Title: Star Trek-Infinity: Intuitive Reasoning(MISC) 
Author: Charles Rando (trando@worldnet.att.net) 
Series: MISC 
Rating: [PG] 
Part: NEW 1/2 
Disclaimer: Paramount owns the characters in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and Peter David owns the Selelvian race (see his book, Strike Zone). I'd like to think that the characters I've invented and the story are mine. :-) 
Summary: The horrors of war... watching those you care about falling under enemy fire, and being forced to kill for the sake of victory. But for a soldier with amnesia and conflicting memories of his past, reality becomes much more terrifying. 
PROLOGUE
His eyes snapped open. "Where am I?" his mind raced, reeling to recognize the unfamiliar setting he now found himself in. Blinking a few times, he rolled his head to the side. There were rows of beds as far as he could see, all of them empty. Further down, he saw what appeared to be a wall, but the way it seemed to ripple suggested to him that perhaps in was in some kind of large tent. His need to discover what was going on overwhelmed him and he attempted to sit up... which was when he felt a hand on his shoulder, holding him back.
"Don't sit up, Rotein," a kind and somehow familiar voice instructed him. "You're still a little weak from the explosion. Just relax."
Rotein turned his head in the direction of the voice. A man stood on his left side, about a hemtar and a half tall. His skin was tan and his hair was dark, and when he smiled, a pair of sharp incisors poked down from the top of his mouth. His eyes were bright blue and cool, and he had a set up ridges that began on his nose and proceeded up his forehead, each one larger than the one before it. Rotein realized that he knew this face... but he couldn't remember from where. "What happened?" he asked, his mind groggy and his voice raspy. "Where am I?"
"I hope you haven't forgotten what the med. tent looks like, Rotein," the man said, and Rotein heard the word "doctor" flash through his mind. This man was a doctor... but he still couldn't remember his name. "You were injured in the last Kregmin attack. They strafed the camp, getting a lucky shot in at the munitions shack. You were there, trying to get Hellin to safety when the shack exploded. The brunt of the explosion threw you almost five hemtars and you managed to hit the ground head on... literally. Luckily, though, as you can see, you were the only one injured during the attack. Our defense forces were able to chase off the Kregmins minutes later."
Rotein nodded as the doctor's words conjured up memories in his clouded head. He could see the attack, he saw Hellin get hit in the foot... he saw himself running to help, to get Hellin away from the munitions shack before it exploded. He remembered the burst of heat at his back and the powerful force that threw him forward... but that was it. "What about Hellin? Did he make it?"
The doctor's expression turned sad, and Rotein knew the answer before he even replied. "Hellin took the actual brunt of the explosion," the doctor said. "In a way, he died so that you could live, just as you had risked yourself for him."
"He was a good man," Rotein replied succinctly. His mind was so hazy that he hardly remembered anything about Hellin... but somehow he knew that statement was true.
Before the doctor could respond, however, a loud siren began to blare. The doctor's head snapped up at the sound. "Kregmins! Trak it, they're coming back!"
Rotein tried to sit up again, only to be met with a wave of intense dizziness. He leaned back on the bed. "Is there anything I can do?"
The doctor glanced at him and then replied, "Just lie there, Rotein. Get some rest. I've got to get ready for casualties, if we're unlucky enough to have them. Just lie back, get some rest... and we'll see how soon we can get you back onto the battlefield."
Rotein nodded and laid back on the bed, closing his eyes and trying not to imagine what destruction the Kregmins were doing to the camp. He saw their craft in his mind, hovering in low, shooting at them... shooting at him. They were trying to kill him... and he had to do everything he could to insure that didn't happen.
The battle continued to rage outside while the battle inside Rotein's head slowly faded away as Rotein himself faded into a light but needed sleep.
CHAPTER ONE
Lieutenant Evan Remley was not a happy man. This was symbolized quite well by the broken PADD laying by his feet. If he had been alone, a broken PADD would have been easy to hide... just sweep up all the debris and dematerialize it in the replicator. Now, of course, he had every single patron of the Middle Ground staring at him, including its hostess. When his eyes met hers, she began making her way over to his table.
"Problems, Evan?" she asked.
"No, no, everything's fine," Remley replied, wishing he had made such a public show of aggravation. "It just... slipped."
"Slipped?" Lorin repeated, bending over to pick up the tiny recording device. "Must have been a flaw in the design of this one... slips out of your hand and cracks in half just like that." She gently put the broken PADD back on Remley's table. "By the expression on your face, it looks like you've been working on something big...."
"No," Remley began to protest, and then decided better. "All right, it's big... but it's classified. I can't talk about it, and that's the problem. I have to work on this thing pretty much completely all by myself."
"And so you came here," Lorin said, indicating the ship's lounge, "so you wouldn't feel so quite alone? In one sense, at least?"
Remley shrugged. "I wasn't really thinking about it... just like I really wasn't thinking when I broke that PADD. The facts of this case are just so... technical. And there are some things about engineering that I just don't understand."
"You don't understand engineering?" Lorin asked in mock surprise. "But I thought that's why you wore the uniform with the gold on the shoulders?"
"Used to be more gold before," Remley muttered under his breath.
"You're a security officer... a "cop", I believe they call them on Earth," Lorin reminded him. "And from what I've seen, you're a damn good one. But even the best security officers, the best "cops" had help. People to analyze facts that they didn't understand... is there really no one you feel you can trust?"
"The Captain has ordered me to keep very quiet about this until I have more facts... which is a major Catch-22. How can I gather facts without asking questions?"
Lorin shook her head. "Look, there must be SOMEONE on this ship, someone with a knowledge of engineering that you feel you can trust. Even Sherlock Holmes had his Watson... I'm only going to say this one, Evan, and don't take it the wrong way: seek help."
Remley sat up straight, his eyes alive. "Come to think of it, there is someone I know that might be able to help. Someone that not only I can trust, but someone I think the Captain will trust as well. Someone who knows what it means to wear this gold uniform on both sides of the line." He stood up. "Thanks for your help, Lorin."
"Anytime, Evan," she replied, beginning to clear away the empty glasses he had gone through during his stay here. "Oh, and one more thing to put your mind at ease. Don't worry about this little show you made here... as far as I know, no one here knows what you're working on, so you're top secret project is still top secret."
Remley grinned. "Thanks, Lorin. You always know how to make a guy feel better." He gathered up his remaining PADDs and headed out of the lounge.
"All part of the job," Lorin thought to herself after he was gone. "And good luck catching that spy of yours... if I hear anything noteworthy, I'll make sure to pass it on."
******************************************************
Hours later, Rotein woke in the same bed, but this time the doctor wasn't hovering over him.
Jortine, that was the doctor's name. Rotein couldn't believe he had forgotten it. But as time progressed, his memories were beginning to trickle back into his mind. It was a comforting experience.
He sat up on his bed, this time without any dizzy or nauseating waves. Feeling stronger, he swung his legs over the side and looked over the room. Five beds had patients on them, and Doctor Jortine was hovering over one a few rows down. Jortine seemed almost aware of his presence, and looked over after just a few seconds.
"I see you're feeling better," the doctor said. "Let me finish up here and I'll come check you out."
"No hurry," Rotein replied, reveling in the sights, sounds and smells on the med. tent. They weren't the happiest of images, but they were bringing back snippets of memory here and there. It was a reassuring process.
Rotein's gaze fell upon a short, plain faced woman at the far end of the tent that he'd never seen before... or didn't remember seeing before. He told himself to ask Jortine who she was when he returned... but when he blinked, she was gone. It was as if she had never even been there in the first place. Rotein shook his head... after landing on it, it was only natural that he'd be seeing things.
"So, how do you feel?" Jortine asked, moving to Rotein's bed and running a small scanning device over his body.
"A little hungry," Rotein said, "and my mind is still groggy. It's hard to remember things."
"Probably acquired some partial amnesia when you hit your head," Jortine suggested. "Can you remember anything?"
"It's all coming back to me slowly. To be honest, it took me a while to remember your name."
Jortine nodded, as if this were to be expected. And with partial amnesia, Rotein thought, it probably was. "Well, I don't think there's anything else I can do for you here. You're doing much better than you were a few hours ago. Why don't you head over to the mess tent and get yourself something to eat? Go easy now, don't exert yourself too much. I'm putting you on restrictive duty... come back tomorrow morning and we'll see if you're ready to go active again."
"Yes sir," Rotein replied with a smile, and he hopped off the bed. "Thanks for all your help, Doctor." He turned and headed out of the med. tent.
The bright light of the setting sun hit his eyes the instant he was outside. He couldn't help but squint, almost as if he hadn't been outside for weeks. His mind, of course, told him this was ridiculous: he remembered being outside just this morning when the Kregmins attacked. He dismissed the thought and headed for the mess tent. His stomach was reminding him of something else he hadn't done in a while....
******************************************************
"You require my assistance?" the Vulcan asked. His voice was low and constrained, and Remley appreciated that. Sounds often had a tendency to carry in a room as large as a shuttlebay.
Remley nodded. "I'm working on this... project, and it's really not going anywhere. I could use another brain to help me figure this out, and I have a strong feeling you'll be able to help."
"Then I will endeavor to do my best. After all, it would not be logical to disagree with one of your 'feelings.' May I assume by your apparent secrecy that this 'project' you are referring to deals with ship's security?"
"I knew I was right in coming to you. No one understands security better than a security officer," Remley said with a grin.
Lieutenant D'vis raised an eyebrow. "I have not served as a security officer for seven months and two weeks. Indeed, I find myself more... satisfied with my current assignment in operations. But I believe I still retain the necessary skills to help you. And I give you my word that anything you tell me regarding this investigation shall not reach anyone else."
"Then we'll get started as soon as possible," Remley said. "I'll let the Captain know I need your services, and he'll shift your duties around as needed. I'll contact you once everything is figured out."
The Vulcan lieutenant nodded and replied, "I understand." Remley nodded back and headed out of the shuttlebay.
CHAPTER TWO
The small craft blazed across the landscape, ducking under tree limbs and skirting to avoid the laser fire coming from behind it. The lone pilot of the hoveyor swore as he barely escaped being hit... the Kregmin never knew when to give up. But he was so close to the homebase... just a few more henyares and he would be there....
He looked to his left. The soldier next to him clutched his gun for dear life as he glanced over the small dirt hill. He couldn't help but feel for the young man... this was probably his first time on the battlefield, and probably only had one thing on his mind: kill or be killed. He wished he could reach out, give the soldier a reassuring pat on the shoulder, but the Kregmin could charge their line at any second....
He saw the Kregmin soldier approaching. He knew it was going to be one of them... there was no one else left. He could see the other man's sand-colored hair glisten in the sunlight... he could hear him breathing through all four nostrils... just two more hemtars and... now! He darted around the tree... and came face to face with a being he'd never seen before. It had a long neck, scaly skin... and indentation in the middle of its forehead. A very alien face....
It was the last image Rotein saw before he awoke.
"You all right?" his tent-mate asked groggily, looking up blearily from his cot.
Rotein nodded. "Yeah, yeah... just a nightmare." He rubbed his tired eyes. "Sorry for waking you, Ornan."
"Eh, I was gonna get up soon anyway," Ornan replied with a slight yawn. Rotein knew he was just trying to be polite... sunrise wasn't for another three hours. But Ornan sat up and got out of bed anyway, sitting down in the corner of the tent he called his "workspace." Rotein remembered that Ornan spent much of his free time there... fiddling with this or that. Making a water filter out of the most rudimentary items, or modifying the power cells from their hand lasers to cook food. But at the moment, Rotein's memory was still too foggy to remember why Ornan had picked such a hobby.
"I got back in and you were already asleep," Ornan said as he began working on something or another. "How're you feeling?"
"Better," Rotein told him. "My memory is still foggy... Doc Jortine thinks I might have suffered a concussion, and wants me to go back to the med. tent tomorrow just to make sure. But I'm finding that the more time I spend here... the more people I see again and the more places I go, my memories come back to me. Slowly but surely, they come back to me."
Ornan nodded, not looking up from his project. "That happened to me about a month before you were posted here... the loss of memory, I mean. My hoveyor was brought down by a Kregmin anti-aircraft gun, and I was the only one to survive the explosion. Forgot who I was for a while, but it came back to me eventually."
A memory began to form in the back of Rotein's head. He didn't push it or prompt it... he just let it grow as it naturally would, until finally it was clear enough for him to latch on to. "You've had some bad luck in those hoveyors, haven't you? Seems like everytime you go up in one, it gets shot down."
Ornan actually looked up from his workspace and grinned at him. "But I always make it out safe and sound and they always bring me back home in the end." He turned back to his work. "I'm just lucky, I guess. You should fly with me sometime... maybe with the two of us working together, I won't get shot down."
Part of Rotein's mind screamed at him, literally screamed to turn down the invitation. It wasn't safe... remember how many times he had been shot down? Only one to make it out alive? But then another voice seemed to say, "But he's your friend. You've trusted him before... you know that. Trust him now... you must trust him." 
Finally, Rotein replied, "Next mission, I'll fly with you."
Ornan grinned again. "You won't regret it, I promise you that. The two of us together... nothing can stop us!"
Rotein nodded and smiled weakly, still wondering if he'd made the right decision. Sure, Ornan was his friend... but was friendship something to risk his life over?
"He would for you," his mind replied.
Rotein glanced around the tent, wondering if he'd ever see his quarters again. And then, for the briefest of instants, he saw a large glass window... curving inward as it rose to the ceiling. And another window... and a metallic brace between them... and beyond the window were stars... nothing but stars.
Rotein looked down to discover himself wearing a uniform of some type... black with red shoulders. An odd badge over his heart... and three little pips on his collar. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and opened his eyes again.
The uniform was gone... the windows were gone. Ornan was still there, tinkering away, oblivious to everything Rotein had seen.
It was strange... Rotein couldn't remember ever having these hallucinations before, although he had to admit that his memory hadn't been the best in recent days. But the strange woman he had seen in the med. tent... the reptilian looking alien in his dream... and the illusions he had just seen. For some reason, they felt just as real as any of his other memories. And why had his eyes reacted so badly to the sunlight?
He laid down and turned these thoughts over and over again in his head. Should he tell Jortine about what he had seen? Again, the voice in his head, the one that had told him to trust Ornan, spoke. "If you tell the doctor, he'll take you off duty for days. You're just seeing things because you've been cooped up for too long... you need action. Relax... these false memories will pass."
The voice was very reassuring, and Rotein decided it was probably right. It sounded logical, at least... and somehow he felt that it was true.
That was the last thought he had before he fell asleep again, completely unaware that Ornan was still tinkering in the corner.
CHAPTER THREE
Lieutenant Remley tapped the PADD harder and harder on the desk. Each second, his tapping became quicker, more vicious... until finally the door chime rang. Remley stopped tapping and put the PADD down gently... he had come close to breaking another one because of this damn saboteur.
D'vis entered seconds after Remley called for him to come in. "Lieutenant," he said, "I received your message and arrived as quickly as I could. The human desire to know information, particularly gossip, is very strong. I was forced to literally order Ensign Chianchetti back to work."
"You didn't make too much of a show of it, did you?" Remley asked.
"Of course not, sir," D'vis replied. "That is why you enlisted my help, is it not?"
Remley grinned. "Good man... now let's get down to it." He picked up the PADD that just a minute before he had been tapping uncontrollably as he waited for D'vis to arrive. "This is everything I know so far... it's not much, but at least it's organized chronologically."
"A logical method," D'vis replied as he took the PADD. His eyes raced across the tiny screen, taking in all the information it had to offer. "This is most fascinating," he said once he had finished. "The placement of these chips is quite ingenious... I never would have thought to check for sabotage in this part of the warp engine." 
"Then that's the first thing I want to do," Remley told him. "After Ensign Marit discovered that first chip, I scanned all the shuttles in both bays with a tricorder, but I didn't pick up anything. I didn't want to do any dissection of any engines because: a. it would have attracted attention to my investigation, and two... engineering is not my strongest point. I don't want to press the wrong switch and end up blowing up... half the... shuttlebay...." Remley's eyes lit up as an idea occurred to him. "D'vis, that exploding runabout we picked up from Starbase 306... could one of these chips have been responsible?"
"It is a possibility," D'vis agreed. "If the chip malfunctioned, it could have resulted in the explosion."
"I knew there was something I was missing," Remley said thoughtfully. "Everything came together a little TOO easily... a little TOO perfectly... but the runabout never seemed to really fit in with everything else."
"You are suggesting that the runabout exploded by coincidence?" D'vis inquired.
Remley shook his head. "No, it happened because someone wanted it to happen... but I had a feeling that the runabout and all those sensor malfunctions weren't linked. And now I think we could be close to finding the proof for that."
"The possibility does exist," D'vis replied, although he did not quote the odds. During his time as a security officer on the Infinity, D'vis had learned that it was often more logical to follow Lieutenant Remley's instinct than to go against it. "It might also be logical to...."
D'vis never finished his thought, because at that moment, the red alert siren began to sound. Captain Rando's voice boomed throughout the entire ship, including Remley's quarters. "All hands to battle stations. Repeat, all hands to battle stations. This is not a drill."
"Klingons," Remley blurted instinctually, and he bolted from his seat for the door with D'vis right behind him. "We'll have to finish this later," he told the Vulcan as he rushed off for the nearest turbolift.
D'vis nodded and hurried down to the shuttlebay. If any shuttles were going to be needed during this battle with the Klingons, he wanted to be sure that none of them had that chip in their engines.
******************************************************
"So," Rotein whispered as he took a seat next to Ornan. He had just finished his check-up with Jortine when the gathering siren went off. "What do you think this is all about?"
"I don't know anything more than you do," Ornan replied, glancing around him at the other men taking seats in the briefing room. "Must be something important, though. Looks like the entire squad is here."
Rotein nodded and turned his attention to the front of the room just as the admiral entered. His uniform was mostly black with a red and black top... it seemed out of place. That same badge Rotein had seen on himself last night was there too... but this time there were two sets of metallic pips, one for each collar of the admiral's uniform. Rotein shut his eyes and opened them again to find that admiral back in regular war fatigues... green and brown to camouflage the body to its surroundings. He wished again that his eyes would stop playing tricks with him.
"Gentlemen," the admiral began, "in every recorded war, there is one event that goes down as the turning point... a pivotal day or action that literally decides who will be the victor... and who will be the loser." He paused, in grand military tradition of the moment before big news is delivered. "We have located the major weapons manufacturing plant for the Kregmin. This one plant produces 75% of their weapons and ammunition... and until now, it has been cleverly hidden from us. But because of the sacrifice of a dozen of our brave brothers, we are now ready to strike a blow for the winning side!" He motioned for one of the soldiers on the stage to do come closer, and the man did so, unraveling a large map of Kregmin territory. "Our target is here... right outside the Kregmin city of Valskar. Our attack will begin tomorrow at sunrise... and we will be victorious."
"Valskar?" Rotein repeated, turning to Ornan in the midst of a tidal wave of applause. "That's not much of a city, from what I remember... it's populated by mostly farmers."
"That's what I thought too," Ornan replied with a shrug. "Maybe that's why the Kregmins put it there... it'd be the last place we'd look for such an industrial complex."
Rotein shook his head. "I don't know... something doesn't feel right." A strange wave passed over him... another one of those strange memories that he had been having since the explosion. "I almost feel like we've done this before...."
"Oh?" Ornan said, raising an eyebrow. "Do you remember if we were successful?"
Rotein paused, trying to let the memory come back to him. "No," he said finally. "We weren't successful... there was no weapons complex there... only civilians... and we killed them all."
Ornan stared at him. "Well... let's just hope we have better luck this time," was all he could say.
But Rotein couldn't shake the feeling that he had done this before... that history was repeating itself... and that these people were going to make a mistake that would cost thousands of lives.
Part of him wished that the voice he had heard last night would come back to reassure him that everything would be all right... but it never came.