WARNING:

This is a story of friendship, commitment, love and trust. It is not a sex story. However, this story deals with love between male teenagers. If you are offended by stories involving love between two teenage boys, please do not read this story. There may be some sex scenes in this story; however, sex is not the main theme. If you are under age 18 or 21 or it is illegal to read this story where you live, don't read it. Reproducing this story for distribution without the owner's permission is a violation of that copyright.

Authors' Note:

Let me know if you like the story - you'd be amazed how much that encourages me to continue writing.

Sam Lakes

sam_lakes@yahoo.com

 
 

Queststar

By Sam Lakes

 

Chapter 6

“You know the word’s out about your boy, Jack,” chuckled Cmdr. Jorgen Targus as he sat for breakfast in the Commodore’s private dining room.

“What do you mean, Jorgen?”

“That boy has something up his sleeve. I knew he was up to something last night, which I will tell you about, but first, my guys told me this morning that half the ship will probably be watching Zaron run the gauntlet. Listen to this, yesterday morning he logged on a data terminal and then jump-linked to the Academy Library.”

“Ha-ha, yeah I know about that, he asked me if he could do that because he wanted to do some research,” replied the Commodore.

“Yeah, the thing is, he was on the line for three hours. Then he linked into the ship's library and watched recordings of cadets running the gauntlet.”

“A bit unusual, but its been done before by first year cadets,” said Commander Nucomb who was also having breakfast with the Commodore.

“For five hours?” asked a smiling Commander Targus.

“Five hours!” exclaimed Commander Nucomb, “The most any cadet has watched one of those recordings was, maybe, fifteen minutes. What in the world was he doing? Going through the whole archive?”

“No, according to the logs he only watched the last gauntlet run last year. But that’s not what has gotten everyone interested. He went to engineering and spent half an hour with the Chief Engineer discussing ways the machine could be messed with, or rather checking out his theory of how the machine could be cheated. Finally, he told the Chief Engineer that he would be asking engineering to verify that the gauntlet is fully operational and properly working before he runs.”

“What is he up to?” asked the Commodore.

“I wish I knew. As I said last night, I knew he was up to something.” Commander Targus paused, smiled, slowly shaking his head like someone thinking a pleasant thought.

“Go on, Jorgen,” said the Commodore.

“He asked me to shoot him with my blaster set on sting. Well, after thirty minutes of trying to reason with him, I shot him. What followed was the absolute worst ten minutes of my entire life. I was pinned against the wall barely able to move, Zaron was lying on the floor of my office. I thought I’d killed him. Then I heard him say ‘Think about what I said I liked about you’. I did, and the force field started discipating until it was finally gone. He thanked me and asked me to help him to his room. He had done this in case Trender couldn’t get to him.”

The Commodore laughed. “I think he had an ulterior motive. I told him I was thinking of not allowing him to run the Gauntlet because of the force field issue, and he asked me not to do that, because he could work it out so no one would know. Do you know if he has told Trender about the force field," asked the commodore.

"Not that I know of but then if Zaron ask him not to say anything - he wouldn't. That boy is so in love with Zaron if Zaron asked him to go for a walk in the Forbidden Forest he would," laughed Commander Nucomb.