DISCLAIMER: The following story if fictional group of random thought particles from the recesses of my mind. Setting of the series are based of the works of Lurking Dragon's Rejuve Universe, in accordance with his writer's guide. If this offends carefully cultured sensibilities, or you have yet to reached the rank of major in what you think is society, then please recycle these electrons to save bandwidth sooner than possible. Editorial help provided by Timmythewiz
—Rogue (who's existence has yet to be disproved)
Pint-Sized Engineer
August 2773
As Commander Rodger Murphie sat in his office on Renewal Station, he paused from the seemingly endless paperwork, the worst part of the position of Chief Engineer as far as he was concerned. Though it had it's perks: it was a new station, so the tech was state of the art, but it also kept him busy as they worked all the bugs out of the system, and while it was a technically a Confederation installation, the remoteness of the the Shinho Colony, which Renewal was the high end of the planet's space elevator, meant he had a free hand in his work with no higher ranking engineers within easy commutation or travel range. Independence on a project of this size was a luxury engineers, even ones as good as Roger, seldom got to enjoy.
Shinho is near the edge of human explored space, it was here that humanity first encountered the Jalaxians. First contact was almost 50 years ago now, as they too explored this planet. While they are an feliniod race, they share a surprisingly unique characteristic with us, the joy of Dance, or as they call it D'jetar. Human had been discouraged for a long time by the lack of this trait in their partners in space, so dancing was something done in private, kelped alive by traditionalists. But the Jalaxians did not simply use dance as a past-time like we do, it a cultural focus point for them, top dancers being like human Holostars!
Given their focus on dance, the Jalaxians were beginning to feel quite alone in their passion. Upon discovering fellow dancers at last, the pulled out all the stops after first contact, by-passing the usual games of getting to know one another on the frontiers, and sent an Ambassador straight to earth just 2 years later, with second contact not even arranged yet, by-passing contact with many other races that even the humans have only nominal contact with. Ah, what a sight he made in Terran style tux and tails, as he greeted Confederation of Humanity's President, and asked her to Dance, the 40 year old Roger thought with a smile, and so very like them. They see their target, and they pounce. Some, well many, found Roger to be shockingly young for his position, not physically but chronologically that is, for he was only on his Kindern Cycle, and it's a rare soul who can get their Masters in Chandlerian Physics without rejuvenating to study it, but he had done it.
There were few on Shinho who shared his love for manipulating the physical world. While the colony's remoteness limited the types who wanted to join, there were as always a few of those independent types that that are not happy unless the are living on the edge of civilized space, but mainly Shinho drew the dancers and other artistic types from both species, who hope that Shinho will become a renaissance world for their love. This meant that most of the 'practical' types, such as Rodger was beginning to see himself grouped as, come to be married to the artist types, or even the political types that got colony off the ground in secret "trade" discussions, like Roger's own wife Governor Melanie Murphie.
The Jalaxians have never let anything derail their efforts to form closer ties with humanity. The wife of a Jalaxian diplomat even waved her diplomatic immunity and accepted a sentence as a Penitatas rather than endanger the negotiations when she caused a scandal in a fit of jealousy. This drive extended to forming the joint colony. The problems faced were three fold: the first one was the remoteness of the colony to both home worlds, with the concomitant difficulties of defending the site from any outside aggressors. The second was budgetary, funding such an undertaking would be a huge expense, and budgets are always tight. The final was the issue governance, they barely knew each other's ways: how could a fair social structure be established that could withstand hidden cultural clashes. The Jalaxian government had an answer for all these issues. As to the defense issues and the budgetary objections, the Jalaxians agreed to foot the bill for the construction of a trade station, with whatever defense features Starfleet deemed necessary, including ship repair docks. The remainder of the costs were paid by the colonists themselves, as the modern economy has resulted in very few 'starving artists' to say the least! What's more, given Jalaxian's home world is 1.2Gs, they tend to be physically stronger than Humans, so the Jalaxian Marine Corp would be supply the ground pounders needed to form the foundations of the Colony Guard so Starfleet only needed to supply starbase personnel and fighter pilots to bring the defense forces up to strength. So Starfleet took no budget hit, without feeling they where comprising their duty to protect the colony. The Jalaxian answer to the the problems of fair governance was downright shocking! They suggested that the Colony should use Confederation law unmodified! The Jalaxians pointed they did not have rejuvenation technology themselves, and their own laws are probably going need to be overhauled if they successfully negotiate access to the technology, where as the Confederation of Humanity have been dealing with the social issue from the technology for a long time, it made Shinho the perfect test bed for whatever reforms they need to make.
Melanie was worried that the Jalaxians gave too much to get this colony established so as part of her discrete efforts to try to alleviate these power imbalances before they could cause trouble for the young colony, she convinced Rodger to take on the Kindern Jalaxian that was working at the other terminal in his office currently, as an intern as part of her practical physics course at Maiuchi Kindern High. Although the fact young Karlara Felixian was suggested to him because she was the daughter of Prime Minister Farlar, Rodger would have taken her on anyway, due to her ability, as the Colony would have trouble if it did not develop its next generation of engineering potential. Though it was hard for Rodger to believing she was only 16, due to the fact she received her Fujkawa treatment later than the human normal of 8 years old, as part of an experiment to when was the ideal time for Jalaxians to receive their modified version, so she looked much closer to a twentieth century 16 year old than a modern girl of her age. Luckily the the changes to her fur colorization on the back of her hands resulting is silver 'K's should help avoid any problems this could cause before she becomes an adult at 21. Still hormone problems, and probably an earlier need to rejuvenate means Jalaxian will probably need an earlier age to use the Fujkawa treatment.
Karlara was sitting at the terminal , in her school uniform, working on the design for her variable resistor music board, with Roger giving her pointers that doubled as a lesson in Ohms' Law, as well as her entry into Kindern version of the Science Fair that is to be held on Diaspora. While she was getting a bit of a head start, as most of her classmates would not even start thinking about the fair until September, that's one of the rewards of taking an internship like this. With Maiuchi being an equatorial capital, due to the Space elevator, and the fact most of the prime settlement areas are in the souther hemisphere, Maiuchi uses a southern hemisphere school year, the school year goes from February to late November, much easier on organization in Rodger's opinion having the school year contain within a year, rather than straddling two.
Suddenly Karlara looked at the time and declared "Oh darn, it's later than I though, if I don't get home on the next car, I'm going to be on the line! I promised I would look after my little brother this afternoon!"
"Don't worry, save your work, and I'll escort you through the restricted docking area, that way you will have plenty of time to catch the elevator car," Rodger kindly offered.
"Thank you Commander you really saved my tail." and with that Rodger led the way, though when the were half way though the docking area, when suddenly the flat handrail that was added even to level rooms as one of the cosmetic concessions to the Jalaxians turn from green to yellow. "Come Karlara we need to hurry to get you to the secure civilian section be the elevator hub, so I can get to Ops" Rodger informed his charge as he hurried her into the corridor, for the line had been adapted to serve as the alert indicator. But before they could get beyond that segment, the bar again changed color, this time to red, as the comm announced "Brace for impact!" shortly before heard the collision and saw the wall of fire rushing towards them from the docking area. Without thinking Rodger grabbed the tarp covering the equipment that was next to them, and wrapped Karlara in and used his body to shield the Kindern...
