New Fanfic Series: The adventures of the Throbbin' Rod

[marty4286]

New Fanfic Series: The adventures of the Throbbin' Rod

Cast of Characters:

Yaniv Rosenberg - When Yaniv turned 19 after graduating from High School, he left his home city of Tel-Aviv, Israel for the first time to explore the universe. He felt that life on Earth (and the Federation for that matter) was too boring and meaningless for him to stick around. Before he met his best friend Rupert, he lived day to day by doing various little jobs until he could afford passage to a different planet and start the process over again. He is now 22 and the only thing that changed was the ship he calls his own and the various little jobs paying for fuel and provisions instead of boarding passes.

Rupert Hess - Rupee, as he likes to be called (though his partner insists on calling him "Hess"), was an interstellar transient before he met Yaniv Rosenberg. He was orphaned as a child in the human colony of New Oregon and ran away from when he was 16. He is now 23, and for 7 years managed to go to almost every corner of the Alpha and Beta quadrants. He and Rosenberg managed to meet when he was running from Ferengi gangsters; Yaniv was just an innocent bystander but Rupert got him involved to try to take the heat off of himself. Needless to say, they both became targets together (the basis of any good friendship). They managed together in getting the local police to stop the mobsters and were given one of the Ferengi's ship as a form of compensation.

"Throbbin' Rod" - This is the unfortunately named civilian Danube class runabout owned by Yaniv Rosenberg and Rupert Hess (registered on Rigel V). There were no Danube class runabouts sold to private parties, though a large amount of salvaged government ships have appeared on the black market following the Dominion war. This is legal under the salvage laws observed by the Federation and most Alpha quadrant powers, though frowned upon. Its first owner was Starfleet, but it was lost in action protecting a convoy of freighters. A Tellarite merchant recovered and repaired the vessel, who sold it to a member of the Orion Syndicate in Rigel V. When the new owner was arrested, the siezed property was handed over to the civilians that helped in the arrest for their trouble. Hess unilateraly named the ship over the protests of Rosenberg when he registered it. The restoration by the Tellarites was impeccable; "The Rod" (as Rosenberg calls it) is up to Starfleet specifications, though there are no microtorpedos. The weapons being disabled was a fact that allowed the ship to be handed to young civilians. The cops did not know that the phasers were still operational...

Chapter 1:

Yaniv "Rosy" Rosenberg and Rupert "Rupee" Hess arrived in their starship "Throbbin' Rod" around the orbit of the planet Nova Vulcanis. A Federation planet. Yaniv shuddered. He promised himself years ago that he would never come back to Federation space, but he had no choice but to come back. His ship needed servicing that only a Federation facility could do.

He and Rupert picked a surface starport to berth in and hailed ground control. Thankfully Yaniv was still a Federation citizen; everything was still free, or so they said. Once on the ground, he left the ship by himself (he didn't want to deal with Rupert running into trouble with Federation authorities) to talk to the repair technicians.

The commander of the traffic control center looked up his name before he landed because of a hunch. He was wrong, Yaniv was not a sex offender, but he did notice that the young man had not been in Federation space for 3 whole years. Interesting, he thought. Freedom of movement was a right in the Federation, but in practice, it was "Freedom to move where we want you to move".

Yaniv was detained as he exit "The Rod" and forced to undergo hours of interrogation and cavity searches (that's right, more than one in an age of transporters and highly sensitive sensors) until he convinced the commander that he was not a spy or subversive. When that was over, he was billed "application fees" in advance of the repairs to be done. The application fees exceeded the cost of repairs than if it was done in private repair facilities, but there was no choice and it was paid. Then he was told that repairs would start as soon as the technicians finish priority repairs (foreign registered civilian ships had low priority), which could be as soon as 10 days! Surprisingly, the ship itself was never violated. Yaniv assumed that they just did not want to search a foreign ship and cause a diplomatic incident. That would never have stopped them, the real reason being they saw Rupert and did not want to deal with him...

After two days Yaniv was finally released. He was greeted with shock when he came back to the ship. It was no longer painted in Starfleet regulation colors, it was now Cardassian brown. However, that was not what surprised him. Large bold text reading "Throbbin' Rod" was now painted on the sides of each nacelle pylon.

"YOU FUCKING CUNT," Yaniv screamed when he came inside, "YOU PROMISED NOT TO DO THAT!"

"We're in the Fed now," Rupert smiled, "You can't talk like that anymore."

Yaniv balled his hand into a fist with the middle finger extended toward Rupert. He shook his head angrily and retreated to his cabin.

-

Back in a Starfleet observation room, two security operatives listened to the exchange.

"We could nail him," one said, "That falls under subversive speech."

"No," the other shook his head, "We can leave him be, I would have done the same because of that other guy."

The first one raised an eyebrow.

"You know what I mean!"

-

Yaniv calmed himself down before he left his room to talk to Rupert.

"Hess," He began, "Hess you fucker, first the name, then this."

"THEN this?" Rupert questioned, "It's the same exact thing as the first one; you're supposed to paint the name of the ship on the side in the first place!"

"Whatever," Yaniv changed the subject, "That's not what I wanted to talk to you about. They're going to repair the ship sometime in 10 to 20 days, so we need to leave the ship until they finish."

"Ah hell," Rupert, "At least it's free. Gotta love you commies."

Yaniv knew he was being surveiled and successfully resisted in saying, don't call me a commie.

"There's a 50 credit application fee to get the accomodations, and a 20 credit renewal fee for every day we stay," ended up being what he said.

"What?" Rupert was aghast, "It better be 5 star accomodations!"

"No, its a freedom suite," Yaniv smirked. "A double bunk bed and a replicator. With communal bathroom, because it would be anti-social otherwise," he recited the last sentence by rote.

Chapter to be continued...