, the same man
who was once executive officer of the Wedge Defense Force starship
Wayward Son in -this- one?"
        "I had that honor for nearly 300 years," Gryphon replied.
        "Then you must know that you're a wanted man."
        "I do know that.  I understand the Federation has assigned the
Musashi matter to Starfleet for adjudication."
        Kirk glanced back at Spock, who was just rejoining the line; the
Vulcan nodded confirmation.
        "In that case," Gryphon went on, "then in the interests of
galactic justice, Captain Kirk... "  He proffered his sheathed sword to
the younger man.  "I surrender myself to your custody, sir."
        Kirk took the weapon, regarded it appreciatively - he wasn't a
swordsman himself, but he knew quality when he held it - and then smiled
and handed it back.
        "You may keep your sword, Captain," he replied, then added
wryly, "I won't have it said that James T. Kirk treated a fellow
starship captain like a common criminal.  I'll have to hold you on board
Enterprise until we can make arrangements for trial, but if you'll give
me your parole, as one officer to another, you won't be confined to
quarters."
        "You have it, Captain, and thank you," Gryphon said.  Whatever
he planned to say next was pre-empted by the sudden appearance of a
Crown City Constabulary official vehicle, which pulled up in the street
next to them and disgorged a trio of people.  Two of them were uniformed
officers, who immediately drew their weapons and moved into a mutually
supportive arrest formation, while the third was a tall, thin, greying
man in a severely cut suit.
        "I want those women arrested at once!" the Minister for Home
Defense shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Saavik and the rest of
the Surprise landing party.  "Along with the maniacs on that ship when
you catch them!  They're responsible for massive airspace violations,
carrying unlicensed weapons, and - "  He paused, scowling with
annoyance, when his portable comm sounded, but then his face went blank
with surprise as he recognized the ringtone.
        Pulling out the device, he flipped it open and said, "Hello?"
Stiffening to something like attention, he said in a much more civil
tone, "Y-yes, Your Majesty!  Well, I... no... yes... yes... very good,
Your Majesty."  Moving the phone away from his head, the Minister
covered the mouthpiece with one hand and said to the taller of the two
CCC officers, "Sergeant?  Her Majesty the Queen wishes to speak with
you."
        Evincing bafflement even through the visor of his riot helmet,
the CCC sergeant holstered his weapon, took the phone, flipped up his
visor, and answered, "Hello?"  A pause while he listened intently; then
he nodded firmly, though the Queen could not see him, and said, "Of
course, Your Majesty.  I'll see to it immediately."
        Closing the telephone, he returned it to its owner, and while
the Minister was putting it away, he drew his weapon again and said,
"Minister, you're under arrest."
        "What?!" the Minister blurted.  The sergeant nodded to his
colleague, who put her weapon away, handcuffed the Minister, and ushered
him into the back of their car.
        Turning to Saavik, the sergeant gave a slight bow and said, "You
and your colleagues are free to go, ma'am.  Her Majesty the Queen bids
you welcome to the Empire, and she would find it most agreeable if you
would all visit the Palace at your earliest convenience... though you'll
have to fly there, as it appears that someone has destroyed the bridge."
        Saavik received this last comment with the gravity its deadpan
delivery deserved, inclining her head precisely five degrees.  "Thank
you, Sergeant.  We shall certainly call upon her at our first
convenience."
        The sergeant closed his visor over his responding smile,
saluted, climbed back into the car, and drove away, leaving Kirk and
Gryphon standing there giving each other identical "... what just
happened?" looks.
        Gryphon recovered first.  "Captain, may I have a moment with my
first officer?  Then I'm at your disposal."
        "By all means."
        Gryphon turned to Saavik and handed his sword to her, saying,
"Take the Surprise back and pick up the rest of the crew.  I think we
can safely presume that Asrial's invitation applies to everybody."
        She nodded, tucking the weapon under her arm.  "And then?"
        He shrugged.  "Beats me.  I guess we'll figure that out after
the trial, assuming I'm not in Takron-Galtos."
        "I will be there," Saavik promised, then raised her hand in the
Vulcan salute and said in her native language, <Until I see you again,
live long and prosper.>
        Gryphon returned the salute and replied, <Peace and long life,
my... blast.  Vulcan has no terms of endearment.>
        Off to the side, Valeris gave an explosive giggle, causing Dr.
McCoy to pause in tending her leg and give her a puzzled look.  Spock
only raised an eyebrow.
        <It's a barbarous torturing of grammar, sir,> Vanessa put in,
<since it involves using an adjective as a noun, but if I may suggest
'my indispensable'.>
        <Oh, well played, Lieutenant,> said Gryphon with a grin.  <Extra
grog for you tonight.  Tell Hunter I said so.>  Bowing to his first
officer, he kissed her hand, then turned and said, "I'm all yours,
Captain Kirk."
        "Oo, me too!" said Valeris.
        "Dammit, girl, stop trying to get up or I'll saw this leg
-off,-" McCoy grumbled.

                       WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2310
                         STARFLEET HEADQUARTERS
                 SAN FRANCISCO, EARTH, CENTAURUS SECTOR

        The great assembly hall at Starfleet Headquarters was not
customarily used as a courtroom, but there was precedent, and for what
every press outlet in the galaxy was calling the Trial of the Century,
no other room in the headquarters complex would do.  Mercifully, the
proceedings were not open to the public, as they were essentially a
court-martial, but even so, the place was packed with witnesses, persons
of interest, and individuals who, while not directly involved in the
case, were deemed to be sufficiently connected to warrant admitting
them.  The rows at the back were filled with Starfleet Academy
midshipmen, chosen by lottery from the hundreds who had heard of the
case as children and were eager to see the players in such an ancient
tragedy in real life.
        There was no jury; the case would be heard, and ultimately
decided, by a panel of three Starfleet flag officers, who now filed in
through a door behind the bench and seated themselves, in full panoply,
behind it.
        "This tribunal is now in session," said the white-haired man
sitting in the chairman's position, center and a little forward of the
other two.  "Vice Admiral Edward Fitzpatrick, chairman, presiding."
        "Commodore Percival Stone," the dark-skinned, red-coated officer
to Fitzpatrick's left announced for the record.
        "Rear Admiral Philip Boyce," the blue-clad officer to
Fitzpatrick's right declared.
        Gryphon leaned toward his advocate and asked quietly, "How does
it look?"
        "Our prospects are mixed, but on the whole I think them
favorable," Spock replied.  "Admiral Fitzpatrick is a fair man.
Commodore Stone presided over Captain Kirk's court-martial some years
ago, and his charges were proven false.  Admiral Boyce and I are old
shipmates."
        "I want it understood," Fitzpatrick declared, "that this trial
is not intended as any kind of whitewash.  We will have order; we will
have evidence; we will take nothing for granted.  Is the accused
present?"
        Gryphon rose to his feet, and there was an audible buzz around
the room as he did so, his image projected 20 feet high on a screen for
the benefit of those far up at the back.  He caused at least part of the
buzz with the way he was dressed: in his full-dress uniform from the
"other" Starfleet, his red coat trimmed in gold and the left side of his
chest, below the arrowhead badge, encrusted with ribbons and medals
earned over his long service.
        He had agonized for some time over whether to dress as the
captain of the Invincible or the long-ago man accused of the crimes for
which he was tried, and whose life now seemed to him as if another man
had lived it.  In the end, Saavik had persuaded him that he would add
weight to the Starfleet perception of his character by quietly
displaying the evidence of his long, honorable career with another
dimension's equivalent of the same outfit.
        And displaying that evidence he certainly was, though only the
members of his own crew, gathered in the section immediately behind the
defendant's table, could recognize most of the specific parts.  Some of
the decorations he wore did have equivalents in this Starfleet - the
Galactic Perimeter ribbon, for example, and the Starfleet Cross - but
most were unknown to these officers.  His shipmates, though, knew every
single one, from the Cyben First Contact medal to the gold-edged blue
ribbon denoting him captain of the fleet's fastest ship.  They all wore
a similar one, lacking the gold, claiming membership in the same elite
club.  Sadly, the Delta IV Survival Medal was wholly apocryphal, and
though no one here could know that, he had chosen not to tempt fate by
wearing it.
        "I'm here, your honors," he said.
        "Is the prosecutor present?" Stone asked.
        At the prosecutor's table, a short, slim, bald-headed man rose
to his feet, squared his datapad, and announced, "Commodore Heihachiro
Nogura for the prosecution, your honors."
        One row back from the defendant's table, Jamie Finney leaned
over and elbowed Vanessa Leeds.  "(Jesus, it's Nogura!)" she whispered.
"(Didn't he ever have hair?)"
        For most of that day, Nogura presented the prosecution's case.
He seemed to know it was weak, but rather than capitulate to that fact
and just cruise through, he dug in and pursued what few solid facts he
had with the vigor of a religious zealot.  Commander Hutchins, as he was
then, -had- been present in the Seventh Street School that day; he had
been armed and he had been conducting a highly stressful combat mission.
In addition, WDF records salvaged after the collapse of that
organization clearly showed that the force's chief medical officer, one
Dr. Jenna Steen, had logged concerns over the commander's mental state
several times over the preceding months, saying at one point that she
thought he should be relieved of his duties before his mind snapped.
        "Nearly three hundred years," Nogura pointed out sharply to the
court, "is an -inconceivably- long time to remain in a combat posting.
No human mind could withstand such punishment indefinitely.   Your
honors, the question is not whether Commander Hutchins went mad, it's
how he ever managed to go that long before he did."
        Spock was on his feet.  "Objection, your honors.  Commodore
Nogura is indulging in meaningless emotional wordplay.  I insist his
last sentence be stricken as both inflammatory and irrelevant."
        "You will have your chance to refute the evidence, Commander,"
Stone rebuked him.
        "I concur with Commander Spock," said Boyce.  "Commodore Nogura
is not a physician.  His -interpretation- of Dr. Steen's case notes is
of no value to this court."
        "(Bless you, Philip Boyce,)" Gryphon murmured.
        Nogura rested just before the court recessed for the day.  As
the spectators filed out, Spock turned to Gryphon and said,
        "Commodore Nogura's evidence is flimsy and he is well aware of
the fact.  He is relying on his talents for vicious cross-examination
and snide insinuation to damage our defense in its turn."
        Gryphon nodded.  "I figured as much.  Are we ready for him?"
        "I believe so."  Spock paused, then went on with only faint
hesitation, "I am still uncertain as to why you chose me as your
advocate, Captain.  We are virtual strangers to each other.  This would
be offset somewhat if I had some great reputation as a litigator, but I
have not.  I lack even a law degree."
        Gryphon smiled and patted the Vulcan's shoulder.  "Believe me,
Spock.  They won't accept an advocate from my own crew, and barring
that, there's no one I'd rather have in my corner."
        Spock arched an eyebrow.  "Indeed?  I will not pretend to
understand your thought process, but I will do my best."

		       THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2380

        Day 2 began with Spock's opening argument and was taken up with
the presentation of scientific evidence, including the boomer drop pod
recovered by Gil Grissom and Maia Sterling from the surface of Musashi
and various trace evidence found in the Seventh Street School.
        In the middle of all the (admittedly rather dry) expert
testimony, Raoul Duke - who was riveted by even the dryest part of the
proceeding - suddenly realized that odd sounds were coming from the seat
next to him.  Turning, he saw that Valeris had dozed off.  She was still
sitting upright, but her eyes were closed and she would occasionally
twitch in her sleep, sometimes even producing a faint high-pitched sound.

        Valeris had had enough of the little Japanese admiral's
insinuations and attempts to impugn the credibility of the scientists,
particularly that handsome Salusian.  Rising from her seat, she leaped
over the heads of the startled spectators to the courtroom floor, nerve-
pinched the bailiff, seized his phaser, and blasted Nogura twenty feet
back to the opposite wall.  Then she turned her weapon on the bench,
screaming at the top of her lungs,
        "YOU WILL NEVER TAKE HIM ALIVE, FILTHY EARTHMEN!"

        "Valeris.  -Valeris!-" Duke muttered, swatting at her with his
notebook.  "Wake up, dammit, wake up!"
        Valeris woke with a start, turned, and blinked at Duke.  "What
is it?"
        "You were having the chasing-a-rabbit dream or some goddamned
thing," Duke replied.  "Keep quiet before you get us thrown out of
here."
        "I was doing no such thing," Valeris replied stuffily, folding
her arms and slouching slightly.  "I was simply meditating."
        "Yeah, well, meditate without -yipping.-"
        "-Hmph,-" she said, not looking at him.  "Vulcans do not yip."

        The only real highlight of the day came when Grissom took the
stand, and Nogura opened his cross-examination with, "Inspector Grissom,
indulge an old man's curiosity for a moment, can you tell me why a Royal
Salusian Mounted Police investigator would take it upon himself to
investigate an ancient crime scene on the planet Musashi, far outside
his normal jurisdiction?"
        Grissom smiled blandly.  "Because it was there, Commodore."  As
Nogura drew breath to chide him, he went on, "The specifics of my
recruitment into the Musashi Project are subject to the provisions of
the Imperial Confidentiality Act of 1957.  I can only tell you that I
was there at the personal request of my monarch."
        "And what jurisdiction did she have over the matter?" Nogura
asked archly.
        "That was not mine to consider, sir," Grissom replied.  "I am a
servant of the Crown.  Nothing more."

        "The scientific evidence is inconclusive in this case," Nogura
observed when the final witness had come and gone.  "Mr. Spock's
witnesses have established that there was a Boomer at the scene.
However, the defense has produced -nothing- to prove that it and not
Commander Hutchins performed the actions of which he stands accused, nor
even which Boomer it was."
        "Commodore, if I may," Spock put in, "it is generally considered
poor form to give your summation before the defense has rested its
case."
        Nogura snorted.  "What else could you possibly have to present,
man?  You've shown us your science and it's wanting.  In a civilian
court you could probably hide behind reasonable doubt, but this is a
military tribunal, sir!  You'll have to do better than that if you want
to save your client from the airlock."
        Spock remained unruffled.  "Airlock ejection has not been an
approved method of capital punishment in some time, as the Commodore is
well aware.  In any event, the defense has presented only half its case
and your remarks are out of order, sir."
        "Enough," said Fitzpatrick.  "Commander Spock is correct,
Commodore.  You'll have your chance to present your summation.  Mr.
Spock, you say you've presented only half your case.  That being so, the
court will recess until 0900 tomorrow."  He struck his gavel.
        "He's right about the science," Gryphon observed glumly.  "We
can put HN1 there, and it's obvious to a four-year-old that he did it,
but... "
        Spock nodded.  "Starfleet judicial inquiries have higher
standards of evidence than a four-year-old," he agreed.  "However, I
believe I have the matter well in hand."  He slightly inclined one
eyebrow.  "Do you still trust me?"
        "Implicitly."
        "Excellent."

			FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 2380

        Day 3 opened with Spock rising, tugging reflexively at his
stiff-fronted dress tunic to make sure it was perfectly straight, and
saying, "Your honors, I concur with Commodore Nogura.  The scientific
evidence in this case cannot tell the full story.  Therefore, with your
permission, I would like to spend today addressing the other half of the
equation of Captain Hutchins's guilt or innocence.
        "As you are aware, his career with the Wedge Defense Force
before the incident on Musashi was long and highly distinguished - but
the prosecution may claim, rightly, that this is neither here nor there
in light of that incident and the many changes it wrought upon the
galaxy.  However, he subsequently had a lengthy, and if anything -more-
distinguished, career as an officer in a service with which we all should
be familiar - the United Federation of Planets Starfleet.
        "That this Starfleet operated in a parallel dimension is
immaterial," Spock went on, ignoring the murmurs and mutterings of the
gallery.  "It served a Federation with the same goals and priorities as
our own.  Its charter and mandate were comparable.  Its standards of
service were, if anything, higher than our own.  Therefore, the records
and testimony of those who served with him must go a long way toward
establishing the man's character - and that will be a critical factor in
the absence of concrete scientific conclusions."
        "Your honors, I object," said Nogura, and various members of the
gallery could not help but smile at Admiral Boyce's unsuccessfully
muted, "(Naturally.)"  Nogura ignored the aside and continued, "What
evidence does Commander Spock have that this organization, this... this
alien Starfleet... even exists?"
        "A history of the Federation and a copy of Starfleet's charter
are encoded into the optical ROM of every log buoy aboard every
Starfleet vessel, in the event that such a buoy, ejected from a
foundering ship, is recovered by a people unfamiliar with the
Federation," Spock answered.  "The log buoy recovered from the wreck of
the USS Invincible bears such a record as well.  It is illogical to
assume that such an item would be fabricated and planted by the
Invincible's crew, who were not expecting their vessel to be destroyed.
This use of the buoy could not be anticipated."
        Fitzpatrick considered this, then nodded.  "Very well, Mr.
Spock.  You will be required to present your authentication of the buoy
and your determination of its extradimensional origin in due course."
        "Of course, Admiral.  If I may proceed?"
        "By all means."
        Spock called almost everyone who could possibly have known
Gryphon in the parallel dimension - essentially, everyone he'd brought
with him.  Some had served with him only a short time; others had been
his shipmate since before he achieved his own command, serving with him
aboard the parallel Enterprise or even earlier.  The Invincible's Chief
of the Ship, Command Master Chief Petty Officer Claude Radois, had
served with him aboard his very first Starfleet posting, USS Challenger,
and told how he took command of the badly damaged vessel after the rest
of her officer corps were killed in a Romulan attack and led them not
only to safety, but victory, saving a starbase and a science vessel in
the process.
        Others told not of his service record, which they considered
stood by itself, but of his personal character, recounting acts of
kindness, decisions that reflected his integrity, examples of quieter
heroism than the kind that appeared in official citations.  Every one
was proud to have served with him.  Every one would join his next ship,
if he were given one tomorrow, and never look back.
        Gryphon had known he was a popular captain, had taken pride in
it throughout his command career, but he hadn't known quite how deep his
shipmates' regard for him actually ran, and as he sat and watched them
sing his praises to the court, he almost felt like weeping; but that
would never have done, so he merely sat and tried to show them his
gratitude with the look in his eyes.
        Here was Henry Lang, explaining how, even though he had served
as a chief engineer aboard one of the fleet's most advanced starships
himself, and had co-authored the famous Enterprise refit of 2271 with
the great Montgomery Scott, Gryphon had never once interfered with
Lang's responsibilities as Invincible's chief.  Here was Jaime Finney
describing the gamble he took selecting her as his ship's armory officer
despite the shadow her father's legacy cast over her own career.  Here
was Maximilian Hunter telling the court that only his captain's firm
confidence in his abilities, when after an accident he himself had none,
had kept him from resigning from Starfleet early in his time aboard
Invincible.   And here was Vanessa Leeds saying that Invincible was her
very first deep space posting out of the academy, and that her academy
classmates Kim and Samantha were consumed by jealousy when the
assignments were announced - it was that widely avowed even among
midshipmen, by that time, that Captain Hutchins was the best captain in
Starfleet, rivaled only by his fellow legends of Tanaab, Hikaru Sulu and
Pavel Chekov.
        And, finally, here was Saavik, quiet, dignified, dress-
uniformed, revealing to them - to a room full of total strangers - one
of the darkest and most painful moments of her life, all for the sake of
the man she called captain.
        "Captain Hutchins stands accused of a brutal and senseless mass
murder, a slaughter of children," she said.  "To me, this is
incomprehensible.  It is patently absurd; to a logical mind, it borders
on the obscene.  I would sooner believe that the cosmological constant
is variable.  I will tell you why."
        She hesitated for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts, and
then went on in the same cool, precise tone of voice, "Many years ago,
on a planet of which you have never heard, this man risked his life
where none of his shipmates could see him, when it was none of his
business to intervene, for the sake of another - a person who was a
stranger to him.
        "He was not a Starfleet officer at the time, merely a civilian
scientific observer; he had sworn no oaths, was under no obligation to
offer any assistance.  And yet he faced a painful and humiliating death
with nothing more than a metal blade and a man's courage, when no one
would have known if he hadn't bothered... all to save the life of a
single child."
        Nogura rose to his feet and said with palpable skepticism, "If
no one was there to see him do it, Commander, how do you know this?"
        "I did not say no one was there," Saavik replied calmly.  "I
said his -shipmates- were not there, and that no one would have known
had he stayed his hand."
        "Then how do -you- know?" Nogura asked, his tone of voice all
but calling her a liar.  When she didn't respond at once, he rounded the
table and approached the witness box, his tone becoming more aggressive:
        "-How do you know?-"

/--
                            STARDATE 6120.2
                    PLANET VEGA C-612 ("HELLGUARD")

        "Drop your weapon and step away from that child!" the human in
the grey Starfleet excursion jacket roared.  When the Romulan soldier
didn't respond, he switched to the man's own language - perfectly
inflected - and tried again.  <Drop your weapon and back away!  Do it
now!> 
        That got the soldier's attention, but all it made him do was
turn his disruptor rifle from the terrified, cowering half-breed child
and aim it at the presumptuous, foolish human instead.  <Or what, round-
ear?> he asked mockingly.  <You haven't even got a weapon.>
        <Haven't I?> the human replied.  <Last chance.  Walk away or you
die here and now.>
        The soldier smirked.  He was at least six inches taller than the
human, and though the human was broad-shouldered, he lacked the
Romulan's gravity-trained bulk.  <There won't be enough of you to sweep
up,> he declared, and fired.
        The man in the grey jacket wasn't there.
        <Wha?> the Romulan remarked, and a moment later the man in grey
seemed to -materialize- behind him, fading out of nothing as abruptly as
he had vanished, with a long, wickedly curved sword in both hands.  He
brought it down and around with all the force of his body behind it,
swinging from hips and shoulders, and there was a terrible sound like
meat being cleaved - which was more or less what it was.  The Romulan
soldier went down as if he'd been shot, nearly cut in half despite his
armored uniform, and his blood splashed the ground like water spilled
from an overturned pitcher.
        The grey-coated man reversed his sword, swept the soldier's
emerald blood from it with a long-practiced gesture, and sheathed it
home in the scabbard across his back.  Then he stepped over the corpse,
knelt in front of the child, and asked gently, <Are you all right?>
        She didn't answer him, just stared with the fear in her eyes
only slightly diminished, and he realized that he must be nearly as
terrible a figure to her as the man he'd just dispatched.
        Backing away, he pulled a Starfleet communicator from his belt,
flipped it open, and said, "Spock.  It's Gryphon.  Get over here.  I've
got a survivor."
--/

        Saavik looked straight through Nogura, her eyes coldly
dismissive, and said, "I was that child, Commodore."

        After that revelation, there was little more Nogura could say,
and in any event, the rest of Saavik's testimony - of Gryphon's years of
steadfast friendship even in the face of the difficulties posed by the
cultural gap between them, their time at Starfleet Academy, their
legendary Kobayashi Maru run, their time aboard Enterprise, the implicit
trust and unwavering support he'd shown her during her long tenure as
his first officer - had little in it that even the contentious commodore
could challenge.  He even had a note of respect in his eyes when she
left the stand, for if there was one thing Heihachiro Nogura admired
unreservedly, it was the bond of loyalty between deserving captain and
capable exec.
        "Your honors," Spock said, "that concludes my selection of
witnesses.  I yield the floor to Commodore Nogura for his closing
remarks."
        Nogura rose.  "Your honors, before closing arguments commence, I
beg the court's indulgence.  I have two witnesses who were not available
during the opening phase of the trial, and with your permission I would
like to reopen the prosecution's case to call them."
        "(That dirty bastard!  Can he do that?)" Finney whispered, but
Saavik merely shook her head for the lieutenant to be quiet.
        "Mr. Spock, you may object if you wish," said Boyce.  "This is
highly irregular."
        But Spock merely rose to his feet and said, "I have no
objections, Admiral.  In fact, I welcome Commodore Nogura's additional
witnesses.  It is important to my client that the full and complete
truth be established before this court."
        Fitzpatrick considered this, then shook his head as if to tell
the Vulcan on his own head be it and said, "Very well, Commodore, you
may proceed."
        For the first of his two final gambits, Nogura dealt with the
fact of HN1's confession, dismissing it as the ramblings of a badly
damaged android in the depths of Biocrash Syndrome, his positronic
network seriously degraded.  He produced a shark-suited functionary from
GENOM Corporation's legal department to state that 33/S unit GRP-HN1 was
manufactured in 2378 for a "historical display" on RetroWorld, the
"Living Theme Park of the Past".
        "The Boomer's confession cannot be taken literally," the young
lawyer was saying.  "Its memory unit is badly degraded.  It mistook part
of its historical re-enactment programming for reality."
        At this point, a scruffy-looking gentleman in a none-too-clean
boiler suit, with a shaggy jacket that looked like nothing so much as
Wookiee pelt on over it and a Chicago Cubs cap crammed down backward on
his head, stood up and announced loudly,
        "That's a PILE'A CRAP."
        Everyone turned to look at him.
        "... And who might you be, sir?" Admiral Fitzpatrick asked.
        "My name's Zefram Cochrane," the man said; then, taking in the
whole courtroom with one panoramic gesture, he added, "Without me all'a
you punks'd be lookin' for real jobs."
        "Bailiff, remove that man!" Commodore Stone barked, but before
the bailiff could move, an ensign appeared behind the bench and
whispered to Fitzpatrick.
        "(Seriously?)" the admiral asked, his remark picked up by his
mic even though it was uttered sotto voce.
        "(Yessir, biometric scans confirm.  That really is Dr.
Cochrane.)"
        "Dr. Cochrane, do you have something to add to the testimony
being presented?" asked Boyce.
        "Only that it's a pile'a crap," Cochrane repeated, walking down
the center aisle and passing through the swinging gate.  "I've examined
that boomer.  He's 80 years old at least, and he's nuttier than a
fruitcake but there's nothin' wrong with his memory.  This is such
transparent smoke I'm surprised Nogura's even trying to blow it up your
skirt."
        "Your honors, I object in the strictest imaginable terms!  This
man is a notorious libertine - "
        "I was not aware that Dr. Cochrane's lifestyle invalidated his
scientific credentials, your honors," Spock interrupted coolly.
        "(Go, Spock, go,)" Raoul Duke murmured into his clenched fist.
        "-Are- you a certified Boomer technician, Dr. Cochrane?" asked
Fitzpatrick.
        "I'm a certified everything technician, son," Cochrane replied.
"And lemme tell ya somethin' else.  I invented warp drive with the help
of -that man right there,-" he said, pointing to Gryphon.  "Child-
killer.  What a load of horseshit."
        "If you would confine yourself to the pertinent facts, Doctor,"
Stone began severely, but Cochrane failed to be intimidated.
        "What the hell's not pertinent about him being innocent?" he
demanded.  "What grade are you in?"  He turned and scanned the gallery.
"I can't believe any of you are buying this," he said, his manner
suddenly less offhanded and much more serious.  "You're supposed to be
among the best-educated people in the galaxy.  This was a painfully
transparent frame job then, and the evidence before us now reduces it to
bad comedy.  Kirk!  You can't possibly buy into this, can you?  That man
-designed your ship.-  Without him, you'd be just another hyperspace
tramp, not the great captain of the famous starship Enterprise.  How
many chicks do you think you'd pull then, huh?"
        "(I think he's got you there, Jim,)" a hugely amused Bones McCoy
muttered behind his hand.
        "Dr. Cochrane, -please,-" said Fitzpatrick.  "Is there anything
else?"
        Cochrane looked challengingly around the room one more time,
then shook his head.  "Nah, I'm done."  Addressing the tribunal, he
said, "Either you've got brains or you'll convict.  Nothin' else I say
is gonna matter."
       Having said his piece, he returned to his seat, pausing in the
aisle only to return a high sign from Raoul Duke.
        Once the thoroughly rattled GENOM official retired from the
stand, Nogura seemed to settle himself for a moment, then recovered his
aplomb and said, "I'm ready to call my last witness, if your honors
please."
        "So be it," said Fitzpatrick.
        Nogura turned to the defense table, a sly cruelty in the smile
he directed at Gryphon and Spock, and then said, intently watching the
defendant's face,
        "I call Kei Morgan."
        If he was expecting to see something other than mild, benign
interest on Gryphon's face, Nogura was disappointed, but he hid it well
as the tanned redhead, dressed in a neatly pressed silver-and-black
Worlds Welfare Work Association dress uniform, took the stand and was
sworn.
        "Consultant Morgan," Nogura said.  "You are familiar with the
defendant, are you not?"
        "You could say that," Kei replied with a faint smirk.
        "Just answer the question, please," Nogura said.
        "Yeah, I know him."
        "During your long association with him, did you ever have any
reason to believe that he might be developing... mental instability?"
        Without a heartbeat's hesitation, Kei replied, "No."
        Nogura blinked.  "I beg your pardon, Consultant?"
        "I said no," Kei repeated.  "Turn up your hearing aid, grandpa."
        A titter ran around the room, punctuated by a harsh (and punch-
to-the-thigh-truncated) bark of laughter from Valeris.
        "Kindly address counsel with respect," said Commodore Stone
touchily.
        "Sorry," Kei replied.  "No, I never had reason to suspect that
the man with whom I shared my bed was losing his mind.  Clear enough?"
        "Are you aware that the WDF's own chief medical officer logged
suspicions to the contrary?"
        "Those logs are bullshit," Kei replied bluntly.  "Jenna never
wrote any such thing about Ben."
        "And how would you know that?"
        "Because I broke into her office and read all her goddamn files
when we had him locked up in his room," Kei replied, "trying to get a
line on what the hell was going on.  If there had been anything in there
about that, I'd remember."  She laughed humorlessly.  "Those logs you're
so proud of?  Those are Jenna's files on -me.-  I read those that day
too, and boy, didn't that just piss me off.  'Course, now we know she
was right."
        Nogura raised a skeptical eyebrow.  "Dr. Steen was in the habit
of referring to you with masculine pronouns?"
        Kei shrugged dismissively.  "Cut.  Paste.  So easy even a
Starfleet shyster can do it."
        Nogura went purple with rage and spluttered while the whole room
laughed; Fitzpatrick banged his gavel and bellowed for order, then
sternly instructed the reporter to strike the last sentence of that
remark and the witness to behave herself, goddammit, this isn't a fifth-
grade debating society.
        With the palpable desperation of a man who feels his whole world
slipping away from him - Gryphon could almost relate - Nogura plunged
on, "Perhaps we had best turn to the events in the Seventh Street
School.  Can you tell us in your own words what happened?"
        Kei calmly, dispassionately described the entire mission,
starting with the insertion and ending in the corridor outside the
school principal's office.  Her voice quavered only slightly as she
described seeing a man in Shadow Squad-style CVR-3 armor massacre an
entire class of fourth-graders, then take a shot at her before fleeing
through a doorway - one through which, a moment later, Benjamin Hutchins
emerged looking as if he'd forgotten something.
        "And what happened then?"
        "I lost my -shit- is what happened then.  What the hell mass
murderer gets away with it and then thinks, oh no, wait, forgot my keys,
comes back to where he knows there's a Trouble Consultant waiting to
shoot him?  It's only recently occurred to me that that doesn't make any
goddamned sense whatsoever."
        Nogura stared at her, fumbling for words, and then asked, "Am I
to understand that it is now your testimony that you don't believe the
first man - the one who shot the children - was the same as the second
man - the one who came through the door and was subsequently shot by
you?"
        Kei nodded.  "That's correct," she said, and then continued in a
perfectly candid, almost cheerful tone of voice, "It's now my testimony
that I am a witless bint and I nearly destroyed the galaxy.  If anybody
ought to go to the clink, it's me, for -criminally negligent stupidity.-
There.  I said it.  Goddammit, I feel better."
        Nogura eyed her narrowly.  "Have you been drinking, Consultant?"
        "Most of the last century, Commodore," Kei replied.  "When I
wasn't whacked up on something harder.  But not today."  She shook her
head, eyes closed, and added almost inaudibly, "Not today."
        "I... have no further questions of this witness, your honors,"
said Nogura, staggering slightly as he felt for his seat behind him and
then fell into it.
        Spock rose.  "Consultant Morgan," he said.  "I have only one
question for you today."  He paused for just the right dramatic moment,
then asked simply, "Why are you here?"
        Kei took a deep breath and let it out in a long, slow sigh.
"Because I'd like to get my first good night's sleep in 92 years
tonight, Mr. Spock.  That's all."
        "Thank you, Consultant.  I have nothing further."
        Fitzpatrick dismissed her; without looking at the defendant, she
rose and went to the back of the room.  There were no seats back there,
so she stood by the door until one of the midshipmen, whether out of
some misplaced idea of gallantry or just to be nice, got up and gestured
her into his.

        Nogura did what he could, summoning all his vitriol and all his
powers of obfuscation to imply that the scientific evidence, which he
had earlier dismissed as inconclusive, somehow now demonstrated the
defendant's guilt absolutely; that the witnesses presented by the
defense were, in large part, a pack of perjurers and probably pirates
into the bargain; that Commander Saavik's fanciful tale of frontier
justice was creative, and surprisingly well-delivered for a Vulcan's
lie, but merely a fable in the end; that Zefram Cochrane was a drunkard
and a boor; and that Kei Morgan was a notorious drug abuser whose
testimony could not be counted for anything (notwithstanding that he had
called her, not Spock).
        Which might have been enough at least to sway one member of the
panel and deadlock the tribunal, until Spock rose to give his summation.
        "Gentlemen, I do not envy you the decision that stands before
you.  You are to decide nothing less than the worth of a man's entire
life.  Is this man worthy to live?  Or must he die?  Of course, two of
you have been starship captains, and the other is a physician.  The
power of life and death is one with which you are not unfamiliar.
        "But this case is a difficult one.  The scientific evidence is
ambiguous.  The testimonies of witnesses conflict, sometimes
contradicting even themselves.  Very well, the scientific evidence is
not conclusive.  Discard it.  Instead... search your feelings."
        Apart from the Vulcan's deep, rhythmic, perfectly enunciated
cadences, there was utter silence in the courtroom.  People leaned
forward in their seats, unwilling to miss a moment.  Leonard McCoy
looked like someone had just handed him a gold brick, or possibly hit
him with it.
        Leaning forward with the rest, Raoul Duke unconsciously seized
hold of Valeris's left hand with his right; the left was clenched and
banging rhythmically on his thigh as he hissed low around the empty stem
of his cigarette holder, "(Yeeesssssss.)"
        Spock went on, "Are those who have told you of the goodness, the
decency, the courage and integrity, of this man - are they all liars or
fools?  Or, when their voices combine to tell you unequivocally that
this man could not possibly have done the foul thing of which he is
accused, will you believe them?"
        He turned away from the tribunal, paced to the middle of the
room, and then rounded on them, fixing them with his dark gaze and
saying in a voice which had its normal pitch and volume, but many times
its usual intensity, "-What do your instincts tell you?-  Ask yourselves
this, and pay heed to the answer... for instincts are ancient things,
older and more deeply rooted in the sapient heart than science or logic,
and they are very hard to fool."
        Spock walked slowly to his place behind the defense table, laid
his hands on either side of the datapad he had not once consulted during
the case, and said, "Thank you.  This concludes the defense."
        Fitzpatrick stared at Spock for a few moments, as if he had
forgotten what he had to do next; then he cleared his throat and said,
"Tha... thank you, Commander Spock.  This court will stand in recess
while the tribunal considers its decision."
        After the flag officers left the room, an excited babble broke
out among the spectators while Nogura sat at his table and fumed.
Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy descended from the gallery to flank the
advocate for the defense.
        "By God, Spock, I never knew you had it in you," McCoy said with
a delighted grin.  "That was -magnificent.-"
        Spock inclined his head graciously.  "Thank you, Doctor.  I only
hope it was sufficient."
        "Sufficient?" McCoy replied.  "You could've gotten Garth of Izar
off with that speech."
        "I sincerely hope not, Doctor.  Captain Garth truly -is- a
murderous madman.  Advocating his acquittal would be... distasteful."
        "Well, I didn't say you -would- have."
        "Spock, I have to know," said Kirk, beaming.  "Where did you
learn to appeal to the -emotions- like that?"
        "From you, Captain," Spock replied calmly.  "In the course of
our travels together you have made many such appeals to various beings
we have met.  I learned it from watching you."
        Kirk looked puzzled.  "-Me?-"
        Spock nodded.  "Yes, Captain."  Then, after a moment's pause,
the Vulcan composed himself into a startlingly accurate impression of
Kirk's stance and body language, pitched his voice a bit higher than
normal, and said with intensity in his eyes, "WE.  The... PEOPLE."
        Kirk stared at him; so did McCoy, but then the doctor burst into
laughter so intense he nearly fell down.
        "Do I really... -pause- like that?" Kirk wondered when McCoy had
control of himself again.
        "You do, Captain.  And to very good effect.  It is a rhetorical
technique I also endeavored to adopt in this proceeding."
        Kirk blinked.  "Well."  Then, with a self-mocking smile, he
added, "I hope I don't become... self-conscious after this."
        "I do not think that is a worry you need have, Captain," said
Spock imperturbably, setting McCoy off again.
        "However it comes out, Mr. Spock," Gryphon put in, "you have my
thanks.  I couldn't have asked for a better defense."
        "Thank you, Captain," said Spock.  "I have done my best."
        Saavik descended to the courtroom level as well, though in her
case it was a matter only of coming down one row and making her way
around the rail.  She sat in the empty chair next to Gryphon and said,
"I believe congratulations are in order."
        "Shh!  Jesus, Saavik.  Not yet," Gryphon replied, shaking his
head.  He looked around for some wood to touch, but was thwarted by the
future.
        "I am sorry," Saavik said in the tone she used when she was
humoring him and wanted him to know that she was.  "I retract my
blatantly premature prediction."

        They waited for a tense hour, then 90 minutes, through the usual
adjournment time and into the dinner hour.  When the tribunal returned,
the room recomposed itself; almost no one had left, though some were
wondering if they were just about to be dismissed for an evening recess
while the tribunal kept at it.
        This expectation was scotched when Fitzpatrick announced,
"This court has reached its verdict.  The defendant will rise."
        Gryphon got to his feet - and so, behind him, did all 44 of the
Invincible's survivors, Valeris included (and a lifesize hologram of
Vision, to boot).
        "What's the meaning of this?" Commodore Stone demanded.
        Saavik spoke for them: "We are the surviving officers and crew
of the starship USS Invincible, your honor.  We stand with our captain."
        Stone looked as if he might make some further comment, but
Fitzpatrick only nodded.
        "Very well.  Benjamin D. Hutchins, late of the Wedge Defense
Force, you are accused of multiple murder in conjunction with the events
of the Musashi Incident in 2288, as well as a host of subsequent crimes
stemming from your time as a galactic fugitive.
        "In the matter of the Musashi murders, this court finds you not
guilty."
        The roar that erupted when the admiral pronounced these words
could not be quelled by simple gavel-banging, and indeed he didn't
bother to try for several seconds longer than strict military decorum
called for.  The Starfleet mids, as caught up in the proceedings as
everyone else, cheered and threw their caps in the air as if at
graduation.  So did Maia Sterling, who then, just for good measure,
seized the person next to her and planted a great big kiss on him.
(Inspector Grissom seemed slightly taken aback, but not offended.)  From
the back, Valeris let out a piercing cry of, "That is TOTALLY WICKED!"
and began dancing.  Raoul Duke just grinned around his cigarette holder.
Zefram Cochrane tossed back a slug from his hip flask, then offered it
to Kei, who shook her head and left the room.
        When Fitzpatrick finally did have the room quieted, he went on,
"This verdict nullifies the remaining charges.  You are a free man,
Captain."  Fitzpatrick rose, as did his colleagues.  "Clear skies to
you," he said, nodding to Gryphon.  "This tribunal stands adjourned."

        Someone had alerted the Lucky Dragon, a Chinese restaurant in
San Francisco favored by Starfleet Academy mids, and United Earth Navy
cadets before them, for centuries.  By the time the victorious party and
various hangers-on arrived, the place was cleared for action like an
eighteenth-century man-of-war, tables all pushed together, clean linens
prepared, staff bolstered.
        "Well, Captain Hutchins," said Kirk, raising a glass, "you're a
free man.  What are your plans?"
        "I don't know," Gryphon admitted.  "I think first I might go
back to Salusia and ask that cute Kumbari air traffic controller to
dinner."
        Kirk's hazel eyes twinkled.  "I hate to disappoint you, Captain,
but she's already got plans the next time Enterprise is in the system."
        Gryphon gave a delighted laugh.  "Oh, well bowled, Captain Kirk,
well bowled.  A cup of tea with you, sir."
        A Starfleet Academy midshipman, dressed in the iridescent
silver-grey tunic of his station in the service, stepped up to the table
at something like attention and said, "I have a telegram for Captain
Hutchins."
        "I guess that's me," Gryphon said, putting up his hand.  The mid
handed him a yellow envelope, saluted, and then about-faced and vanished
into the crowd.  Gryphon looked after him for a moment, then shrugged
and tore the end off the envelope.  What was within, to his surprise,
was not a standard yellow telegram form, but rather a sheet of plain
note paper with a message written on it in a bold, angular, very
familiar but utterly unexpected hand:

Gryphon:
        Congratulations on winning the trial.  I never truly believed
in your guilt, but you must remember, at that time, my closest aide
had betrayed me, and I believed my dream to have died.  I had to get
away and do some thinking, and when I returned to Utopia Planitia you
were nowhere to be found.  I have spent these last many years remaking
the Shipyards into a true masterwork, suitable for the enterprise (if
you can pardon the pun) that you and I are about to embark upon.  I
await your arrival via Federation starship Enterprise most eagerly; we
have much to discuss!

                                        Yours,
                                        --F.

        He read it twice, then tucked it inside the flap of his uniform
jacket and turned to Kirk, who was grinning at him.  "Did you know about
this?" he asked.
        "I had some advance warning, yes," Kirk replied.  "But there's
no hurry.  I'd just as soon give my people some shore leave on Earth
before we leave, if it's all right with you."
        Gryphon smiled.  "Hell, he's waited 92 years, Wolfgang can wait
a little longer," he said.  He spotted a large, dark-clad figure rise
from the next table over and turn to leave.  "Zoner!  Yo!"  MegaZone
turned.  "You takin' off?"
        MegaZone nodded.  "Yeah.  Nothing more for me to do here.  Guess
I'll move on.  I got a message last night about a job out on the Rim."
        "Huh.  Okay.  I thought maybe you'd like to come back to Zeta C
with me, see what Wolfgang's cooking up," Gryphon said casually.
        "Nah," Zoner replied.  "I'm... that's not my life any more.  But
hey.  Congratulations, man.  Take care of yourself.  I'll... I'll see
you around."
        Gryphon knew that there were times to press a point with Zoner
and times to let it go, and that this was one of the latter.  "Okay," he
said again.  "Take it easy."  Zoner raised a hand in a slightly awkward
wave, then turned and pushed his way through the crowd to the door.
        Gryphon shook his head sadly, took another sip of tea, and said
to no one in particular, "Ah, well.  Give it time.  He'll come around."
Then, as if a thought had just occurred to him, he leaned toward the
person to his right and said in a low, private voice,
        "Commander, I can't help but notice that you've had your hand on
my leg under the table this whole time.  I hope you're not harboring any
unusual ideas about what today's activities may mean for our
professional relationship moving forward."
        "Of course not, Captain," Saavik replied at once.  "Not at all."
        When her hand did not move, Gryphon merely nodded with a smile,
reached for the beef teriyaki, and said, "Good, good.  Carry on, then.
Mister Chekov, the teapot stands by you, sir," he added brightly.
        A moment later, Spock appeared from the buffet with a plate of
vegetarian dim sum in one hand and a thick sheaf of documents in the
other.  The former he put in front of Saavik; the latter he handed to
Gryphon.
        "My final act as your legal advocate," he explained to the
Earthman's questioning look.  "These are the documents you must sign to
complete the bureaucratic processes surrounding your trial."
        Gryphon flipped through the papers, skimming and signing them,
then paused at the last sheet and asked, "What's this one?"
        Spock looked to see which one he meant, then replied in utter
deadpan, "That is an invoice to the GENOM Corporation, claiming the two
hundred fifty million Standard credits the company has promised to the
person who apprehends the Butcher of Musashi.  It will be submitted the
moment HN1's trial is complete - which I am assured will be no later
than Monday."
        Gryphon stared at the form for a moment, then signed it with a
huge flourish and handed the whole bundle back to Spock with a grin.
        "I love hangin' with you, man," he said.
        Spock raised an eyebrow and replied, "Indeed."

                         MONDAY, MARCH 17, 2380
                         STARFLEET HEADQUARTERS

        Gryphon stood in one of the main transporter rooms, waiting for
certain of his officers - some of whom, he had discovered in the last
few days, were apt to become complete slugabeds when ashore with nothing
to do.
        After a few minutes of dull time-killing, he heard the door
hiss-squeak and turned to see, of all people, Vaughn Gross, barefoot and
carrying a large, thick blue binder.
        "Morning," said Reality, raising a hand.
        "Morning," Gryphon replied.  "I see you found your binder."
        "Yeah," Reality replied.  "Oh hey, there was something I
wanted to tell you about that, but...oh well, that's okay, it can
wait.  Hey, congratulations on winning your trial.  I hope you get the
Wedge Defense Force back up and running again.  How's Kei?"
        "I dunno," Gryphon said.  "I haven't seen her since the trial.
I think she's avoiding me."
        "Oh."  Reality looked momentarily downcast.  "I'm sorry to
hear that.  Oh well... she'll come around.  Probably just needs to
think.  I haven't found Iczer-1 yet, but the millennium is young.
Anyway...take it easy.  I guess I'll see you around."
        "Bye, Vaughn," said Gryphon as Reality turned and left the
room.  He turned to the Starfleet technician manning the transporter
console.  "-That- was surreal," he commented.  The tech nodded in
agreement.
        A few more minutes passed.  The door opened again.  Gryphon,
caught on the far side of the room in mid-pace, turned to see Valeris -
not quite as he would have expected.  She had removed the perforated
metal band from her hair, letting it fall into a fetching but most un-
Vulcan disheveled gamin, and she was wearing what appeared to be a
Hawaiian-print sundress and a pair of John Lennon shades.
        "Hello, Valeris," he said, covering his surprise.  "How are
you?"
        She advanced across the room toward him, looking as if she
didn't quite know what to say.  "I... I have been thinking about what
you told me," she said slowly, looking down at the floor.  "About the
possibility of starting all over again.  And while... what I have
become... is not quite the form I would have expected my symbolic
rebirth to take..."  She looked up suddenly, her face breaking into a
great beaming smile.  "It's -fucking- -awesome.-"
        The transporter tech, who had never seen a Vulcan act anything
like this, suddenly went off into a painful-sounding coughing jag.
        "Before I leave to take up my new life in full, though, there is
something I must do," she said.  "It has become increasingly important
to me that, for whatever little it's worth, I apologize to you."
Looking troubled, she went on, "I know that words alone cannot erase the
harm I've done, but I hope that in some way, what I've experienced since
has helped to balance the karmic scales... and I am truly sorry."
        Gryphon regarded her thoughtfully for a few moments, then
smiled.  "I'll tell you what.  Stay with Duke.  Learn to see the cosmic
truth.  And when you're ready, come and see me.  I'll have a job for
you... and I'll forgive you."
        He wasn't expecting that response to delight her so much that
she'd throw her arms around him and kiss him with a high degree of
Vulcan technical expertise, but there it was.
        "Ahem," came a voice from the door.  Valeris broke off her show
of gratitude, turned, and blushed a comely greenish hue.
        "Oh!  I am sorry.  You must have much you wish to discuss.  I'll
be going."  She turned, gave him a quicker second kiss, said in a lower
voice, "I'll see you," and then trotted cheerfully past Kei and out the
door.
        Kei looked after her with a bemused expression for a few
moments, then turned back to Gryphon and asked, "What is it with you,
anyway?"
        Gryphon shrugged.  "I wish I knew, I'd sell it and make a
fortune.  Hey, Ensign, take five, huh?"
        "Sir?" said the transporter operator.
        "Beat it!  Go find my officers or something."
        "Uh... yessir."  The tech departed.
        Gryphon clapped his hands, rubbing them together.  "So!  What
brings you to this transporter room?"
        Kei looked uncertain as to the answer.  "I, uh... I dunno
really," she said.  "I just wanted to say... "  She stepped closer, put
her hands on his shoulders, then fell against him, closing her arms
around him.  "I'm sorry," she said into his shoulder.  "I really fucked
up."
        He put his arms around her in turn and said, "I can't argue with
that."
        She leaned back a little, gave him an accusing look, and said,
"You're supposed to say something comforting."
        "Sorry.  I'm used to dealing with Vulcans."
        "So I saw," Kei said with a little ghost of her old smirk.  She
disengaged, took a step back, but left one hand on his shoulder.
"Anyway... helluva stupid thing to say after all this time, but there it
is.  'I'm sorry, I really fucked up' pretty much covers it.  I'm just
glad I could make it to your trial and do what I could to put it right."
        "Well, you sure did -that,-" said Gryphon appreciatively.
"They're going to be talking about your testimony for years.  Having
something blow up in your face like that is probably going to be called
'the Nogura Maneuver' at the academy from here on out."
        She laughed.  "Yeah... probably."  She hesitated, looking
awkward.  "Well, uh... I gotta go.  HB's waiting for me."
        Gryphon reached up and covered her hand on his shoulder with his
own.  Looking her in the eye, he asked gently, "Does he make you happy?"
        She smiled a little shyly.  "Yeah.  Yeah, he does."  Glancing
down, she thought over her next remark, then met his eyes again and
said, "He's the first guy that does in a long, long time."
        Gryphon nodded.  "That's all I can ask for," he said.  Releasing
her hand to cup the side of her face in his palm instead, he added,
"Hang onto that.  It's awfully rare in this life."
        "I know.  I understand that now."
        Gryphon smiled.  "Good."  He patted her face, then let his hand
drop to his side.  "G'bye, Kei.  See you around."
        "Yeah.  I, uh... yeah.  I'll see you.  Don't be a stranger."
        She looked like there was more she wanted to say, but after a
moment she left it and just walked away, pausing when the door opened to
look back and smile.  Out in the hall, Gryphon could see Hellboy
slouching against the far wall, hands in his coat pockets; he looked up
when the door opened, met Gryphon's eye, and looked taken aback when the
Earthman smiled and gave him a little reverse nod of acknowledgement
rather than the glowering eyefuck he probably expected.  Kei took his
arm and led him away; he looked back, behind her shoulders, giving
Gryphon that same blank look of surprise until the doors closed and cut
them off.
        Chuckling, Gryphon returned to pacing.  A moment later the
transporter tech returned, and shortly after that Gryphon's communicator
beeped.
        "Hutchins," he answered.
        "Surprise here, Captain," Max Hunter's voice replied.  "We've
just formed up with Enterprise and downloaded their navigational data.
We'll be a day or so behind you, but we'll see you at Zeta Cygni."
        "Very well, Mr. Hunter, carry on.  Clear skies.  Hutchins out."
        "Surprise out," Hunter replied.  Gryphon closed the
communicator, smiling, and tucked it away.
        A few moments later, the door opened and Saavik entered,
followed closely by Jamie and Vanessa.
        "It's about time you got here," he said mock-grumpily, unable to
pull it off even a little thanks to the big grin on his face.  "There's
a man waiting for us, you know."
        "He has waited 92 years," Saavik replied matter-of-factly; then,
with a tiny, tiny smile, she added, "Wolfgang can wait a little longer."
        Gryphon laughed and mounted the transporter platform.  Saavik
took the pad to his right, Jamie to his left, and Vanessa the one to the
left of that.
        "You're quite right, Mr. Saavik," he said.  "Let's go check out
our shipyards.  Energize!"
        The cool dislocation of the beam whisked them away.

                      And the rest... is history.

                         /*  The Rolling Stones
                          "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
                        Decca F.12782 (1968)  */

                      Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presented
                      UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE
                                Manhunt
			Part 6: Must Converge

                                starring
                     33/S Infiltration Unit GRP-HN1
                          Benjamin D. Hutchins
                           Maximilian Hunter
                             Teyynar Tarolo
                          Richard E. Sterling
                              Jaime Finney
                             Henry J. Lang
                               Sara Sidle
                           The Saenar Ripper
                          Giol'bertis Grissom
                                 Spock
                                Valeris
                               Raoul Duke
                             Edison Carter
                              Theora Jones
                          Leonard H. McCoy, MD
                             James T. Kirk
                  Several Enterprise security officers
                                MegaZone
                             Maia Sterling
                            Miranda Sterling
                             Scott Bernard
                             Mirrim Verron
                                 Saavik
                             Vanessa Leeds
                               Mira McRea
                  H.M. Gov't Minister for Home Defense
                   A Crown City Constabulary sergeant
                            A CCC Constable
                           Edward Fitzpatrick
                             Percival Stone
                              Philip Boyce
                           Heihachiro Nogura
                             Claude Radois
                           A Romulan soldier
                             A GENOM lawyer
                         Zefram Cochrane, Ph.D.
                               Kei Morgan
                     A Starfleet Academy midshipman
                              Vaughn Gross
                                Hellboy

                                   by
                          Benjamin D. Hutchins

                                  with

                              Chad Collier
                              Geoff Depew
                            Philip J. Moyer
                       and The EPU Usual Suspects

                     pejorative language consultant
                             Janice Collier

             Based on STAR TREK created by Gene Roddenberry

                          E P U (colour) 2009