A long period of comfortable silence lapsed before the two officers actually turned to the subject of the navigator.

“You can read Chekov pretty well, can't you?” Sulu asked, deciding to sound Del out again on the subject of telepathy.

The engineer was laying with his hands folded behind his head looking up at the stars. “He not t'ink very complicated t'ings,” Del replied easily.

“That's not exactly what I'm asking,” the helmsman pressed.

The Cajun turned his head enough to give Sulu the sort of impatient look he had before, but answered, “Well, yeah, I can read him like a book.”

“Can you read everyone like that?”

Del returned his gaze to the stars. “He not have shields,” he replied indirectly.

“Someone with more shields is more difficult?” Sulu wasn’t quite sure he wanted this confirmed.

The engineer nodded.

“But not impossible?”

Del shrugged.

There was definitely something about this planet and the creatures that they had encountered that was making Sulu feel odd. More information about telepathy from a telepath seemed like it couldn’t fail to relieve the anxious feeling inside his chest. “You knew what he was thinking before he did,” the helmsman stated almost as an accusation.

“When he upset, he tend to think in Russian,” the engineer replied, yawning. “I not have to wait fo’ the translation.”

“You hear that much of what he thinks all the time?”

“No.” Del was beginning to sound irritated. “He has zero abilities. He can't project thought.”

“Are there are a lot of people like that?”

“Not enough.”

“So you have to make an effort?” Sulu concluded. “Like you did back in the valley when we thought the dragon had him?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you do that often?”

“Prob’ly a lot less often than he t'ink I do.” Rolling over onto his side, the look on Del’s face clearly said that he decided to give Sulu just enough information to shut him up. “It like if you had a roommate who kept a diary...a really long diary with lots o’ borin’ stuff in it ‘bout laundry an’ differential equations an’ what passes fo’ good food in Russia... So, most o’ the time, who cares, right?”

“Yeah,” Sulu agreed, hoping this meant that the Cajun was about to tell the thing that would sate his sudden, irresistible hunger for knowledge about telepathy.

“An’ he keep this diary layin’ open on a table in the middle of the room every day -- day after day. An’ some days, you know there gonna be somet’ing in it ‘bout you or someone you know or somet’ing that happen that you want to know ‘bout.”

“You might take a little peak, then?”

Del rolled over back onto his back. “It hard not to.”

This information did nothing to sooth the itch in the helmsman’s brain. “What about me?” he asked, deciding to quit being coy and go straight to the point. “Is it that easy to read me?”

Del was silent for a minute. “You not like an open diary, if that what you worried about.”

Sulu shook his head. “I don't think that is what I'm worried about.”

The engineer let another silence lapse without commenting. “If you in trouble...” he said at last. “If anyone on a mission in trouble, I could prob’ly do what I did -- tell if they dead or not, get a general sense o’ their state of mind... if those were my orders.”

Sulu shook his head again. “Somehow I'm getting the feeling that you're willing to talk to me about what you can do, but you don't want to talk about what I can do.”

The engineer looked at the stars silently.

"So Chekov was right," Sulu concluded.

“About what?”

“There are things that scare you.”

Del turned and looked at him, his black eyes glittering in the firelight.

Sulu took a deep breath and fought the terror that rose up in him as the question he wanted to know the answer to so badly finally crystallized in his mind. “What do you know about what's going on inside my head and why won't you tell me?”

Del just looked at him for a moment, then sat up. “Chekov right about somet’ing else, too.”

“What?”

“We gonna have an early mornin’ tomorrow if we gonna be ready by the time them dragons get here,” the engineer said, knocking the dirt off the legs of his pants as if they were in the middle of a conversation about the weather.

“Del...” Sulu pleaded. The engineer sighed, clearly not wanting to explore this topic and yet hating to refuse to help.

“Lemme tell you a Cajun bedtime story,” Del said, coming to an unexpected compromise with himself.

“Okay,” Sulu agreed, surprised and puzzled.

Del poured a cup of Chekov’s bark tea for each of them before he began. “Once upon a time, there a beautiful young girl named Celeste BeauMonde, who live down in the bayou. Not only was she tres jolie, she had all the good gifts. She was smart as a whip an’ kind as a saint. She could sing like an angel an’ dance like the devil.”

DelMonde told the story lightly but intensely, like a Voodoo priest relating a teaching tale to an initiate. Every phrase seemed to have a second, deeper meaning. Each image seemed imbued with hidden symbolism.

“All the men in the parish want her, but no man caught her fancy until one day when a stranger pass through. He call himself Monsieur Reynard. He as dark an' strange as she was sweet an' fair. But despite how her papa fuss, an' her mama cry, an' all her kinfolk plead, Celeste BeauMonde would have no other.”

A nightbird sang in the distance in a minor key.

“After their wedding, he take her deep, deep, deep into the swamp where even the ‘gators don’t go. To her surprise, they come upon a grande maison. ‘This my house,’ say Mr. Reynard. ‘An' now it yours, too, ma cher. All I ask is that you leave me one room to my own-self.’’

“’What ever you say, mon mari doux,’ answer Celeste BeauMonde, good as gold -- but you know the idea of a room where she cannot go start to eat away at her from that moment on.”

"They pass a good time together until the day Mr. Reynard say he got to attend on some business. ‘Mind what I have said, cher,’ he say to her as he leave. ‘Some t’ings best left alone.’’

The significance of the last statement didn’t seem too hidden to Sulu in the context of their previous conversation.

“Celeste BeauMonde try to be good fo' a while, but her curiosity get th' best of her. She start to search an' search for that room where she cannot go. When she find the door her key will not unlock, it have a carvin’ over the doorway that say, “Etre audacieux, être audacieux, mais pas trop audacieux – Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.”

“She take a li’l hairpin from her golden curls an’ open that door right up. There not not'ing in that room but a big ol’ box. In carved letters on the top o’ that box it say, ‘Etre audacieux, être audacieux, mais pas trop audacieux de peur que le sang de votre coeur devrait courir le froid – Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, else the blood o’ your heart is bound to run cold.’”

Why does the Pandora in the story never stop and not open the box? Sulu wondered.

“Havin’ gone this far, Celeste BeauMonde could not bear to stop, so she slide another pin from her hair an' work that lock ‘til it open.” The Cajun paused and waited for the nightbird to finish its melancholy song. “An’ there not not'ing in that box but th' bones an’ locks o' hair o' all Mr. Reynard’s other wives that he done chopped up, ate, an' put into that box. And Celeste BeauMonde look around her an' can see now that whole house is made of not'ing but bone o' all the peoples Mr. Reynard has killed. When she see where she at, Celeste BeauMonde’s beautiful hair turn white, her eyes turn to stone, an' she become a ghost on the spot.”

Although he was anticipating that the plot would twist in this direction, the imagery brought the memory of the moment he’d found out the identity of the Hunter forcefully to Sulu’s mind.

“On a moonlit night, you can still see her walk through the heart o' the swamp singin’, ‘Remember me, mes enfants, and be bold, be bold, but not too bold, else the blood ‘o your heart is bound too soon to run too cold.’”

The hot tea in his hands wasn’t enough to take the chill out of the helmsman’s bones that had nothing to do with the cool night breeze.

“If that's a bedtime story,” he said, attempting to be light, “then Cajun children must learn to sleep with at least one eye open all night.”

“It safer fo’ ‘em that way.” Suddenly Del was no longer the voodoo priest giving him a coded story about his past, but just plain Del… Del, the bastard… Del, who wasn’t above screwing with someone else’s head just because they wouldn’t quit bothering him.

“I think that story was the longest answer to a question you've ever given me...” Sulu said slowly.

“I guess so,” he said, draining his cup of tea.

“...And it still boils down to ‘fuck off".”

The Cajun shrugged as he rose. “I just tryin’ to correct your view o' me. I not no mute. I can talk to people when I have a mind to.”

Sulu shook his head. Despite the way the engineer was trying to play off their conversation, the helmsman knew somehow that the anxiety that he had seen in his friend was very real. The Cajun had used the story – in the same way he usually used his music – to express his true feelings. Those feelings seemed to Sulu to be ones of undeniable dread connected to their shared past – to the Clave and the man whose name both of them now hated to hear – and an even more intense trepidation of a past that the Cajun refused to even acknowledge. Whose past? The helmsman wondered. What makes him so disturbed about something he didn’t experience?

Instead of waiting for these questions to be voiced, the engineer toasted his friend with his flask as he headed for the trail down to the cave mouth. “Bonne nuit, mon ami.”

Sulu sighed, knowing he’d have to content himself with not knowing the answer to the questions this planet raised in his mind or the equally troubling ones this conversation had raised. He tried to clear both from his mind as he poured himself another cup of tea and settled in for a full evening of planning for tomorrow’s potential battle with the dragon who’d stolen the shuttle… and for wishing Jilla were here. “Good night, Del.”

“Damn, that t’ing got some good eyes on it,” DelMonde exclaimed, squinting into the rising sun. “It already got us spotted. Damn near make a hawk look like he need bifocals.”

The three officers were standing on the top of plateau near the smoldering embers of their campfire watching the dark speck in the distance grow steadily larger.

Chekov pointed a whirring tricorder in the creature’s direction. “I wonder if the creature’s olfactory system augments its optical perception?”

“I dunno,” the Cajun replied. “It tend to t'ink in terms of 'Fire, hot. Shiny, good. Mammals, crunchy yummy treat' ‘stead of 'If I were preparin' a report on myself fo' the Vulcan Institute o' Xenobiology, I would be sure to note the followin' anatomical peculiarities…'”

Sulu was checking the charge on his phaser.

“Too bad. That line of thought would have been considerably more useful to us.” The navigator replied, then turned to the helmsman. “My readings indicate the most vulnerable areas should be the head and the chest.”

“Del,” Sulu ordered, “See if you can warn it off first.”

The engineer closed his eyes for a moment, letting his thoughts find those of the reptile far above them. “Damn,” he sighed.

“What?”

“It surprised that it breakfast makin’ noise that sound like talkin’,” he said, breaking out his own phaser and checking the settings.

“Try again.”

The Cajun reached out again, being a little more forceful this time. When he deciphered the images in its mind, he gave a short laugh. “Now it wonderin’ if the lichen it ate yesterday makin’ it hallucinate.”

“One more time,” Sulu requested.

DelMonde made a face. “Oh, charmin’…”

“What?”

“It t'ink it bite my head off to see what inside that make a talkin’ noise.”

“Gentlemen, I’m afraid we may have reached the limits of diplomacy,” the helmsman decided grimly. “Phasers on stun. Minimum setting. Minimum dispersal. We’re only trying to scare it off. When it comes around…. On my mark…And… Fire!”

The dragon screeched as three glowing beams hit it. It retreated quickly to a rocky peak opposite of them.

“Minimum setting only has minimal impact,” Chekov noted, as the dragon licked at its chest, looking surprisingly dog-like.

“I don’t want to kill it unless we have to.”

“You may have to,” DelMonde informed his mission commander as the creature gathered itself for a second run at them.

“Okay.” Sulu kept his eyes on the dragon as he adjusted his phaser. “Stay on stun, but increase the intensity to thirty percent. Let’s give it a bigger nudge.”

“You need to aim forward, Noel,” Chekov advised as they raised their weapons. “Anticipate the movement.”

It wasn’t that Del was a bad shot, he just wasn’t as insanely, inhumanly, obsessively good as these two target range junkies. The hand phaser wasn’t designed to be the precise long-range weapon they were forcing it to be. It was primarily a blaster, used when the whites, greens, or pinks of an enemy’s eye were clearly in view. Most Starfleet officers would never bother with adjusting the stun intensity from ten to thirty percent. Many had probably forgotten how to do so since most used only the two settings that his Academy instructor had referred to as “Sleepytime” and “Bye-Bye.”

With a team of regular personnel, Del figured that Sulu probably wouldn’t have ordered this sort of precision firing, but since the helmsman could hit ticks off a moving dragon’s back at nearly a mile away and knew Chekov was ready and able to do the same, he was able to indulge his penchant for marksmanship while at the same time insuring that they didn’t vaporize or unnecessarily wound their target. The choice wasn’t doing much to prevent one team member from feeling like a cross-eyed clown trying out for the Wild Bill Hickok Road Show, though.

“I hit it,” DelMonde retorted sourly.

“You hit the tail,” the Russian said, as the dragon started into a climb. “There’s not many nerve endings there.”

“It seem like the tail harder to hit than the chest,” the engineer muttered defensively.

Chekov raised an eyebrow, but kept his eyes on his target. “Were you aiming at the tail?”

“That a very leadin’ question, young man,” DelMonde replied archly.

Hitting the top of its arc, the reptile used the momentum to plunge downward in what the Cajun could hear him assume was going to be a terrifying plunge. The creature screamed with frustration and sheered off abruptly as two bright beams hit its body once more… and one beam came very close to hitting its foot.

“Try talking to it again,” Sulu ordered.

“It mad now.” Del shook his head, unable to get the thing to pay attention. “It t'ink it breakfast need to shut th' fuck up an' quit stingin’ it.”

“Not terribly intelligent, is it?” Chekov said, holding his tricorder up in the creature’s direction to check the damage.

“It smart enough to use tools,” Del reported, catching a plan form in their opponent’s mind. He pointed as the dragon picked out a boulder that it could heft in its clawed feet.

“It’s going to try to drop that on us?”

“Yeah. Apparently mashed breakfast still better than no breakfast.”

“Okay.” Sulu kept his eye on the dragon and it headed to the right and circled around slowly, trying to stay out of range as it gained altitude. “Three-pronged defense. Del, give your phaser to Chekov. When I give the order, concentrate on throwing any thought at it that you think will scare the thing. Chekov, maximum setting, disintegrate. I want you to get the rock without hitting the dragon. I’ll stay on stun and aim at the head.

Del released a long breath as he handed his weapon to the navigator and tried to think of something that would scare a giant flying lizard that would dive into phaser fire twice in a row. “Here ya go, Deadeye,” he said to the Russian. “Make your mama an’ me proud.”

The dragon was closing in above them now.

“Chekov,” Sulu said, using one hand to shield the sun from his eyes as he held the other arm out in a very straight line pointing up at the dragon. “If you could sequence your shots…”

The navigator shifted his stance so that one weapon was in front of the other. “Got it.”

“And…” Sulu waited a fraction of a second after the bolder had left the dragon’s claws. “Fire!”

“Sheee- it!” Del took an involuntary step backwards as the stone glowed out of existence with what sounded like a thunderclap.

“Disintegrating the two halves of the stone slightly out of phase…” Chekov began to explain.

“Make big rock go boom,” Del said, using an approximation of the dragon’s simple image/action/effect/emotion pattern of mental expression to describe the event. “The critter an’ I both impressed.”

“Enough to leave?” Sulu asked watching the dragon wheel in a dazed circle over them.

“Well, what you do if when you were squirrel huntin’ an’ you found some li'l squirrels that made talk-talk an' had stingers that make big rock go boom?”

“I’d swear off the lichen for a while,” the helmsman replied, lowering his phaser as the dragon retreated to its rock perch on the other side of the valley.

“And notify the Vulcan Institute of Xenobiology,” Chekov added.

“And call for backup,” Sulu said, correctly interpreting the dragon’s crooning squall as it put back its head and yowled vocally and telepathically for its lair-mates.

“Eatin’ one third o’ your breakfast beats eatin’ no breakfast,” Del confirmed.

“Damn,” the helmsman swore. “I didn’t want to have to kill one. They seem intelligent… in a ‘fire-bad’ ‘shiny-good’ sort of way.”

“An' now we gonna have t’ kill three,” Del reported, interpreting the sensation of new auras of intelligence that seemed to be responding to the dragon’s call.

“Damn,” Sulu repeated. “Can we? Do we have enough fire power to take on two more?”

Chekov nodded and held up his two phasers. “Stingers make go boom.”

“Not take much t’ turn you into th' Great White Hunter, does it?” Del asked, rolling his eyes.

“Mentally I’m preparing an abject letter of apology to the Vulcan Institute of Xenobiology,” the Russian assured him.

“Well, you not 'spect a Christmas card from 'em this year.”

Sulu pointed at a couple of dark spots on the horizon. “And here they come.”

Del turned his head to one side, trying to process the new, more sophisticated flow of image/action/effect/emotion pattern sequences between the creatures. “Hmmm…”

“What?” the helmsman asked, checking back over his shoulder on the status of the first dragon.

“Our pal a li'l more articulate when he be talkin’ to his friends.”

“What are they saying?”

“That, yes, we are really tasty-lookin’ squirrel-monkeys wit’ brightly colored fur, but there no way we can talk or make big rocks go boom,” Del translated freely. “They t'ink he need t' lay off the lichen.”

”Talk to them,” Sulu ordered. “Tell them that we come in peace…”

“Yeah, yeah,” the Cajun acknowledged. “The whole JTK intergalactic welcome wagon speech… I’m a’doin’ it.”

“And?”

The engineer shook his head. “These must be stubborn, tete dure, Russian dragons. They not believe I possibly be telepathic… Despite the fact they hear me. They saying, ‘Damn, it really sound like that squirrel-monkey can talk. I wonder how soon that stop after you bite off its head?’”

“It does seem improbable,” Chekov said in defense of his metaphorical co-patriots.

“Oh…” Del held up a hand to stop them from asking more questions while he was trying to decipher.

“What?”

“This seems sorta good,” he reported. “They t'ink you two twins.”

“Why?”

“’Cause you look identical to 'em. Same size. Same markin's.”

“And that’s good?”

“Twins are special to 'em -- very lucky… Oh…”

“What?”

“Lucky if you eat ‘em.”

“Oh,” Chekov said. “That kind of lucky.”

“Yeah. Lucky fo' dragon. Not so much fo' twins.”

“Do they have a plan?” Sulu asked as the new dragons settled on peaks near the original one. “Or are they just going to rush us?”

Not only were they quickly developing a plan, Del was a little surprised at how effective it seemed. This group must have experienced hunting troublesome prey several times before. “Our pal gonna draw fire wit’ another frontal assault, while the big one tries the rock trick, aimin’ to hit us from the left flank. An' the green one is gonna sneak up from behind an'… Oooo.”

“What?”

“An' pick off the red one – me.” The Cajun put a hand to his chest to emphasize. “They assume that I the leader an’ you two’ll be demoralized an’ scatter if they get me an’ bite my head off.”

“They’re obviously not reading our minds,” Chekov said, handing Del back his phaser.

“Okay.” Sulu adjusted his phaser. “On my mark, we each fire – ninety percent stun, minimal dispersal – then fall back to the cave. I still want to avoid killing them if we can. I’ll take the one of the right. Del, take the green one, and Chekov, you hit the big guy.”

The Russian turned to his helmpartner. “Shouldn’t he…?”

The helmsman made a quick sign that indicated that the navigator should be ready to take a second shot at the green dragon if Del’s aim was off.

“Guys,” Del said to remind them of the folly of such subterfuge. “I a telepath, y'know.”

“Then use it to anticipate the creature’s movements,” Chekov suggested encouragingly. “Aim forward so your target will fly into the beam.”

“Thank you, Annie Oakley-o-vich.”

“It looks like they’re going to take their time setting up,” Sulu observed as the dragons flapped their wings without taking off.

“They not sure ‘bout our range,” Del reported.

“Okay.” Sulu took a step forward, revising his original plan in response to this new intelligence almost as quickly as he spoke. “Here’s the new play, guys. As your target comes into the edge of range, fire -- aiming for the chest. Fall back to the standing rocks that go down to the cave. Del, get behind the one on the left. Chekov, go right. I’ll stay center. From the rocks, take a second shot -- if you’ve got one. If the first shot doesn’t take them out, they’ll be closer, so aim for the head. Then full retreat to the cave. No heroics, gentlemen. Don’t wait for a shot. I don’t want you to be at a standstill for more than three seconds. If we can draw them in towards the cave, we can pick them off one at a time from point blank range. Got it?”

“Got it,” Chekov said, making the sort of big, showy arc with his arm as he took a bead on his target that people quickly learn not to do when there was even a slight chance that they might miss.

“Yeah.” Del leveled his weapon with the sort of movement preferred by normal mortals.

His dragon suddenly took off to the far right with a burst of speed. It took a zig-zag-ing route over the tops of the trees trying to stay well out of range. He could hear the high-pitched screech as Sulu’s creature reached the top of its ascent and began its dive towards them. The green dragon took this as his all clear to dart in closer.

Del drew in his breath and squeezed the trigger. As if reading the Cajun’s thought, the dragon did a head-feint to the left, drawing the engineer’s fire and diving below the tree line as the shot glowed harmlessly above him.

“Fuck,” the engineer swore, running back to the cover of the rocks. He heard the whine of someone else’s phaser and a shriek as it hit.

When Del took up his new position, his dragon was nowhere in sight. Sulu was sliding into his second position nearby on one knee like he was stealing a base. Chekov was firing a shot that his dragon by luck or design managed to block with the rock he carried.

“Three, two…” Del counted down, in preparation for breaking to the cave mouth. On “one,” though, his dragon’s head popped up in a steep climb out of the valley between the hills.

Again, as if reading the Cajun’s thought, the beast zagged behind Chekov’s dragon as the engineer fired. Del’s shot again went wide, but this time accidentally hit the Russian’s creature in the throat just before the navigator tagged the beast near the eyes with a second shot.

The big dragon reeled backwards. As the engineer saw the boulder escape from the reptile’s claws and drop in a curving path towards the lake, a half-thought formed in Del’s mind. ’What if..?’

Knowing that he had no time for words or argument, Del shot, “Disintegrate that rock!” directly into Chekov’s mind.

Like a well-oiled machine, the Russian spun out of his retreat and back towards the edge of the rock that overhung the mouth of the cave in unquestioning response. In one fluid movement, he changed the setting on his weapon, took aim, and fired as he ran.

The boulder glowed out of existence as it hit the water. Del hoped that was enough as the two of them bolted for the cave.

“What was that?” Sulu asked, skidding to a halt beside them.

“The…” was all Del had time to get out before the roar began. The force of it shook his brain and echoed through the valley.

He didn’t need to look outside the mouth of the cave to know they had woken up the Old Man of the Lake.

“What is it?” Chekov asked, more alarmed by the sight of his two fellow officers clutching their temples than by the bellowing outside.

“We all pissed off the wrong guy,” Del managed to force out from between gritted teeth.

Even Chekov began to shake his head in discomfort as the bone-rattling vibrations continued.

“Think he’ll listen to an apology?” Sulu asked hopefully, keeping his hands pressed to his ears.

“This not even directed toward us,” Del said, pointing outside. “It for those flyin’ sons of bitches out there. Apparently this not the first time our pal from the bottom o’ the lake had to yell at ‘em for chuckin’ a ball through his front window.”

“Who are you talking about?” the Russian demanded. “What’s making that noise? What are you talking about?”

“There’s a fourth creature.” Sulu answered as the thrumming in his head began to subside. He handed the navigator a tricorder and pointed out across the valley. “It lives in the lake and doesn’t seem like to have things dropped in there.”

“Nice shot, though,” Del complimented his fellow officer.

“Thank you…” Chekov said before realizing, “Were you the one who ordered me…?”

“Those lyin’ sacks o' dragon shit…” The Cajun interrupted, taking his hands off his ears and heading towards the entrance.

“What is it?” Sulu followed him.

“They blamin’ th' whole t'ing on us,” he replied, pointing at their foes, two of whom they could see circling their way back over to their side of the valley.

“Can you...?” the helmsman began.

“I’m a’tellin’ ‘im right now,” Del confirmed as the officers walked out into the sunlight.

Two of the dragons were back on their perch on the bald peak. They were making shrill noises of what sounded like protest. From the edge of the natural terrace in front of the cave, the Enterprise officers could see that the biggest dragon was on the ground in the valley below, swinging its head slowly from side to side as if still groggy from the effects of the stun. A fourth creature, bigger than all three flying creatures combined was sliding out of the water, looking ungainly as it smashed trees beneath its massive clawed feet.

“And that they took our…” Sulu continued, trying not to be repulsed by the scaley, bumpy, human-eating dinosaur look of the creature from the lake as it made its way across the landscape like a steamroller.

“Oh hell, yeah,” Del assured him.

The lake creature seemed to be headed more in their direction, but it was hard to tell. It waddled awkwardly from side to side as it tore a path through the valley.

“Well, what does he say?”

“Lyin’ sons o' lizard bitches,” Del cursed the flyers. “They say we musta stole that shuttle from a dragon ‘cause little squirrel-monkeys like us not possibly be sophisticated enough t' build a beautiful metal egg like that.”

“Well, tell him that…”

“Yeah, if they built it then why it full o' t'ings squirrel-monkey sized ‘stead o’ dragon-sized?”

The lake dragon opened its terrible jaws and emitted another roar that sounded both inside and outside their heads.

“And that… Ouch,” Del rubbed his temple, “is how you say, ‘Everybody needs to shut the fuck up’ in dragon-talk.”

Chekov nodded, steadying himself on a nearby rock. “I think I understand that much of their language.”

“Tell them that…” Sulu persisted.

“They onto somet'ing else now…” Del interrupted. “The twin t'ing.”

Chekov tugged at his uniform tunic. “Should we try to look less…”

“No, no,” Del cautioned quickly. “You see, twins special to Monsieur Du Lac here too. They sacred to him.”

The navigator blinked. “Sacred?”

“Oh, yeah. He very religieux… Twins one o’ the symbols o' his gods.”

“Wow,” Sulu said, but kept his hand on his weapon.

“Now, he a li'l nearsighted,” Del warned. “So he comin’ up this way t’ have a better look at us.”

“Phasers?” the helmsman asked tersely.

“I’d say put ‘em away. We not want to make him mad – since he on our side.”

“Is he?”

“It lookin’ that way.” Del nodded. “He come up wit' an elegant explanation fo' why I can talk-talk.”

“Which is?”

“I magic.”

“I can see where that would sound reasonable to you,” his roommate commented.

“You see, this whole spot here is sacred fo' the ol' Monsieur,” Del explained and the noise of the creature approach grew louder and louder. “An' like a good Baptist, he come up here to pray an’ sleep.”

“And he assumes that magical squirrel monkeys like us were drawn here for similar reasons,” Sulu said, taking a few careful steps back from the edge and signaling his fellow officers to do likewise.

“He t'ink that maybe you two are my sacred twin wives… or twin servants, if you prefer.”

“I do prefer the second option,” Chekov confirmed.

“And that we bringin’ our sacred metal egg up here to start a magical squirrel-monkey family,” Del said, capturing the lake dragon’s utopian picture in words as well as he could.

“Oh, very reasonable,” the Russian agreed facetiously, as trees in the valley below them crunched under the creature’s weight and the dank, lake smell of it grew more overpowering. “But it is evidence of advanced cognitive abilities.”

“The Vulcan Institute of Xenobiology’ll be thrilled shitless, won’t they?” Del said, retreating with his fellows a few steps further.

“I may receive one of their Christmas cards after all,” Chekov replied over the din of crunching trees.

The noise ceased. One giant, green-veined, reptilian eye of Monsieur Du Lac appeared above the cliff face and surveyed them curiously.

“Say hello, boys,” Del suggested, although the smell of the creature alone was almost enough to gag him. “If you two could do somet’ing together…”

Helmsman and navigator exchanged a look. “Wave?” Sulu suggested.

“Why not?” Chekov replied agreeably.

They raised opposite hands in the sort of twin-like coordination that comes naturally to long-time helmpartners.

“Hello, Mr. Lake Dragon,” Sulu said, putting what he hoped would be read as a friendly non-edible look on his face.

“Good dragon,” the Russian said. “Nice dragon.”

“It not a poodle, Chekov,” the helmsman reminded him.

“I almost wish it were,” the navigator replied through his smile.

“You two so cute,” Del commented. “I marry you if I hadn’t already.”

“Watch what you’re thinking, Del,” Sulu cautioned. “Is he buying this? Ask him if we can…”

The dragon turned his massive head towards the flying dragon’s perch and gave a roar that knocked all the humans from their feet.

“That mean….” Del began, struggling to his feet.

“Give them back their shuttle,” Chekov guessed. “Dragon seems to be a very straightforward language.”

“The vocalized part is.”

The flying dragons took off nosily. Their flight paths were considerably less stable than they had been before the fight.

“You better run, ya scaly, lyin' bastards,” Del called after them.

“Speaking of lying,” Sulu began cautiously, “You’re not actually telling him that you’re a magical squirrel-monkey, are you?”

“I jus' ain’t sayin’ I not,” Del confirmed. “The ship not be too far away. When they get here, I sure Ruth an’ the rest of Team Logic Force come up wit' a way t’ give him the more simple explanation that no, we jus' squirrel-monkeys from Outer Space.”

“This species may be sufficiently advanced to be covered by the Prime Directive,” Chekov said.

“So we just smile and nod for the moment,” Sulu concluded.

The dragon emitted a low thrumming noise.

“I hope that’s a happy growl.”

“It offerin’ to show us around,” Del translated. “Take us on a cruise ‘round the sacred lake so we can see the sacred neighborhood.”

“It does realize that we don’t breathe underwater, doesn’t it?” Chekov asked.

“I’ll go,” Sulu said, walking up the giant section of spine that the creature placed within climbing range. “What about you guys?”

Chekov hadn’t moved an inch. “Someone should wait for the shuttle,” he said, reasonably.

“And I be here in the unlikely event that Chekov’s command o' Dragon Language fail him,” Del said.

“Okay.” The helmsman disappeared from view as he grabbed on to one of the big knots on the creature’s forehead. “Have fun!”

The two remaining officers stepped to the edge of the cliff to watch as Sulu and the creature made their way in a wriggling path down the avenue of cleared trees in the valley and towards the lake.

Del turned and narrowed his eyes at the navigator. “What?

“Nothing,” Chekov replied, despite the fact that smug satisfaction was radiating from every pore in his body.

“Okay.” The engineer shook his head in defeat. “How you know?

The Russian couldn’t resist a small triumphant smile. “That you're afraid of crocodiles?”

The two of them looked down into the valley as the lake dragon that looked like the giant, unattractive ancestor of that Earth species crawled back into the water swishing its long, ridged tale. “Alligators,” Del corrected. “An' I not 'fraid of 'em… It jus' ever since one almos' took my hand off, I not like ‘em very much…”

“You made an unlimited claim,” the navigator replied as he walked back to the cave’s mouth. “Logic predicts that unlimited claims will almost always turn out to be false.”

The engineer nodded ruefully as he helped his fellow officer, pull the navigational beacon out into the sunlight. “When I said I not scared of not'ing…”

“It was improbable that you had absolutely no fears at all,” Chekov confirmed.

“'Cause everyone 'fraid o' somet’ing.”

“Fear is a survival mechanism,” the Russian stated, activating the beacon. “The person without fear does not exercise caution and therefore is less likely to survive as long in a dangerous and uncertain universe.”

“So all you had to do was watch an’ wait…”

“And in an unfamiliar and uncertain environment, my chances were good that you would encounter something that you were…that you didn’t like very much.”

“Smartass,” Del congratulated him grudgingly.

The navigator shrugged modestly. “It was just an exercise in inductive reasoning.”

The two stood and searched the skies for dragons or spaceships.

“It not as dumb as bein’ scared o’ poodles,” the Cajun reminded his roommate.

This time, though, the Russian was ready with a second salvo. “I estimate that there is a strong probability that you’re uneasy about arachnoids as well.”

“Damn,” Del whistled, impressed. “Where that come from?”

“You consistently use comparisons to spiders and their habitats as pejoratives – i.e. ‘I not know how much sleep I be gettin' in that spider-y lookin’ hole.’”

The engineer frowned at the Russian. “You t'ink you pretty smart, doncha?”

“Well...” The navigator couldn’t find any reason to dispute this logical conclusion.

The Cajun shook his head. “Boy, someday I like to buy you fo' what you worth an' sell you fo' what you t'ink you worth.”

“That's a barbaric thought.”

“Seein’ as how we surrounded wit’ flying dragons an’ giant crocodiles, a barbaric thought seem most appropriate.” In the distance, Del could barely make out Sulu as a speck on the giant reptile’s back. Feeling contentment radiating from that direction, he wondered if old Monsieur Du Lac was trying to have a little talk-talk with the helmsman. A ripple of anticipation battled with a chill of foreboding as the engineer wondered what would be the consequences of truly unleashing the dark power in the helmsman’s mind – a power whose presence he did his best to ignore without ever questioning why. “I guess we all got our personal dragons t’ deal wit’.”

The navigational beacon began to beep, indicating that it was receiving a signal.

“Right on time,” Del said. “Give or take a day or so.”

“I estimate another nine point seven five minutes until they are within range of our communicators.”

“Listen,” the Cajun began slowly. “About the ship gettin’ here an’ communicatin’ an’ all that…”

“I could easily be persuaded not to share my conclusions about crocodiles and spiders if I were similarly assured that there would be no further mention of poodles, tap dancing, and -- especially -- slut mongering.”

“Blackmailer,” Del said, as he held out a hand.

“Simple survival instinct,” Chekov explained, shaking it to seal the deal. “Remember who I’m going home to.”

“All right. All right,” the engineer relented, knowing that any information so certain of putting Daffy on the warpath was a legitimate threat to the navigator’s health and well-being. “I try to help keep up the illusion that you a normal Human being.”

The navigator snorted. “And I will help maintain yours that you aren’t.”

The Cajun nodded with satisfaction as he watched Sulu glide out of sight on dragonback. “Business as usual, then.”

The End