Bedivere

[Phillip Ellis 0]

The light green-blue waters of Avalon laid glassily in the still afternoon, only the most subtle of waves crashed on the beach-head a few hundred meters away from the secondary Starfleet base, known as Bravo site. Originally intended for primary settlement, the base had morphed into something entirely different.

 

While the primary site maintained a Denali-class communications array that proved more than sufficient for the purposes of relaying messages back and forth between Avalon, Camelot and the Federation-Bajoran colony at New Bajor, and Camelot maintained an advanced if-not secretive Surya-class array, there was a definitive lack of an ultra-long range array capable of broadcasting messages to Deep Space Nine and beyond as well as keeping links with the growing number of Allied vessels operating in the Gamma Quadrant.

 

For a period of months, Starfleet had debated the solution to this problem. While they could bounce messages back and forth from Avalon Array to the New Bajor Caltris Communications Satellite and then on to Deep Space Nine; the Scorpiad seizure of the wormhole had show Starfleet the importance of having a long range array with MIDAS-capabilities. Problem there was, MIDAS was a large space borne array with a very technical set of operational limits as to its interquadrant communications abilities.

 

That led Starfleet to dispatch some of its leading communications experts to the Gamma Quadrant to begin working on a solution. One of those men was Dr. Phillip Ellis, a leading expert in long range communications protocols and designer of the newest series of long range arrays to be deployed in the Alpha Quadrant, known as the Pheidippides Arrays.

 

As he stood on the tranquil beaches of Bravo site, a large silver structure had taken shape behind him. Where only empty space had once been, a monument to cooperation was forming. The collaborative work of over seventeen scientists and dozens of civilian and military workers from the Romulan, Klingon and Federation governments, as well additional advisors from the Bajoran, Ferengi and Cardassian governments had contributed to the construction and design of the most technologically advanced communications array ever constructed; a harmonic merger of the best technologies from the Alpha Quadrant.

 

Ellis’ light, red hair fluttered gently in the breeze as he smiled proudly. In a few hours, the first messages would be sent from what was to be dubbed the Bedivere Array to Deep Space Nine, followed by a series of tests on the effective range of the massive array and the network of uplinks that had been sent out to make the system less dependent on the availability of the wormhole.

 

Essentially working off the same principals as MIDAS, Bedivere used a complex mixture of remote communication buoys dispatched throughout the intermingling space and the occasional bouncing off pulsars to achieve real-time communicative abilities with the Alpha Quadrant for a period of 25 minutes every seventy-two Camelot hours, and allowed for the sending and receiving of standard and complex data streams with a twelve-minute delay.

 

It was, in a word, a technological tour de force. For Ellis, it was the work of a life-time put into practice. He’d come to Avalon expecting his stay to be short, or as short as possible. The reputation of the place was of a rough and tumble locale in the middle of a warzone, something akin to a resort in the middle of the Middle East circa 2000’s. Not exactly on the top of the list of vacation spots, if you got the drift.

 

Perhaps that was what had surprised Eliis the most about this planet, and the system in general. While it still lacked in some of the modern amenities of the better developed colony worlds back in the Alpha Quadrant, the planet was safe and secure. And while the area of space around it seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket, life on Avalon and Camelot endured. Idyllic, calm, unspoiled—the stark contrast between hell and heaven had never seemed so clear.

 

The draw was beginning to become apparent. Ellis had begun to understand why more and more civilians from the Alpha Quadrant had started settling the planet. Here, they could live their lives on the edge of the frontier, but safe enough to not worry about the neighbors showing up with guns when they asked for a cup of sugar. It was a draw that was beginning to tug at his heart strings as his time on Avalon began to come to an end. If the tests of Bedivere were successful, Starfleet and the Federation would no doubt have need of his service elsewhere.

 

It left him a conundrum of choices. He’d spent nearly his entire life working for the Federation; and though born on Earth, he had never really found anyone place that he could call home. At his age, that was starting to feel like a problem.

 

Retirement began looming on his mind. The peaceful waves, the tranquil environment and the chance at a new beginning here in the frontiers of exploration, combined with the opportunity to see his magnum opus grow and continue to develop was alluring. So much that he’d begun looking into securing long-term housing either at the Alpha base to the North or Camelot in orbit.

 

A wistful sigh replaced his smile. These were tough choices he was going to have to make, but at the moment, he was content to simply stand on the beach, the soft sounds of gentle wave-breaks filling his ears as his life’s work cast a long shadow behind him.