[2008: MAY-JUN] *WINNER* Hospitality Reaches Across Many Borders

[Idril Mar]

It had all happened so fast. The young jaygee sat in the escape pod all by himself, just thinking over the happenings of the day before. His ship, the Sabre-class Wildcat, had been on a routine patrol near the Bajoran Badlands. They had been jumped by a pair of Jem'Hadar attack cruisers. The Captain had ordered the ship into the Badlands, trying to shake the attacking Dominion vessels, but to no avail. They were forced to turn and fight. The battle was sharp but the conclusion was predictable from the beginning. The Wildcat had been lost with all hands.

All hands but one, Scott Grissam thought to himself. Now here I am, stuck in the wandering storms of the Badlands, with no hope of rescue and not even anyone to share my misery with.

The pod started shaking and a hard crack on the hull brought his stomach up into his throat. For a moment, the human was worried that his pod was caught up in an asteroid field or something and he was about to be battered to death. Not that it would be any worse, really than the long lingering death he was looking forward to at the moment.

A rhythmic pounding began on the outside, sparking hope in Scott. A moment later the hatch popped open, revealing not the hard cold vacuum of space but a pair of toothily grinning Klingon warriors.

"Ah, the little human is still in one piece!" the first one exclaimed, showing an honest pleasure at the sight of the battered and dirty Starfleet officer. "Come on out of there, human, and let us look at you."

"My pleasure," Scott said, gladly dragging himself out of the pod and into the Klingon shuttlebay.

"What is your name, Starfleet?" the other Klingon asked.

"Lieutenant jg. Scott Grissam, Tactical Officer, USS Wildcat," the young man responded. "We got jumped by a couple of attack ships and I was the only survivor."

The Klingons nodded, appropriate concern seeming to cross their faces.

"I am sure your compatriots died with much honor, Scott Grissam," the first Klingon smiled and clapped him on the back. "I am Lieutenant K'tak son of K'tar, and this is Sub-lieutenant Marketh, son of Kargeth. You are aboard the IKS K'elmpek. Come, we will take you to the Sickbay and then we will show you what true Klingon hospitality is all about!"

The way the two hulking aliens broke out into deep booming laughs, compounded by the rumors he had heard at the Academy about Klingon medicine, made Scott look back at his escape pod wistfully. Maybe sitting in there hadn't been such a bad thing after all.

A day later, the K'elmpek was still on patrol. The Wildcat's tactical officer had found out that they were out hunting for Cardassian ships that sometimes attacked from the cover of the plasma storms. They had destroyed one already, what appeared to be an older Cardassian cruiser. Scott had wondered a bit why such a junker had been out on its own in a combat zone, but dismissed it.

The Sickbay had been as close to a chamber of horrors as he ever wanted to come. His bumps and bruises didn't warrant anything so fancy as a dermal regenerator, so he got a foul smelling salve rubbed into his skin by a Klingon nurse who could've done double duty as a member of the women's weight lifting team back home. Rolling his shoulders, he thought that he might actually get *more* bruises from that treatment than it was supposed to get rid of. On the whole, though, despite being rough and boisterous, the human felt at home. The Klingons were hearty eaters, if it was a bit odd food wise, liberal with their humor and with their fighting, and intense in their dedication to their cause. It was all a refreshing change, he thought as he hit the hot bunk just vacated by an officer going on duty, from the cool professionalism of a Starfleet vessel.

What seemed like a moment later, the ship rocked violently, throwing Grissam to the deck. Red tinged emergency lighting showed an empty room. He scrambled out into the hallway.

"What's going on?!?" he yelled to a passing Klingon crewman.

"Three Cardassians... this is indeed a good day to die!" a heavy slap on the back and a toothy grin was the response.

Three Cardassian cruisers? Scott thought to himself. Against one Bird of Prey? There was bravery and then there was folly and he had a strong suspicion that this was the latter. The Starfleet officer wanted to help, but had not gotten any sort of duty assignment; he was a guest of the Empire, after all, not a member of the crew. He made his way to the one place he could think of that would be completely out of the way of everyone: his escape pod from the Wildcat. Emerging onto the relative calm of the small shuttlebay, he thought for a moment. The pod was comforting, a link to his lost comrades. Grissam climbed into the pod and strapped in, less for any sort of safety than for a feeling of being where he was supposed to be, where he was out of the way. A crash from outside brought him out of his thoughts. A tangle of debris fell down onto the pod, slamming the door shut. Before he could unbuckle and try to get back out a huge explosion rocked the whole vessel and a fireball blew everything and everyone in the bay out into space.

"Oh no... not again..." the tactical officer thought to himself. He jumped up and looked out the window, praying that he wouldn't see exactly what he saw. The Bird of Prey was disintegrating into millions of pieces. Scott could do nothing except sink back into the bench and hope that some of his new friends had made it to the escape pods.

Another day in the Badlands passed and again, the young man was jolted awake by more shaking and another hard clang on the hull. Again the pod opened, this time revealing the shuttlebay of a Starfleet vessel; it was an Akira-class battlecarrier, from the look of it.

"Good to see you in one piece, Lieutenant," a Vulcan woman in a flight deck uniform said. "Are you injured?"

He shook his head. "Do you know if any other escape pods, from a Klingon Bird of Prey, have been detected in the area? They picked me up for a day but got attacked by some Cardies."

An eyebrow went up. "I am unaware of any at this time, but I will inquire. Do you know the name of the ship?"

"The K'elmpek. It was an older ship, but they still showed me a good bit of hospitality. I hope to have the chance to return the favor."

"Please report to Sickbay. I will arrange for quarters and contact you when I have more information on the Klingon vessel." The Vulcan turned her back and walked off. Scott sighed. Back into the grind of things, I guess, he thought to himself.

A couple hours later and he was resting alone in borrowed quarters when the door beeped. Who could that be?

"Come!"

A Lieutenant Commander from Operations walked in. Scott stood and snapped to attention.

"At ease, Lieutenant. You said that the ship who first recovered you was the IKS K'elmpek, correct?"

"Yes... did you find anyone?"

"No, and I doubt we will. The only vessel by that name was reported lost with all hands more than fifteen years ago."