Surefoot 20: One Man's Eden...

"Of course," Aurora replied, stroking his chest fur, "We are Free Spirits, at one with our drives and instincts." She glanced down. "Just as you are, it seems."

"Unless he's not really interested in sex," Dusk suggested.

"Mother's Cubs..." he breathed out, wondering where these women had been all his life.

*

SS Valley Forge, Bridge:

"Here," Captain Bakunin pointed to the star on the Bridge chart. "This was Eden's system. And this," He moved his finger to another point. "Is your new home, a moon circling Arcturus Prime." And now he indicated a blinking red light between the two. "And this is us. We have not taken your people off course. We are not diverting you anywhere. Your people can come up here at any time and see for yourselves."

Laura Lowell stood there, arms folded across her chest, looking dubious. "This could be faked."

Nearby, Kami split her attention between studying the girl's suspicious nature for a way to help ease the tensions between the Edenist youths and everyone else, and studying Sasha, currently standing nearby pretending to be focused on the fuel readouts but really watching the exchange between the girl and the Captain. But she still managed to offer, "I'm sure if you wanted to confirm the readings on the Surefoot-"

"Those could just as easily be faked, too."

"Why would they do that?" Sasha finally spoke up.

Laura glanced over, as if noticing the other girl for the first time. "It's part of the Starfleet Conspiracy! We're being taken to some camp in the middle of nowhere to be conscripted into your Death Armies!"

"What?" Sasha stepped forward, stopping only when Kami raised a blocking arm between them. "You're talking crap!"

"Really? Then why haven't we reached Arcturus Prime yet? We're travelling, like, a million miles a second!"

"Warp Four, actually," Sasha corrected archly. "About 19 million miles a second, which might seem a lot to someone not familiar with warp mechanics - or much of anything else. But the distance to Arcturus Prime is far, far greater, and the freighter can't go any faster, especially with the biodomes mounted, so it'll take you 115 days. There's no conspiracy going on."

Laura sneered at her. "You would say that! You're no better than that Baby Killer captain of yours."

Kami felt Sasha react, and immediately turned to face her, her gaze unignorable. "The only acceptable response you can have to that is to walk away. Do it. NOW." More softly, she added, "Please. I'll deal with this."

Sasha stared back, the conflict clear in her expression. Then, to her credit, she nodded stiffly and departed the Valley Forge's Bridge, not even looking in Laura's direction.

Kami then turned to the other girl, drawing closer, reaching out and taking her hand, measuring her voice and expression. "Sweetheart, you have the wrong impression of Starfleet. We are not murderers, not warmongers." She led her aside, her voice dropping. "Yes, we have weapons - but we also have rules, principles, guidelines that tell us to use those weapons only as a last resort. Starfleet Directive 001 says 'Members of Starfleet will take any and all reasonable measures to preserve life, in whatever form it might take'." She squeezed Laura's hand. "All life is precious. You believe it. So do we."

Laura grunted, sounding unconvinced.

Then Kami drew even closer, squeezing tighter until the girl winced in pain, as the Caitian whispered, "But if you call my husband a Baby Killer again, I'll forget those principles just long enough to make you profoundly regret opening your ignorant little mouth. Do you Reach?"

She Reached.

*

Sasha entered the jungle biodome, feeling the hot swaddling air hit her lungs as she used the meditative techniques Kami and T'Varik taught her to control her temper. The Counselor had been right; leaving that blinkered, opinionated Nature Child behind was the only acceptable response.

"You look like you could chew your way through the bulkhead."

She turned to see an older human male in a robe with some of the drones she'd seen waddling about the freighter. He was pruning sickly leaves from a thick bush of olive-green triangular leaves, but stopped and smiled at her. "Howdy."

She recognised him as Mr Lowell, the closest thing these people had to a leader. "Um, Howdy, Sir. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you."

"You're not. Young people are always welcome here to enjoy the beautiful greenery from our former world. I don't know how you people can restrict yourselves to the cold, sterile corridors of your starships, cutting yourselves off from Nature's Blessed Touch. I would die if I was forced to encase myself in hard metal, and wear those confining clothes."

"It's... not so bad, Sir. Starships are comfortable places - as are our uniforms - and we have Arboretums, and Holodecks-"

The man smiled and shook his head. "How can any of that possibly compare to what we have here?" He drew closer, handing over the pruning shears to one of the drones as he did so. "Our Eden was once covered in beauty like this. Then it was poisoned. Fatally." An ineffable sadness eclipsed his gaze. "We struggled to try and stop the inevitable. And then, once the inevitable was accepted, we focused on saving what we could."

She nodded politely. "How did you manage to arrange all this? The transport, the biodomes, settling on Arcturus Prime?"

"The Bounty of Eden: we produced a high-yield grain on our former world called heptatriticale. The Valley Forge's hold is filled with barrels of it; it helped earn us a new homestead, and the means to take us there. Nature provides."

Then her combadge chirped. "Commander T'Varik to Ensign Hrelle: Alpha Squad members Rrori and Kitirik were due to end their shore leave on the Valley Forge 2.3 minutes ago, but they have not returned to the designated beam-back point. The sensors indicate they are both in the biodome you are currently occupying; please instruct them that I am prepared to transport them back and file charges of being Absent Without Leave, should they continue to fail to comply."

"Understood, Commander. Ensign Hrelle out." She looked around.

Lowell smiled, pointing in two different directions. "Your furry friend is with some of the young women of our community-"

"Well now, there's a surprise."

"And I believe the serpentine one is with his new girlfriend."

"Girlfriend?" Sasha shook her head. "Thank you, Sir. If you'll excuse me?"

She found Rrori first, just as Lowell had described, amidst a group of naked women. Keeping themselves busy. Vigorously busy. Sasha almost turned around to go find Kit first, but steeled herself and called out, "Meow! Put those women down and get dressed, it's time to go home! Now!"

Then she walked away, shaking her head in amazement at how flexible Caitians could get.

She found Kit by a hidden pool, fed with a gurgling waterfall, snatching insects from the air with his tongue - and in the company of a figure that looked remarkably like him, only with a different skin colour and texture. They were chatting away happily, Kit's displaying a level of delight Sasha had rarely seen in him, and it made her smile. "Hello there."

The two figures stood up, Kit holding out his hands beckoningly. "Respected Squad Leader! Come, come! I want you to meet Piri! She is from Qarar, too, she fled earlier than I did! Piri, this is my squad leader and good friend Sasha Hrelle!"

Sasha smiled and nodded. "Pleasure to meet you. I didn't know there were other off-world Qarari."

"Neither did I!" Kit declared. "She left to study archaeology! She's been with the Edenists and is going onto Earth and she likes Zeroball and Yarmok music and found some Debrune ruins on Eden and her favourite colour is chartreuse and-"

"And you can tell me the rest on the way back to ship; your shore leave ended a couple of minutes ago, and T'Varik contacted me to get you."

Kit glanced down at the chronometer fastened to the inside collar of his shirt, his colours shifting to reflect his crestfallen mood. "Respected Squad Leader, I've hardly been here, surely I can stay longer with Piri? It has been only a short time, and tomorrow she will be collected and gone. I will take on extra duty shifts on my return."

"Sorry, Kit, orders are orders." She reached up and patted him on the arm. "Come on, it's no big deal."

He swatted her arm away, his colours flaring red with anger now. "No. It is 'no big deal' for you. You humans are all over the Galaxy. We can't get away from you! You will never know what it means to be a minority of just a handful, to not see another of your race for years! And with things the way they are on our homeworld, I will probably spend the rest of my life in exile! Alone!"

Taken aback by the outburst, Sasha paled and swallowed before responding, "Kit... you're not alone. You have us, your friends-"

"My so-called 'friends' are too busy rutting each other like animals and preparing to graduate and move onto separate lives! They no longer have time for their funny little bug-eating asexual friend! You can go tell the Respected Commander T'Varik to go to Hell! And the rest of you can follow her!"

Sasha stared at him, completely caught off-guard by his reaction, and not knowing what to say to him. Instead she stepped back, her eyes still on him as she touched her combadge. "Hrelle to Surefoot: I've made contact with Mr Rrori, and he's on his way to the beam-back point, but I'm authorising additional shore leave for Mr Kitirik."

T'Varik's voice filled the air, making Kit start, as if the Vulcan had appeared to scold him. "And what is your reason for doing this, Ensign?"

"I'll... explain on my return. Hrelle out." She looked down on her friend and squadmate, her face and voice taut. "There. I expect you back on duty at the start of the next shift."

Kit's anger had ebbed, replaced with an obvious shock at the level of his own vitriol towards her. "Good Friend Sasha, I-"

"We'll talk about your attitude when you return." Sasha nodded curtly at Piri, turned and departed.

She made her way through the underbrush, emerging to find Rrori approaching, still dressing... and limping, his voice breathless. "T-Thank you-"

She frowned at him. "You're thanking me? I thought you'd be pissed off at being interrupted-"

He stopped, wincing in discomfort. "I have- I have been with them for six hours. All of them. Multiple times. Every position imaginable... and a few I never thought were."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it."

"They- They wouldn't let me leave, not even rest. I am... I am so very, very spent-"

Sasha rolled her eyes. "Oy vey, you're like the kid who got stuck in the candy store overnight..."

*

Back at the pool, Kit sat down again, staring at the gurgling water, stills stunned by his outburst. "I- I was unforgivably rude to Good Friend Sasha."

"Yes," Piri agreed. "It felt good, didn't it? It took me ages to break free of our people's strict protocols of good manners. I found it difficult to throw off our societal shackles at first - and my Miradorn associates took cruel advantage of that until I did."

But he remained inconsolable. "I should return, and apologise-"

He started to rise, but Piri took his hand and drew him back down again. "Wait... are you sure that Starfleet is the right path you need to take? There is literally a whole Galaxy of opportunity awaiting you."

He looked to her, genuinely considering her words, and until recently never expecting to do so. It was true; Starfleet might have once seemed the only path for him, the only future, when he had escaped Qarar, had corrective surgery and entered Starfleet Academy - all with their assistance. But though he was grateful for their help, their education, he wasn't bound to them like some indentured servant. He had seen enough of the rest of the Galaxy to know what awaited him. "You think... perhaps with you-"

She let go of his hand, her expression changing. "No, Kit. As much a pleasurable experience it has been to encounter another member of our race out here, especially one as intelligent and funny as you are, we should not try to forge a relationship."

"But- But we share a love of the sciences, and I have lived on Earth, and can instruct you-"

But she brought a clawed finger to his lipless mouth, silencing him. "No. It would not work between us. A shared heritage and love of sciences would not be enough, believe me." She dropped her hand, took his again. "But there is something you can do for me..."

SS Valley Forge, Aft Assembly Area:

Eydiir pressed the hypospray against the Edenist's neck. "There. As you will be in space for an extended period, this will assist you in acclimating and resisting the long-term effects of such travel."

The young man smiled. "Thank you, sister. Are you One?"

"If it will expedite your departure from my presence, then yes, I am." When he tried to hug her, she stepped back. "Please embrace a tree or a woodland creature instead. Next."

Nearby, the other Medical cadets, also providing the Edenists with immunisation and resistance boosters, continued to take note of the Capellan woman's attitude, allowing Gamma Squad's Bill Beaudine to quip, "I gotta admire your bedside manner, Eydiir."

"I am not at anyone's bedside," she pointed out dryly - though her manner softened a little when her next patient turned out to be a little girl. "But I will provide the minimal medical care required by these profligates."

Beta Squad's Bezra Pruhl knelt by a child of her own, the Trill running a tricorder around the boy. "Aww, how can you be so mean? These people have found Paradise, they're at one, in harmony with Gentle Mother Nature."

"I have read of this Terran myth; the Garden of Eden was an allegory created to explain the seeming cruelty of life, and to blame the exile from this Paradise on a woman for eating a fruit. And Nature is not gentle and maternal and harmonious; it is chaotic and brutal. And these people are fools." She glared at her next patient, a beatific young woman who seemingly didn't hear Eydiir's continued rant.

Epsilon Squad's Reyii Igavo was refilling her hypospray. "We do not have such myths on Betazed, but the idea of a life without hardship or strife is appealing."

"It is an illusion. And these people are wasting their lives..." She paused, noting the vacant, glassy look in the young woman's eyes. "Are you coherent? At least, by your limited standards?"

The girl smiled, reached up limply to touch Eydiir's cheek. "Beauti- Beautiful..."

Eydiir gently but firmly drew the hand away, prepared to dismiss it as yet another symptom of this stagnant society - but something made her retrieve her tricorder and scan the girl. "Miss, I would like you to accompany me to my vessel."

The girl's eyes brightened a little. "To make love?" She drew in to kiss Eydiir.

The Capellan stopped her. "Absolutely not."

*

USS Surefoot, Captain's/Counselor's Quarters:

Kami was purring as Hrelle gently but firmly kneaded her shoulders; she was relaxing, but still feeling the need to grouse. "That little wispy rainbow talks so much crap her ass must think it's out of a job."

"I know," he said distantly, enjoying his wife's scent, and the feel of her tail stroking his calf as his hands moved down the length of her spine, even as he noted the tension still in her muscles. "And I'm glad that Sasha listened to you and walked away. And that you didn't react aggressively, either."

"Umm... yeah."

He leaned in suspiciously. "Sugartail? You didn't do anything to her, did you?"

She looked at him. "In my defence, she really, really deserved it." Then the door chimed, and she rose quickly, grabbing her dressing gown as quickly as she did the distraction. "Ooh, a visitor! Go answer it, Esek, quickly!"

He grunted, slipping into his own as he drew up to the door, mentally guessing who it might be. And failing. "Mr Kitirik?"

The Qarari was still in his off-duty clothes, but looked downcast, distracted. "Most Respected Captain, please forgive me for this unexpected intrusion into your private residence."

Kami approached the doorway as well, concern on her face. "Kit? Is there something wrong?"

He looked to each of them in turn. "Apologies to you both again, but circumstances have arisen that force me to seek urgent wisdom that perhaps you two more than anyone else onboard can provide."

"Both of us?" Hrelle looked to his wife as he stepped back. "Well, I don't know what good I can do-"

"I've been telling you that for years," Kami joked, guiding Kit to the couch. "I heard that you met another member of your people over there. What's she like?"

He nodded. "Her name is Piri. She is an amateur archaeologist. She is travelling to Earth with some artefacts she discovered on Eden. And she wants me to inseminate her."

Hrelle was halfway to sitting down beside him, when he stopped and looked at Kami. "Inseminate?"

"Yes," she noted, more mockingly. "Remember what happened between us about six months ago? Oh, and you might want to close your gown and tuck Little Esek away." She focused on Kit again. "We don't know any more about your people's culture than what you've told us, but that seems rather... sudden."

"Piri never thought she would have the opportunity to have offspring until we met. Neither did I, for that matter. But she will be leaving the Valley Forge tomorrow; the window of opportunity to make any decision is small."

Hrelle rose again and moved to their private replicator, as Kami asked, "Are you looking to have a career break? Commander T'Varik might be better equipped to expedite that-"

"No thank you, Most Respected Counselor. Friend Piri does not require my companionship. Only my seminal contribution."

Hrelle returned with three teacups on a tray, setting them on the table, as Kami asked, "And how does that make you feel?"

Kit reached for a cup. "I am... disappointed in her attitude. But I suspect she is still strongly influenced by our culture. Qarari males and females do not form mixed partnerships, beyond arrangements for reproduction, and the males and females take the offspring of their own gender to raise. She desires to form her own clutch."

Hrelle lifted his own cup. "And what do you desire, Kit? Would you be satisfied with just being a sperm donor, and letting her go off to raise your children?"

The cadet stared into the contents of his own cup. "It would make sense for me to ensure the continuation of my genetic line, given the unlikelihood of my ever returning to my homeworld." He looked to them in turn. "Children do not necessarily require both parents present to thrive."

"True," Hrelle conceded, sipping. "Sasha had one parent for many years before I came into her life."

"And my firstborn Mirow after his father died," Kami added.

"And in fact, in some cases, the absence of a poor parent would be a benefit," Kit mused - though he sounded as if he was trying to convince himself of that.

"True, too." Hrelle looked to him. "But what does that have to do with you? Do you think you'd be a bad parent, Kit?"

"I..." Kit delayed responding to drink. "I have no experience-"

Kami smiled. "No one goes into parenthood with experience... except the influence we received from our own parents. Or those in our lives who acted as parents; Mirow wasn't just raised by me, but by my clan, and Sasha underwent something similar. And your clutch raised you, I understand."

"Yes." Kit looked up again at the couple. "May I ask a personal question, please?"

"Why are the Captain and I having a child?" Kami prompted, still smiling as her hand rested on her belly.