The smell of tooled leather met her nose as Captain Jaya Thorne stood holding the bag that was shoved into her hands, watching the Klingons rush towards the trees. She took a deep breath of the fresh, boreal air, then turned to the group she was with, and asked, “Who knows how to start a fire?”

Both Reade and Ford wore their civilian clothes for this challenge; Reade was in a tank top with cargo pants and a pair of black boots, while Ford wore a leather jacket with a muscle shirt underneath, also cargo pants and black boots. They did their research and knew that there was going to be a lot of hiking, and with this mandatory shore leave, the uniform was quite optional.

“Well, before I joined Starfleet, I was a Boy Scout. Starting a fire would be my specialty.” Ford smirked.

“You a Boy Scout?” Reade held back a chuckle. “I’ll gather the firewood,” Reade informed Thorne.

“Alright, we should start moving,” she said, handing them the flint and steel. “We need to find a spot to sleep for the night.” She started walking towards the trees, stepping high in the tall grass.

Ford took the tools and stuffed them into one of his cargo pockets before he followed Throne into the tall grass with Reade right behind him.

“The Klingons sure got a head start on us,” Said Reade.

“You know what they say, ‘slow and steady wins the race’. Besides, I don’t think it matters if they beat us anyway. This is more for the Klingons to see if we ‘hoo-mans’ can actually do this.” Ford chuckled.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Pretty Lady, the pink coloured hovering Exocomp, was to be the Doctor aboard the USS Blythe, but had received orders to report to the USS Leif Erikson for a short cultural exchange beforehand. She noticed that the group of Klingons who had sprinted towards the ridge that the one had identified, indeed appeared to have had at least a 150 metre head start over the group of starfleeters.

“Maybe we aren’t supposed to win…but are we allowed to try and win?” The cheeky exocomp said to Thorne.

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Jaya answered over her shoulder,  “but I think it’s safe to assume they’ve done this before.”

Pretty Lady replied excitedly ‘Sweet! In that case, it was nice meeting all of you, I’ll go do some… recon, yeah, recon and catch up with you in a bit.’ The spunky little Droid then rose in the air several feet above the other officers’ heads, and zoomed off towards the treeline where the Klingons had disappeared into. ‘Tally hoooooooo! You cheating muthaf….’ her voice trailed off as she soared away.

((A few moments later, Near the group of Klingons))

Lady was hot on the trail of the Klingons who had rushed into the forest when the horn had sounded.

‘I’ll teach you to laugh at us, you big meanies,’ she muttered to herself. Having thoroughly read the challenge from the Klingon Battle Group CO and studied up on the particular ritual and trials they would be performing. To stay within the rules and spirit of the contest, Pretty Lady had agreed not to modify her universal replicated tool apparatus during the trial.

But, before she had been down she had replicated a custom 4 piece apparatus that had; 2 2 foot long double jointed arms with a 3 finger 1 thumb hands on the end, a 16 inch long tube served as an Ribolian Hedgehog quill ejector, and a 2 foot long triple jointed fully articulating arm with a dye gun on the end that shot bright pink dye a half inch wide on whatever she felt like ‘tagging’ while she was here on Khitomer.

Pretty Lady was a Doctor by training, though as an exocomp, she was quite well-versed on many topics, as exocomps all shared information with each other while still being their own individual. Personally, she was into Punk Rock and Building Ant Farms. She had a collection of Ant farms in mesh-covered aquarium-style containers that were currently in transit to the Blythe with the rest of her belongings, and the ants had enough to survive for at least a month.

As she approached the first Klingon, who was bringing up the rear, she quietly hovered up behind him. The sound of her repulsors alerted him to her presence when she was about 3 feet behind him. He whirled around and before he could say or do anything, Lady said in a low monotone voice, ‘Boop!’ and shot a Ribolian Hedgehog quill into his cheek. He fell to the ground, instantly comatose. He would wake up in about an hour, with no other side effects.

Lady had spent an hour researching the best organic sedatives or coma-inducing natural substance that she could replicate a delivery system for before beaming down. And the Ribolian Hedgehog quill was the product of an adaptive evolution, and allowed the hedgehog to stun their predators for long enough for them to scurry away and safely beyond the range of the smell sense of animals that hunted it on Ribolia. And it worked even better than she had hoped. She quickly scribbled ‘I love Starfleet’ on the Klingon chest with her pink dye gun, and then hovered back up into the air, heading back towards her teammates.

((Back with the group))

The air under the canopy of trees was shady and cool, as the golden light of evening shone through the trunks. Jaya finally came to a stop in a small clearing, where an emerald patch of dewy grass held a square metallic crate and a circle of rounded stones.

“That must be the fire pit.” She said, headed for the crate, “I wonder what’s in here?”

Pretty Lady hovered back towards the group ‘Hey guys, watcha up to?’

Reade had been collecting sticks on the way of searching for their campsite up until they found one. As Thorne headed for the crate, Reade and Ford began to set up the fire pit and place all the wood and sticks that were gathered into a cone shape.

“I’ll go gather some more wood to keep feeding the fire,” said Reade as she started to check around the perimeter of the campsite for some branches and sticks.

Pretty Lady added ‘I’ll give you a hand. I need an excuse to practice using these.’ The little robot waved the mechanical arms on her tool attachment a bit like a drunken sailor.

‘So where are you from, ma’am?’ Lady said conversationally as she hovered near Reade, picking up dead sticks and twigs with her arms as she went.

Reade continued to gather firewood while she answered the exo-comp’s question. “I am a space baby. Parents took a cruise trip across Federation space, and I was born on the cruise. Although I’ve lived on Small Haven colony for most of my life before I applied for the Academy.” Reade smiled.

Lady replied, “Oh, what a coinkydink, I’m a space baby myself, I was constructed and activated aboard the USS Vancouver.” Reade smiled and nodded.

“I’ll get the fire going, sun’s halfway down, so it’ll get dark in an hour or so,” said Ford as he took into consideration his readings about Khitomer and the day and night cycle. He took the flint and steel out of the cargo pants pocket that he had tucked them into. He’d grab a bunch of dead leaves around him to pile them up inside the cone before he started to strike the tools together to send sparks towards the kindling.

Jaya knelt beside the crate. It wasn’t large, maybe two feet along any edge. The lid was held closed by two latches, but she could see no locks. The latches flipped open with a sharp clank, and the hinge squealed slightly as it was opened.

“It’s food,” she said out loud to the group, “Just simple survival rations, but they are human food.” She dug through the foil packages. “Oh, there’s also a note.”

Welcome, Humans.

We call our little adventure the Trial of Ash and Leaf. The goal is quite simple. Survive the wilderness without modern tools, and make it to the top of the mountain. Once both groups arrive, there is a test of skills that will be performed. At the end of that test is the opponent’s flag. First one through the obstacles will be the winner. Good luck, humans.

Qapla’!

“Huh,” Jaya said, flipping the note over to see if there was anything on the back. “Well, there’s that, I guess. Who wants Mac and Cheese?”

Pretty Lady hovered over to Jaya, knowing she didn’t need any of the food, she said, and looked at the note over her shoulder. “That part about the modern technology…does that mean me? Or are modern sexy technological lifeforms like me exempt Boss?” she said sheepishly “I interpreted the rules as meaning I couldn’t replicate new tools after I beamed down, hence why I whipped up this sweet little unit with all these simple gizmo’s before coming to the surface, I’ll offer any food that may have been meant for me to the group of course.’ Lady said as she waved her tools in front of the mission’s leader.

Jaya pondered for a moment. “It doesn’t say anything against androids, specifically, but I think I feel like it may be seen as an insult to their honor if you were to continue zooming around.” She stopped for a second, trying to figure out exactly what she was trying to say. “Maybe in the spirit of competition, we keep our feet on the ground?”

‘Feet? I don’t have any of those…hmmm…if I govern my repulsors to not allow me to move faster than a human at a jogging speed be ok? And I promise not to hover above 6 feet off the ground. Would that be in the spirit of the competition, ma’am?’ She decided not to mention tranquilizer one Klingon and tagging him with Pink dye at this particular moment.

“I believe that will suffice, yes,” Jaya replied, pulling the rope and hatchet from the bag. “I’m going to put a roof over our heads.” She straightened up, looked around for a deadfall tree, and headed off towards it.

Pretty Lady helped out with the task of building a shelter for her Humanoid companions. Knowing she wouldn’t need it, but wanted to assist her comrades nonetheless.

It was dark before she had finished building the shelter. It wasn’t pretty by any means, but it would keep and rain off their heads. She plopped herself down in front of the fire, sitting cross-legged on the damp earth. She tore the foil off a package labelled ‘Beef Stew’ and dug in. It wasn’t terrible, but it could have used some salt. “Thanks for the fire,” she said to Ford as she ate.

Pretty Lady, realizing that her companions would need far more rest than her. She would need to stop to top up her power cells for about 1 hour when the sun rose the next morning. “I’ll volunteer to pull fire picket and perimeter guard tonight so you all get some sleepy time. If one of you could volunteer to wake up and relieve me at sunset so that I can recharge my power cells for an hour or so, that would be perfect.”

Jaya nodded. “I get up early anyway, Pretty. I’ll take over in the morning. Thanks for looking out for us.”

Using her ‘new’ arm and making a haphazard saluting motion with her left arm. ‘My pleasure, cap’n.’

Jaya smiled, ‘Wrong arm, Lieutenant.’

Lady replied as she quickly switched arms ‘Sorry, this is my first set of arms, only had ’em since this morning.’