Boone Trek: My Clone's Keeper
This piece of fic is dedicated to all Mingo women out there and to all of us who have watched WAY too many episodes of both Star Trek and Daniel Boone. While writing a scene with Yad and Mingo in another DB fic, I was suddenly struck by certain 'similarities' between the characters of the two shows. Obviously that night I either had too much time on my hands or had had a little TOO much Blue Thunder, and this was the result. Consider it a Halloween treat....
Or trick.
Marla
PS Certain characters are referred to who appeared in 'My Brother's Keeper' and 'The Tamarack Massacre Affair'. If anyone needs a refresher course on those two episodes, just holler at me and I will bring you up to speed.
And now sit back in your easy chair, flip that dial or grab that remote (depending on your age), grab a Pepsi or Coke (as you wish) and join the Boone clan on an unusual trek............
As usual no copyright infringement is intended. All characters from the DB TV series belong to Mr. Parker and the powers that be on this planet. All Star Trek characters belong to the rest of the powers that be in the known universe. All lunacy contained herein belongs to me - and they are all VERY happy that I am taking the blame...er...the credit for it.
"Mingo? Mingo, can you hear me? Answer me if you can."
Captain Daniel T. Boone frowned as he tapped his finger against the face of his communicator. His first officer, Lieutenant Commander Cara-Mingo, the half-Caucasian, half-Cher-o-kee, had been out of touch for more than an hour now. He had beamed down to the planet with Doctor Carolina Yadkin in order to confer with a scientist who was doing breakthrough research in the area of cloning. He hadn't heard from either of them since. The fact that they had missed the first scheduled check-in hadn't troubled him all that much. He knew they both had a tendency to get caught up in their work. But now that the second one had passed and still all the communicator would spit out was static, he was growing concerned.
What if they had killed each other?
He shook his head. Bad joke. All too true, but a bad joke nonetheless. He switched the frequency and tried the cantankerous doctor instead. "Yad?" he called. "You old scoundrel, are you there? Yad?"
"Still no luck, sir?"
Captain Boone looked up. It was his voluptuous and virtuous yeoman, Rebecca Bryan. She had red hair and a beautiful face with enough curves below it to throw the whole Shawnee Empire into a spiral dive from which they'd never pull out. "Yeoman Bryan," he said. "I think something has happened to the doctor and Mingo."
"Have they killed each other, sir?" At his look, she pouted. "Sorry, sir. Bad joke."
"Yes, it was."
"You don't think anything has happened to commander Mingo, do you, sir?"
One of the captain's brown eyebrows decided to shake hands with the lock of similarly colored hair that tumbled out of control onto his forehead. "Excuse me, I thought you were supposed to swoon over only me, Rebecca Bryan....Boone." He whispered the last softly. No one was to know they had secretly married many moons before while taking R&R at the green pools of Ceti Omicron Five, and had enjoyed their first nuptial bliss while flying back in Admiral Menewa's shuttlecraft. "What is this concern over Commander Mingo?"
"Well, it's...those feathers, sir." She smiled. "And that black shining hair. He is dashedly handsome, you know? All the women think so."
"Do they now? All the women, you say?"
She glanced around the bridge to see if anyone was watching. They, of course, were not. Shoving her elegant, elaborate, impossibly-complicated braided copper hair out of the way, she pecked him on the cheek. "Except me, of course. My heart has room for only one man."
"That's better," he said and started to turn away.
"Lieutenant Commander Erasmus Julius Cincinnatus, chief engineer of the Continental Starship Boonesborough."
"What?"
Rebecca giggled and handed him a stylus and report for his signature. "Just kidding, Captain. See you later in the hydro-ponic garden, handsome." And with that, she turned and bounced off the bridge.
"As they say on my planet, criminetly," Lieutenant Is'rul, the blue-eyed white-haired three foot tall helmsman from planet K'E-n-Tuck could not hide his disgust. "Wimmen. I do not know what you humanoids see in them."
"They have their uses," the captain replied.
"Such as?"
Captain Boone frowned. "Where do your little ones come from, Is'rul? Beg your pardon," he excused himself to the short helmsman, "the ones who grow to be...er...short like you?"
"There is a great pond," the K'E-n-Tuckian said, placing his fingers together in a steepled position, "we skip the flat stone across its surface, and as it touches the sacred waters a new K'E-n-Tuckian emerges." He sighed. "It is a beautiful thing."
"So there are no women on your planet?"
"No. None at all."
Boone thought for a moment. Might make a great vacation spot in about two years when the magic had worn off. "Bryan!" he called, hitting one of the multiple buttons that blinked on the arm of his chair. "Bring that stylus back up here!"
Her voice came from the little box. "Aye, sir. As soon as I pull the pie out of the food replicator."
He sniffed. He thought he could smell it. "You bakin' an apple pie, yeoman?"
"And chocolate chip cookies with the chocolate chips made into little smiley faces."
"Forget the stylus." He snapped off the communicator. He turned to his helmsman. The man seemed to be gone. "Is'rul? Lieutenant Is'rul?"
His blue eyes peeked over the back of his chair. "Sir?"
"Sorry, couldn't see you there. About the wimmen. You don't know what you're missin'."
As the helmsman disappeared again, the young navigator next to him spun in his seat. "INCOMING WARBIRD, CAPTAIN. DECLOAKED AND HEADING STRAIGHT FOR US! WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS, SIR?"
Ensign Jericho came from a planet of mutes. Unfortunately, he had been born with a tongue. "Lieutenant, what did I tell you about speaking softly."
"THAT IF I DON'T SPEAK SOFTLY, SIR, YOU WILL CARRY A BIG STICK?"
"And?"
"REPEATEDLY STRIKE ME WITH IT?"
"And?"
He turned back to his screens. "sorry, sir," he whispered. "i will remember to keep it down, sir. warbird holding. standard orbit around planet omicron ceti seventeen seventy-five, sir." He paused and then spun in his seat again. "SIR! THEY ARE BEAMING DOWN TO THE EXACT COORDINATES OF DR. YADKIN AND COMMANDER MINGO! SIR!"
The Captain stared at him; his hand on his chin. He leaned down and pulled a big stick out from under his seat and hit him on the head, rendering him unconscious. Then he turned to Communications. "Lieutenant Jemima?"
"Yes, Pa. Er, Captain."
He rolled his eyes at his and his yeoman's daughter. She, of course, did not use the name of Boone since the marriage had never been officially announced. Her technical designation was Lieutenant J. E. Mima. "Take the navigator's chair."
"Sir." She moved from Communications to the seat Lt. Jericho had lately occupied. She sat down and then swung in it as to face the Captain as he had. "Permission to say something, sir?"
"Granted."
"Lieutenant Jericho has many attributes that are to be admired, sir."
"Like what?"
"He can run faster than a rabbit. And last year, when we visited Ceti Omicron Six, he could be heard over the explosion of the reactor core. He was given a medal for that."
"I see."
"Of course, he was also cited for breaking the eardrums of the entire quadrant. But they put him on probation."
"Noted, lieutenant. Oh, Jemima?"
"Yes, Pa. ...Sir."
"Any word from Mingo or Yadkin yet?"
She shook her head. "No, sir."
"And what about the Shawnee landing party?"
She got up and went to the Science station. She hesitated as the blue light pulsed on her face, knowing it showed off her wide brown eyes and made her appear angelic. Then she remembered, the effect was wasted. Jericho was unconscious and the dashedly handsome Commander Mingo was missing. "It's strange, sir," she sighed, all business again, "one of the signatures does not match the Shawnee."
"No?"
"No, sir." She paused as the ever present music that highlighted the dramatic moments in their lives, swelled. "Sir, one of them is part Che-r-okee."
He stood up. "Mingo?"
"And part....Creek."
Silence filled the bridge.
That was until Jericho stirred.
"Mingo? Mingo, can you hear me? Are you all right?"
The raven-haired first officer of the Starship Boonesborough sat up. He put his hand to his head. "I do not remember sitting on the ground."
"That's because you fell there, you copper-colored, bead-wearing, feather-sportin' Cher-o-kee, through that there hole up there. Consarn it, if you aren't the most accident-prone creature I ever have met. I'm a doctor, not a nursemaid. How come they let you out on your own when you can't make it one hour without spilling some of that there Cher-o-kee blood you got runnin' through your emotionless veins?"
"I beg your pardon?" Commander Mingo rose to his feet and dusted himself off. He reached up and straightened his feathers so their angle was a perfect 25 degrees and then checked the beads at this throat. They carried out the important task of supporting the perfect silver circle that was the symbol of his people; the IDIC, whose initials stood for 'Incredibly Dashing Intellectual Creatures' and marked his race as unique. It had been given to him by a scientist they had transported on the C.S.S. Boonesborough once, who had of course fallen madly in love with him, and whose advances he had had to reject. He was, of course, not frightened of commitment in the slightest, but carried deep emotional scars from the choices made by his late Cher-o-kee mother, Talota, and his Caucasian father, Ambassador John Murray, the Empire of Dunsmore, the potentate of all the world, that kept him from marrying. Well, perhaps he wasn't the potentate of all the world, but only of England. Still, it was a son's duty to honor his father's little eccentricities. "Doctor Yadkin, you are, of course, as your human kind is so prone to do, exaggerating to make a point. To begin with 'veins' cannot be emotionless as cellular material does not contain emotions, and it has been precisely 1.4 hours since I last injured myself."
"1.4.?"
"Yes. Precisely.
"Well, I'm a doctor, not a wristwatch, Mingo. How'd you expect me to know that?"
He pointed at his arm. "Look at your chronometer?"
"Oh." Doctor Yadkin turned his arm over and glanced at the antiquated timepiece he wore. "Dad blame it!"
"Ah, another quaint human exclamation. I take it you have discovered something?"
"Nope. Forgot somethin'. I ain't checked in yet. It's an hour overdue."
"The Captain will not be pleased, Doctor. He has often expressed to me his impatience with this predilection you have for being distracted by unnecessary and unimportant minutia; the result of which is a negation of the crucial role for which you were hired; mainly looking after the welfare and prosperity-physical, psychological and emotional-of the humanoids and various other life-forms on the ship. At times, he has despaired, and at other times has suggested some form of remedial punishment might be in order." Doctor Yadkin looked at him. He seemed appropriately cowed. Until he opened his mouth.
"What?"
Mingo sighed. "I shall endeavor to reduce my dissertation to terms with which your limited brain capacity might have an acquaintance." One raven eyebrow peaked. "The captain expressed his dissatisfaction with your somewhat limited attention span, and suggested some sort of curative, sanatory correction might be in order to best serve the C.S.S. Boonesborough and her crew." The other eyebrow lifted. "Is that better?"
"What?"
Mingo's dark brown eyes rolled back into his head, almost as deeply, but not quite so much as when he went into the Cher-o-kee healing trance - which was, of course, on average, five times a week. "You have the attention span of a two year old and you need to be spanked."
The doctor shook his head. "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?"
Mingo frowned. "I thought I did."
Doctor Yadkin pulled out his communicator and flipped it open. "Dan'l? Captain Dan'l? You there?"
"Yad? That you, Yad?" Their captain's voice was somewhat frantic. "Are you all right?"
"Well, why in the Sam Hill wouldn't we be? I mean, Mingo fell down a hole and we're at the bottom of it, but other than that, ain't nothin' new. I been - "
"Yad. Put Mingo on."
Mingo opened his communicator and tuned it to the appropriate frequency. "Captain Boone," he said; his tone soft and low.
"Mingo, I...." The captain's voice trailed off. "Mingo?"
"Yes, Captain?"
"What did I tell you about using that voice?"
"Sir?"
"Just a second. Yes, Is'rul, pick her up and put her back in the chair." His voice grew stronger as he turned back. "Lieutenant Jemima just swooned."
"Sorry, sir. I will try to remember."
"See that you do. Oh, Mingo."
"Captain?"
"We have a Shawnee warbird hovering over the planet. It's powering up its weapons, so we may not be able to chat for a while. Say, is that scientist with you in the hole?"
"No, sir. I was endeavoring to introduce the good doctor the local flora and fauna on Ceti Omicron Seventeen seventy-five-all two of them that is- when I inadvertently placed my left foot on the concealed cover of a trap set to capture some large predator or other animal."
"Blundered into it," Doctor Yadkin muttered.
Mingo ignored him. "Sir."
"Did you talk to him yet?"
"The scientist, Captain?"
"Er... Yep."
"No, Captain." He exchanged confused glances with Dr. Yadkin. "Is there something you are endeavoring to inform us of?"
"I think one of his experiments may have escaped."
"Sir?" A burst of static struck Mingo's highly sensitive Cher-o-kee ears. He dropped the communicator. With a frown on his face, he bent to retrieve it, and as he did, a phaser blast took him in the side.
Yadkin knelt beside his prone form and checked his feathers for a pulse. A moment later he looked at his wristwatch. "Only made it fifteen minutes this time."
Suddenly a shadow overwhelmed them. Yadkin drew a breath and lifted his own phaser. He froze with horror. Before him stood a tall man in the martial costume of the Shawnee confederacy, but he was not Shawnee. His forehead was free of furrows, and smooth as the hull of the C.S.S. Boonesborough herself. Two ruffled feathers, set at a perfect twenty-five degree angle, decorated his long black hair, but they were not tall and proud like Lieutenant Commander Mingo's. They hung instead at the side as if ashamed. He wore a beaded necklace around his throat. Upon it was a silver disk broken in two. He took the phaser from Yadkin's hand and crushed it in one easy gesture, and then leaned down to lift Mingo's face from the dirt.
Yadkin looked from one to the other.
He gasped.
They were the same.
"Mingo?"
The Cher-o-kee moaned.
"Cara-Mingo?"
He opened his eyes and looked up into a face that was own face, horribly distorted. It was almost more than he could bear, for it went against the IDIC of his people. All Cher-o-kee were slender, muscular and well-built, with long straight shining black hair and perfect feathers. This man wore his feathers hanging down, and ruffled. And his hair was mussed.
It went against everything he believed.
"Who are you?" he gasped.
"Who am I?"
"Yes, are you deaf as well as unkempt?"
The other man pressed the tip of his knife into his throat. "You have made it twenty-five minutes without injury, my brother. Of course, you were unconscious for twenty-four of those, but would you not like to try to make it thirty?"
"My ...brother?" Mingo paused. He waited. He hesitated.
The other man glanced about. "What? What is it?"
"I'm sorry. This is a dramatic moment, is it not?"
"Yes."
"I was waiting for the music. Perhaps it doesn't like you. I would say that indicates it has good taste."
The knife pressed into his throat. "You wish to know who I am?"
"YES."
"You want to know who I am?"
"YES."
"I will tell you who I am...."
"There is no need. Obviously you are related to Doctor Yadkin as you are one of the most aggravating creatures I have ever encountered in all my travels - which have been many." He drew a breath. "You said, 'My brother', you cannot mean...?"
"Many moons ago, a Cher-o-kee princess was taken from her people as tribute. She was sold by the Shawnee Empire to my people, their distant cousins, the Creek. My father, who was born without the bones in his forehead, was considered ugly. In order to compensate, he became a great warrior. Overcompensating, he wiped out half of the Creek nation and was branded a renegade. He fled to the land of England on Earth with his Cher-o-kee bride and his infant son. There, he met the..."
"High Potentate of all the world?"
"Yes. Empire Dunsmore. There was a battle. My father was killed. Later, Talota married her human emancipator and you were born."
"Then why didn't I know of your existence until now?"
"I hated you, little brother, and the weakling race that spawned you. Many were the times I tried to kill you. In the Cher-o-kee mind, I was an aberration. They tried to cure me. They would take these feathers and set them straight," he paused, "and every time I would bend them again. Finally, they put me in stasis and buried me deep in the heart of an asteroid, and wiped my existence from the collective memory of the universe. And now, that is what I will do to you, little brother. You will know pain such as you have never known."
"I doubt that," Mingo muttered.
"You laugh, my brother. Soon you will laugh no more, but will cry out as I draw this knife across your copper-colored flesh."
Mingo gasped. He glanced at the chronometer on the wall. "But it's only been twenty-nine minutes!"
Back on the C.S.S. Boonesborough, Captain Daniel T. Boone was doing his best to keep hold of his luscious yeoman as the ship was battered by photon blasts and the crew swayed in rhythm from side to side. "Status report, Mr. Cincinnatus!" he snapped. The gray-haired engineering chief's worried face appeared on the viewscreen. "I need those phasers now!"
"Tarnation! Captain, I told ya it will take a coon's age to get these here engines back on line. That last blast crumpled the dilithium crystals 'til they look like so much coal in a kiddie's Christmas stocking. We're gonna go critical in fifteen minutes if I can't find a substitute."
" 'Natus, you old goat, is it really that grim, or are you just exaggeratin' in order to impress me later?"
"Dan'l, do I ever do that?" the old man asked.
Captain Boone nodded emphatically. "Yes."
"Well, I ain't this time! If I ain't called you back in ten minutes, you better raise the white flag over the Boonesborough's prow and order out the lifeboats."
As his bewhiskered face vanished from the screen, Yeoman Rebecca Bryan moved closer to her captain. He caught her in an embrace as she said, "Oh, Dan, I don't know how we'll get out of this one."
"I know, Becky." His expression was serious. "With Mingo on the planet I feel like I'm missin' my right arm."
"Oh!" She exclaimed. "Captain!"
He looked at her sharply. "What? Do you have a solution?"
"No, I found your right arm. It's around my waist."
Captain Daniel Boone sucked in a sigh and blew it out by striking his fist on the baffling, blinking buttons. Half the panel lit up. So did half the ship. " "Natus," he yelled, "we're runnin' out of time. You got an answer yet. 'Natus?"
"I may have, sir. Hold your dad-blamed horses."
"Natus?"
There was a moment of tense silence. "That's it! Jumpin' Je-hosaphat!"
"What Cincinnatus? What is it?"
"Dan?" Yeoman Bryan leaned her head so close to the Captain, she accidentally knocked him out of his seat with her braids. "Sorry, sir."
"SIR!" Ensign Jericho, who had unfortunately recovered consciousness, called out. "SHAWNEE BIRD OF PREY AT MARK ONE TWO THREE, EE-II-EE-II-O!!!"
As the Captain found his seat again, he yelled. "Natus, the Shawnee are movin' in for the kill. I need that power, now!"
"You got it! Captain, invite them to a pig roast and light the fire!"
The Captain nodded and Jericho's fingers flew over the controls. "GOT HIM, SIR! DEAD ON!"
"Natus," the captain said as he accepted Yeoman Bryan's ministrations, including the much needed wiping of his brow, "you old goat, what did you use to light the fire in those phasers?"
The older man's face appeared on the monitor. He hiccuped once and disappeared from the screen.
Bryan and the Captain looked at each other and said as one, "Blue Thunder."
Lieutenant Commander Mingo found himself on the surface. He had been stripped to his regulation black boxer briefs and boots and deposited, his limbs tied to stakes, in one of the many desert areas of this barren world. His brother stood over him, wearing his Continental Fleet uniform, and gloating. "In my sleep in the asteroid I dreamed, brother, of this day. This ugly face I have been forced to wear will serve my purpose. I will now take your place and by infiltrating the Continental Fleet, become the master of the known universe!"
"An interesting concept, brother, but first you will have to fool Captain Daniel T. Boone. He is shrewd and wily. You will have little chance."
"Ah, brother, and it is said the Cher-o-kee cannot lie. You and I both know Captain Daniel T. Boone is guileless and trusting. I will easily over come him and take his ship. And with the C.S.S. Boonesborough under my command, I will return to Earth and conquer it- just as I have your doctor friend."
Mingo looked up and was surprised to find Doctor Yadkin standing next to the imposter. "Doctor Yadkin?" At first he thought nothing was wrong since the Caucasian doctor was normally boorish and inarticulate, but soon it dawned on him that something was. The doctor was keeping his mouth shut and his opinions to himself. "My brother, what have you done to him?"
"It is a secret, my brother. Culled from ancient documents, born of mystic and archaic sciences. Some say its origin was Cher-o-kee." He paused and again, as if in fear of the one known as Tara-Mingo, the music was silent. "You know of what I speak."
"No. Not?"
"Yes. The corncake. In it are all mysteries confined and resolved."
It was sacrilege to share the ancient corncake with an outsider. His brother had done so. Lieutenant Commander Mingo knew at that moment, beyond any possible percentage of doubt he could quote, that his brother was beyond redemption. "No! Doctor," he cried. "Fight it. You must fight him. Regain control!"
The doctor smiled stupidly and opened his communicator. Tara-Mingo nodded as he said woodenly, 'Two to beam up."
The transporter took them in a shower of sparkles and ....
Mingo was alone.