THE RELIANT

A MATTER OF MERCY

"Penny for your thoughts, Captain," Lisa said to John while sitting on the bridge one day.

John gazed over at her. "What?" he said, startled.

"I said penny for your thoughts. It looked like you were deep in thought over there."

John nodded. "Yeah, I was just thinking about something that happened to me years ago."

"What were you thinking about, Captain?" Tamala asked as she turned in her seat and looked at him.

He shrugged again. "It's just something I think about sometimes whenever I get down on the universe."

"This wouldn't have anything to do with our last mission, would it?" Lisa asked.

John let out a derisive grunt. Their last mission Lisa was referring to had been a complete disaster. Admiral Flagg has sent them on a first contact mission to the planet of Mykossia. John already hated first contact missions since one never knew what they were getting into whenever they met another race for the first time. But the Mykossians turned out to be a very paranoid race who were very distrustful of outsiders. The moment the landing party-which consisted of John, Lisa and security chief Bortis-transported down to the planet they were immediately surrounded by several armed Mykossians aiming their weapons at them. When John asked them what was going on, one of the Mykossians started accusing them of being spies and accusing them of espionage and of being part of an invasion force and all kinds of other crazy things. Now John had seen and dealt with paranoid races before, but these Mykossians took the proverbial cake. Finally, before things got too out of control, John ordered the landing party to transport back to The Reliant where, once back onboard, he ordered ship's pilot Zack to fly them the hell out of there as fast as the ship could fly. He wondered if Admiral Flagg didn't already know what how the Mykossians were and sent them there to further try to punish him and his crew. He could just picture Flagg sitting in his office laughing his ass off as he pictured the Mykossian's reaction to their arrival.

"So what were you thinking about, Captain?" asked Lisa curiously.

"Oh, it was just something that happened to me during the Karnin war."

"Really?" Lisa raised her eyebrows as she seemed intrigued. "Why don't you tell us?"

"Oh, I don't know if you'd want to hear about it."

"Oh, come on, Captain." She smiled at him. "Tell us."

"Yeah, Captain," Tamala chimed in, still smiling at it. "Tell us. Please?"

John sighed as he leaned back in his chair. "Oh, all right. I'll tell you."

"Yay!" Tamala exclaimed, clapping her hands together.

"Well, like I said, it happened during the Karnin war . . ."

***

Alliance intelligence had been receiving reports that the Karnin military had been setting up military bases on the planet of Ovulle, which was right on the outskirts of Alliance space. So The Pretorius was ordered to go to the planet and check to see if the reports were correct. 

When The Pretorius arrived at the planet, Captain Yager, his first officer Commander Lazz and chief of security Clint Bronson transported down to the planet along with a hover jeep. They drove around in search of any possible Karnin military bases, which they didn't find at first. After over an hour of searching, John was about to call off the search when something appeared on the jeep's censors.

"Captain," Clint said, "I'm picking up something on the censors."

"What is it, Mr. Bronson?"