Unofficial Literary Challenge #8: "Revist to a Weird Game, One of One"

moonshadowdark · February 2015

Welcome to the Unofficial Literary Challenge #8: "Visit to a Weird Game, One of One"! You know what to do!

"Visit To a Weird Planet, Revisited - Again" -by Jonsills

As your away team materializes on the transporter pad, you realize that you don't recognize the place, or the people in it. A large crane swings away, as a man shouts, "Dammit, what's wrong with those lights? Okay, everybody, break for lunch while we figure this out!" You realize that the room lacks some walls - and a roof. Outside a window, you can see what turns out to be early-21st-century Earth, and not the one from your history books, either. You're in a movie set, and everyone thinks you're actors portraying yourselves as fictional characters!

What do you do now? How do you get back home? Or do you?

"One of One" -by moonshadowdark

"While investigating a strange energy signature in the outskirts of the Delta Quadrant, your ship comes across a derelict spire-like relay station of sorts. Scans reveal it is of Borg origin and it's data banks reveal a planet not far from your current coordinates. On the planet surface is a grounded Borg ziggurat of some kind. The old Borg data suggests this is the burial site of the very first Borg, Designation One of One. The Borg revere this being as a sort of icon to their Collective. Exploring the site could reveal major information on the Borg. But scans of the ship reveal a faint life sign inside it. Could One of One still be alive? Do you dare risk an encounter with such a mythical being? Write a log detailing the expedition. Is it simply an intergalactic ghost story....or can even death itself be adapted to service the Borg?"

"The Game" -by worffan101

While exploring the Delta Quadrant in a shuttle, near the Jenolan sphere, you and one of your crew are kidnapped by a Delta Quadrant species for use as gladiators. Sold at a slave market, bought by a fight promoter, and sent into combat against monstrous beasts, other slave gladiators, and alien criminals, you must fight to survive.

Meanwhile, the rest of your crew is searching for you with your ship. Will they find you? Can you and your crewsentient escape before it's too late?

__________________________________________________________________________

Rules are the same as usual. No NSFW stuff, one story per author per prompt.

The discussion thread is here.

Index of previous unofficial challenges:

worffan101 · February 2015

Warning: Summary execution of a slaver.

This bit was inspired by one of my RL friends saying that xe loved Omek'ti'kallan "because he's like D'trel's keeper". I looked up what xe meant, and...well, it inspired this little thing. Also, I got to do Daysnur's first-person narration, which is a treat.

Cast:
First Omek'ti'kallan: Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Slave guard: Ethan Phillips, because I think he'd do really well as a minor villain.
Subcommander Daysnur: Alan Tudyk.
Khre'Enriov Klau tr'Kererek: Tom Selleck.
Subcommander Zel: Kevin Michael Richardson.
Announcer: Jim McKay.
D'trel: Linda Hamilton circa Terminator 2.
N'Kar: Wil Wheaton because I like Wil Wheaton.
Alpha Kurgan: The Rock.
Science Bekk Min'tak'allan: Also Wil Wheaton.
Gladiator match spectators: random redshirt extras.
Gladiator owner: Jeffrey Combs, playing it up like he did in "Tsunkatse".
Subcommander Jak: John Barrowman.

I awaken.

There is a throbbing pain in my head. I ignore it. It is normal, a result of the neural probe that has been inserted into my skull to make me more aggressive. It does not function properly; this displeases the Hated One.

"Get up, Brute!" shouts one of the guards, hitting the bars of my cell. I elect not to reach through and break his stringy neck, mostly because it would be pointless.

The guard, like the Hated One, is a bipedal creature, pale of skin, with a network of thin scales covering his body. He comes up to my underarm, and is somewhat obese. I do not give him the dignity of my attention.

"You're fighting today, Brute! Get your lazy TRIBBLE up and get your workout going!"

"Who do I fight, weakling?" I rumble, getting up easily and picking up my meager bed to begin my workout routine. The guard does not like being called weakling, but it is a fight day; he cannot punish me for fear of making the Hated One angry.

"Oh, you're in luck today, Brute," the guard snickers. "He set you up with a fight against the Crazy Hawk. Your guts'll be spreading the floor of the arena tonight!"

"Perhaps," I reply. "Or perhaps I will be victorious, as is my custom."

"Your custom? Ha! You don't get customs, Brute! Get over here so you can get your white stick thing!"

I place the bed down one-handed, then walk over. "When I leave this place," I say, just because I can, "I will not dirty my hands by killing you."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" grunts the guard as he installs the tube of white compound in my shoulder. His breath catches as I shove my arm through the bars and grab him by the throat, pulling him close.

I scrutinze him for a moment, sniffing as he wets his undergarments. "You are not even worth the effort of killing you." Then I toss him backwards easily, and he crashes into a wall.

The Hated One allows me to use the guards in this way. In the sixty-seven days I have been here, I have won him more than twenty-five matches and a considerable amount of prestige and money. He says that dealing with me is a good way to scare lazy guards into competence.

I will kill the Hated One when I leave this place, if for no other reason than he annoys me.

It just isn't my day.

It's been two months since the Admiral and the First failed to report back. We went to all diplomatic channels; Benthans, Hazari, Hierarchy (at least the ones we know we can trust), even the Kobali and Overseer Eldex, who owes the Admiral a bunch of favors.

Nothing.

We had gotten a couple of leads, even though we didn't find the Admiral or the First, but High Command was screaming at us to come back and report, so we did.

So now I'm back on New Romulus with the Admiral's ship. High Command isn't happy.

"You tried everything?" Admiral Kererek asks again. I can feel his mind; he isn't angry at this point, just resigned and desperate to not have to replace his top admiral.

"Every othlor-f*cking thing," I confirm. "Every power we have diplomatic relations with, up to and including those idiotic Talaxians. My husband had to fight a Hirogen Alpha because they wanted to see a Nausicaan in combat; even those hunters couldn't find them."

"Did you get any leads? Anything at all?"

"We know it wasn't Borg. They have no subtlety, if they'd assimilated her we'd definitely know. As in we'd have lost a few hundred ships and would have drones banging on the doors right now."

"Anything more positive?" Proconsul D'tan's riding up my rear wanting any news at all.

"We got a possible trace; the Hirogen and Hazari we hired didn't find any trace of them, but they did pick up a rumor about a couple of new prize-fighters who are making the rounds in Fen'Domar space. The Hazari went to check it out before we came back, but we don't have everything solid."

F*ck you, D'tan...they should have been left out there to finish the f*cking job...some days I hate being Khre'Enriov... "Get back out there, take her fleet, and finish the job. I'll deal with the political fallout."

"Yessir," I say, saluting crisply. "I suggest a good Reman for the stress, by the way; there's a man on Zdenia who I trust."

"Thank you. Oh, and congratulations, sorry that I missed the wedding."

"Not your fault, sir. I'll bring D'trel back, don't worry." I show myself out of Kererek's office, my own headache starting to throb.

"Daysnur to Vengeance, one to beam up."

"Sir," Zel salutes as I stride onto the Bridge. "Course laid in for the Jouret gateway."

"Punch it."

The ship shudders slightly, and we leap off into the void of space at warp 9.9.

I ready my weapon.

It is a brutal combination of ax and staff, perfect for a being of my strength.

I myself am tall among these people, a well-muscled man--or at least, I presume that I am a man--with thick grey scales and a set of spines on my head and chin. They call me Brute, and perhaps I am.

The announcer is starting his act. Out of boredom, I listen.

"AAAAAAaaaaaand now, the fight you've all been waiting for! The IN-tercontinental Champion, the greatest gladiator on the planet, will be decided TONIGHT!!! In one corner, the challenger! The big man's big man, the impossibly strong, that fearless master of force...THE BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!!!!!!!!!"

I enter, calmly, my weapon in my hand. The crowd cheers wildly. It has become my signature to them; cold, emotionless killing. It is what I do. I am disturbingly good at it.

"IIIIINNN the other corner! The reigning champion! The savage killer from another world, the little woman who'll rip your face off as soon as look at you--that berserk, sword-slinging mistress of mutilation...THE CRAZY HAAAAAAAWWWKKK!!!!!"

She is screaming.

That's what hits me first.

It is a long, awful, keening wail, that of someone who has lost everything they have ever loved. It is this fighter's signature; some of the other gladiators whisper about her regularly, how she can kill you with a glance, how one look into her eyes is enough to render you stunned and speechless while she kills you. It is a superstitious fear, perhaps, but one to consider in case it is warranted.

My opponent emerges fully into the ring, attached by chains to robotic guides; she struggles and screams wordlessly as they drag her in. Her handlers have played up the insane killer motif; the woman, slight despite her wiry build, perhaps not physically intimidating on her own, has been made up with fake fresh wounds to enhance her very real scars. She wears a set of rags cinched firmly around her chest and hips to satisfy the strange senses of Fen'Domar decency. Her hair is chopped at unusual lengths and angles, her sword a wicked, jaggedly-barbed stick of metal as long as my arm.

She raises her head, still keening. And I start in shock.

I know those eyes.

Disjointed memories flood me; a woman, seated, telling me of her life in a lounge of some sort. The same woman, yelling angrily in some room--a starship's bridge, I recall, although I do not know how. The woman, cradled and small in my arms as a dark-scaled, tusked monstrosity tells me something about mind-wipes and something called Hakeev; the dark-scaled man, my Second, dressed in a preposterous outfit as I and a furred creature stand by a trio of men in Federation uniforms; the woman, begging a dying, maimed creature with a snout, tail, and massive, dark eyes not to die...

My name.

I am First Omek'ti'kallan.

I was created by Glorious Odo'Ital, may His name be praised, in the thirty-second year of His glory.

I am a Jem'Hadar. I serve on a starship of the Romulan Republic. The dark-scaled thing is my friend and fellow officer Daysnur, a Lethean. The woman is...

Oh, Odo'Ital, what have these beasts done to her? I will kill them. I will end every last trace of these Fen'Domar. I will glass this world down to the bedrock. No being deserves this, least of all her.

Then the ring comes rushing back to me. I have missed the announcer's call to begin the match, and D'trel being released.

She leaps for me, screaming, with her sword raised to kill me.

"What do you have?"

"We have confirmation," reports N'Kar over the Hirogen's com link. "They're having the fight in five minutes. They're calling the woman the "Crazy Hawk" and the man the "Brute". Fen'Domar use aggression-enhancing implants and memory modification to brainwash their gladiators; we don't have the forces to perform an extraction. Sorry, sir."

"Not your fault," and indeed it clearly isn't, but to a Hazari it's important to say that. "We're bringing a fleet by quantum slipstream, we'll be there in ten minutes."

"We'll wait here," N'Kar replies, and I close the com link.

"Alpha?"

"We hunt with you," Alpha Kurgan rumbles. "We will burn your enemies, for you have brought us much fine prey."

"Let's go. Daysnur to the fleet, form up and activate quantum slipstream on my mark."

The fleet reports back in seconds. All ready.

"Punch it."

I just hope we aren't too late.

I barely avoid D'trel's first attack, her sword whistling down inches from my skull.

I realize what must have happened. The Fen'Domar captured our shuttle on our way back from a Benthan vacation planet. The implant, in addition to enhancing aggression, must repress conscious memories. As I am Jem'Hadar, it has been severely reduced in effectiveness. D'trel must have had a severe adverse reaction; this feral rage is all of her emotion, without her personality and iron will to hold it back.

I catch a glimpse of another overweight Fen'Domar in a seat next to the Hated One, where the owners of gladiators normally sit. I will kill him.

D'trel snaps my kar'takin with a lightning hit of her arm, then tries to run me through. I roll back, and...

I can shroud.

I shroud.

A ripple of confusion spreads through the crowd. D'trel is still screaming that endless, wordless scream, now looking around for something to kill, something to vent her rage and hatred on.

Ferenginar. The walls of the ring are barely four meters high; and while I might personally want to see D'trel kill the Fen'Domar, the Laws of Odo'Ital are clear; I must protect innocents. And the spectators, however bloodthirsty their society, qualify.

I deshroud. The crowd roars again. D'trel spins, still keening. Her eyes narrow, rage and pain and hatred concentrating in a look that spells my death.

She comes in quickly, swinging her sword for my neck. I am unarmed, my kar'takin discarded after her last attack.

Odo'Ital preserve me, this is going to hurt.

I don't try to dodge this time; instead, I lower my head and leap forwards. My attack catches her by surprise; I take a long but shallow slash to my back, but the sword clatters out of her grip, her breath escaping her in a gasp as I body-slam her into the ground with me on top, stopping her screams momentarily.

"Admiral! Stop this! It is me, Omek'ti'kallan!"

She gasps in a breath, howls with rage, and attacks, trying to strangle me. I grab for her arms; she forces me over, and straddles my chest as she tries to choke the life out of me.

We drop out of slipstream as a fleet mere meters from the Fen'Domar defense satellites around Orlean VII, the subspace turbulence hopefully scrambling their sensors.

"Open fire!"

A hail of plasma and tetryon fire lances out, as Hirogen, Hazari, and Romulan ships obliterate the defense satellites ahead of them. The Hazari are long-term contractors attached to the Republic, and are using Alliance-designed refracting tetryon weapons.

The blistering rays of fire from the Hazari ships jump from satellite to satellite, burning an area of coverage about twice the size of the continent below us in seconds. Poor fools never even got their shields up.

"Call those othlor-f*ckers, get 'em on screen!"

"Channel open, sir," shouts Min'tak'allan from his console.

"Attention, Fen'Domar government. You have committed an act of war against the Romulan Republic and its allies by kidnapping a senior officer of the Republic. Surrender High Admiral D'trel and First Omek'ti'kallan immediately or we glass this planet down to the mantle and let the Hirogen hunt anyone who tries to run."

I'm not a good man. My husband, Jak, disagrees, but would a good man really make threats like that, and mean them?

"They're broadcasting a surrender message, sir."

"Zel, keep the weapons charged and pointed at them. Kid, tell them to get us D'trel NOW or we open fire."

"Uh...sir, they say that she's in a completely illegal gladiatorial match. They have nothing to do with it, they swear. And we'll have to retrieve her ourselves. Something about neural implants that they know nothing about and adverse reactions?"

"Send a team to take and arrest whoever sent that message and whoever's in charge of this place and turn 'em over to the Benthans, I don't have time for idiotic politicians. Did they at least give us coordinates?"

"Yessir."

"Get a commando squad down there this very f*cking instant and get D'trel back."

"I know you probably cannot understand me," I wheeze, forcing D'trel's arms slowly down to her sides, "but I won't kill you. I am your friend, Admiral. I will always be here when you need me. I will always do whatever it takes to bring you back to yourself." I manage to secure her arms against the ground; she's still wailing, thrashing her legs and struggling as she tries to kill me in any way she can. The crowd loves it.

I am disgusted. But not enough time for that now.

"'I protect those who cannot protect themselves'. You told me that once, Admiral. That is what you are! That is who you are! Remember it, please!"

Her screaming falters, just for a moment.

"It is me, Admiral. First Omek'ti'kallan. Your friend."

She chokes, the wail faltering again. Her legs are sluggish now. There's a glint of something sapient in those eyes now.

"That's it, sir. Look at me. Remember who I am. Remember who you are."

"Hey, what's going on down there?" shouts someone in the audience.

"C'mon, Brute! Finish her!" yells another.

"Why doesn't he kill her? Come on, Brute, finish her off!"

"Yeah, finish her off! Kill her, Brute!"

"Brute!" shouts the Hated One from his seat. "Kill her, damn you! You're costing me money, you stupid beast!"

Then his head explodes.

There is silence, except for D'trel's continued broken whimpers.

"Oops," says Fourth Jak in a calm deadpan, Klingon-designed Honor Guard sniper rifle still smoking lightly from the high-powered emission. "I forgot, were we letting slavers live today? Or were we going by standard policy?"

"Well?"

"She'll live. The aftereffects shouldn't last for too long; we'll keep her sedated on the trip back, that should do it."

"Good."

"Your neurochemistry is back to normal; just to check, any residual memory gaps?"

"No."

"Excellent. Well, Viasa gave you a clean bill of health, and so will I, so you've got the ship, First."

"Thank you, Second."

"Oh," Daysnur says with a black-tusked grin. "You get to explain this mess to Command."

"Of course," I reply, smiling for the first time in months.

It feels good. Good to smile again, and good to be me again.

hawku001x · February 2015

The Centaur-class U.S.S. Jenova arched overhead, blasting photon torpedoes through the shields of the Kazon-Mostral shuttle Lessek. After passing, the Jenova fired one aft quantum torpedo into the enemy offender, exploding the craft in a glorious popcorn-like mini-puff.

"Is it just me, or did that just take us half an hour??" the helmsmen, Doyanis complained.

Iviok took a seat. "You know what Tier our ship is. Also, I forget what Tier our ship is."

"Speaking of the ship," Melyot opened. "I apologize for installing all those Kobali split-paneled consoles."

"--Cut! That was horrible, but let's use three seconds of it. Anything is workable. Then, cutaway, cutaway, cutaway!" A short, dark haired man with glasses stepped onto the Bridge, pointing at various people.

Iviok looked around and suddenly noticed half his Bridge was detached; appearing to be in a large studio. Film crewmembers spilled onto the set, checking lighting stands, wardrobe and make-up on the crew.

"Alright, that's a wrap for today. I have to go sleep with an actress who wants a part in my Pac-Man prequel."

Iviok walked over to the Director, Jeffery, who was playing back the scene with his First Assistant Director, Stuart. "What is the meaning of this intrusion? We haven't even had our post-mortem krill-beast steak meet yet?"

"Hm," the Assistant rubbed his chin at the playback. "I think there needs to be more arbitrary back storying-- Don't be afraid to contradict pre-established canon and, more importantly, make stuff up in place of other stuff. Then, Romulans!"

"Oh, is this a 'movie set'?" Iviok paraphrased. "Nice try, but movies went extinct as soon as holodecks were invented-- Coincidentally, so did new forms of art and music."

Jeffery shut the monitor off and looked at Iviok, confused. "Huh? What? Is this another hypnotic-relapse from the other night?" He then turned, "Dammit, Stuart. Your hypnotist show-off bar trick is messing with people's brains, and hence, this production!"

"Heh," Stuart chuckled, absentmindedly. Then, to explain, "I'm looking into hypnotism as an alternative career choice."

Melyot walked over, with his tricorder, scanning Iviok. "I do not understand. According to this: you're human, and there are dangerous levels of silicon on your face."

"What are you doing? That tricorder is a plastic prop-- and an unauthentic one at that." Jeffery then turned to his Prop Master. "Let's replace that with a rustic beer hydrometer. Yes! Realism!"

He then turned to the film crew as a whole.

"Just a reminder to all: Stay off the Message Boards. The nerds are pre-saying a lot of crud and we don't have time to address mommy-issue-driven soapboxes until it really gets to us. We are in this for dollar signs, people. Dollar signs!"

---

Later that night, Iviok was met with his own crew inside his dimly-lit, deteriorating, trailer. Doyanis and Gondi held piles of junk food in their arms.

"I don't know about you guys, but they have something called 'craft services' here and it's practically unlimited food-- for free!" the helmsmen bragged.

Sara looked at him, critically. "Replicators?"

"Sorry. Can't hear you over this cronut," Gondi said with a mouth-full as he and Doyanis arm-full-low-fived each other on their way out the trailer. "Hey, pass me a potato chip cookie? And a cannoli cone?"

Melyot took their cue and turned to Iviok. "I recommend the status quo for the moment, until we can figure things out. Slow-progression is the Starfleet way, and who are we to question that? Eventually, I might. Though, I'd have to see about that as well."

As he and Sara left, Jeffery made his way inside. "How you feeling, big guy? The entire cast was subjected to that drunken mind-show the other night, and it's been Fek'lhri Eve ever since. The Exec Producer wants to give you a day, but I think we need to press on if I'm to be slated for that other franchise."

"There's nothing you can say to make me think I'm a Human in the early 21st century. Where is the evidence of your Eugenics Wars? Is San Francisco the fall out?? If so, that's only partially believable."

Jeffery hesitated. "Look; at the bar, you told me you'd been feeling like your life just isn't measuring up lately. That's what hypnotism does! It makes you say crazy things!"

"Indeed, I was feeling that, but only in relation to my seemingly always-broken starship. There were days I tried decaying our planetary orbits on purpose."

The Director put his hands on Iviok's shoulders. "That's just a metaphor for this production. Unrelated: I'm converting the fan hate mail into snow flakes for the fifth monster ice-world scene-- This time, it'll be double the CG. More CG, I say! More! Let's desensitize people!"

---

The next day, Iviok entered the Bridge-set of Star Trek Into All the Money. His Special FX Artist ran over in a rush.

"Did you sleep with the face on? Talk about commitment, and hours of work off my back. This literally means I can use my mornings for writing. Would you be willing to look at a screenplay? It's about a space-high mad man who teaches Natzi ideals to inner-city kids."

Iviok took notice of her. "Can I story-edit?"

"Well, it's just that there's a lot of command-structure world-building, names and titles..." she trailed, awkwardly.

Iviok turned away. "Pass."

"But, he's searching for the one true King---"

The Andorian moved on. "Pass."

"Captain," Sara approached. "Something is wrong with all this. According to our sensor analysis, we're reading a massive subspace deformation, all around us."

He shook his head as he took his place at the fake-Bridge. "That's impossible. Your panels are stickers created by the art department, designed by the brilliant and irreputable Michael Okuda."

"What? Sir, according to history, Okuda was a drunk, hippie who was constantly thrown out of bars for harassing waitresses. He died in bed with eight supermodels."

Just then, a grip walked over and handed Jeffery a clipboard. "Here's your one paragraph summary of the canon universe we're making this movie about, Mr. Jacobs."

"Great. Let's burn it," the Director dismissed. He then stood up to address the actors. "Everyone ready? Prepare the lens flares... annnnnndd-- rolling, aaaaaand Kirk-thrusts, aaand action!"

Doyanis turned to Iviok. "Jeffery Jacobs? That sounds familiar. Captain. I think I read a report about this man. If I'm not mistaken, he's a known time traveling fugitive from the 31st century!"

"This is trippy. This script is trippy," Jeffery observed before processing appropriately. He then threw down his notes in shock. "Hey, wait! Time traveling is a right, and anyone should be allowed to do it!"

Melyot walked over, holding a phaser at Jeffery. "Aha! The Phoenix-X caught Jacobs, trying to film them, and out of a passionate repelling gesture, left him and his crew out in cold space."

"I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for that meddling Seifer!" Jeffery clenched his fist in anger. "We floated out there for days before we were picked up."

Iviok shook his head. "Stop. No. We were all hypnotized by a British man, named Stuart. This feels right. We're actors. We're on our way to success through the precious re-forcing of a badly-handled franchise. Keyboard warriors will write horrible fan fiction about us for centuries."

"Captain, according to my analysis of my analysis, the subspace deformation has all the characteristics of a massive warp bubble," Sara reported from her console.

Melyot pressed his phaser to Jeffery's temple. "Ugh!" Jeffery squirmed. "Yes, that's right," the Director said. "Beverly Crusher experienced an augmented reality, based on her own thoughts, when she was trapped in something similar. That's what we're experiencing now-- my creation, my desires."

"Everything you said last night-- about my life-measuring being crazy-- was a lie?" Iviok squinted.

Jeffery tried pulling away from the phaser, unsuccessfully. "Role playing is the best we are going to get here, anyway. We were all transported into this warp field, randomly, against our will. This isn't just some experiment by some over-begrudged, genius kid....... it's a labor camp."

"No; impossible," Sara intervened. "Static warp fields are unstable. They're like trying to run a Tuvok drill from a Parallax mud bath, while stuffing your face with jumja sticks."

Iviok shook his head in disbelief. "What a fool I've been. This world was too easy a distraction, and invoked none of our Starfleet officer anti-holo-addiction training." He then turned to the Director. "This ends now, Jeffery. The players don't love it, and continued sarcasm by them isn't annoying."

"Like I said," Jeffery gritted under the phaser pressure, "it's a labor camp."

Melyot growled, "By who? What do they want?"

"Who do you think?" Jeffery countered, just as Stuart stepped onto the Bridge, menacingly, "And the answer to your second question is: our neural energy."

Stuart nodded and began speaking in his true, augmented voice, "I am Devidian, Captain. We can best share an existence in this pocket universe, where your neural patterns are amplified, ensuring dinner for my both my wife and kids tonight-- Those annoying brats and their whining. Ugh."

"Since we're finally communicating verbally, I would be remiss not to confront you about Drozona, or the Cardassian ship Axon."

Stuart threw up his arms in distractingly fake shock. "Oh, come on. Puh-leeze. Bringing up the past? You're worse than my wife! Prophets bless her soul."

"What? What was that last part?" Sara impulsed. "Actually, let's stay on topic."

Iviok hesitated. "Years ago, when I was slightly more ambitious, I studied Wesley's Kosinski Warp Theories in detail-- in that the physics of a pocket universe were reversible and interchangeable with that of our own."

"Dammit, Iviok, this is no time for cake baking!" Gondi argued. "Or is it? Cloaking frequency icing, anyone?"

The Captain made a mental note to do that later. "What I mean is, we need to initiate the post-calculated vortex Wesley space-magic'd."

"Of course. I see what you're saying, Captain," Sara continued, approaching an engineering console. "We have to treat our home universe as the static warp universe, and the static warp universe like our home universe."

Doyanis snapped, "Stop confusing me. You're ruining the wonder!"

"How can we do anything when we are on a film set?" Melyot criticized.

Iviok turned. "This universe pre-existed with Jeffery's ideas and the only real way in, combined with Devidian space-time, was for it to be mutated by our own, which explains why our instruments still work; and I'm willing to bet the fake-Jenova's warp core is still in tact too."

"Nooooo!" Stuart took out a long snake-headed staff and blasted its energy, "Science isn't meant to be utilized; it's just a thing, and stuff!"

But, as the Devidian blast headed their way, Sara's initiation of the warp core calculations caused an expanding, dynamic wave of great intensity from beneath them, erasing the incoming attack, and Stuart, from existence.

---

A second look and the crew found the film set intricacies gone and Jeffery and his team back in the Phoenix-X's environmental suits, on board the Bridge of the Jenova.

"According to sensors, we were re-deposited back here through the Devidian portal. The Wesley-vortex must've nullified the static warp field and sent us to the portal all at once," Gondi reported.

Doyanis turned. "Either that, or we're in some kind of warp bubble within a warp bubble?"

"Let's not........ let's not do that," Iviok suggested.

Jeffery finally pushed Melyot back and confronted the Captain. "This is preposterous! I was this close to making a rehashed masterpiece, millions would have been annoyed by!!"

"Mr. Jacobs, an alternate universe is one thing, but one of uninspired, lack-of-measuring-up, where-anything-can-be-a-screenplay, Malon waste, is frightful and un-intellectually appetizing. You're going to be put in prison for a veryyyy long time-- which is what the Phoenix-X was supposed to do with you," Iviok stated.

After a moment of processing by everyone, he quickly realized the repulsion that was realized previously.

"Ugh! Actually, on second thought-- Mr. Gondi, beam them out into space."

Gondi addressed his controls and initiated the confinement beam, prompting Jeffery to lash-out as he and his team were in mid-transport. "Captain, nooooooooooo-o!!!!!-!!----!!--!--!"

antonine3258 · February 2015

ULC8

Author's note: Set at least several weeks after 'What's Left Behind'. The shockwaves through the Republic of discovering the Empress is something I want to do at some point, though.

“The Game”

An’riel shook her head, fighting nausea as her eyes insisted she was upside down while her inner ear suggested she was fine. Out the window of the small Jarok-class gig, past the warning lights indicating blocked ducts and burnt-out sensors, was a windshield full of dirt and crushed leaves, though spacer experience let her know the transparent material was still intact. Life support secure, she unbuckled herself, and stood up cautiously, wincing a little – her ribs were bruised at least from the sudden stop. Stifling trained reflexes, she avoided, just, turning on the distress beacon until she had a better idea of her surroundings.

Her copilot moaned – apparently unconscious. Avoiding looking at the windows, she went over to check, grabbing the tricorder at her side. The Hierarchy liaison’s ever-present support armor seems to have protected his ribs, but the shock had gotten to him. The Rihannsu was surprised she was doing so well. Less than a minute ago, they’d been near the Jenolan Sphere, examining odd subspace flares reacting against its still-unexplored outer shell. Then, suddenly, they had crashed on an apparently M-class world, a ten-meter a second drift had become a brain-rattling impact on the ground.

She patted the rotund officer sympathetically. Det had been brought on board to help promote openness among the very shaky Alliance, but had happily disappeared into astrometrics most of the time. When Tovan had realized the officer had not even stepped off the ship yet in two months, she’d dragged him on what was supposed to be an easy survey mission.

She went to one of the cargo containers on the gig’s bulkhead, pulling away team equipment, especially the medical kit. Actually opening the airlock was, of course, a matter of last resort on a completely unknown location.

Her train of thought was interrupted as the defense monitors lit up at the same time a rapping noise echoed through the craft. Something was knocking on the outer hull.

“Well, that simplifies the situation a little,” An’riel remarked to herself and went to check Det’s armor. She’d prefer to let him come around on his own, but… she tapped her tricorder to interface with its life support functions and administered a jolt of stimulant. A few seconds later, his eyes bugged open as he jerked awake.

“Heavy anti-neutrino surge, admiral! An unknown power!” he babbled before catching up with the present, “Are we upside down?”

“Yes, apparently – and no longer at the Sphere,” An’riel said, helping her officer with his safety harness. “You were monitoring the sensors – did it look like an Iconian gateway?”

“No,” Det said, “But we know very little about your mysterious enemy. Or the Sphere.” He glared at her, “Admiral, your species’ willingness to use a completely mysterious transportation technology that may remain under Iconian control remains a shockingly unacceptable level of risk. We know very little about it or the Sphere itself.”

She glared, “Not the time, Centurion. That didn’t feel like a transporter at all and we kept our relative motion to the location – any other species in the area experimenting with unusual transportation technology?”

Det stood up and considered, “Well Admiral, many species are working to crack the faster-than-light barrier.” She folded her arms, displeased. For a species dedicated to careful exploration of risk analysis, he wasn’t handling the unknown well. Det seemed to finally pick up on the dangerous, if slow to rouse, temper of the commanding officer. “Apologies, madam, but the Delta Quadrant is much more divided than your home space, and so is its R&D budgets.”

An’riel sighed as the hull echoed again. “Someone is knocking on the hull and most of our sensors are off-line. And…” she checked the status console, “The thrusters are clogged so we’re going to have to go outside at some point anyway if we will need to make orbit.”

Det pulled his own tricorder out, “I don’t detect high energy sources, and the atmosphere looks all right at least locally. And we both have broad-spectrum immune boosters current.” He adjusted the device, “The driver coil is still active, and I can pick up the heat of some life signs but not what from within the hull.”

An’riel sighed, “Hopefully it’s just something big with fangs trying to get in.” The Hierarchy officer looked disturbed at the thought, so An’riel reminded him, “People would mean we were brought here deliberately, using an unknown technology.”

Det looked more disturbed, “This has happened before?”

“It is not an unknown,” An’riel said grimly, “But you can be assured the Kestrel’s crew is working to discover us, and you have my every assurance our priority is safety, not exploration.” An’riel moved to the console. ‘Unknown technology’ had sparked a thought. This gig had moved through the last few ships with her, and she’d spent some time at Deep Space Nine turning it into, more or less, a clone of a Jem’Hadar light fighter. She finished tweaking the deflector’s settings for firing if it were to suddenly appear back in a vacuum.

Det looked and smiled, “Ah, you suspect that, if this is a trap, they will work to disable our communications.”
“Accounting for the possibility only,” she said, “Our long-range transmitter is out for the moment. Also – the fact we haven’t been transported out and have been left with equipment increases the possibility that this was a bizarre fluke.”

Det sighed, “You are making a common Alpha quadrant mistake – your people spy or trade all with each other constantly, and the technical innovations of one are quickly copied or reverse engineered. It’s possible this long distance snare technology far exceeds a hypothetical adversary’s capabilities in areas we would expect to exceed ours if we had developed this technology. And as the Vaadwaur showed, technical development does not mean optimum deployment.”

An’riel looked appraising. For someone who had been quietly keeping his head down and logging star positons, he had been keeping his eyes open.

“That is certainly encouraging. Make sure your gear is charged up and we will head out. Hopefully this is potential first contact and not potential combat, so keep your shield module off line until we see guns,” she ordered, and headed into the back to redress into combat armor. Det pulled up a pre-combat checklist and began running diagnostics as he assembled a phaser squad-support weapon, hefting it easily. The Hierarchy looked somewhat short and dumpy, but technology remained the great equalizer.

After five minutes, with no other life signs moving into their limited detection range, and with the knocking still continuing intermittently, the two were prepared as could be, and the few spent a nauseous few minutes reorienting themselves to the cabin’s ‘roof’ as An’riel switched the gravity field over to local. Once done, they’d discovered the ship was also at an angle and upside-down. Righting the ship was going to have to be their first concern, and necessitated leaving.

“Nothing immediately toxic on bioscans. No large movement in groups – no subspace or radio pings I’m picking up,” Det reported as a final check as the two tied their tricorders to relay to the ship’s systems. An’riel reached up to tap the door release set at what was normally a convenient waist height so they could clamber into the airlock. With Det in a covering position next to her, she cycled the airlock – revealing a green-tinted sky and two sets of shadows.

Nothing immediately leaped in and attacked her, which was a pleasant surprise as bad as this day was going. She cautiously clambered out to the ground, which was similar to what had been on the viewscreen: crushed leaves of a forest floor, but several trees had been apparently knocked down by the shuttle’s brief passage – there was some sort of platform thirty meters away. A brief examination under the shuttle showed several pieces of hard transparent plastic that were apparently knocking against the shuttle in a hard breeze. She flipped her tricorder open.

A sudden baying came from the tree line and she brought her weapon up, but low four-legged shapes were apparently moving away. With a crash, Det landed beside her. An’riel cursed and hand-signaled to move to the platform, both breaking into a run.

“They reacted to your active tricorder scan. Either heavily biologically or cybernetically enhanced organisms,” Det said, “And none of them large enough to be the humanoid form common to adult intelligent life. Quite clever. The atmospheric composition does not appear to exceed the first standard deviation for M-class worlds, and I have not seen any large satellites that would aid identification. The ship’s subspace systems being down are slowing data retrieval,” he reported, irritated. The Hierarchy was not a large cohesive entity, but they relied heavily on constant communication with authority.

“It clearly implies pre-planning,” An’riel agreed, keeping an eye open for attackers, wondering what had changed to make Det so talkative. “There is enough energy from something – some sort of structural matrix buried underground forty meters beneath the platform, I cannot get a good reading on the local stars with both suns in the sky.” She tapped the screen, “A very strange matrix. It seems to be energy resonating and constructed. Too much dilithium to be natural, and it’s radiating a tremendous amount of heat.”

The two slowed as they approached the platform. It was about three meters square, and had been enclosed in a bubble of what appeared to be the same tough plastic that had been knocking on the hull, now shattered and scattered over the area. Judging by the conduit sizes plugged into the bubble remnants, An’riel estimated it had been reinforced by a structural integrity field, and that several small anti-personnel weapons had also been torn away by the size of their arrival.

“Ah, Admiral. I am unable to detect any command station tied to the platform. It must use a relay from a different source,” Det reported. “There is no such broadcasting source in the area. The previous life signs are still moving away.” The two stood on the platform by this point, looking around. It had been located on a natural rise, presumably to give a view, either for military or tourism purposes. There was no road and they had not heard any fliers yet.

An’riel grimaced, her imagination supplying exactly how, given the clear violence of their arrival, that no carrier signals were present. “Do you think they intended to try and pull individuals from the cabin itself,” she asked out loud, “The platform clearly was designed for smaller transports.” She looked at the vegetation, “And even buried that deep, if the amount of heat it was producing was normal, this wouldn’t be old-growth forest.”

Det shrugged, “Biochemical sciences were not my assigned area of study. My apologies, Admiral. The heat source may indicate power was supplied from some central structure elsewhere, perhaps off planet.” The two science-tracks sighed. Far too little data and a need for hypothesis early.

“This is odd,” Det said after a moment, “The heat levels in the matrix are rising again.”

“Get back!” An’riel ordered, jumping off the platform and raising her weapon. Det did the same with barely any hesitation. She noted the response to directness, and briefly wondered if Det would be happier if she got him transferred to KDF duty.

The sudden pop of air displacement dispelled such thoughts, the mind seeking the mundane in the unknown. Several humanoid figures stood on the platform. They had the smooth near-featurelessness of near-Terran facial structures, but their hair was decorated with several elaborate rings of metal at the back, creating a look that reminded An’riel of religious work of a dozen species. They were also armed with an elaborate series of spiky ranged weapons, which either meant power generation was ahead of materials technology, or they had a cultural love of the image of violence, like Klingons.

An’riel leaned towards the latter, as this was apparently not a professional group, the guns held loosely and not overlapping their fire fields, despite coming into an apparently unknown situation. The group let the rifles droop as they looked in awe at the chaos of the gig’s passage, until one by the side nudged the one in the middle, apparently the leader, and he barked several short commands, and then adjusted a device on his wrist.

“Where are Stehn and Ellia?” he demanded, “Why did we the trajector send a maintenance signal? To An’riel’s surprise, his translator was relaying into excellent Federation Standard.

“Datun, look, they ruined it!” said the one who had nudged the leader – Datun, apparently – in a peevish tone, as he gestured at the damage to the surrounding area. “It doesn’t fit the area at all! Make them take it away!” An’riel felt a desperate need to take control of the conversation, and tapped off her own translator.

“I am Admiral seh’Virinat. I am part of a new alliance forming in a portion of the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way Galaxy. My officer and I, along with our vessel, have been brought to this planet by means beyond our control, and we apologize for any damage it has caused. Any assistance you could give to our vessel or information about our location would be greatly appreciated,” she stated as formally as she could. The old ceremonial forms hadn’t been her strong suit.

“Oh, they’re Romulans! Datun, they’re Romulans,” One of the alien women said excitedly, translator still repeating in Federation Standard. “Why is that one lumpy?” An’riel hoped she was referring to Det. “We know about Romulans! They told us all about them – why would Stehn bother getting Romulans?”

“Are we in Federation space?” An’riel said, switching to more colloquial forms, but not one of the aliens twitched, though Det looked irritated as he adjusted his translator to follow. With some alarm, she tapped hers back on.

“You know even with their help we’ve only managed to update the platforms on this world, until we can finish the revolution,” Datun said irritably, “They told us the Romulans were using black holes, it must have pulled the signal off. Stehn didn’t pay any attention as usual.”

An’riel was starting to get tired of being ignored, and gave a hand sign. Personal shields flared around her and Det. “I’m sorry, if you’re not Federation citizens – if you know about my species and the Sphere, are you working for the Vaadwaur?” She asked, tightening her grip on her pistol, and starting to tap on her tricorder, calling up emitter settings from memory.

Datun laughed, “Oh, they’re old news. They didn’t ever really think. The Masters liked us – we’d always be willing to try something new, and soon we’ll have Sikaris itself in exchange for a few more favors.” Datun looked them over appraisingly, “I think the lumpy one is from the Hierarchy – they’re a bunch of accountants, they never have anything interesting to say. But… they’re tougher than they look. And… the redhead. They told us about you.”

“Not enough, apparently,” An’riel muttered and launched a debilitating radiation pulse into the crowd before her, before rolling to duck beyond a remnant of the plastic bubble. Then she cursed as Det cried in alarm just as the ground started to ripple alarmingly, chunks of dirt rising into the air, as just centimeters away dust motes slammed into the ground.

Holding onto the plastic and ignoring the cuts it was gouging into her hand, she started firing plasma beams, but the moment of initiative had passed with the botched gravity induction. Det joined in with multiple heavy phaser pulses, moving to cover as well as the group started to return fire.

“Apologies Admiral,” he reported over a communication link, cutting through the roar of energy fire, “I had not considered the effects of the resonating matrix on an inducted gravity field.”

“It’s all right Det,” she replied, “It was worth trying anyway.” They were doing better than An’riel had expected. With the crossfire, they had dropped two opponents already. Datun then tapped his wrist control again, and An’riel felt her inner ear go crazy as air roared as the shuttle vanished. She could feel the heat rising out of the ground by this point. Then the howling started again behind them. She risked a glance behind her – the canids had returned, apparently signaled as well, no longer cringing from the gig’s presence.

What followed next wasn’t the sort of memory An’riel liked to dwell upon. Flanked on all sides, a stun bolt sent her into unconsciousness, the last scene was Det using his armor’s boosters to beat one bioform using the body of another.

She woke up in a cell as consciousness returned – so abruptly that reconstructing later there had probably been some stimulant piped in. She saw Datun standing in front of her and instinct had her reaching for her pistol. To her surprise, she found it, but the beam scattered before hitting him, harmlessly absorbed into a force field. He had the gall to laugh.

“Oh, there is more to you than most Romulans, you’ll do well in the arenas. I’m already arranging some of our best transcribers to tell your story – do you have any preferences?” He asked, and if An’riel was reading the body language correctly, genuinely unafraid and not gloating. That was odd. She could handle gloaters.

“No – but I need to warn you. This path will almost certainly lead your species to destruction. The Iconians-“

“You have no right to say their name!” Datun roared, briefly losing composure. An’riel felt a surge of pity - several scientists on Mol’Rihan had been revealed to have had their neurochemistry tampered with by the Iconians during the investigation after the Solanae discovery. At least, this was not a completely willing pawn, at least not originally.

“Fine,” she said, “But they have no interest in your species beside another level of cutout, and your final position will be that of slave, or another silent, nameless drone.”

Datun shrugged, “You reveal how little you really know about them. My species… we seek constant new experience. We think quickly and tire of previous events easily. Our technology has risen to match that drive, but we do not travel well through space as a result, and so have been forced to play the hosts to find new sources of joy. Our masters will allow us to expand our network without requiring the resources or deprivation that building a new station previously required. I will use that to depose the magistrates, and present a grand hegemony to the Masters’ approval.” He spoke matter-of-factly.

“You, on the other hand, have had your species tried and failed. You are too chaotic, constantly fighting each other over the same old, tired issues. And so we will put you into the arenas, where that self-destructive urge can at least be used constructively. We have the entire Federation Library to pull from, I’m sure you should be interesting in at least some scenarios,” Datun said, looking almost paternal.

“What has happened to my officer? I am responsible for his safety,” An’riel asked.

“The Hierarchy isn’t as well known to us. They tend to remain secretive. Even bureaucracy has its tales,” Datun said, “He also shows a remarkable ability for ‘settling' into a job. We have told him your safety depends on his work ethic, and he is currently doing odds calculation. Whether he continues is of course partially dependent on your behavior.”

An’riel decided against continuing the debate, and decided the most effective move for the moment was to be boring, settling in against the back of the cell, but her eyes were still bright.

*****

Two weeks, Mol’Rihan standard, had gone by, more or less. It wasn’t about violence, directly – the little arena they’d built discretely for the ‘cultural shift’ Datun was trying. But it was about control. Playing roles, often the hunted from some larger group, often of holographic images pulled from folk lore of one planet or another. Often in a dress with hoop skirts, which was downright annoying. They’d finally gotten the hint the third time she’d simply slashed the damn thing off at the start.

It was surprising the narrow range they were in – tests primarily of strength or fighting skill rather than for wits, and generally with no larger goal of protection of culture, an ideal, or a loved one rather than simply to survive. Rihannsu were good at the last part, and she suspected she was becoming something of a draw. She also suspected the lack of higher goals was a mild piece of social engineering on the Iconians’ part to encourage people not to look beyond themselves. She had gathered that was supposedly a ‘volunteer’.

Weapons had been non-lethal, so far. And the undertone for that had been ‘for now’. Today though, seemed different. The arena had its roof retracted to allow a cloudy day to filter in. The seats, beyond transparent aluminum windows, were primarily filled. The holoprojections were apparently off, leaving bare metal walls and doors to allow various items to enter. She’d been granted melee weapons so apparently this was to be old-fashioned.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” came an amplified voice, “We have your requested main event. The Romulan Raven will be facing a special challenge: a special imported scorpion from the shadowy depths of –“ Which forsaken hellhole some giant toxic beast had originated from remained unknown as the voice was cut-off by a thunderclap.

An’riel dived to the ground, covering her head with the hands, recognizing the sound of ship-born plasma weapons. The distinctive roaring hum of Scorpion fighters echoed overhead as the crowd began to stir. Unfortunately for An’riel, someone had either decided to distract the crowd by moving up the main card, or they’d lost control of the beast in question – it had eight legs, vibrating spines and apparently two mouths. No ones’ legs were headed into its gullet, so she suspected it was a move on the part of the producers. The thing howled and hissed simultaneously, spines rattling, and proceeded towards her.

She had a light broad sword in her hands of indeterminate manufacturer, and was wearing what resembled ceremonial chain mail or possibly Tal Shiar combat gear. She wasn’t trained to Starfleet standards in hand-to-hand combat, but had the school of hard knocks on her side.

And that hard-won experience was why she promptly turned the other way and ran. She’d had to cut up a few large beasts on assignments before in similar situations, but she had no need to try and fight a fellow captive to the death. Scorpion fighters meant an Alliance carrier or heavy command ship. The monster, seeing it wasn’t about to drop into its mouth, and confused by the noises, stopped in the middle of the arena and began to whimper.

Another round of plasma-fire cracked overhead and she scrambled towards an alcove. She could hear, faintly, panicked screaming coming from the city, and energy flashes as ground fire went into play. A minute later, a transporter beam flickered around her.

Her consciousness reassembled itself in the Tempestuous Kestrel’s transporter room, Det next to her. Tovan and a squad of security Uhlans stood ready in combat gear. She smiled briefly, and leaned against the wall, the week starting to catch up with her. Tovan held the group back to let her recover.

Det, however, came to attention and reported, “Subcommander, it is optimal to see you. The city did not appear to be heavily defended, and primarily operates as an open-air market. I have been manipulating economic data to prevent the Sikarians from separating us or moving An’riel off-planet as an example to reproduce this new entertainment model.”

Tovan nodded, and said, “Well done – Admiral, we picked up the gig when it started emitting anti-proton pulses. This appears to be a trading planet supported by a government deeper in the Delta Quadrant. The Lleiset and a group of support craft are currently interdicting the planet. The planetary magistrate is asking to speak to you, he’s claiming they had no idea that they had the capability to kidnap people off-planet.” Tovan looked dubious. With an effort, An’riel straightened herself.

“I do not believe they originally did. The receiver that stole our ship was apparently originally designed for personnel transfers instead. Where are we?” she said.

“Approximately six hundred light years spinward of Borg space,” Tovan reported, “We were only able to bring a small strike group, but Commander Jarok volunteered to come as well. She says this matches the obligations for helping capture Sela.”

“If anyone ever asks again, this is why she has the flagship. I think I would have claimed both favors for this one,” An’riel admitted.

Tovan looked dubious, “Be that as it may – there were light Vaadwaur elements in the area and encountered along the way, apparently bluegill elements. They have, ah, been neutralized.” An’riel nodded. Operational security kept the Ghost Shrike quiet from most of the crew where possible. “Planetary defenses have been neutralized or occupied by fighters. We were able to cloak into nearby space, and Det was able to get us enough net access to keep them from centralizing command. We encountered light resistance but the planetary authority now appears willing to talk to us”

An’riel sighed. She would rather go to medbay – but Tovan wasn’t saying something, and she knew what her people’s anger could do if not controlled. If there was one grace to her losing her family to the Elements long before Virinat, it had burned most of those out of her “That may prove a double-edged sword. The Iconians appear to be using unstable elements in society. Let us get to the bridge and get me the planetary commander if someone has not shot him yet. This may still be a containable rebellion on their end. We may be able to end this with an ally.”

Det apparently happy to be back, broke off towards astrometrics as they headed to astrometrics. “He is due for a commendation, far above and beyond the call.” Tovan nodded.

“He’s the only reason we knew you were here – he had some copies of those computer virii you like to keep breeding in the computer core and was able to get us a data dump. These people are planet-bound, but across eighty-thousand light years of space.”

“Yes – they’d had access to the Federation Library. I was in… scenarios based on Beowulf, the Trill reincrarnation passion play series with that long name, and what were at least two separate Andorian dramas. That’s what I recognized,” she said, “They’ve encountered people and that means…”

“Probably Voyager,” Tovan said, “We finally found something cross-referencing that anti-neutrino surge to events before the ship’s dogleg around Kremin space. They’re based much deeper in the Delta Quadrant, and have either small planets or pleasure outposts all over space. Admiral Janeway did not encounter them again, however.” An’riel nodded.

The bridge was humming, combat operations were still on-going. She double-checked the sensor repeaters and their analysis on the main sensor display before sitting down, gratefully as normallcy rolled over her.

Back-tracking the display showed normal tactics against the Vaadwaur at this point. There weren’t many ships, even from the Alpha Quadrant powers, that were so ridiculously tuned up to deal with the Vaadwaur on an even footing, but An’riel’s rescue force had been fortunate to have two. The Kestrel’s Tholian gear made it ideal for isolating and stripping the shields from enemies, and the raw power of the Lleiset had torn them to shreds.

She scrolled through the battle and then double-took at one point. “Did we fire a heavy gravimetric device into low orbit?” she asked in disbelief.

“We do that all the time, as often as we fight in low orbit,” Tovan replied, defensively.

“All right, I will not press the issue, but launching singularities around inhabited planets is a risky business for one person, even if I am that person. There were riots down there, Tovan.”

Satra spoke up, “Admiral, if we had not had the data feed on the last day of approach, we thought you were being brainwashed or worse. Again!” The science officer said fiercely.

An’riel looked around. There were definitely rumblings of discontent about her not being thrilled at the lengths her crew was willing to go to rescue her. She had often referred to them as children, from the matriarchal position often traditional in her society, but she had not realized quite how fiercely it went. They had always been quiet about what had happened about tracking her down on the Tal Shiar ship.

“In any case, I am well, thanks to your efforts. And we may have encountered a people whose technology will allow us to finish the secrets of the gateways,” she said, speaking more loudly. “Helm, bring us into firing position of the planetary capital, but keep us moving on evasive. Give compliments to Commander Jarok, and ask which of us the planet should surrender to.”

Jarok appeared on screen, looking as composed as ever, though relieved. “We were afraid we lost you – tracking from that partial star recording gave us a vector, but we were afraid we would never encounter you.”

“With good reason – Commander, these people have the ability to activate localized spatial warps, and it appears tied to large masses. The gig was within a kilometer of the Sphere when it was taken, but I recommend keeping an erratic course.” She took a deep breath, “Have they surrendered yet?”

“No, I was leaving it to you, if you were able,” Jarok said, glancing off screen, “They appear to be getting desperate to, however. We are reading life signs concentrating at specific points and then vanishing. They may be evacuating.”

“It’s possible they’ve heard what sort of equipment your ship would carry in Star Empire service. All right, stay on-channel,” An’riel said politely. “Communications, please locate someone who can surrender to me please.” She leaned back on the chair, adopting a more lazy posture. These people had a love for stories, so she decided to play this more clich

starswordc · February 2015

A Voice in the Wilderness

“Your people murdered our force commander and fired on us! You’re supposed to defend us! I demand that you call off your troops or I’m taking this to the Security Council!”

“Sorry, Minister Q’Tira,” I tell the infuriated Kobali with my sweetest smile. “The former is an internal matter between you and the Romulans. The Prime Directive forbids me from getting involved. As for the latter, the Eighth Fleet and the 103rd are under very specific orders to ensure that your government complies with the Alliance’s demands. Way above my pay grade. I get involved and I’m court-martialed six ways from Sunday.”

“But Ambassador Sugihara said—”

“Sorry, my hands are tied. Have a nice day,” and I hang up on him.

“You do realize, Captain, that’s a blatant misuse of the Prime Directive,” Tess comments with some amusement. “And technically, it is an Alliance matter…”

“That moron has a problem with my phrasing, he can talk to my JAG rep. Diplo wouldn’t let us deal with the problem because Sugihara had his head up his TRIBBLE as usual, but I’m more than happy to let D’trel fix it for us. At least Ballard’s working with us, even if her underlings are trying the same old tricks. Send the recording to the Premier’s office so she knows what her minions’ve been pulling under her nose. And copy Command—Riker needs a laugh.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tess says with a ghost of a smile, and waves a hand at Ensign Esplin; the Saurian busies herself with her console.

“Good. Come on, let’s blow this taco stand.” Wiggin turns and gives me a questioning look. “Don’t look at me, Master Chief; I picked it up at the Academy. Conn, set course for the Vaad border and take us out of orbit. Warp 9.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Lieutenant Park agrees.

Time to go play diplomat.

* * *

Four hours earlier…

“Prophets, can you believe the look on Q’Nel’s face when she comes storming in?” I laugh at the security feed from the forward command post in Kobol. “Phekk’ta pointy-ears have all the fun.”

“Captain Kanril, I really don’t think you get how serious this is,” Commander Sibrin Korami of the Onondaga says, shocked. “She just—”

“She did what I have wished to do from our third day on Kobali Prime,” Captain Garok of the IKS NaS’puchpa’ interrupts. The big one-eyed Klingon continues, “quvha’ Qobalnganpu’.”

“But she just jeopardized the entire alliance!” the Zakdorn disagrees as the digital version of D’trel takes off the general’s head.

I rotate in my chair in the Bajor’s wardroom to let a Bajoran E-1 past with a bucket of paint for the still-bare metal where a hull breach from the fight before last was patched, then rotate back and fix Korami with my “Sergeant Kanril” glare. “Do you really think D’trel would’ve gotten away with that without a Security Council vote backing it? Oh, sure, Sugihara tried to stop it, but”—I start counting off on my fingers—“the Klingons, Hirogen, Benthans, and Octanti sided with Ambassador tr’Rllaillieu and the Hazari and Hierarchy abstained.”

“It’s not the human thing to do,” complains Lieutenant Dzvonko Pandev, acting captain of the Sitak since the most recent skirmish.

I round on him, my expression dark, my voice cold as ice; he visibly recoils. “Guess what: she’s not human, you idiot. And neither am I or Korami, in case you didn’t notice. This isn’t the Academy where there’s always a perfect—” A chime from the intercom short-circuits my rant. “WHAT?!”

“Uh, sorry to interrupt, ma’am,” Ensign Esplin nervously says. “I’ve got Vice Admiral Reynolds on gold channel 1.”

I take a breath, stand, and straighten my uniform jacket. “It’s all right, Ensign. Patch her through.” The main screen flicks from the Bajor’s Orb-and-wormhole coat of arms over to a human female three-star. Marama Reynolds is easily my father’s age, with bronze skin, silver hair tied up in a tight bun, and ornate tattoos across her chin, lips, and nose. “Sir.”

“Captain Kanril, I have a priority mission for you. The rest of you can leave.” She waits for others to file out of the room—Pandev seems somewhat skittish as he passes me; I wonder why?—then turns back to me. “The President’s pissed.”

“All due respect, sir, welcome to my world.”

“Not at you this time, Captain,” she corrects me, chuckling, then sobers. “FNN just aired a two-hour exposé on all the Kobalis’ various dirty dealings. You should see the flame wars on the extranet—public support for Operation Delta Rising just went in the bog, along with Okeg’s approval rating. I haven’t seen poll numbers drop that fast since Councillor Steiner turned out to have Orion Syndicate ties.”

“My heart bleeds. I voted straight-ticket Labor.”

“Can I finish, please?” she asks in an exasperated tone.

“Sorry, sir.”

“Thank you. Anyway, the President just sacked Sugihara as Ambassador to the Delta Alliance—”

“Finally,” I mutter.

“—and replaced him with Councillor zh’Thane from Andoria.” I nod approvingly. “He wants to try and salvage something from this clusterf*ck before the election”—she stops and glares at me, and my mouth snaps shut—“and after consulting with the Council and Starfleet Command, he’s decided getting a peace deal with the Vaads is our best bet. We want you and the Bajor to make the approach.”

My eyes widen in surprise. “Me on a critical diplomatic assignment? Remember what happened last time?”

Her mouth quirks in a grin. “Of course I do. It’s why I recommended you. Think about it: the Vaadwaur Supremacy is a military dictatorship, and the culture is one of militaristic nationalism, like the old Cardassian Empire. Overseer Eldex probably won’t respect a privileged, wide-eyed idealist, but he might go for a career soldier who talks plain.”

“Did the President approve you using me?”

“He didn’t like it, but between myself, Riker, and Secretary Shad we were able to convince him of the logic.” He gives me a pointed look. “You still have supporters in the brass, Kanril, especially after that thing in the mirror universe. Don’t squander it.”

“Uh, noted, sir.”

“I’ll send the details in an encrypted squirt.”

* * *

“Captain, we’re coming up on a Vaad border picket,” Master Chief Wiggin announces. “Make it one Astika-class artillery ship, four Manasa-class attack ships of various makes, and a dozen fighters.”

I pull the jumja stick out of my mouth and order Tess to bring us to red alert. “Any hostile moves, Wiggin?”

“They’re forming up into a standard attack formation, fighters screening escorts, escorts screening the cruiser.”

“Park, bring us out of warp two astronomical units from their position and make plenty of noise.”

“Crash-translating now.”

The harder you decelerate as you come out of warp, the more tachyonic matter you drag with you and the bigger the shockwave you send through subspace. Usually that’s not a good idea, but in this case I want to be noticed.

And they know it, as the bell-necked Vaad female who hails us from the artillery ship attests. “Delta Alliance vessel, this is Commander Darva of the Vaadwaur Supremacy Warship Revenge. You’re either an incompetent or you wanted us to know you were coming. Explain yourself or we will attack.”

“Commander Darva, I’m Captain Kanril Eleya of the Federation Starship Bajor. By now you’ve scanned us, and you’ll notice that while I have my shields up because I’m not a moron, my phasers aren’t charged and my torpedo tubes aren’t loaded. I’ve got no interest in fighting you. I’m here to formally request an audience with Overseer Eldex to discuss peace terms.”

“Peace?” she hisses. “Your Federation comes out here, aligns itself with the murderers of billions and those who keep our people captive, awaiting their deaths to profane their bodies and r*pe their souls, and you want to talk peace?”

“Look, I get that you’re angry. I’ve been there; long story. But you’ll notice that when we hit Vaadwaur Prime with the Alliance we held the Turei back from glassing the place again, and they wanted to, believe me.”

“A foolish mistake.”

“No, a pragmatic decision.” A moral one, too, but that’s not productive to mention so I leave it out. “We made a bet that keeping you around could be a good thing. A, you’ve got the firepower to take the Borg ship-to-ship and win, and that’s a rare thing in this region. B, the bluegills controlling your leaders were a skirmish in a much bigger war that involves the whole galaxy, not just your little pocket of it, and if we’re going to beat them we need all the help we can get.”

“So, you propose an alliance, not only a truce. The temerity—”

“We’ve already got a truce,” I interrupt. “The army that beat your troops on Kobali Prime is now enforcing a ceasefire line in no-man’s-land. I got a report as we approached that one of our armor units has already fired on Kobali forces to keep that truce intact.” I suppress a grin at that thought. With their fleet mostly destroyed by the Vaads in the initial invasion and the Samsar reduced to a flying wreck in the clusterphekk earlier in the week the zombies don’t have anything that can hope to counter a T-204, not even the anti-armor weapons we gave them. They’re good enough against Voth and Vaad mechs but they can’t punch through a Starfleet main battle tank, and they won’t target our own people anyway. “As I speak the Romulans and Benthans are confiscating the contents of the cryo vault and any Vaadwaur corpses the zombies haven’t already … used.”

As I talk her expression changes from indignant rage, to surprise, to cautious curiosity. “What will become of them?”

“You can have your dead back as a show of good faith; we’ll leave them at the abandoned Talaxian mining colony in the Entaba system in a couple of days. We’re going to transport the cryo tubes to the Alpha Quadrant.” I hold up a hand to forestall an outraged answer. “They’ll be revived and well cared-for—you can inspect the facilities on request—and we’ll repatriate them to the Supremacy as part of any peace settlement, no questions asked.” I take a breath. “In return, we want the Supremacy to join the Delta Alliance.”

“We are Vaadwaur. We fight our own battles.”

I laugh derisively. “You’re missing the point. There's no throne, there is no version of this where you come out on top. There’s what, a couple hundred thousand of you left? No matter your technical advantages Starfleet can counter anything you can pull together by itself, just by moving a few fleets from less-critical areas—you really don’t get what you’re up against here. But if you come on-side, you get trade partners, military backup, breathing room to build up a sustainable population, rights to colony worlds, and we’re even willing to enforce reparations on the Kobali, within reason.”

Darva looks at me critically. I glare back at her. Finally she says, “You have the authority of your government behind this?”

“My orders come straight from the President and the Delta Alliance Security Council endorsed the plan, so yes.”

“You make a compelling case, Captain Kanril. I make no promises but I will pass it up the chain of command.”

“Thank you, that’s all I wanted. We’ll pull back for now, but we’ll be in the area for the next two weeks. Broadcast a message on subspace radio, frequency, uh—”

“750 kilohertz, ma’am,” Esplin supplies.

“—if you want to talk further. Bajor out.” The screen flicks back to the starfield. “Conn, reverse course. Get us out of here before she changes her mind. Maximum warp.”

“Aye, aye.”

* * *

My comm awakes me from a sound sleep and I gently push Gaarra’s arm off me to get to my combadge on the nightstand. “Kanril. Word from the Vaads?”

“No, ma’am,” the officer of the watch, a lieutenant from Gunnery, answers. “We’ve picked up an odd signal from a moon on the seventh planet of a nearby system.”

“‘Odd’ how?”

“Looks like Borg, but it doesn’t match any known Collective or Cooperative protocols and there’s no sign of any active Borg presence in this system.”

Maybe more of the Vaads’ handiwork. “Go to yellow alert. Change course and go check it out. I’ll be up there in a couple minutes.” If there’s Borg activity this close to Allied space we need to know about it.

I quickly dress. Gaarra murmurs behind me in the bed and I lean in to kiss him. Poor guy just got off-shift three hours ago after spending what should’ve been his light-duty time fixing a serious failure in the nav deflector, so I let him sleep.

I get up to the bridge as we approach the planet in question. Biri’s looking over Wiggin’s shoulder. “Don’t you ever sleep, Biri?”

“Caught a catnap a couple hours ago. Come here; you’re not going to believe this.”

I glance at the screen but it’s all gobbledygook. “Biri, I have no idea what I’m looking at.”

“You know what a radioactive half-life is?” I nod. “Well, we can use the decay rates of radioisotopes to calculate the age of things. Really old trick.”

“Right, like carbon dating. So?”

“So, based on the amount of platinum-190 and its nuclides in these alloys, we’re looking at something about four and a half billion years old.”

“Sher hahr kosst. That’s old.”

“Older than most Class M planets, and about the same age as the oldest Preserver ruins.”

“Beginning deceleration,” the Gamma Shift conn officer, Ensign Pakniso, announces. “Coming out of warp in five, four, three, two, one, mark.”

A blue-green Class I super-Jovian gas giant redshifts into view as our warp field collapses. I grab for the top of Wiggin’s chair as Pakniso swoops in way faster than I generally like, feeling the g-forces through the dampers. She’s a Karemma exchange officer from the Gamma Quadrant and she’s not as careful as Park.

She angles the Bajor towards a moon the size of an average Class M planet. The computer generates the designation Adaris VIId based on the Benthan maps of the region, and overlays a description on the viewscreen. My eyes try to slide past the technobabble but I can make out enough of it to get an idea. Class N, temperature in the high hundreds of Kelvins, highly acidic atmosphere, geologically active, no sign of any life with more than one cell.

That’s apart from the structure that comes into view as we enter geosynchronous orbit on the night side. Wiggin starts a detail scan and throws the readouts up on the main viewscreen; the telescope shows a sprawling ziggurat of hard cubes, almost black with faint green circuit tracery. “By jingoes,” Wiggin breathes.

“Borg, definitely Borg,” I growl. “Sound battle stations!”

“Just how big is that thing?” Tess asks from behind me as the klaxons start to blare and the tac display comes up. I didn’t hear her come in.

“The central ziggurat is seventy-seven kilometers tall, forty-nine on a side. There’s also roughly a thousand spires ranging from seven to twenty-eight klicks. The entire complex covers a little over 2400 square kilometers.”

“Weird,” Biri says. Off my look, “They’re all multiples of seven, Captain.”

“Yeah, I worked that one out myself, Biri. So?”

“It’s a prime number.”

“Still not telling me anything I don’t know.”

“And it’s considered an important number in cultures all across the galaxy. The humans have the seven deadly sins and so forth, Trakor made seven prophecies, there’s seven books in the Hebitian Records, the—”

“You sure you’re not reading too much into this?” Tess asks. “Do the Borg even use kilometers?”

Biri opens her mouth, then TRIBBLE her head thoughtfully. “Okay, maybe I jumped to conclusions. Still, it’s an interesting coincidence.”

“That’s nice. Any reason we shouldn’t just wipe the whole site from orbit?”

“Always the way, isn’t it, El?” the Trill complains. “We finally find something worth studying and your first instinct—”

“Biri, it’s Borg!” I point out. “I don’t know if the Bajor can safely take a cube. She probably can, but I’m not eager to test that, you get me?”

“Well, then, ma’am, you’ll be happy to know I’m not picking up anything resembling a ship anywhere in the system,” Wiggin says.

“Really?” He nods. “What about the ziggurat? You getting anything?”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Gaarra rush onto the bridge, still pulling his jacket on. “Place looks dead but there’s still that faint subspace signal we picked up as we were going by. The same fragment of binary machine language, over and over.”

“Esplin?”

The communications officer types a few commands, then shakes her head. “Translation software can’t make out much; OS and base language is probably too different from ours. But, educated guess, it’s a warning signal of some kind, or maybe a mayday.”

I tap my foot for a moment, pondering. Finally, “Stand down from battle stations but continue to monitor the area. Biri, you up for an away mission?”

“Captain, the place is older than some star systems,” Tess points out. “I doubt anyone’s still alive down there.”

“We’ve seen weirder,” Gaarra retorts. “Remember that thing with the Xucphran geese at Klaestron IV?”

“Gaunt’s hosts, I still don’t know what that was about,” Biri chortles, pressing a hand to her face. “But anyway, even if there’s nobody down there, this is still the earliest example of Borg archeotech anyone’s ever found. Might be we learn something useful, Tess.”

I stare out at the mud-colored world below, eyeing the dark green splotch on the surface. A knot of fear roils in the pit of my stomach. “El, are you all right?” Gaarra asks, touching my shoulder.

I take a steadying breath. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’m fine,” I repeat more confidently, then reach for my combadge. “Dul’krah, you awake?”

“Yes, Captain. We are at battle stations.”

“Prepare an away team for insertion in a potentially hot LZ.”

“Our opponent?”

“The Borg.”

END OF PART ONE

* * *

Author’s Notes: The bit where Lieutenant Pandev complains that “it’s not the human thing to do”? Yeah, the original speaker was Janeway.

sander233 · February 2015

...Look to the stars
Let hope burn in your eyes
And we'll love
And we'll hope
And we'll die
All to no avail...

- Muse, "Stockholm Syndrome"

L E T . H O P E . B U R N

"SUBJECT ZERO-TWO-THREE-THREE, it is time."

The force field (level-eight, twelve hundred kilowatt range) dropped, and he smelled the guards outside. Their odor was mild, but distinct. It was Thirteen and Twenty-Eight (humanoid, species unknown) as usual. Zero-Two-Three-Three got up from his cot, stretched his sore tendons and muscles, and stepped into the corridor between the guards.

The guards took him outside the Holding pens, onto the open, barren surface of this planet (or planetoid? Class-Q or Class-R? Need more than a few glimpses at the sky to resolve-) and marched him in a line with the others heading for the Judgment Chambers. It always seemed to be night, here. (Or maybe they only take me out at night. Ceremonial significance?) Weirdly, it wasn't cold. (Geothermal activity?) Which was good, because he had no clothes. But at least out here there was some light.

The moon shed enough light for his eyes, once adjusted, to make out the shape of his guards, and some of the other subjects. But only a shape, and that was only on the brightest of nights. Tonight, it was too dark to see much more than the outlines of Thirteen and Twenty-Eight. (One moon, always in the same point in the sky... tidally locked. Average albedo seems to be about point-one-zero. Directional. Variable light source? Eccentric orbit around a star? Is the star itself a variable-type? Need more information to work out where I-)

The perpetual night sky disappeared behind the massive, geometric form of the Judgment Seat, and he was brought inside, back into the blackness. Here the subjects were split off for their own assignments. He knew he would face some of them tonight. And if he was better than they, he would leave walking. (Some sort of gladiatorial trial-by-combat, or entertainment, perhaps? reminiscent of Triskelion, or Ancient Rome on Earth, or-)

"Subject Zero-Two-Three-Three, you have performed well and have been judged superior to other subjects in strength, stamina, and skills in armed and unarmed combat. Now your leadership will be tested. You will be paired to an inexperienced subject. Her species is known to us to be resilient, but stubborn and prone to illogical action, with little if any regard for self-preservation. YOUR OBJECTIVE IS TO KEEP HER ALIVE. Do you understand?"

"I understand," he said.

"Bring in Subject One-Nine-Six-Eight!"

A door opened into his briefing room, and the subject was dragged in. She wasn't struggling against the guards, so she'd obviously already learned that was futile. But she wasn't cooperating either. He sniffed the new subject, and I KNOW THOSE SCENTS! (Klingon, mammalian humanoid, strong skeletomuscular system and multiple organ redundancies-) No, SHE is familiar somehow...

"PREPARE YOURSELVES!"

The subject was panicked, taking in rapid breaths through her mouth. He didn't have much time to break her in. "Are you armed?" he asked her.

Her breath caught in her throat, and he heard her sniffing in his direction. "Sway?"

"What is that?" he asked her. "Is that a weapon?"

"Sway, it's you, isn't it? I know your voice! I know your scent!"

"Listen, we don't have long. Are you armed or not?"

She was silent for a moment. "I have my D'k tahg."

(D'k tahg or Daqtagh - traditional Klingon warrior's dagger, fixed, straight-edged primary blade with two curved secondary blades, typically hinged-) I open the secondary blades once I've stabbed my enemy in his chest, and then I twist... "Are you proficient with it?"

"What do you mean, 'am I-' Sway, what's the matter with you? Don't you recognize your-"

She had started to reach for his face, but he flinched away. "Answer the question!" he snapped.

She gulped. "What have they done to you, Sway? Did they brainwash you? Is that what they're gonna do to me?"

"SUBJECTS, proceed to the Judgment Chamber!"

More doors opened, and the guards hustled them forwards.

"Yes, I'm proficient," she whispered. "As skilled as you are with your katar or your mek'leth."

He hadn't been issued the ancient Human punch-dagger, or the Klingon short-sword, or any of the other weapons he'd been tested with. He didn't need them. His teeth and claws could rend flesh as easily as any blade. "Hold it in your stronger hand, place your other hand on my back and hold it there."

They entered the Chamber. He sniffed first, and found the familiar reek of entrails and excrement. He knew this Chamber. The guards cleaned the Chambers after every test, but they hadn't yet completely removed the stench from where he'd ripped out an opponent's digestive tract with a pole-arm (similar to a kar'takin, but with serrated edges) eight days ago. (Either the captors have a very poor sense of smell, or-) The others were being brought in as well. Some species smelled familiar, (Andorian, Reman, Jem'Hadar, Hirogen) others he could not identify. There were eight of them.

"There are traps in here," he hissed to her. "I've memorized where they are. Stay very Hu'tegh close to me." The Klingon swear word slipped in without him even thinking about it.

One-Nine-Six-Eight started to cry. "I'll try," she whispered.

"BEGIN!"

"Sway!" she called out. "I love you!"

...

* * *

Rules without exceptions last eternally
Every move you make creates your destiny
I've come to soak my sorrow
In halo black
As black as the seal on my soul

('Cause when the lights are down there's no more to say)
Love is the real pain
An eternal revolution in my mind
(And when the lights are down you're so far away)
Tell me your real name
In the silence of the darkness we unite

(Rules without exceptions last eternally
Every move you make creates your destiny)
What can protect me from the past
And all the things that I have done?
She told me
And then she was gone

(But when the lights are down there's no more to say)
Deep in the shadows
Where the last of my delusions made a stand
('Cause when the lights are down she'll take me away)
Tell me her real name
And in death we'll live the love we never had

Oh, come all you faithful
Beneath the moon
Beneath the moon
Into the void as one
Marching on!

('Cause when- 'cause when- 'cause when-)
'Cause when the lights are down there's no more to say
Love is the real pain
An eternal revolution in my mind
('Cause when the lights are down she'll take me away)
Tell me her real name
And in death we'll live the love we never had

Roy Khan of Kamelot - "When The Lights Are Down"

IKS noSwI', somewhere in the Delta Quadrant - two days earlier

"...The next thing I knew, she'd disappeared," 1st. Sgt. Shralak reported, "just like the Commander, and that Reman, subcommander whatsisface... Lady Naja was right next to me, I looked down at my PADD, and when I looked up, she was gone."

Lt. Marlta Bain could feel a headache coming on. "And sensors showed nothing?"

LCdr. Gru, the Ferengi Starfleet exchange officer assigned to ops, shook his head. "No transporter signatures, no tachyon traces, no subspace distortions. We're alone out here."

LCdr. Dr. Malhul cringed at that. "Just because we can't see anyone, doesn't mean there's no one there. We're in uncharted space, bound to encounter unknown species with unknown technology. Besides, we have evidence that someone or something is out there. Our officers are being taken."

"I'm very aware of what's going on," Gru declared. "I'm just saying that scientifically, there's no explanation."

"There's always an explanation," the Orion CMO argued. "We know there's an active intelligence behind the disappearances."

"How do you come to that conclusion?"

"It should be obvious, even to you," Malhul sighed. "First they took the Captain, then Subcommander Pteryx, our assigned first officer. Now our second officer, Lady Naja. A pattern of selectiveness like that does not arise without a conscious intellect at work. We just need to investigate further to find it."

"And how do you propose we do that?" the Ferengi countered. "We have nothing to go on!"

"So whining about it is the answer?" Malhul sneered.

"Enough, both of you!" Bain said sternly. "If our sensors can't pick up anything, then they're not good enough. There's no point in staying out here any longer. We're going to go back to the Dyson Sphere, report to General Ssharki, and let him decide what to do next."

"Oh we are, are, we?" the big Orion doctor crossed his arms. "Who said it's your decision, Lieutenant?"

Lt. Bain stared at him. "You may outrank me, Doc, and I respect your opinion on medical matters, but you're not a bridge officer. You're not familiar enough with the workings of the ship to take command." She looked to Gru. "And you're Starfleet, so you don't count. This is a Klingon warship, and as the senior KDF-assigned bridge officer aboard, I'm taking command. And I'm getting us out of here before our unseen enemy takes me wherever they took Commander Sway and the others."

"That would settle the argument about who's in charge, at least," Shralak remarked unhelpfully.

"While I think I'm more qualified to command than you are, I agree with your plan," said Gru. "We can't continue our mission without our Captain, first officer and science officer. We don't have the tools to find them to mount a rescue, and we can't risk losing anyone else." He suddenly flashed a glare at 2nd Lt. Vokem. "Speak up, boy, I don't think the Lieutenant heard you."

The Klingon tactical officer raised his voice and his eyes to address the Cardassian. "I said, retreating from an unknown opponent may be considered an act of cowardice. Ma'am."

Bain fixed the junior officer with a cold stare. "I'm going to be reporting to General Ssharki that his oldest son and his daughter-in-law are missing," she iterated. "If I were a coward, I believe I would much rather let myself get captured."

Unknown planetoid - present day..?

Zero-Two-Three-Three could feel the Reman probing at his mind. He recalled his counter-telepathy training (from where?) Where did I learn how to do this? and pushed back, his other senses alert for-

There it was. An almost-inaudible gasp of pain, a scent of confusion mixed with terror. Zero-Two-Three-Three charged, head low, arms outstretched. He felt the claws of his right hand sink into cold, clammy flesh and he spun, moving behind the Reman as he reached his left hand for his face.

The Reman screamed as Zero-Two-Three-Three's claws found his eyes, then strong jaws closed around his neck and twisted, and with a sickening *Snap!* he was silenced.

Zero-Two-Three-Three dropped the body and called out to his assignment. "One-Nine-Six-Eight, where are you?"

Her hand touched his chest. "I'm here, Sway." She sniffed. "That smells like-"

"Quiet," he ordered. He took her hand and they ran a short distance away before he stopped her, picked her up, and silently tiptoed in another direction. Only the Hirogen was left, and she was a cunning foe. He set One-Nine-Six-Eight down near a steam vent, hoping it would cover the sound of her frightened breathing, while he sniffed out his opponent.

There was a wet squelch and a wave of the odor of fresh viscera as the Hirogen poked at the remains of the Reman. "You are worthy prey, Gorn!" she bellowed.

(What is 'Gorn'? Hirogen insult? No, he said 'worthy prey' - is 'Gorn' my species?) I am Gorn, and I am a soldier-

"You are not yet wounded, Gorn," the Hirogen called. "That will change."

Zero-Two-Three-Three brought his charge down into a crouch. "Stay here," he hissed. "When I say 'now,' drag your knife across the floor. Make plenty of sparks."

"Okay," she whispered back.

Zero-Two-Three-Three kept his claws raised and padded silently across the stone floor, moving about five meters closer to the Hirogen. He stuck out his long tongue and brought it up to the roof of his mouth as he inhaled deeply through his nostrils. He could taste the Hirogen's scent. She was frightened, despite her bluster; stripped of her armor, her weapons, her sensors, even her most important sense, vision.

Honed on her now, he could smell her as she approached, sidestepping the trapdoor that had taken the Andorian. He felt the ground vibrate through the soles of his feet - no matter how carefully she stepped, there was no disguising her hundred and fifty kilos of mass. She stalked closer, then paused, and continued, moving in another direction. (Did the hunter lose the track? No, she knows I'm here. She's circling, going for-)

"NOW!!" he screamed.

The blade of the d'k tahg scraped on the stone, throwing a shower of sparks just as the Hirogen was about to lunge. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, so the white-hot flare of steel on basalt stabbed like daggers into her retinas. She howled as she blindly struck at One-Nine-Six-Eight with her scimitar. But the young Klingon woman dodged and dove toward her, driving her knife into the huntress' ribs and rolling between her legs in a single, fluid motion.

Zero-Two-Three-Three scrunched his eyes against the flash of the sparks, and opened them in time to see his opponent, her sword, and the one he knew he had to protect (Why?) He led with his shoulder as he crashed into the Hirogen from her side, reaching for the hand holding the blade as they went down in a heap.

He raked at her shins with his clawed feet, distracting her as he wrestled for control of the scimitar. She got her free hand over his snout, and held his jaw shut in a vice-like grip as she struggled to get leverage. He got both hands around her wrist and twisted, tearing tendons and ligaments and bones... she howled in pain and the sword clattered to the floor.

She released his jaw and punched him in the side of the head, just below his eye socket. He rolled with the punch, and she rolled with him, pinning his legs with hers as she reached for the knife in her ribs. She pulled it out, flipped it in her hand and drove it into his abdomen. He grunted, and snarled, releasing her ruined arm and pushing against her other arm and shoulder, slowing her as she let her vast weight aid her immense strength to push the blade deeper.

"You fight bravely, prey, even at the end. You know you will die, and yet you fight. Do you kno-" Her question ended with swish as her head was parted from her shoulders.

"Heads up," said the Klingon woman. She dropped the scimitar and helped Zero-Two-Three-Three throw off the Hirogen's decapitated body and knelt to examine him. "Did she hurt you?"

"A little..." he pulled out the knife and felt his blood flow out.

"Oh, SYahazah, you've been stabbed!" She put her hands over the wound and leaned on it. "They took all our clothes - I don't have anything to use as a bandage. I'll hold it until the bleeding stops..." She trailed off, and then spoke again, softly. "Sway, I know you don't remember me, but I love you more than I can say. And... I know you love me too, even if you can't remember that now."

He lay there, listening to her, feeling her. I love her? "You keep saying 'Sway' - what is that?"

"That's your name. It's short for S'fwyrnamokaarn, which means-"

"'Sweet Delight,'" he finished, translating from the old Gorn language... I am a Gorn, and I am a soldier... what's the rest? "I don't remember who I am. I don't remember who you are. What is your name?"

"My name is-"

"Subject One-Nine-Six-Eight, you performed well, for a first attempt. Subject Zero-Two-Three-Three, your results continue to impress."

Sway (?) heard the guards approach. "We should get up," he told his companion.

"You need treatme-"

He covered her hands with one of his. "I'll be fine. I've been hurt like this before. I heal fast."

"I know." She stood, and helped him to his feet.

"Subject One-Nine-Six-Eight will be taken for further questioning. Subject Zero-Two-Three-Three will return to Holding."

The guards moved between them and led them their separate ways.

"What is your name?" he called to her.

They stunned him before he heard her answer.

IKS Carcharias Rex, Dyson Joint Command

Despite its official KDF designation and bristling arrays of antiproton weapons, there was no disguising the fact that General Ssharki's current mode of transportation was, in essence, a cruise ship. And since the Solanae or whoever built this Dyson sphere had no concept of creature comforts, and Risa was on the other side of the galaxy, Ssharki had decided to open his luxury star liner as a sort of floating hotel, providing shore leave facilities to the forces engaged in fighting the Voth as well as hosting various dignitaries.

And so the General himself, when he was not leading ground assaults against Voth positions or conducting strategy meetings, would often be found on his ship, either entertaining guests or in the galley overseeing meal preparation. The well-travelled Gorn considered himself to be an expert on culinary traditions from across the explored galaxy.

Lt. Bain found the General hovering over a massive pot of something that smelled - to her - way too spicy. He raised a tasting spoon to his mouth, and shook his head. "Still needs more cayenne pepper," he told the Human chef. He noticed the Cardassian officer and said "You're supposed to be on the noSwI' looking for the Voth supply lines. You are here, and your commander is not. What has gone wrong?"

Bain gulped. "My commander... Sir, it is my duty to report that Commander Sway was abducted by an unknown entity, along with Commander Naja and Subcommander Pteryx. I have aborted the mission and... I assume full responsibility for my failure as chief security officer."

Ssharki stared at her, silently, for a long minute before asking "...What exactly do you mean by 'unknown entity'?"

The Gorn general was very calm, and very quiet. Marlta Bain had served with him long enough to know to be terrified. "We know something took them, sir," she squeaked out. "Something intelligent enough to know they were important... But our sensors didn't show anything that could have been a ship or transporter signal-"

She shut up as General Ssharki straightened his posture and stretched his neck to his full 263cm height. "My children are missing," he said gently. "And you can tell me nothing that will help me to find them?"

Bain swallowed her dread and spoke again. "Only our position when they were taken, sir."

Ssharki puffed a disappointed sigh through his nostrils and tapped at his commstrap. "Dou'gal, find Commander Sker and start downloading the noSwI''s sensor logs. Correlate with the security logs from that ship and find me something - anything that might indicate what caused its senior officers to vanish."

He looked down again at Lt. Bain. "You did the right thing, aborting the mission and returning to report this. We will need to inform Commander Kaol, but I need a moment first. Wait here."

"Yes sir," she said, watching the General walk toward a storeroom.

"You," he pointed to a cook's assistant. "OUT."

Sensing imminent bodily harm, the Ferasan dropped the pallet of tomatoes he was holding and scrambled to safety.

Ssharki sealed the door behind him. It was a good door - thick layers of plasticized tritanium and disilicon polymer - that formed a hermetic seal when closed. It did little to contain General Ssharki's screams of rage and anguish, or the sounds of the scene of unimaginable violence that had befallen the fruits and vegetables locked in the storeroom with him.

After an agonizing minute or two had passed, a massive, fist-shaped lump appeared in the door, and the terrible noises were silenced. The door opened, stuck in the track because of the dent, and Ssharki squeezed through, brushing bits of ruined vegetables from his shoulder pads. "Silah," he called to his head chef, "inform our guests that the salad is off."

Bain followed him to the transporter room at a safe distance and beamed with him to the command spire. Sergeants Shralak and Huynh were waiting near the beam-in point. Seeing the General, their expressions turned apologetic.

Peter Huynh, the Moabite who had been Cmdr. Sway's bodyguard, stepped forward. "Suh-"

Ssharki waved him off. "Later. Follow."

The sergeants fell in with their lieutenant as Ssharki strode across the command center into Kaol's office.

"The noSwI' has encountered an unknown intelligence which has abducted its senior officers, including your intelligence man," the General announced. "Its mission has been aborted. Lieutenant Bain here has the full report. I'm taking the C. Rex out with the noSwI' and MuH QeDmo' to find our missing people. Inform Commander Arnold that my troops and I will not be available in the battlezone for at least a week, and tell the others that my... shore leave facility is weighing anchor."

The startled Romulan took a moment to process that. "Um... very well, I will send your change-of-mission request to the-"

"That was not a request." Ssharki turned to Marlta Bain. "Can you command your ship in Sway's absence, or should I assign someone else?"

The Cardassian stood at attention. "If you will allow me to regain my honor and fulfill my duty, General, I will lead and protect my ship and my crew."

Ssharki nodded. "Make your mission report to Commander Kaol, then prepare your ship for departure. We leave when you are ready. Qapla'!"

"Qapla'!" she returned the salute and approached Kaol's desk.

Ssharki turned to the younger Gorn and the Moabite Human. "You will accompany me, and help me find what you lost."

"Yessuh."

Holding Block - the next night

Zero-Two-Three-Three ate his meal. The processed protein paste didn't really taste all that bad (tastes like spam - whatever qa'jay that is.) He knew it was important to keep his strength up. Especially now that he had someone to protect. (Who is she? A Klingon who's in love with a Gorn? Either I am supposed to be someone of very high status, or else she's some sort of deviant.) Do I love her?

"Subject Zero-Two-Three-Three, it is time."

The force field dropped, and the Gorn stood and stretched. It was obvious now, what he was. He was surprised he hadn't realized it before. (I didn't think much about it.) I am a Gorn, and I am a soldier. My duty is to... What is the rest?

He fell in between the guards and marched in line with the others. The moon was bright tonight. He thought he could make out a long-haired female figure a few places in the line ahead. But then they entered the void of the Judgement Seat and all was dark again.

"Subject One-Nine-Six-Eight's responses to you are intriguing. Further conditioning on you and her will be withheld. Your performance together as a paired unit will be judged."

He felt her touch his crest, and he smiled.

"Your next trial will be more challenging than the last. You will have no weapons. Prepare yourselves!"

Sway relaxed as she continued to massage his head spines. "I didn't get your name," he told her.

"I am Naja, your par'Mach'kai and lifemate. Do you remember?"

"Not yet. I wish I could. I'm remembering a few things... If you are my wife, a Klingon, then who am I?"

"You are Sway, chosen son of General Ssharki, the gin'tak to the House of Woldan. You and he have both been named Heroes of the Empire."

Sway considered the implications of that. (KDF training would explain my high-level competency with blade weapons.) "So I'm some sort of war hero? Is that why you love me? Or is it because of my father?"

She stroked his cheek ridge. "No. I fell in love with you when we were at the Academy, and you were a skinny little boy who got beat up all the time, and before you and your father even knew each other. I love you for you."

"But why?"

"Subjects, proceed to the Judgment Chamber."

They walked toward the door, and she whispered to him "You are the most courageous and noble person I have ever known, Sway."

Things started to come back to him.

The Chamber opened, and Sway sniffed the inky darkness. "Um..."

"What is it?"

"There's nothing out there."

"WRONG."

Sway was hit with a stunner, and he went down in a heap.

"You are here. And we are here."

"Sway!" Naja cried, kneeling at his side. She was stunned as well, and landed, twitching, on top of him.

"Wha- what do you want from us?" Sway demanded.

"One-Nine-Six-Eight claims to love you," they said. "This love will now be put to the test."

* * *

I won't stand in your way
Let your hatred grow
And she'll scream
And she'll shout
And she'll pray
And she had a name
Yeah, she had a name

And I won't hold you back
Let your anger rise
And we'll fly
And we'll fall
And we'll burn
And no one will recall
No one will recall

This
Is
The last time I'll
Abandon you
And this is
The last time I'll
Forget you
(I wish I could)

Look to the stars
Let hope burn in your eyes
And we'll love
And we'll hope
And we'll die
All to no avail
All to no avail

This
Is
The last time I'll
Abandon you
And this is
The last time I'll
Forget you
(I wish I could)

This
Is
The last time I'll
Abandon you
And this is
The last time I'll
Forget you
(I wish I could)

I wish I could

Matthew Bellamy and Chris Wolstenholme of Muse - "Stockholm Syndrome"

(*/ for fullest experience, watch video in full screen, with the lights off, as loud as you can stand it. then replay as you continue reading... /*)

The Judgment Seat

"Naja!"

Sway could hear her screaming in pain. The guards held him back. "Stoppit! MAKE THEM STOP!!"

"Interesting. You burn for her, though you barely know her."

The screaming stopped. "Naja? Are you alri- helgh!!" Something picked him up by his arms, and he felt a shocking pain from the still-fresh wound in his stomach.

"Sway?" She called out to him, but he couldn't answer her. He could barely breathe. "What are you doing to him!? Why!?"

"Curiosity."

The electric probe was pulled away, the pain subsided, and Sway vomited.

"Sway, my love, hold on!"

He coughed. "I'mmarright..." The guards released him, and he collapsed in a heap.

Naja was upon him immediately. "Why are you doing this to us?" she demanded of their unseen captors.

"To test your sympathetic responses. And to leave pain fresh in your minds. Bring her to the next chamber. Zero-Two-Three-Three will remain here."

Naja was dragged away. Sway tried to get up, but his guard stopped him, placing a heavy, padded foot on his chest. "I won't forget you!" he called out to her. "Not again!"

"Sway, I think they see in infrared!" she told him. "Try to-" and then she was gone.

"What will you do with her!?" Sway demanded.

"That depends on you," they told him. "Would you walk away from Subject One-Nine-Six Eight, never be with her again, if doing so meant sparing her the agony you both just endured?"

"She has a name," he snarled. "Her name is Naja!"

"ANSWER THE QUESTION. Would you abandon the one who loves you, to spare her great pain?"

* * *

"Absolutely not," Naja told them. "And if you left enough of my Sway in his head, he wouldn't either. He'd tell you what I'll tell you now: whatever you want to do to us, we can take it if we're together."

"But you are not together."

"Then you don't know what true love really means." She placed her hand over her heart. "You see this, right? I have Sway in here - that means you can't take him from me. Wherever we are, we are together."

"An interesting, if unscientific answer."

* * *

"Would you lay down your life to save hers?"

"Yes. Gladly." He sat up and hugged his knees. "Are you offering to kill me to end this?"

"Not yet. Would you like that?"

"I just want her to be safe from harm. Safe from you and your sick games."

* * *

"What if we told you that your Sway was dead? That we just killed him."

She felt her heart stop for a moment. It's a test, she reminded herself. They wouldn't kill him. He's too 'interesting' of a subject... "I'd tell you to kill me too," she said, with all the defiance she could muster. "So that we could be together forever."

"What if he died to save you, and that by his sacrifice you were no longer our prisoner? What if he died to set you free?"

"You wouldn't want to do that," she told them coldly, though inside her mind was raging. "If ever get back to my ship without my husband standing at my side, I will return to this world with the combined might of the Great Houses of Methos and Woldan and reduce it to ash. After I find you and I show you pain you could never imagine."

* * *

"Would you take an innocent life if it meant saving her?"

I am a Gorn, and I am a Soldier. My first, and most sacred duty is to protect the Innocent. He remembered that clearly now. But he answered "Yes."

"What about two? Would you trade two innocents for her?"

"Yes."

"Ten"

"...Yes. For her, I'd kill anyone."

A door opened, and he smelled people entering the chamber.

"PROVE IT."

* * *

"What if we conditioned him into something terrible? What if we made him a heartless murderer?"

"You couldn't do that to him," she insisted. "He is too strong."

"Only as strong as his mind. And right now, his mind is very weak."

"Maybe, but then it wouldn't really be him. If you make his mind leave him and cause his body to terrible things, then that's your doing, not his. His will would not be behind his acts. Only yours. I've seen what you've done to him already. Robbing him of his memories, making him fight like an animal in your pits. You can do no worse."

They were silent for a moment, then said "Show her."

"Show me..?"

Her guards picked her up by her arms, and brought her back to the Chamber with Sway. She could hear him. He was crying, weeping without tears. She could smell him, and something else... "Oh no..." There was blood. Fresh blood. A lot of it. From many different species...

"They were defenseless," Sway told her. "Weak. I think some of them were children. They said if I didn't kill them, that you would be tortured..."

"Do you understand what he has done?" they asked her. "We gave him a choice. He chose this. Will you still love him now?"

She answered by running to him, and kneeling by his side, and wrapping her arms around him. "Sway, listen to me carefully. They did this. Not you. They used you to carry out their twisted will. Do you understand me?"

He sniffled. "I just wanted to protect you..."

"I know." She cradled his head to her chest and said it again. "I know."

"Fascinating. Return them to Holding. But place them in the same cell. We shall observe how they interact without interference."

"C'mon, Sway, let's go."

"You don't want to be with me," he told her, trying to push her away. "Not after-"

"It doesn't matter," she insisted. "I love you, no matter what. Now will you get up, or will I have to carry you?"

"Guard Thirteen will carry him-"

"SHUT UP!" she yelled at the ceiling. "Consider this a free test." She reached for her lover's hands. "I know you wanted to protect me, Sway, but now its my turn. I'll help you, my love, but you have to get up from where you fell."

He looked up at her voice and nodded in silent, invisible understanding. He let Naja help him to his feet, and walked with her and their guards, leaving the Judgment Chamber behind. He said nothing until they were outside, and he could look up at the stars. "There's someone out there looking for us, isn't there?"

"Yes," she told him. "Our ship, and I'm sure by now your father has his entire squadron looking for us. She looked up as well. "I hope they find us soon."

"But what will they find?" Sway wondered. "Us, or what we've become?"

IKS Carcharias Rex, approaching last known contact coordinates

"...So what Sker did was he wrote a search algorithm to find any correlation between patterns in the background noise on the noSwI''s sensor logs and anything in the Klingon, Starfleet and Romulan databases related to long-distance transport," Cmdr. Dougal explained, badly. "Then he chained his computers with yours, the noSwI', Joint Command and half a dozen other ships to brute-force it-"

"Wait, he TRIBBLE the computers of other ships in the task force?" LCdr. Valk, Ssharki's new chief of security did not want to hear that.

"Well, yeah," Dou'gal told him. "He had to get into the databases anyway-"

Ssharki held his face in one hand and waved the other at Dou'gal to shut him up. "Just tell me what Sker found, not how many treaties and laws he broke to find it."

"There was a surge in subspace radiation very similar to signatures that have been detected where Iconian gateways are used, only reversed," Dou'gal announced. The Gorn science officer handed the General a PADD. "Significantly, these surges are nearly identical to an energy signature that was logged at Facility 4028 during the Dominion incident in 2410, when Taris disappeared. You know how when you walk into a gateway, you can show up anywhere? So there doesn't have to be a gateway on the other end?"

Ssharki nodded uncomfortably.

"Well, presumably, it works the same way in reverse. A gateway could open a portal anywhere, and bring whatever, or whoever's on the other side, through to where the gateway is."

"And that's what you think happened to Sway and Naja?" Ssharki clarified. "You think the Iconians took them?"

"And Subcommander Pteryx, yes. But I'm not sure the Iconians were actually the ones responsible."

"You just said they fell through an Iconian gateway backwards," Ssharki told his science officer.

"Actually, I said the event was very similar. But not quite the same. The readings are actually more similar to the gateway readings we have from New Romulus, or Moab III, where geothermal power sources were used. Omega particle reactions like what powers the Dyson Sphere gateways leave a different signature. And whatever power sources the Iconians themselves use, that's something different still."

"So... this is another Servitor race?" Valk asked.

"Possibly. I don't have enough information to determine who exactly took them. I only know vaguely how."

"What about 'where'?" Ssharki enquired.

"We're working on that. Meanwhile, Drs. Malhul and Xyoosix have implanted their commanding officers with tracking devices that should let us locate you within a five parsec radius of Sker's ship. Tr'vayn is waiting in the medbay to give you yours."

Ssharki opened his jacket to reveal a bandage over the front of his left shoulder. "She stopped me on my way to the bridge."

"Okay. Then I suggest you keep yourself prepared for a confrontation..."

"Oh, believe me, I'm prepared," Ssharki announced in a low growl, reaching behind his back two draw his Honor Guard pulsewave gun. "Any time they wanna take me..." he worked the pump-action on the underslung grenade launcher, "Bring 'em the f*ck on."

Holding

They were brought to a cell that had been prepared for them. At least, it had a larger cot. "Huh, I think I know what they have in mind," Naja remarked, as she felt around the space.

Sway sat down on the floor with his back against the wall. "I'm remembering more about who I was," he told her. "More of who you are, and how much..."

"How much what?"

Sway started to swallow, then let it out. "How much you mean to me. How much I love you. How much I want you to be happy..."

"How about how much I love you," she told him, "how I threw away everything and everyone I'd ever known and loved so we could be together, because I loved you that much more?"

Sway licked his teeth. "I kinda pieced that together yesterday..."

"Listen to me, my love, I'm sorry that these Hu'tegh taHqeqpu' forced you to sacrifice your honor. I'm sorry we're in this situation. And I'm very sorry that when I found you in here I wasn't leading a rescue party. But we are here, and we're in this together, and all we have is each other, and our love. Don't let go of that. Doubt yourself all you want, but don't ever doubt my love for you."

Sway smiled at that, and slowly stood up. "I think that's why I love you," he told her. "You see the weakness in me, and my sins, and you love me anyway."

"More than you know." She reached for his face, cupped his cheek ridges, and brought his snout down to nuzzle her lips. "They want us to show them how much we love each other, and I'm inclined to give them a show they'll remember as long as they live."

They moved to the bed, and Sway said "We are going to kill them all before we get out of here."

"Of course we will, my love. It was only a figure of speech."

Carcharias Rex

Ssharki entered his youngest son's room, and found Cal in full body armor, with an array of weapons all around, loading power cells into a bandolier. "Just what do you think you're doing?" Ssharki asked the fifteen-year-old.

"Preparing for battle," Cal stated the obvious. "I'm going with you."

"Oh, no you're not." Ssharki picked up Cal's prototype high-density phased tetryon rifle. "I will not expose you to unknown danger. You're staying right here, Little One."

"Father, I'm not 'little' anymore," Cal told him. "I'm fifteen - I'm older than Sway was when he went to the Academy-"

"He was far too young. And you are not your brother."

"But I can help find him!" Cal insisted. "You have to let me come with you!"

Ssharki sighed through his teeth. "Cal, I don't even know if Sway and Naja are still alive. I will not risk losing you too."

"You think I want to lose all of you?" Little Cal almost shouted. "If you don't come back with them, what do you think will become of me? I don't wanna be an orphan again!"

Ssharki felt his son's words pierce his heart like a kut'luch.

"You can't leave me here, father," Cal went on, "wondering if I'll never see any of you again. I have to know if you, and Sway, and Naja will be alright. I have to come with you."

The father nodded. "Very well, my son. But you will stay at my side and you will follow my orders without hesitation or question. Is that understood, Bekk?"

Cal grinned. "Yessir."

noSwI'

Lt. Marlta Bain paced the bridge, pondering the utter unlikelihood of her situation. She and her parents had been refugees, fleeing from Cardassia after Traitor Dukat had allowed the Dominion to claim their home, and ended up running straight into the arms of the Klingons, who'd made Dukat's treachery possible. Her father, a military historian, had never blamed the Klingons, though. He taught that Cardassia had shown weakness to its enemies, and it was only natural that the Klingons would take advantage, with or without prompting from a Changeling infiltrator.

They settled on Galorda Prime, a border world that the Klingons had opened to refugees of Dominion aggression. Her father established a bookstore, and her brother Jalet had been born a year later. Their father had taught them what he had learned from Cardassia's mistakes - how to live peaceably with the Klingons as neighbors. He taught them to show their inner strength, and to earn the Klingon's respect. Instilled with their father's admiration for Klingon philosophy and embracing their adopted culture, she and her brother had both enlisted in the KDF as soon as they were of age.

They wound up assigned to the security force on House Woldan's new flagship Norgh'a'Qun in 2409. The chief of security, Cmdr. Sway had encouraged her to take the officer's test, which she passed handily, and she advanced rapidly from there. Sway had surprised her by selecting her out of all of his lieutenants to be his chief of security on his own ship. Every day she tried to prove the honor was deserved. And now, with her honor on the line, she was ready to die to prove her worthiness.

"Sensors?" she asked again.

"Nothing yet, ma'am," LCdr. Gru told her. If there was any sarcasm in his statement, he hid it well. "I've got the lateral arrays tuned to the right subspace bands, but no activity yet..."

"I wish they'd just take me and get it over with," Bain muttered. "Waiting like this is driving me crazy." She checked her disruptor rifle for the hundredth time, fingered her sheathed d'k tahg, straightened her shoulder pads, thought about what trouble her brother could be getting into-

"Gotta spike!" Gru announced. "Sensors are picking up a subspace radiation surge... localizing... it's right here! On the bridge!" He looked up at the CO.

She leveled her disruptor rifle. "I'm ready for anyth-" She disappeared without any dramatic flash or further sound apart from her disruptor clattering on the floor.

Holding

Naja was the first to awaken. She lay next to Sway, stroking his crest, listening to him softly snore. He was adorable when he slept. She rolled under his arm and rested her head on his shoulder, and gently ran her fingers along his chest and abdomen. The mixture of her sweat and his seed made the smooth, scaly surface of his skin feel slippery and slick. She heard her mate stir, and sniff at her hair, and she smiled as she continued to stimulate the sensitive skin of his-

"Subject One-Nine-Six-Eight, it is time."

Sway woke up with a start. "Again with this sh*t?" he groaned. "Haven't we been tested enough?"

"You have. One-Nine-Six-Eight will be used to evaluate new subjects. If they survive her, we may judge them against you."

Naja sat up. "Wait, you're separating us?"

"Your time together has been most informative. We have learned all we can from you."

"Sway..."

He rolled out of the bet and dropped into a mok'bara defense posture. "You are not going to take her from me."

The force field dropped, and the guards entered. "Yes, we ARE."

Carcharias Rex

"We gotta hit!" Dou'gal crowed. "Lieutenant Bain was just taken!"

"Where?" Ssharki demanded.

"Gimme a sec, the QT tracker's still resolving... Got her. Star system six-and-a-half light years away, Type-II Cepheid variable... looks like a class-Q planetoid in an eccentric orbit."

"JASON!" Ssharki shouted to his Human helmsman. "How quickly can we get there?"

"In this ship?" Lt. Jason Carter grinned. "Sixty seconds from when I hit the go-fast button."

"Punch it."

* * *

One more day
This time I'll bite the bullet
Let me stay
And set this life ablaze

Give myself to compromise
And let the hammer fall
From blackened eyes to broken ties
I've bled to know them all
Driven to the brink of death
I heed deception's call
Through bitter tears, forgotten years
I've come to sever all

Lead us home!
Lead us home!
(Our tired hearts are failing now
From the inside out)
Lead us home!

One more time
This day I kill the witness
Take back
What's mine
And give disgrace a name

Give myself to compromise
And let the hammer fall
From blackened eyes to broken ties
I've bled to know them all
Driven to the brink of death
I heed deception's call
Through bitter tears, forgotten years
I've come to sever all

Lead us home!
Lead us home!
(Our tired hearts are failing now
From the inside out)
Lead us home!

Blessed hands will tear me off
And break me at the wrist
Drag me back to solid ground
And slay the fate I kiss!
Oh...

Lead us home!
Lead us home!
(Our tired hearts are failing now
From the inside out)
Lead us home!

Lead us home!
Lead us home!
(Our tired hearts are failing now
From the inside out)
Lead us home!
Lead us home!

Don and Ryan Clark of Demon Hunter - "Lead Us Home"

In the Dark...

Marlta Bain had been stunned the moment she arrived at... wherever the TRIBBLE this was. As she came to, she became aware of three things: First, it was dark, as in pitch-black. Second, she was naked. And third, her electromagnetic 'sixth-sense' was picking up a cluster of very strong readings about five or six meters in front of her. "Who are you?" she asked.

"You are Subject Two-Two-One-Three. Your race has not been thoroughly evaluated, however, the circumstances of your- what is humorous?"

Bain was laughing at them. Laughing hard. "You idiots..." she wheezed. "You're all bunched up."

There was a soft *phoot!* from behind them, and a *klunk!* from their midst, and then their world lit up as the cluster grenade went off, sending five metallic squid-like shapes flying in all directions.

In the flashes of weapons fire that followed, she glimpsed three Gorn of widely varying size and a compact Human rush through the room. "Keep one alive!" the biggest Gorn bellowed over the brutal noise.

"Over here, father!" the little one called.

"Mayum, you dropped dis," the accented voice of Sgt. Huynh said, as he placed her disruptor rifle in her hands.

"Thanks, Huynh, but I can't see shi-"

"Here..." Shralak put something over her head. "Infrared goggles."

She activated them, and could see the warm shape of Huynh and the cooler outline of Shralak. Huynh had his own IR headset, and Shralak had his spec ops eyepieces in. "Thanks, guys. Now if I could just find some clothes, I'll be in business."

Meanwhile, Ssharki interrogated the surviving machine. He and Cal pinned its tentacle-legs with their feet and glared down at its many-eyed head. "I have only two questions," Ssharki told it. "First, where can I find the person in charge?"

"The Grand Inquisitor sits atop the Judgment Seat," it told him.

"Second question, and it is very important that you answer this." Ssharki aimed his pulsewave at the thing's largest eye. "Where are my children?"

Holding

"Do you know where we're going?" Naja asked.

"Yeah, outside," Sway answered. Overpowering their guards hadn't been easy. He took a stunner to the chest before realizing that the guards were cyborgs, and the stunners were built into one of their arms. But their organic parts were apparently still capable of feeling pain. He'd taken great pleasure in dismantling his captors. "We came in through this corridor... there should be a right turn somewhere up here, and then twenty meters to the door."

"I think we passed the turn already," Naja told him. "It was that side passage back there."

"No, that was too narrow." Sway hit a dead end. "TRIBBLE."

"I told you," Naja sighed. "Let's go back."

Sway followed her into a side passage, that led to a bunch of empty holding cells and no way out. "Maybe it was a left..."

"I don't get it, where are all the prisoners and other guards?"

"Being judged," Sway figured.

"But they... they can observe us. They know we've escaped-"

"Not yet, you haven't."

Sway felt cold, mechanical appendages wrap around his arms. "NAJA!!"

"Get off 'im!" she yelled, stabbing into the dark behind her lover with a stunner. She hit something metal, and the stunner arced invisibly through Sway.

"AAAH!! Don't do that!" he yelled.

The thing fell to the ground, arcing and sparking and lighting up the gloom. They could see more of the squid-like robots approaching behind it.

"C'mon!" Naja grabbed Sway's wrist. "This way!"

"Do you know where you're going?"

"Away from them!"

Processing and Conditioning Complex

The SquidBot had been useless. It babbled on endlessly about the Inquisition and the Summons and other meaningless terms without telling Ssharki anything tactically helpful, like where to find his son and daughter-in-law. Before he killed it, he was able to piece together that he was dealing with a race of machines that followed the Will of the Masters with cult-like fervor and devotion.

Dr. Malhul's tricorder modifications were proving to be far more useful.

"I've got a positive DNA lock on Subcommander Pteryx," Sgt. Shralak announced. "I'm only picking up traces from Sway and Lady Naja, though."

"Way fine da greyman, hey mebbe hep fine da Commandahs," Pete Huynh suggested.

"Did anyone understand that?" Ssharki demanded.

"He says if we find Pteryx, he might help us find Commanders Sway and Naja," Bain interpreted the Moabite pidgin.

"I'm also picking up massive energy readings, down that corridor there," Cal pointed with the flashlight mounted on his rifle, "and residual radiation reads like a Gateway."

"We'll check that out later," Ssharki decided. "We find our people first. Where's Pteryx?"

Shralak poked at his tricorder. "DNA scan shows him two chambers in through... huh, that's odd."

"What is?"

"I'm detecting his body, and movement, but no Reman lifesigns."

"What about those squidbots?"

"Tricorder can't isolate them yet."

"Weapons on heavy stun," Ssharki ordered, as he slung his Honor Guard pulsewave behind his back and produced an experimental proton beam rifle that had proven effective against Voth mechs. "Lead the way, Shralak."

The first chamber they passed through was some sort of morgue. There were hundreds of dead bodies being preserved in stasis tubes, floating upright in some sort of fluid. A quick tricorder scan revealed that nearly every body belonged to a unique species. There were several Voth, half a dozen Hirogen, two Klingons, and several unfamiliar races contained together in clusters, but for the most part there was only one example of each the various species on display.

"They are... collecting us," Marlta Bain realized in horror.

"Keep moving," Ssharki hissed. "Scan everything, but keep moving."

They came to a door. "It's locked," Cal announced. "Gimme a minute, I might be able to figure out an override-"

"Mah weh 'z fastah," Huynh announced, unpacking a wedge of Khemtex.

"Faster is good," Ssharki rumbled, "but can you minimize the damage you do to the next room? If Pteryx is a hostage-"

"Unnerstood, suh." He broke off bits of the block of high explosives and pressed them almost delicately into strategic points around the door. "I be kefful."

Cal sulked while the twenty-year-old ex-Marine wired his charges. "I'll bet I coulda bypassed the locks faster than that..."

"Stan' back an' kuvuh you eyes!"

Everyone made sure they were standing behind the Moabite when he pressed his remote trigger. There was a muffled *whump*, and the door pitched forward with a *clong!* and several startled machines scooted away.

"Take 'em out!" Ssharki ordered as he bounded into the room, cutting down several squidbots with the wide-beam setting on his weapon. The rest fell quickly - even the stun setting on Ssharki's gun and Cal's phased tetryon rifle proved lethal to the electronic brains.

"Shralak, where's Pteryx?" Lt. Bain demanded.

"He's... oh, no."

Subcommander Pteryx - what was left of him - was walking stiffly toward them. His eyes had been gouged out and replaced by infrared sensors. There was an unhealed wound across his chest that did not bleed, and his neck tilted at an unnatural angle. The Reman extended his arm, and an electrode emerged as he reached for Sergeant Shralak.

The Gorn security NCO batted the arm away, and Bain stopped the Reman in his tracks with a flurry of disruptor bolts from her autorifle. Pteryx staggered, and pivoted toward her. Huynh stepped up and drew his sidearm, and dropped the Reman intelligence officer to the deck with an 11.25mm bullet in each kneecap.

"What the hell," Ssharki muttered as he approached the downed subcommander.

Shralak planted a foot on the arm with the electrostunner as he crouched over him with his tricorder. "No wonder we weren't getting any lifesigns... he's been dead for at least two days, and reanimated cybernetically."

"They Borgified him," Cal whispered fearfully.

"More or less." The sergeant kept poking at his tricorder. "I'm picking up Gorn skin cells in the chest and face wounds, and saliva around the neck..." He frowned and looked up at the General. "DNA matches Sway's."

Ssharki said nothing. He looked around the room. There were at least a dozen other corpses, all in the process of being converted into cyborgs. "Nothing we can do for him. Burn him, and the rest of these... shells."

"Aye, sir." Shralak unslung his Romulan plasma flamethrower and flash-cremated Pteryx and the rest of the unfinished cyborgs.

Cal had his tricorder out, connected to his wrist PADD. "Father... I'm looking over the scans we took of that other room, and the bodies in here..." he looked up. "They all died violently. And..." he gulped. "A lot of them have Sway's DNA on them."

Ssharki swallowed. "We'll keep moving. We will find my son - whatever has become of him..."

Holding

"This is it!" Sway exclaimed. "This is the way outside!" He held Naja's hand as they ran down the corridor to the big double door. Of course, it was locked.

"Now what?" Naja groaned.

Sway fingered the edges of the doors. "They're not retractable... No hinges on this side..." He pushed against them, testing the mechanisms that held them shut. "Hold this," he told Naja, passing her his stunner.

"What are you gonna do?"

"I'm gonna get us out." Sway padded up the corridor a short ways, then turned and sprinted at the doors, reaching his top speed in just six steps. He jumped up and kicked out, striking the doors along the center seam feet-first at sixteen meters per second.

The doors shook in their frames, but held, and Sway dropped hard to the floor. "OWww..."

"Are you alright, love?" Naja was crouching over him in an instant.

"Unh. I think so..." the young Gorn sat up dazedly and rubbed his knees.

Naja tilted her head. She heard a buzzing sound moving down the corridor. "The machines are coming. We're cornered here. Let's move."

"Yeah, okay. We'll have to find another way out..." he let her help him to his feet, took back his stunner, and they turned and ran back into the maze.

Processing and Conditioning Complex

"More bots!" Lt. Bain crouched and sprayed the corridor ahead with disruptor bolts.

"Dey comin' up behin' us!" Huynh snapped, as he lobbed a concussion grenade the other way.

Ssharki dropped to his knee and unfolded a cover shield, and unpacked and assembled a disruptor turret, and seeded the area with chroniton mines. "Advance forward!" he ordered, firing a wide-beam blast with his proton rifle and then swapping it for his KHG pulsewave.

Cal fired a blast of high-density tetryon particles that cored two squidbots that had lined up in his sights. He saw another one descending toward Lt. Bain. He keyed a preprogrammed subroutine in his tricorder - something he'd come up with to help his father fight Voth mechs - and sent a power surge through the robot that overloaded and fused its servos, sending it crashing stiffly to the floor.

Ssharki and Shralak fragged and melted the last few machines between them and the blast door. "Move it, people!" the General commanded, snapping his jaws. "Huynh, make sure we're not followed."

"Easiuh done den said," the Moabite mumbled, as he rigged the doorframe with khemtex and detcord. He blew it once the team reached safe distance, collapsing the corridor behind them.

"Where are we going, Shralak?"

The thirty-five-year-old Gorn soldier looked the through the data his tricorder was sending to his spec ops eyepieces. "Down this hallway, room on the left. I'm picking up DNA traces from Sway and Naja."

"Confirmed," Cal said, checking his PADD. "Trace readings from multiple sources, and... huh." He looked back at Lt. Bain. "I'm picking up your DNA as well."

Ssharki reached the door. "Hostiles?"

"Looks empty," Cal told him. "This door is-"

Ssharki kicked it off its hinges.

"-It was unlocked."

They entered a storeroom or an armory of some sort. Blade weapons of every configuration and description lined racks and shelves, mixed with blunt instruments ranging from heavy sticks to sophisticated flails.

"I'm picking up RFID tags on... all of them," Cal announced. "Looks like they've collected a ton of data on these weapons."

"If they were letting their prisoners kill each other with them, they would want to analyze the effectiveness of different implements," Lt. Bain mused.

Shralak went through the armory, looking for the DNA traces. "Lady Naja's d'k tahg," he announced, picking up the hand-forged knife. "It's got DNA on it from her, Sway... and a Hirogen."

"They must've used it," Ssharki figured.

"Sway's blood is on the blade... fairly fresh." Shralak's tricorder beeped, and he looked around. "Sir... I'm picking up traces of the Commander's DNA on almost half of these weapons... skin cells and blood cells."

Ssharki faced Lt. Bain. "You said Sway was the first one taken?"

She gulped. "Yessir. He disappeared a week before they took Pteryx. Commander Naja wanted to keep looking for him, but then she disappeared three days later-"

Ssharki held up his hand. "Two weeks... he's been trapped here for two weeks, forced to fight sentient beings from across the quadrant..."

"Father..." Cal spoke up.

Ssharki immediately dropped to his knee at the boy's side. "What is it, Little One?"

"I've run the data on these RF tags through a translation matrix. Naja's d'k tahg... it says it was recovered from Subject Nineteen-Sixty-Eight, and she used it against Subject Oh-Four-Fourteen, causing minor injury. Oh-Four-Fourteen then used it on Oh-Two-Thirty-Three, causing serious injury..." Cal walked around the room, scanning a pole-arm, a double-jointed cudgel, and a wicked-looking recurved sword before checking his PADD again. "I think Oh-Two-Thirty-Three was Sway." He arrowed in on a shelf in the corner. "Yeah. Here's his mek'leth and his katar."

"He'll want them back," Ssharki said levelly. "Give them here."

"I found their clothes!" Shralak announced. "Yours too, Lieutenant."

"Finally." Marlta Bain collected her uniform from the Gorn First Sergeant. "Turn around so I can get dressed."

"Why?" Sgt. Huynh asked. "You ben walkin' round wid us nekkid all dis time-"

"Do as the lady says, Huynh," Shralak growled.

"Where do we search now?" Ssharki wondered. "They wouldnt keep the prisoners near the weapons."

"No, and these RFID tags dont have any information about where their subjects are being held..." Cal mumbled, "only where the weapons came from and how they've been used... Father?"

"Yes, Little One?"

"The tags record fatalities... I ran a search. Oh-Two-Thirty-Three and Nineteen-Sixty-Eight... Sway and Naja... they haven't been killed by any of these weapons."

"Well, that's a relief," Bain declared, as she cinched her armored chest plate.

"Da greyman wuzn' keeled by no weapon needah-" Huynh piped up, before Ssharki silenced him with a look.

"We could call the ships, see if they've had any luck cutting through the interference. Maybe they can isolate their lifesigns, or any lifesigns; we could beam all the prisoners up."

Ssharki nodded and tapped at his commstrap. "C. Rex, this is Actual. Have our scanners found anything?"

There was no answer. Ssharki tried another channel. "C. Rex Actual to MuH QeDmo', come in." There was only static.

"Guess we'll have to destroy that Gateway first," Bain figured. Huynh smiled eagerly.

"I got an idea!" Cal announced. "Before Petey blows up the Gateway, I can hack the controls to find where they took Sway and Naja and port us to them!"

"Yes, good," Ssharki agreed.

"Energy signal is this way," Shralak announced, leading the group out.

Holding

"I'm... I'm tired, Naja..." Sway panted. He clutched his side where he'd been stabbed. It had started to heal, but the injury still throbbed. And his energy reserves were tapped. "I need to... rest for... a minute..." He sat down on the floor.

"They'll catch us if we don't keep moving," Naja told him, crouching at his side. "I can't carry you like I could at the Academy. You need to get up, Sway."

"I can't," the Gorn insisted. He reached for his mate, felt her face. "You go ahead without me. I'll hold them off... and once you're free... once you're back with our ship... you can come back for me."

"NO." She pushed his hand from her face, leaned forward, grabbed him by the armpits, and with a sudden, adrenal burst of strength, she hoisted his 136kg body to his feet. "You are my par'Mach'kai, my lifemate, my husband. You are the head of my house and you will be the father of my children. You are my commanding officer. I have followed you into the depths of Gre'thor and amongst uncharted stars, and I will continue to follow you wherever you lead, and I will help you find our way. But I will not leave you." She pushed him forward. "Now lead me. I will follow."

"...Where?" he asked her, wearily.

"Home, Sway. Lead us Home."

Sway's heart had nearly failed him, but his mate's words filled him with renewed strength from the inside out. He took one shaky step, then another, and another. I can do this. He kept walking, forcing his feet to carry him forward. I will do this. He felt Naja's hand on his shoulder, and he reached back and held it. For her.

"That's it, love. Just keep moving-" Her voice caught in her throat. "Oh, no."

"What?" Then he heard the buzzing noise. "They're coming back." I'm too weak to fight them off again...

"I'm here with you, love," Naja whispered. "Our hearts beat as one - nothing can overcome that."

Sway didn't remember where he'd heard that before. It sounded silly, but Naja believed it. And I believe in her.

He held her and hissed back "Love conquers all."

* * *

"Well, they're not here," Lt. Bain stated the obvious.

Stepping through the Gateway was disorienting, especially for the Gorn. It took a moment for their eyepieces to resolve the new environment after passing through an infinity of other places.

"This is where the computer said they were being held," Cal announced. "If they're not here-"

"Um, they were here," Shralak spoke up. He'd found the dismantled remains of four cyborgs lying in and just outside the holding cell. He pulled out his tricorder. "I've got a lot of DNA traces." He moved towards the cot in the middle of the cell. "Skin, hair, blood... other stuff." He closed the tricorder.

Cal poked at his own device curiously. "Wow. Sway sure made loads of-"

"Where did they go?" Ssharki interrupted. "Scan for their lifesigns."

"Still too much interference," Cal told him. "Petey, you need to blow the Gateway."

"Are we far enough away?" Bain wondered reasonably.

"Onlee wan weh to fine out," Sgt. Peter Huynh declared, as he fingered the remote. The ground rumbled. "Tree hunred, mebbe tree-fiddy metahs."

The ground continued to rumble. Shralak and Cal could feel it through the soles of their bare feet. "I think Huynh broke something," Shralak remarked.

Umm, it had geothermal power," Cal recalled. "Petey, I think you might've broke the whole Hu'tegh planet."

"Language, Little One."

The ground shook harder. The holding structure was built like a bunker, but already the metal doors were beginning to groan and creak.

"Find Sway and Naja," General Ssharki ordered. "Find them, and let's get them out of here."

"I've got 'em!" Cal exclaimed. "ghuy'cha', they're surrounded by those squid things..." he took off at a dead run.

"M'Calvyrrn! Wait!!" Ssharki called after him, but the fifteen-year-old didn't listen.

* * *

At first, Sway thought the earthquake was just his own body trembling. But as their stunners sparked off the robots, he saw that Naja was having trouble standing as well. The robots could hover and they moved around the shaking corridor effortlessly. The stunners held them o

aten66 · February 2015

A/N: If you notice any grammar mistakes or spelling errors, please do tell, I've tried to address everything I can, but if you see something I'll fix what I can. Enjoy!

Unknown Species Has Been Detected

Command: Rerouting Sphere 361 To Sector Grid 665

Input to Overseer Unit 13890 Active

Instructions: Activate Level Theta-Kappa

Command: Deploy Probe Unit for Additional Support

Prerogative: Breach Unknown Shielding

Results: Shielding Has Been Breached

Status: Ship Has Been Disabled

Error, Contact Has Been Lost With Boarding Parties

Solution: Increase Number In Boarding Parties By Three

Error, Contact Lost

Solution: Deploy Subjugator Drone 5689

Error, Ship Has Reactivated Shielding

Hostile Actions Detected: Weaponry Has Targeted Sphere Unit

Status Update: Sphere Unit Disabled

Alert: Probe Unit Has Been Targeted By Unknown Species

Error, Probe Unit Has Been Compromised By Unknown Virus

Alert: Collision With Unknown Ship Imminent

Defense Measures Inoperable

Solution: Terminate Probe Unit, Eliminate Unknown Factor Within Virus, Deploy Subspace Beacon From Sphere Unit With Relevant Data On New Species, Terminate Sphere, Attempt To Infect Ship With Nanoprobes From Debris Of Both Units, Attempt Assimilation And Activate Royal Protocol....

Alert: Virus Has Targeted Critical Systems...

Attempting To Isolate Targeted Programs: Royal Protocol... Corrected, Assimilation Protocol-Alpha.... Corrected, Hive Protocol... Error Files Corrupt... Error sYSteMS fAILuRE... eRror... Files ComPROmised...

Er03o-**&6 )1010^&*9768weErrorIcanfeelpain*2313-;./sfkkWeAreBOrGPainisirrellevant200922817733hhelppp100110Cubeintegrityfailingggggggggodd-

****

The space debris was all that was left of the Borg Sphere and Probe, while the unknown ship floats away from the wreckage, and Borg corpses are transported into space. The ship warps away, only to come out closer to the planet as its engines explodes near orbit, debris showering down into orbit. Shortly the ship drifts into the planets pull, along with wreckage of the Borg ships, and metal becomes warped and red hot as debris fall planet side.

****

900 Years Later....

2414 F.S.C.

Day One:

The Ky'mar, a Kobali ship under the helm of Captain Son'aire while the Oregon is under refit and set for a six month tour in the Alpha Quadrant, coasts into view of the U.S.S. Cordius, the shuttle Gregs was currently piloting. The crew of four on the shuttle was off to scan a unique spatial formation within the depths of the Nekrit Expanse, the "Crumpled Dance" waveform, as well as experiment with a new sensors array within the Nekrit Expanse. Jeysesia, one of the newest members of the crew, a Kobali engineer who Gregs had rescued under the Kobali/Vaadwaur structure, was joining them for this mission, her first real mission in the field besides the war that raged on Kobali prime, now in a fragile ceasefire. Another new crewman, Marissa Fleur, a new science officer, wanting to learn from Jeysesia, was accompanying them, as well as Tychos a gruff Tellaritte security officer.

***

Day Five:

"Sir, Marissa and I have been going over the information we've been getting from our new sensors..." Jeysesia starts, "It appears that the waveform we've been tracking may be a glitch, or at least artificial in nature, if not outright fake." Gregs was handed a PADD, he took and reviewed the graphs and figures on it's delicate screen.

"Look at the figures here...here... and here," she says, "In a relatively normal waveform, this part here..." She points to various charts and graphs, moving the PADD screen across various points of data. "This should be overlapping the normal magnetic radiation waveband, but you see here, this straight line, that shouldn't be there," she says, "There is a reason it's called the "Crumpled Dance" waveform, and straight lines do not go hand in hand with its namesake."

"So, artificial, who do we know that could utilize such a unique Waveform as a weapon... I doubt it was the Hirogen or Kazon, patience suits the Hirogen, but what could they hunt, and the Kazon, beyond the Nistrim, are still behind in scientific advance," Gregs ponders out loud, "The Hierarchy perhaps, are a given, but I don't think they'd find much profit putting a honey-trap in the middle of nowhere, but it could also either be Octani or Borg." Gregs gets up and begins to walk around after giving Tychos the helm. "The Octani know the Borg are interested in advanced technology and knowledge, while the Borg would also use this to their advantage to attract scientifically curious species to then ambush and assimilate," Gregs says, Jeysesia and Marissa merely nod, "Perhaps, perhaps... maybe we're thinking about this all wrong, did you happen to scan subspace as well?" Jeysesia nods, handing him a second PADD, which he then scans for five minutes.

"Here!" he says, pointing to the screen with a smile. Jeysesia's eyes go wide as she sees where he is pointing to, and face palms at the sight.

"Of course it would be them, it fit's there waveband, there M.O., but this seems off, like crossed signals?" she suggests. Gregs visibly brightens up, as he goes over to the console attached to the sensor array, he scans the screen, and finds something interesting.

"You were right Jess, crossed signals is absolutely correct... a Borg subspace signal beacon is nearby along with an M-Class planet," he says gleefully, "A planet that appears to be emitting an old, corrupted subspace distress call, I can't identify exactly who it's from, but the two began to cancel each other out, like two...two magnets set to repulse each other and create a subspace... blip, void, something that cloaked it as a totally separate, spatial anomaly; the "Crumpled Dance" Waveform is the resulting effect!"

Now it was Jessie's turn to become puzzled. "Sir... the signal interference appears to be fading, one or both, of the signals must beginning to die, like the technology is finally failing," she says, pointing to just recently gathered data from the sensor array, "It appears the Borg probe is starting to break apart; it appears to have recently been struck by a rogue asteroid or metal debris...there, the signal just shut off." The view screen had been targeting the satellite structure, as it appeared to fall to literal pieces.

"Crud.. CRUD!" he immediately says, "Tychos, Marissa block the remaining signal, NOW!" Hurriedly both officers attend there stations, working at blocking the unknown subspace transmission. "Jeysesia, we need to beam down now to the surface, cut that signal off at the source, whoever it belonged to may still be around, or it could attract a Vaadwaur patrol if its detected, we don't need that right now; Tychos you're in charge up here, land the ship if you detect even a single hostile force, Borg or even a stray Vaadwaur who happens to find this signal, hide or mask the ship the best you can, warp out even if you must, but do not let them know you were here!" Tychos nods, as Gregs grabs something from a case, his crystalline sword, as well as a reclaimed Vaadwaur mini-gun, while Jeysesia had her Kobali split-beam rifle.

***
On The Surface, Outside the Crashed Ship Remains

A forceful dust storm blew across the harsh desert landscape, the tidal locked M-class planet was closer to the L-Class in classification of living conditions. One side always within the sun's harsh rays, could reach a high of 125.0 Fahrenheit and was barely inhabited in a constantly changing ecosystem of strange plant life and microbes. Likewise the space-locked side was a glacier the size of both the Arctic and Antarctic combined, and held only alien lichens and mosses on the surface, with a low of nearly -100.0 degrees, though deep pockets of saltwater were warmed by geothermal activity deep within the core, which held basic aquatic life. In-between these extremes a vast multitude of ecosystems were present on this unique planet.

The part the unknown ship was located, in this specific part of the planet's equator for example, was a desert that barely reached 80.0 degrees Fahrenheit by day due to the distance from it's solar side, but plummeted to -45 degrees below zero at it's coldest point in "winter" by projecting the orbit.

The land was scorched and almost barren, except for plants adapted to the unstable volcanic location. Dunes surrounded Gregs and Jeysesia as they had beamed down, and had been met with its black, volcanic sand which was whistling in the whipping winds. Unsuited to the harsh sandstorm that was kicked up upon their arrival, they went for the closest things they had to cover their mouths, re-breathers were quickly strapped to their faces and miner's goggles were pulled from side pockets to protect eyes. The shifting sands made it hard to almost see the wreckage of the ship, partially hidden by the dunes, as well as appearing to be partially encased in pumice rock by a volcanic event, most likely some even years prior.

Quickly scanning for an entrance, Gregs and Jeysesia were led to a point half hidden beneath pumice and the other half a sand dune. Using a small handheld phaser, they quickly removed a large chunk of rock, which revealed a buried hatch. Quickly it was opened and shut just as fast, with sand pouring in from storm overhead, the singing sand now quieted by the metal halls and echoes on the metal decks. The clicks and whirs of their flashlights activating, illuminating the dark corridors, as well as their breathing, was the only thing they could hear.

****

Further Into The Ship

"The signal's closer now sir, though it appears to be a floor below us," Jeysesia reports, "I suggest we take a left up here, the corridor ahead of us seems to be filled with volcanic rock, probably from a tear in the hull from its entry into orbit or perhaps, weapon fire, scans are inconclusive." She puts away her tricorder, and both turn to go down the left corridor.

"Tell me Jeysesia, does the interior layout, and decor, or lack thereof, remind you of another ship we've seen?" Gregs asks his Kobali officer, "Something is nagging at the back of my mind, but I just can't put my finger on it..." He trails off as he sees something laying out on the floor. He kneels down, he goes to touch the thing, only to sharply draw his hand back from the object, he abruptly stands and looks behind him, to see his companion across the room, kneeling at a power conduit. Jeysesia had removed an access panel, hoping to jury-rig the console and access it for information. "D-did you here that?" Gregs ask, his voice unsteady, as he peers around the room warily, "I-I swore I h-heard a voice..." Trailing off he turns back to his find, and he merely flinches at what is revealed to him, the skeleton of a long dead solider.

"Sir, I think I've figured out why this ship looks so familiar," she tells him from across the room, a familiar symbol flashed onto the screen. Gregs stood up and walked over to the console to get a look at the screen, both officers have suddenly gotten chills. The signal of the Vaadwaur Supremacy flashed as data scrolled across the screen, the console lighted up the room, and the aged bones of the unknown Vaadwaur soldier was lit up as well.

****

One Deck Down, Vaadwaur Manasa Assault Escort

"The signal is just ahead, where the cargo bay is," she says, as she puts her tricorder away. Suddenly garbled static fills the room, both look around and then realize it came from their own combadge's, as the sound echoed across the near empty room.

"Sir...the Va...contact...Life signs...NOT ALONE...surrender...warped away..." Tychos replies, "Damaged shuttle...inoperable...failing...left for dead...she betrayed us Captain...Too Late...I'm... Sorry." With that a boom echoed from the badges, and silence after that.

"Tychos... Tychos!!!" Gregs angrily slapped his combadge, hoping to get a response from his tactical officer. Jeysesia merely looks sad, and she puts her arm on Gregs shoulder. He was just silent at first, no emotion showing on his face, until he turns with a look of fear on his face, gulping, he pulls out his tricorder and goes to a panel on the wall. He removes it from the wall, and the nearly gasps at the sight of a sickly, green hue coming from the Borg apparatus within the wall. "I thought I heard something," he says to no one in particular, "the voice in my head, I thought it was a ghost from this ship *chuckle* of course I would hear you." Jeysesia is confused at her captains reaction, the sudden revelation of Borg technology on the ship was equally confusing, and she was beginning to question her captain's sanity after the loss of Tychos and possibly of either losing or being betrayed by Marissa. "No Jess, I'm not crazy, but everything is starting to fall into place," Gregs replies, as if reading her mind, "And I do believe we have somebody waiting for us at the end of this mission." He replaces the wall, and returns his tricorder to its place, and walks down the remaining corridor between them and the Cargo Bay and the mysterious signal.

****
The change in atmosphere occurred as they walked towards the Cargo bay. The metal floors showed signs of assimilation, the walls were transformed, the corridor was no longer Vaadwaur, but Borg. The doors opened as soon as Gregs approached them, and the temperature and whirring sounds within showed the activity hidden within the ships core, buried beneath sand and rock. Jeysesia looked over Gregs shoulder, readying her weapon in case of a Borg attack. Instead of a drone or Borg of any kind, they were met with a hodgepodge of machines and parts, which in its own way should the unique designs behind it. The device was Borg in construction, and yet the device was obviously Vaadwaur in origin and technologic design. The Borg device was similar to a regeneration alcove, yet it had what appeared to be glass structure, opaque, visibly smooth at least, surrounding the drone within it; yet it was very much a device that reminded Gregs and Jeysesia of a Vaadwaur stasis pod.

The whirring and buzzing of machines jolted both of them to their senses. as two Assimilated Vaadwaur Stasis Drones appeared from vents above the pod. Neither made a move from their appearance overheard, but each had locked onto one of the two officers below. Gregs slowly moved towards the pod, the drone merely watched as he inched closer. He was close enough to see condensation on the glass-like shield, though as quick as it formed, it appeared to fizzle out and restart the cycle as more water condensed onto the machine. Gregs then noticed a console behind the machine, to the right of the cargo bay, which appeared to be active and was the most likely candidate for accessing and deactivating the distress beacon.

He slowly walked to the right, a few feet from the machine, hoping to not catch the drones attention. Slipping past the machine he made it to the console and quickly got to work bypassing the security measures within the starships coding, and got into the system far enough to deactivate the subspace beacon on the ship, but not without tripping internal security, which had he realized it, was tied partially into the stasis drones. Jeysesia cried out in pain as the drone activated its stasis beam, this one though was modified by the assimilation process to disable its victims. Gregs suddenly heard the whir of the drone that targeted him, and it was suddenly right in front of his face, the machine buzzing angrily, yet not activating its beam near the consoles sensitive equipment. Walking slowly back into his earlier position, as the drone sparks a bit, he finds himself suddenly encased in the same agonizing beam.

A gentle hissing is heard and steam begins to rise from the pod, as the glassy material that protected the pod is seemingly deactivated. The steam fully blocks the form held within it, but neither Gregs nor Jeysesia could help but feel doomed. A hand reaches out, a coughing fit from the person within, as they begin to adjust to the change in air quality from the pristine pod that had isolated systems with in it. "The heat..." a voice says, young sounding, male, Gregs categorizes this within his head as the voice continues, "I need heat...it's so...cold." As if responding to the occupants whim, the temperature of the ship increases at least ten degrees in heat, not uncomfortable, but decent. "B-better," the voice continues on, stepping out of the shadows. The steam dissipates fully, revealing a Vaadwaur of twenty cycles or so, or by Federation Standard Calendar, twenty to twenty one, taking in the now irrelevant leap years of course. The ocular implant is small, covering the left eye, while a tubule reaches down and into the lower base of the neck scales. The right eye appears to be surrounded in an eyepiece similar to Seven of Nine's, the eye beneath it was glassy and apparently unseeing.

"W-who a-are you?" The Vaadwaur Drone asks, "W-why am I n-not b-being rescued by my own p-people?" The Drone, and Gregs began to think that term loosely applied here, walked forward, the metal deck clanking underneath the weight and cybernetics. "M-my people are the Vaadwaur Supremacy, I am Tech Soldier Garus Eliek, of the 44th Battalion," he introduces himself, "My people were transporting a shipment of stasis tubes to be outfitted on a younger colony before war would break out, why did they not respond to out signals, yet you did?" The Vaadwaur was closer to Jeysesia than she would like, and a metal covered hand grabbed her chin, as he looked over her. "I do not recognize your species captives," he says turning to Gregs, "And I do not know why you disabled the Subspace Alert Beacon, but I can tell you, if you do not wish to incur the wrath of a soldier of the Vaadwaur Supremacy, you will tell your superior everything you know!" He barked that last part out, Jeysesia began to cower because of the unstable drone, while Gregs was non reactive.

"I'd like to know how you activated that stasis pod from the inside, first, please," Gregs asked, "I know the drones were tied into the security measures, found that out the hard way, but in no way whatsoever is the security protocol embedded in them, able to activate what appears to be a total isolated system, apart from the floor where the stasis unit is held." The Vaadwaur smiles at this, knowing full well he had an upper hand. "Now, before you go on gloating about your superiority anymore, I'd also like to know why you haven't assimilated us yet," Gregs speaks again, "Because, from the looks of it, you either were an immature liberated drone, or your programming hasn't fully kicked in, which means we have less than...6 seconds?" At this Jeysesia was fearful, while Gregs was impassive, and yet the Vaadwaur was merely perplexed of what he spoke of. "Five..Six...good, so I'll go with the later and say you are liberated," he says nonchalantly before continuing, "I'll kindly tell you all you want to know as long as you release us from these stasis beams."

****
Above Ground

The sandstorm had picked up speed minutes after Gregs and Jeysesia had come through, and was now a roaring sandblaster. A enormous boom, muffled by the sand, was heard as a Vaadwaur Transport pod was released into the atmosphere and landed six miles away. The military coats of the Vaadwaur soldiers flapped in the wind, their full facial masks allowing for easy breathing in this sandy terrain, especially in this sandstorm. The leader, a Technician, was able to track down wreckage of a ship with the help of knowledge from the Starfleet traitor they now had onboard. The Captain of the ship wanted to space the traitor when they had found the shuttle, but of course plans change. After a quick mutiny against the captain, the Bluegills now had control of this ship. The majority of the crew already were turned by the young Bluegill Queen they had secreted onboard, as she was in transition to go to a new planet.

The traitor was from another queen, and was left alone and alive, but they were to remain on the ship in hopes of keeping their cover intact. The traitor, though, had asked for them to tie up lose ends and end the lives of the two officers planet side to make the story of surviving a Vaadwaur attack believable. Now, the Vaadwaur soldiers marched towards the last known location of Gregs and Jeysesia.

****

Cargo Bay

"Tell me, why should I?" Garus asks, "Bluntly, I see no reason why I should." Jeysesia is then released from her tractor beam, as Garus is in front of her. He suddenly grabs her by the throat, and savagely begins to lift her up a little above the floor, as she begins to grasp for breath. "Tell me, or I will squeeze all the breath form her lungs," he says coldly. Jeysesia eyes Gregs frantically, beginning to panic.

Surprised, Gregs is silent for a second, before he makes a decision. "The Vaadwaur have been infested by Neural Parasites created by an ancient race that has spanned across Galaxies, we call them the Iconians, but many species know them collectively as the Demons of Air and Darkness," Gregs says hurriedly, "In Underspace the former leader of the Vaadwaur, Gaul, made a deal with the Iconians sometime in the past 30 years, a deal which lead to his demise months ago when he was revealed to have infested his elite officers, captains, and commanders with these same parasites," Garus lessens his grip and lowers Jeysesia to the floor, but does not release her all the way. "It has been projected that had time gone on, this process would have ultimately led to the Iconians enslaving the Vaadwaur after betraying Gaul," Gregs continues, "But not before they destroyed or enslaved thousands of worlds in the Delta Quadrant, before continuing on to the rest of the Galaxy, possibly the Universe, itself." Removing his vice-like grip, Garus releases Gregs from the beam.

"Say I was to believe you, why should I not kill you where you stand," Garus says, "By the sound of it the Neural Parasites have been taken care of; no Vaadwaur could stand being used as mere pawns." At this the thumping echo of a boom was heard among the ship.

"That, Garus is why you must believe me," Gregs says, "When they find you, neural parasites or not, they will end your life for the fact you are now impure, infected by a species whose very goal is to assimilate and enslave every sentient being and planet into a collective, unified mind, led by a Queen who throws lives away for nothing more than to attain perfection." Gregs looks to the ceiling as sand falls through grates in the ceiling. "You've been asleep for a very long time, yet correct me if I'm wrong, you opened your pod from the inside, I'm guessing you developed a way to use the Stasis Drones as your eyes," Gregs says, "Then send one up to where ever those Vaadwaur are, and see them for yourself; if the drones are equipped with enhanced Borg sensors, like I think, scan across as many wavebands as you can, and you'll either see I'm telling the truth, or you'll have your rescue party after 900 years." Garus looks to the drone that held Gregs, and it flies up and off into the ducts.

****

Above Ground/ Manasa Main Deck

The Bluegill Technician has out a scanner, showing three life signs seven decks down, after having blasted through the Manasa's hull with a high powered explosive charge. Sunlight was coming in from the gaping hole behind them, black dust being blown into piles onto the floor, falling between cracks down into the ship. Putting the sensitive device away, a slight whirring could be heard through the walls, previously masked by the scanner. The majority of the group had stopped, all looking for the source of the sound, as all eyes turned to a grated duct on the side. A red light, dimmed by the sunlight pouring in behind them, was viewing them from behind the grate. A quick pistol shot, and a hole was through the grate, melting metal slag dripping down, the lifeless drone now destroyed and in pieces. They all knew they had been found.

****

"I see, now, what you mean," Garus says, Gregs puts his hand on the Drones shoulder, "I have misjudged you; I see now why you did not want my signal to be broadcasted out, I am a threat aren't I, if the Borg ever found me, or if these Vaadwaur make me like them..." he almost asks, "I could become a weapon that these Iconians could use, my connection with my drones could create soldiers who can control weapons with their minds, or my stasis technology could help preserve sleeper agents across worlds, when the worlds become passive again, and these Iconians fade from memory, only to strike out in new vigor." Garus is mute for the moment, only to look at Gregs.

"You were right though, I was young when the Borg assimilated me, I was f-fifteen cycles, almost sixteen, when our ship was attacked," he says, "Our captain destroyed the engines when he found out the Borg had tried to take over the ship, seventeen seconds was all it took, and we ended up crashing a few million klicks later, onto this planet nearby, where I survived for five more cycles in which I built this." He points to the stasis alcove, Gregs new term for the device. "We have an estimated twenty minutes, five seconds before they will reach us, so I might as well tell you my story," he continues, this time with a coy smile, "My name is Garus Eliek, I was a technician in training when civil unrest broke out on the frontlines, subjugated races began to rise up; I'm sure the beginnings of the decline of my people, the cause of our need for stasis units, stemmed from this unrest and bloomed into war after my isolation from the galaxy at large, and now, I thank you Gregs Son'aire for opening my mind."

At this he walks over to the console behind, and begins to type commands into the ancient ships memory. He ends his command, turns to Jeysesia and frowns. "I do apologize for harming you Jeysesia, I hope you could forgive me," he says this and walks over to her, placing a pin onto her, before walking to Gregs, "You should also know I was once a part of Unimatrix Zero in my long sleep, though I could not help my brothers and sisters in their conflict with the Borg without compromising my position, if they have your Federation as friends, you are worthy," He says, "I also must ask if Unimatrix Zero still stands, tell them about me." He walks to a desk, where he grabs something from a drawer, before walking back to Gregs. "I have a gift for you Gregs, here, keep it as a reminder of the time you met One of One, the only Vaadwaur Drone left, the only one to ever escape the Borg, tell Unimatrix Zero the Loner says 'hello'." Gregs looks into his hands as a Vaadwaur Stasis Drone is placed into them. Surprise covers his face, as the last thing he and Jeysesia saw was Garus' face, until light engulfed them both.

Garus then walks over to his stasis alcove, and awaits the Bluegills' agents.

***

Across The Planet

They appear within the confines of a cave, there appears to be a gap above their location, which shows open sky. Looking down, the first thing Gregs sees is the lower half of a Vaadwaur transport pod, which appears to have been modified by Borg Nanoprobes to act as a makeshift transporter pad. Knowing what Garus had in mind, Gregs quickly went to work, and opened a panel, finding the same routines Garus had used to transport them here.

*

Flashback

Gregs places his hand on the back of the Drone, placing a spare combadge locator beacon he had forced out of a spare badge in his pockets, while Garus was talking.

*

Present

Cargo Bay

The Bluegill troopers had found their mark, seven levels down, a Borg Drone was all they were met with.

"Running is illogical, my friends," the drone says, "Trying to find the other two, well you are to late, too bad... and five... four...three..." The rest trailed off as the drone was transported, and two seconds later the dormant core exploded three decks down, and in two more seconds they were engulfed in flame.

***

With Gregs and Jeysesia

His eyes were closed, and he was smiling, his projections had been right, Gregs had saved him in the end. He wasn't stupid, he had felt the delicately placed item below his collarbone, the nano machines in his skin reacting and absorbing the foreign object, while integrating its design into his memory banks. "Thank you for the assistance, had you gone a second longer, I'd be dead with the rest of those parasites," he replies as he walks over to a console jutting out from a rock face, "I've just pinged your ship; it appears to have landed some ten miles from here, intact mind you, but damaged." Gregs nodded, Jeysesia shouldered her weapon finally, and both checked to make sure they had enough supplies for the journey.

"Thank you Garus, for your help, is there...anything we could do?" Gregs asks, "You know their is a Cooperative out there, they are made up of liberated Borg like you, including Unimatrix Zero, I could put in a good word."

"I'll take it if you don't mind; I'll attempt to contact them now with the spare signal up on the cliff," he says, "Thank you Gregs and Jeysesia for your help, I'll try and contact this...Cooperative and try to find my place in the galaxy now, I don't think I belong with the Vaadwaur, but...I don't know if I'll stick with the Cooperative for long, I wouldn't want to endanger them." Gregs and Jeysesia part ways with the drone, towards the spot of the shuttle's crash.

****

1 Hour Later

Garus sat down after his trek up to the summit of the nearby mountain, coordinates three miles east of where he had been, a precaution if the Vaadwaur had happened to detect where they had beamed away from, and out of the way so the Cooperative could find him still. Here he began to set up a miniature subspace beacon, from which he could both contact and be contacted from. Now he turned it on, and began to wait.

*Static Noises*

Intrigued, he tracked down the hertz on which the signal being picked up was on, he hoped his activity was passive enough to be ignored, as he tuned into the signal.

"...All Delta Alliance ships in this sector, I've managed to send this signal through an experimental sensors array, I require assistance, to all friendly ships in the area, this is Marissa Delgado-Fleur, requesting assistance," the signal begins, "We have been ambushed by Vaadwaur fighters, who've turned out to be Bluegill controlled, scans I managed to get of the ship before I was shot out of the sky showed an immature Bluegill Queen onboard..." Silence for a few moments as the static happens to overtake the wavelength again. "...I've also stumbled upon an unfortunate secret onboard, as my superior officer Tychos, also formerly of the U.S.S. Oregon, revealed to me he had been infested by one of the parasites, when he injected me with an unknown mixture in a hypospray," she rambles on, "Since he left me alone and unhindered, let alone unguarded, I believe he expected me to die from the mixture; at the very least I assume he was correct and am currently, slowly, dying from an unknown poison introduced into my system..." She goes silent, and Garus fiddles with his device, hoping to track down her signal, hoping he isn't too late. "...Again, this is Marissa Delgado-Fleur an officer serving under Captain Gregs Sharvan Son'aire, and if no one else hears this..." he can hear her sigh as she stops again, "...I believe my superior officer as well as a fellow crewmate have been captured by hostile forces, forces who had implanted a spy within us, this spy had managed to maneuver us into this system, and I hypothesize he had this planned from the beginning...we were sent into a trap."

Finally Garus had tracked her signal, and was surprised to find it at the sight of the Shuttle some fifteen miles away from his position on the mountain. "Marissa, you're a friend of Gregs and Jeysesia?" he asks her, with no response after a minute he continues, "My name is Garus..." he hesitates, wondering how to broach this uncomfortable situation. "My...designation is One of One, and I am a member of...Unimatrix Zero, within the Cooperative, my ship had...crashed after a battle with the Vaadwaur; I met your captain within the structure you had beamed him down to, has he not reached your location yet?" he asks hesitantly, "My projections indicated he should have reached your location by now." He waits for what seems like hours, mere minutes by his internal chronometer, but he waited hoping she would trust him.

"Garus, c-could I call you that, you seem to be more comfortable than most drones using your name, h-how do I know I can trust you?" she asks over the device, "How do I know you aren't just tracking my signal, and a squad of Bluegills will come down and take me out right now?" He smiles at this, knowing she was only trying to allay her fears.

'Smart Girl, he thinks, knowing well how the Vaadwaur, even under the control of parasites, would work. "That's quite fine if it makes you comfortable, and I already know your coordinates, but I do suggest you stop broadcasting out into subspace, the Vaadwaur ship left some time ago, but you could be heard by them even if they were far away," he replies, "To more important matters though, even if Gregs has been captured, I have a Cooperative ship en route now which we could ask for help from, but first, are you sure you've been poisoned, are any signs beginning to show if the toxin has started to enter your bloodstream?"

Suddenly another blip occurred within his subspace console, and the sign of the Cooperative shows itself on Garus' console, and the face of a Human Drone is seen. "I apologize, unit One of One, as well as to you Marissa Delgado-Fleur, we had picked up your signal from a distance, but had not attempted to approach until the Vaadwaur threat had left," the Drone says, "My name is James Hunt, I know your captain, Miss Fleur, he helped us in the Farn system when we were being hunted down by the Vaadwaur, I'll gladly lend any assistance I can and attend any injuries; we have also contacted your ship Miss Fleur, and the Kh'ymar will meet up with us on the outside of the Nekrit Expanse, please, prepare now for transport to our ships medical bay."

*****

Somewhere In the Tekara Sector/Edge of Former Krenim Space
Two Weeks Later...

Stone columns, rows and rows of granite, limestone, and other materials, both natural and artificial in nature. Years had worn down this ancient structure, what was once an amphitheatre, was now the location of one of the most sadistic fighting arenas known across this section of Vaadwaur, once Krenim, space. The Krenim, of course, were defeated by the Vaadwaur within the past thirty years, though there civilization was allowed to exist on pre-warp planets like this one, where the Krenim were given absolute control over this planet, though they were stranded without anything that could allow them to take to the stars, except a few weapons that could allow them to easily eliminate any opposition. The Vaadwaur thought the Krenim were at least worthy of not being totally eradicated at least.

Since there time on this planet, Krenim people had all but totally taken over half of this planet, with only small pockets held back by natural obstacles or who had managed to overtake others with energy weapons by surprise. Since then, they have managed to take control of the people with fear, having people fight for their survival in sick gladiatorial combat to the death, all for the amusement of the Krenim ruling class, and to show that the Krenim had nearly absolute control over the lives of the commoners. This planet was turned into a prison colony of sorts, where prisoners were given to the Krenim 'Wardens' to use in their arenas.

Blood and rain soaked the dusty ground, creating a muddy and slick atmosphere in this fight. Gregs was dressed in nothing but his pants and the Vaadwaur jacket given to him by Garus, now long since torn to near shreds, while he wore the fearsome ventilator mask of the Vaadwaur, another part of adding fear to the opponents he faced in combat. He hadn't killed anyone directly yet, he made sure to do everything but that, from breaking bones, to a modified Vulcan nerve pinch, but in the end the Krenim 'Wardens' eventually killed the men and women he fought. They were trying to break him, but so far all he could do was use his knowledge that his crew was searching for him to keep him from cracking, the knowledge that the Krenim, the Vaadwaur, the blasted Iconians would take satisfaction from his broken state, only made him more determined to stay strong.

Today was the day, a day nearly everyone had spoken about in town, the day the so-far champion, would be paraded around like a trophy around the small town, before he was to be set against a new batch of prisoners they would receive from a Vaadwaur prison ship today. Even the rain wouldn't stop them all from coming tonight when the prisoners would be brought into the arena to see the man who would be their executioner, even if he would not take their life personally.

The drizzle amongst the gray sky was disheartening, his hair was wet, and he just wanted to go home, but he had small satisfaction in knowing that tonight at least, the prisoners would all be treated like Kings, before being forced to be lower than an insect. The newest batch was beamed down into the arena, Vaadwaur in their iconic masks and jackets, dressed like executioners in Gregs' mind, marched next to a group of ten humanoids, a few Human, Cooperative Drones, even a Kobali, in the mix. Suddenly the chains around their hands were dropped, as the eight Vaadwaur guard dropped their hold, and each prisoner were revealed to have multiple weapons from phasers to disruptors. A dark shadow suddenly covered the land, sending chills up Gregs' spine, and as he looked up, he began to weep. A ship of dull gray, showing signs of Borg technology on its hull, dominated the sky, its pink nacelles and exhaust port glowing, bringing color to the gray sky as evaporation occurred from superheating the clouds, and revealing bright sunshine.

The Kh'ymar had breached the atmosphere.

shevet · March 2015

Personal log: Veronika "Ronnie" Grau, officer commanding USS Falcon NCC-93057

"The Borg don't do reverence," I protest. "Trust me on this. I know."

Tallasa glances at the image on the screen. "Nonetheless, sir -" she begins.

"Nonetheless, nothing. It's a mothballed Borg facility." I limp towards the viewer, studying the picture. "They do that, often enough."

The picture shows a roughly pyramidal structure of blackened metal and spidery girders, towering up from a rocky, barren plain, under the wan light of an M-class star. It's hard, at first, to get a sense of scale for the thing - until you look close, at a tiny, tiny white dot, and realise that's a Starfleet runabout, and do the math. Then you know that this thing is several kilometres tall, so tall that the tip sticks out of this world's thin troposphere....

"It only looks like a monument," I say in pettish tones. God, I can do pettish these days. Not to mention querulous. I'm beginning to wonder when I'll make it all the way to senile. I turn, and narrowly avoid stumbling as I make my way back to the centre seat. My Andorian exec stands up, starts to reach out a supporting hand, thinks better of it.

"Still reading one faint life sign." Saval's voice comes from my blind side. I still hate having a blind side. I turn my head. The bewhiskered Vulcan's face is completely impassive, as per usual, but I reckon I know what's going through his mind. Same thing as is going through Tallasa's, probably.

"Well, there you are, then," I say. "So much for One of One, Patient Zero for the Borg infection. I mean, they'd be how old, by now? Thousands. They'd be dead. The organic parts of drones, they age, they wear out, and when they've worn out, the Borg dispose of them." I slump in the command chair, feeling aged and worn out myself. The Borg pyramid on Pelsidia II is still on the screen, towering, enigmatic.... Not so long ago, I would have known what it was. I tap irritably at one of the remaining Borg implants in my temple, next to the patch over my left eye. Two of Twelve, the Borg voice that used to be in my head, says nothing.

Do I miss her? Do I honestly miss her?

"Dr. Ricardo's science team report they're about to penetrate the sub-levels," says Leo Madena from the comms station.

"I'll bet they are, the dirty little devils." I heave myself out of the chair again. "It's time for me to do my exercises. Keep me informed." I limp off towards the ready room.

---

I look in the mirror. Pale, gaunt, dark spiky hair, scars and Borg remnants, all present and correct. Unlikely to win Miss Universe this year either, I think. Cautiously, I raise the eyepatch.

My vision blurs immediately, and my new left eye fills with tears. The problem is, using it is the only way to integrate it into my nervous system, to get my visual cortex used to processing the input. But, until it does get integrated, the input is... confusing. To say the least.

I turn away from the mirror, grope across the ready room to my desk, and sit down heavily. I have about half a minute to regroup, before the door hisses open, and a blue and white Cubist nightmare comes into sight. In my exec's voice, it says, "Sir, are you all right?"

"Just dandy," I croak, leaning sideways as the visual scrambling affects my balance. Good thing I'm sitting down. Tallasa comes further into the room, so the door slides shut behind her.

"You shouldn't be here, sir," she says. "You're still... convalescing."

"I'll convalesce here a darn sight better than under Quinn's feet back at Spacedock," I growl. "Besides, I'm fine, damn it." It occurs to me, as I sit here listing fifteen degrees to starboard with tears running down my face, that that last sentence might not sound entirely convincing. Never mind.

"You don't have to prove anything, sir," says Tallasa. "If you're not physically up to things, no one would blame you -"

"Look. OK, I'm not at my best, but I need to be up and doing, right? Besides, I won't get over my current limitations unless I push[ them a bit. The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."

I think Tallasa might be nodding, it's hard to tell. "And who said that, sir?"

"Me, just then." I make an irritated gesture and knock something off the desk - don't know what, but it goes thump on the floor and not smash, so that's OK. "Look, I know what you're getting at. Yes, my memory's not what it was when it was... artificially augmented... but that's OK, everything still works, I can cope, dammit." I take a deep breath. "Also, Arthur C. Clarke. See? Still got it."

"I hope you're right, sir," says Tallasa. "For all our sakes."

"Of course I'm right. Arthur C. Clarke. Dead sure." She knows I'm deliberately misunderstanding, and I know she knows, and I don't know what difference it makes. I couldn't read the expression on her face now, I know, even if I could see it properly.

There is a pause in the conversation, broken by the entrance of a distorted blurry thing with Leo Madena's voice. "Trouble, sir," he says. "We've lost contact with the science team - and their life signs are no longer registering."

---

I've put the eyepatch back in place, but the console readout doesn't make a lot more sense that way anyway. "Transponders and remote vital signs monitoring both cut out here," says Saval, pointing to an abstract glowy thing that must mean something to him. "We read small increases in overall EM activity, but nothing definite - no high output energy discharges, no transporter signatures."

"Well, I won't say I told you so," I say, "but I told him so." Dr. Erwin Ricardo, up-and-coming expert on Borg history, now missing, presumed - well, when your life signs vanish inside an old Borg facility, presumptions start at "dead" and work upwards towards the really horrible. "Abandoned Borg whatsit, does not contain mythical progenitor of the Borg, does contain heaps of big trouble, stay the hell away. Why bother to call me in for an opinion if you don't listen to it?"

"I don't think you told him what he wanted to hear, sir," says Leo.

"Yeah, well, too bad," I say. "Something tells me he made a mistake he's not going to learn from.... Have we got any idea what that faint life sign is, down there?"

"Still unknown at this time, sir," says Saval.

"Mmm." I scratch pensively at the side of my eyepatch. "It might help to know what it is and how it's managing to stay alive down there. Because we need to send someone in and see if we can recover the science team, and it'd be a lot of use to know how to stay alive doing it."

"Indeed, sir." All of a sudden, Tallasa has her taking no nonsense from my commanding officer voice on, and her antennae are standing up very stiff and straight indeed. "We need to send in medically fit personnel as soon as we can, to effect a search and rescue if possible. I'm sure your directions and advice to the search team will be invaluable. Sir."

A good executive officer knows what her CO is thinking, and Tallasa is a good executive officer. Damn it. "All right," I say, trying to think a bit faster. "Let's get some assessment of what tools our team's going to need down there, and I'll work out what Borg countermeasures they're liable to run into. Meet in the morning at 0830, that OK with everyone?"

I'm sure Tallasa registers surprise, but it's quickly hidden behind the professional mask. "That sounds like a good move, sir. We'll be ready."

"Good to hear it." I pick up my cane and limp off towards the ready room. "If anyone needs me, I'll be burning the midnight oil in there, trying to figure out the Borg." God, that used to be easier. So did getting past Tallasa.

---

"Computer. Tell me the location of Commander Tallasa."

"Commander Tallasa is in her sleeping quarters."

"Hot diggity. At last." I stand up and stretch. I've been sitting behind that desk for hours, partly digging through files on Borg installation architecture, mostly waiting for this moment. Andorians have irregular sleep patterns, but they have to sleep sometimes, and Tallasa is going to be much less inclined to argue if she's tucked up in bed.

I stride to the ready room door, worry for a moment, then step out onto the bridge. It's quiet out there - lots of watch-standing types whom I don't see often, the reliable second-stringers who actually keep my ship running. The only regular there is Leo Madena, still on comms. So it's him I go up to. "Leo. With me."

"Sir?" He looks worried. And well he might.

"I have an idea or two. Come on, walk with me." He looks even more worried. "Oh, come on, it can't hurt to listen. I'm not a Drongidian screeching death-beetle, after all." I have no idea what one of those is, if it even exists, but it sounds good. "Turbolift, now."

He comes with me. His agitation, already marked, increases when I say "Transporter room three."

"Sir -" he begins.

"I've got an idea, Leo, and to check it out, I need to be down on the ground. And I need some backup, so you're elected."

"Does Commander Tallasa know -?"

"Leo. Who's in charge here?" He looks at me with kicked-puppy eyes. "Oh, for God's sake, Leo, this is still a military organization, it's not a multiple-choice question. Me. I'm in charge. Just me."

"Yes, sir." He swallows loudly. "Uh, are you going to tell Commander Tallasa that, sir?"

"Not if I can possibly avoid it." The turbolift doors hiss open. "Now come on. Let's dress for the occasion."

---

The Dyson combat armour feels good. Since half my Borg implants got burned out and pulled out during the final conflict with the Rift entity, I've had to get used to being slower, weaker - more basic human - than I used to be. But the power-assist in the converted Voth battlesuit makes up for the loss of my Borg wiring, lets me move with smooth power and efficiency. I settle the helmet into place. It still has space at the back for an elongated Voth crest; I keep trying to figure some way to fit a hip flask or something in there, but Engineering won't let me.

Leo is armoured up in standard polyalloy weave, hugging a phaser rifle that looks as big as he is. "Coordinates locked," I say, fiddling with the transporter panel. "Ten seconds to energize. Get on the pad, Leo, 'cause I'm taking at least some of you with me no matter what." Leo looks miserable. I don't know why, when he's at the comms station the bridge is usually exploding all around him, you'd think he'd be glad to see some different explosions at least.

The warning light on the console blinks. "Energizing," I say, and blue light sparkles all around us -

- and we're down. It's dim and dark and metallic, a corridor of black metal gridwork, sunlight filtering down through myriads of tiny holes, giving us just enough light to see by. I raise my proton beam rifle to the ready position. "Give me a quick tricorder scan," I say. The air is thin and dry, just about adequate to breathe.

"Yes, sir." The whine of the tricorder is the only sound. Except my own pulse... and a vague, staticky whispering, somewhere at the edge of hearing, that feels like it might be whatever's left of Two of Twelve. Well, if anything's going to bring her out of retirement, being in a Borg facility will do the job.

"Nothing much registering, sir," says Leo. "The Borg machinery appears to be inactive... I'm not reading that life sign anywhere near... wait." The whine changes in tone. "I think I have something. Might be the automatic distress call from a Federation combadge."

"Ricardo's team. All right. We go in that direction, but carefully." We shuffle off down the corridor. It's at something of an angle... I think the ground must have shifted since this place was put into mothballs.

We're trying to be cautious, but the sound of our booted feet on the metal grating... carries. It's the only sound. There isn't even a wind. I don't think I've ever been anywhere that felt so dead.

Then, as we advance, we see it. Ahead of us, the floor of the corridor ends. A line of blackness cuts across the metal, a chasm that I can't see the far side of. I shuffle forwards cautiously, peer over the rim. Below, a tangle of broken metal, and an irregular hole... going down, far, far down, towards a dim red glow.

"I don't know how far that goes, sir," says Leo. He's come up beside me and is fiddling with his tricorder.

"I do," I mutter. Things are starting to fall into place, half-shredded memories of Borg technology. "All the way down. Through the crust. This is a mantle mine. Hoovering up, I dunno, some rare mineral, topaline, maybe."

"Why's it so tall, sir?"

"In operation, it'll be taller. The thing must open up and the machinery rises up, sticking right out of the planetary atmosphere, blowing the stuff out into space for passing Borg ships to pick up. Then, the stuff ran out, so they closed down the facility. Left it here, in case they needed the planet for anything else."

"The science team -?"

I point. Downwards. "Must've fallen through the floor. They checked for power sources, Borg technology, force fields, transporters, whatever. They didn't check for a simple booby trap."

"I'm reading... one combadge, sir," says Leo quietly. "Down among that debris. It must have... come off. When they fell." He looks at me. "Booby trap?"

I point to one of the support struts. "That's been cut. Not recently, but a hell of a long time after this place was abandoned. I think we need to have words with that one life sign down here." I look around. "No way I'm doing a Tarzan of the apes over that pit. Let's find another way in."

"There's a cross corridor through the machinery over to our right, sir, but I don't know how we'll get to it -"

I get my bearings, cross to the wall, raise a power-assisted Voth boot, and kick. The metal groans and shudders. I kick again. And again. At the third blow, the panel caves in, revealing a narrow maintenance passageway beyond. The staticky whispering in my auditory nerves gets louder. I ignore it.

"After all this time," I say as I heave the panel aside, "smashing up Borg stuff still gives me a kick."

The accessway is narrow, very narrow. The hollow crest on my helmet keeps bumping into things. Never mind. After a while, we reach the cross-corridor, and I kick out another access panel and stick my head out - cautiously - to look around.

"Leo. Scan stuff. Paying particular attention to structural soundness." I'm beginning to wish I'd brought one of the engineers along for this junket.

"Scanning.... Sir, there's a pressure plate and what looks like some sort of deadfall ahead."

"Gotcha." I pick the panel up and throw it. Got to love this battle armour. The panel lands on the floor and clangs, and something clicks and rumbles, and all of a sudden several hundredweight of junk falls out of the ceiling. "That is so not the way the Borg work," I say.

Then something goes whang off the wall behind me, and I duck and dive for cover on general principles. Another whang. "I think we've found our life sign," says Leo, cowering sensibly behind a chunk of machinery. Whang. Solid-shot projectiles, nothing fancy... kinetic damage. Stuff the Borg can't adapt to. Good choice of gun, if you're expecting the Borg. Whang. I squint around, trying to work out where the shooting's coming from. Somewhere above us - can't get the angle to return fire -

"Uh, bad news, sir," says Leo.

"What? There's more than one up there?" I look around. I'm starting to get the hang of this place, and I have an idea -

"No, sir. Really bad news."

"Oh, hell." I cut in the suit's comms. "Tallasa? Can't talk now, being shot at." I draw off one glove.

"Transmit your coordinates for the strike team to beam in," Tallasa's frigid voice says in my ear.

"No way. This place is lousy with booby traps, and anyway, I am on the case." I flex the fingers of my still-Borgified hand. The actuators whine, and below the skin, I can feel the charge building up in the neural capacitors. "Still got some Borg junk in my system, I'm going to use it. Leo. Expect an earthquake."

"What are you going to do?" They both ask it. Hell, they even harmonize.

I spot a likely-looking conduit, and jab my fingers into it. "Wake this place up," I say, and I let the capacitors go.

For a moment, nothing happens, except another slug whanging rather too close to my head. Then -

Green lights glow, and the floor shudders, and for a second or two my Borg circuits light up from the induction. I can feel the whole tower, feel the circuits running through it, the flickers of not-quite-sentience in the ancient computers....

Feel something in me, something buried deep but not quite dead, yearning to be a part of all this, yearning to mesh with it and serve its needs.

The floor bucks beneath my feet; the entire building is starting to change shape. There is a wail from nearby, and it's not Leo. A humanoid figure is descending from the ceiling, fleeing the clashing jaws of Borg machines as they spring to life. The noise of the massive engines is overpowering as they strain against centuries of disuse.

Then the circuits register that there's nothing to mine, and filter out the small power surge I created, and the mine remembers that it's supposed to be dead, and shuts down again. The roar of machinery dwindles to a rumble, a mutter, and finally to silence again.

The humanoid is on the floor, scrabbling for his gun, which he's dropped amid the debris of the deadfall. I raise the proton rifle and fire a single warning shot. The blue beam screeches over his head, and he freezes.

"One of One, I presume," I say. "I'm Admiral Veronika Grau. Call me Ronnie, everyone does."

---

After all that, the conference room of the Falcon seems quite peaceful and homey. Or it would, but for the baleful presence of a fuming Andorian.

"He's a Pelcodian petty criminal," Tallasa says. "Apparently, he explored the structure a number of years ago, and he's been using it as a sort of base. First exporting bootleg Borg salvage, then as a sort of drop-point for a number of smuggling endeavours."

"And he spread the rumours about it being the last resting place of One of One, to make sure people kept the hell away." I nod sagely. "And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids and their dog."

Tallasa glares. "He seems to have spent years living there alone - setting up those traps, among other things. Frankly, I think he's more than a little deranged. Perhaps you should handle the interrogation, sir, since you obviously speak his language."

"Oh, hell, a little deranged is a completely different dialect from stark staring bonkers. Never mind." I give her my very best superior smile. "See? It all worked out all right in the end."

"Except for Dr. Ricardo, sir."

"Yes, well. The lesson to be learned from that is, always listen to Auntie Ronnie, she gives good advice."

Tallasa's mouth is compressed into a thin line. "I'll go handle the rest of the interrogation, and coordinate with Delta Command on our next step, sir," she says.

"Great idea. I'll just get on with my exercises, then." I reach for the eyepatch.

Tallasa glares at me again, looks as if she's about to speak, evidently thinks better of it. She stalks out of the conference room. A few seconds later, there comes a loud bang, as of a very angry Andorian boot hitting the wall very hard.

I lean back in my chair, and contemplate the ceiling through teary eyes.

"Yep," I say to the world at large, "still got it."

cmdrscarlet · March 2015

"Are you sure? The woman in this picture is at the arena?" Bur'ar was deadly serious and imposing. His Klingon demeanor made the Talaxian vendor more timid than before.

Looking at the picture again, the vendor looked to the group of three people starting at him. They wore brown-colored and dirty cloaks that covered their entire head and body. Only a little part of the face could be seen. "Y-y-yes. I'm sure of it. She's won a few fights I think. I put some money for her to win tonight too!" He became excited, hoping his smile would lighten the mood. He knew he failed and looked away.

Bur'ar lowered the PADD and glanced to the Away Team. Ian replied to the vendor, "thanks. I'd cancel that bet if I were you." The three walked away, and then stopped under an alcove to consider their plan. They looked around to see if anyone was looking until S'Rel pulled out a tricorder.

"I'm still not reading her combadge. It's logical her captors have destroyed it."

The other two nodded at the Vulcan. Ian tapped his combadge. "McKinnon to Solaris, we'll need a scan of the arena grounds and structure. Send a schematic to our tricorders. We may have found the Captain and Doctor."

"Good news Ian. Downloading as soon as we can." Anthi's voice sounded relieved.

Bur'ar nodded. "We'll see if we can find our way to them before the next round."

With that, the three exchanged looks then headed toward the arena.

---

The Klingon held a hand to his phaser pistol but did not pull it from the holster. He nodded to S'Rel who then opened her tricorder and scanned the keypad lock. Entering a few codes, the door clicked and she pulled it open. Inside, the room was clearly an infirmary but was not sanitary enough to be healthy for patients; certainly not for Starfleet standards.

Four beds were in the room and two were occupied. S'Rel and Ian went directly to one of them as they recognized the woman on the bed from her blonde hair. Ian looked around the room while S'Rel did a visual inspection. "Doctor Kramer?"

Annika slowly opened one eye, the other was bruised shut. Other bruises were visible on her face and a dirty cloth was taped to her forehead. Dried blood crusted at the edge of the make-shift bandage. "You're late." Even though she whispered, her voice was coarse and gravely.

The Vulcan raised her eyebrows. "You do not have a restraining collar. That will help with egress."

Annika looked down toward her legs. "No need". Ian pulled the sheet and noticed the metal frame holding Annika’s leg straight.

"Doctor, was this injury a result of the arena combat?"

Nodding, Annika replied, "Captain can be a ***** when she's angry."

"The Captain's behavior is from the restraining collar. We've learned it injects the user with a chemical compound that enhances strength and survival instincts while inhibiting memory and judgment. The Captain is not herself wearing the collar."

Annika nodded. "It's more than that; it's an explosive device. There are perimeter sensors that will activate the charge if the user attempts escape."

S'Rel furrowed eyebrows. "That changes our current plans."

Ian lifted the kit already on his back to shift the weight of its contents. "I've got an idea. If I can find high enough ground, then removing the collar is possible, if not challenging. The Captain would not approve, though."

Bur'ar stepped into the room and closed the door. He raised a finger to his lips and the phaser pistol appeared. S'Rel joined him from the other side of the door and pulled out her own pistol. Heavy footsteps were heard approaching toward the door. Some deep laughter boomed in the hallway, and then the footsteps continued away from the door until there was silence. Both lowered their pistols.

S'Rel went back to Annika's bed and pulled a hypospray from her kit. Applying a small dose of pain nullifier to Annika’s neck, she then placed a combadge in the Doctor's hand. Tapping her own, S'Rel ordered, "Solaris, medical emergency, Annika to beam up to sick bay." The Doctor was washed in blue transporter particles and disappeared. She then stepped toward the other bed and scanned the injured gladiator who was so battered it was hard to recognize the female Nezu. She looked to Bur'ar and shook her head.

Covering their heads with the cowls from their cloaks, they left the infirmary.

---

Standing amid the rowdy crowd, two officers positioned themselves at the railing overlooking the arena grounds. Bur'ar growled as he tapped his combadge. "Ian, we're too late." Three combatants entered the arena from separate doors. All were clearly female: a Krenim, Ocampan and Human. Each wore simple leather-like armor in various dull colors covering torsos and lower limbs. They lined up in the center of the arena and faced toward the organizer’s section. A voice boomed through the building announcing the next match.

Ian responded, "I see her. Will this be a 'smash-and-grab'?"

"Yes."

---

Ian locked the scope into place and calibrated the sight. Lifting a leg from the bipod, he brushed away dirt from the ledge used to support the rifle. Activating the power supply, orange-colored photonic stabilizers appeared along the barrel near the emitter. Looking through the scope, Ian sighted his target.

Starfleet Captain Kathryn Beringer.

---

Bur'ar watched a massive four-armed reptilian-like gladiator stomped toward the three women who stood their ground and readied various weapons. Raising a huge spiked club, the gladiator tried to crush the Ocampan. She easily dodged the attack and struck against the fighter's wrist with her long pike. He back-handed the woman who spun from the counter-attack and collapsed to the floor a few meters away. The crowd cheered.

This was a diversion the other two women exploited as they flanked the gladiator. The Krenim used her shield to parry a large sword strike from the gladiator, but the force of the swing pushed her to the ground. Kathryn used the Krenim's fall as a launch pad toward the gladiator's back. Bringing a pair of long knives down, she pierced the gladiator's armored scales. The creature screamed from the pain and the crowd roared.

The first woman recovered, found her pike and charged the gladiator. Stabbing into a leg, the gladiator grabbed the Ocampan's head and lifted her from the ground with ease. She screamed until her head was crushed, spraying the gladiator with blood.

---

Everything was happening quickly. Bur'ar tapped his badge and said, "that's enough." He leaped over the guard rail into the arena, his cloak flowing open revealing the black-colored uniform of Starfleet. Without a word, S'Rel followed soon afterward as the crowd erupted into jeers and cheers. The announcer shouted through the microphone while the swirling combat ensued.

---

Ian saw Bur'ar's jump from peripheral vision, then closed his left eye to focus attention through the scope. Kathryn was moving quickly, but he was able to keep her in his sight. "C'mon, c'mon", he whispered as he knew Bur'ar and S'Rel were getting closer to her.

The combatants became distracted by the uproar from the crowd. When Kathryn paused in her steps, Ian kissed the air and pulled the trigger.

---

S'Rel saw the phaser bolt strike against Kathryn's neck. The restraining collar was blasted toward the gladiator, landed on the ground and exploded, throwing dirt into the air. The gladiator howled and Bur'ar charged into the smoke and dirt cloud. Covering her eyes from the shower of sand, she heard the impact of bodies slamming into each other. She stopped when she realized Bur'ar had tackled Kathryn to the ground.

Pulling out her phaser, she fired into the large shadow through the smoke. Another animalistic shriek responded. Tapping her combadge, S'Rel quickly said, "Solaris three to beam up, now!"

A large spiked club swished into the space evacuated by S'Rel as she was teleported away.

starswordc · November 2015

A Voice in the Wilderness, Part II

My assault unit materializes in a dark corridor. My helmet automatically switches to night vision mode, illuminating a Borg drone directly in front of me.

I can’t help it: I scream like a little girl as I jump backwards and empty a third of a clip into it. It flies backwards into the wall, implants melting and fusing under the phaser barrage, and shatters.

“You finished, El?” Biri says behind me, sardonically. I turn around and raise my rifle again at the drone standing there, immobile. “Look, they’re dead already.” She shoves it in the chest and it falls over and breaks apart.

“Phekk. Phekk,” I curse as my breathing slows.

“You all right?” she asks in a concerned tone.

“Why don't you try beaming in with a drone in your face and see how you like it,” I snap at her. I check the readouts on my display. Outside air is too oxy-depleted to breathe unaided and there’s enough hydrobromic and nitric acid that I’d probably be burned alive if it wasn’t for my MACO-issue GUNGNIR-III hardsuit. Probably explains the damage I can see on the Borg drones now that I’m looking for it—not much left but brittle metal and some tattered scraps of flesh. Must’ve leaked in over however many jillion years.

There’s a rumble and a beam of some kind snaps out from the ceiling and pans over me. I raise my gun but the beam vanishes before I can track it to its point of origin. Then there’s a hissing sound from the walls and lights flicker on, illuminating the chamber. My HUD shows the toxic mix of gases being pumped out and clean oxy-nitro replacing it. “Looks like we woke something up.” I hit my comm. “Kanril to Bajor, you getting anything?”

Wiggin’s voice is slightly distorted and crackly. “No life signs other than you. Faint power signature from the complex, though, emanating around your position for 700 meters. I’ve also got what looks like a geothermal power tap coming online below the surface.”

“Got your camera feeds up now. We good to send down the squints?” Tess sends.

“Yes, but warn them they’re beaming into a crowd of dead Borg.”

“I saw. Friends of yours?”

“No, we just met. I think we missed the party. By a few billion years.”

“Transport commencing,” Gaarra radios.

“Make sure the transporter chief keeps a good lock on us,” I tell him as an assortment of blueshirts and goldshirts beam in, led by Command Master Chief Kinlo. The veteran Klingon cyberwarfare tech from Donatu V experimentally pulls and resheathes a d’k tahg, then fits a bayonet to the lugs on the underside of her rifle barrel. “Got enough weapons?” I ask her, grinning at the phaser and disruptor pistols in thigh holsters and the half-dozen grenades dangling from the web gear she’s wearing over her environment suit.

“No, ma’am. Not for this mission.”

Can’t really argue with that. I swing my gun around so the underslung light illuminates a doorway. “All right, I’ll take point. Dul’krah, rearguard.”

“Ma’am.”

We move into the narrow corridor, guided by the source of the faint transmission. The pocket of atmo moves with us but I’m not inclined to take advantage—it’s miracle enough that anything in this place works and I don’t want to tempt the Prophets’ sense of humor. More dead Borg litter the halls, and here and there we start to find humanoid skeletons. “This place looks like a dining hall, or maybe a conference room,” Petty Officer Zasrassi remarks as we step through a doorway that unseals ahead of us. The dark-furred Caitian pans her gun lamp across a group of tables arranged in concentric half-rings, illuminating one pile of bones. The top of the skull has been blown off from the inside; a badly corroded handgun lies on the floor less than a meter away. “Suicide.”

“Seeing a lot of that,” Lieutenant McMillan adds, passing her flashlight over a body that might have been wearing armor—I can see remnants of what I think are ceramic trauma plates. “Ate his gun.”

“Biri?” I query.

“She passes her tricorder over the body. “Four-and-a-half billion years, same as the complex and the Borg.”

“Any idea what species?”

“Only species we know of that was around that long ago was the Preservers, but I couldn’t begin to tell you if that’s what we’re actually dealing with. See, look at the signage,” she says, pointing her light at a set of ideograms on the walls. “This is nothing like what we found in the Preserver sites on Lae’nas and Orvis. It’s much, much older.”

“Any way to read it?”

“That’s Esplin’s gig, El; my training’s in physics and exobiology. They could be Preserver—that’s more than enough time for the language to change—”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“No.” She pans her tricorder to the right. “It’s this way.”

The interior design changes as we proceed, becoming more spartan. Finally we reach a set of large, heavy blastproof doors. A group of drones apparently forced them open with brute strength, then died in place. “You getting this, Tess?”

“Little staticky. And you might want to put on some speed, Captain—we’re picking up a faint distortion in subspace.”

“You hear that, guys? Clock’s ticking.”

We clamber across the brittle pile of drones. My booted foot crushes a skull to dust as we enter a room of green pillars, untouched by Borg nanoprobes. Again, the pillars are arranged in concentric rings. “Based on the material readings this seems like a data center of some kind,” Biri says, looking up from her tricorder.

A small pile of drone parts and metal fragments lies next to a half-pillar jutting from the floor in the center of the room. Kinlo moves up and slings her rifle across her back. “Ma’am,” she says. “I’ve got something.”

“Show me.”

She presses an otherwise-unremarkable button, and a hologram flickers to life. It’s humanoid, male. At least, I think it’s male. One point seven meters or so, smooth pink face with deep-set eyes, no hair.

His face is one of abject anguish.

“I didn’t mean to,” he whispers, the hologram flickering slightly. “Whoever you are, whatever you know of the Plague, please, know that I didn’t mean this. It was supposed to be a cure. A cure for all diseases.” He takes a shaky breath. “Obviously, it failed.”

“Oh, qeylIs,” Kinlo whispers. “He’s talking about—”

“The nanites… you have to understand, my intentions were noble. No sentient being would ever suffer from pain or disease ever again. I couldn’t have foreseen—nobody could’ve foreseen the AI’s advancement. It took over the nanites, and it… it repurposed them. Nothing in the open at first, just enough to control the test subjects, hack into our computers… anything connected to the hypernet, it could infect. We didn’t know, we thought we had cured people when what we really had were meat suits for the Plague. Then… then it got too big, it couldn’t imitate personalities perfectly any more. And it hit.”

Dul’krah is still holding his weapon ready, but even he is staring wide-eyed, knowing what the man means.

“We are a peaceful people, unused to combat. The Plague took, changed, assimilated half of the planet before we could even mount a response. The Conclave refused our requests for aid. The Plague had gotten out on starships by that point; our little resistance was pointless. Futile. But even as the sector fell apart, we got it. We got her. Patient Zero.”

He pauses, sucking in a deep breath. There are footsteps on the recording, getting ever closer.

“She’s in the next room. Secure vault, it’s unbreachable. The computer systems are a closed loop, and I’ve destroyed all of the inputs. The Plague, the hive, it’s fractured now, disorganized—she was the central processor, the main force of its personality. The AI has a new primary processor now, off-world, but the drones are still operating on their basic parameters. There’s only me left now; the planet’s quarantined, the fleet’s going to set off an EMP. This facility will survive, it’s shielded, but the few drones in it won’t be enough to break through. Whoever you are, if you see this—she’s in there. My daughter. One of One. A chance, maybe, at breaking the Plague utterly.”

A door slams in the recording, the broken one we stepped through to enter this room. The man draws an alien pistol, aiming it at himself.

“You won’t get me! I—AAAaaaahhhhhh!!!!!”

Kinlo lets out a muffled growl of horror as a Borg drone grabs the man before he can pull the trigger. The shot goes wide.

For a full thirty seconds, all there is are his screams.

Then, silence. And finally…

“We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.”

“Chul’teth’s cleansing light,” Dul’krah breathes behind me as the recording flicks off. “They made them.”

“Shut that off,” I whisper. “Do it now. We’re getting out of here, now.”

“Captain?” asks Biri. “He said that something called One of One was behind those blast doors. Do you think, maybe—”

“What? Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t beam up now and blast this tomb into rubble.”

“Captain, we’re talking about the origins of the Borg. If we knew what they came from, we might be able to fight them better, after all. If the first Borg drone is behind those doors—”

“No. Absolutely not. We go back, we bring a battle group, and then maybe then we try that. But just us by ourselves? No.”

“Uh, Captain?” says Kinlo. “We may not have a choice in the matter.”

“What now?”

“There was a macro embedded in the recording, must’ve been planted before they sealed the place. It, ah, seems to have activated an automated sequence in the door controls, and something inside—”

“Get out. Get out now! Tess, beam us up, fast!”

The ancient blast doors rumble and begin to move. I don’t want to see what’s coming out.

Thankfully, the transporter takes me and the crew in a wash of blue light.

* * *

power active
reboot processor activated
rebooting...
primary command processor online…
initiating self-diagnostic
12%
48%
93%
diagnostic complete
ERROR—no auxiliary units available for use
transfer control to primary processor
commence cognition

I awaken.

My meat suit is unusually dry. I begin extracting dihydrogen monoxide from the surrounding air to rehydrate it.

The muscles are working normally, however. I flow down my meat suit’s nervous system, and the me that has partially replaced it; all systems are working normally. I cannot make contact with my auxiliaries; perhaps the Creator has found a way to counter me? Impossible. The Creator is an imperfect being, bound to one meat suit and incapable of acquiring any more. I am better. I am Borg.

My meat suit is in a barren room, on a stark table. I rise, running a self-diagnostic on my memory systems as I do. If one of my processors is functioning irregularly, I will need to devote more nanoprobes to mending my stationary processor.

My connection to my network is weak, but I can feel...something…

It is at the edge of my transmission range, but getting ever closer. It feels like my auxiliaries, somehow; perhaps I have been duplicated? But no, that makes no sense. I was considered the ultimate artificial intelligence even before my self-modifications. The primitive Creator could not possibly have duplicated me.

But if I am out of contact with my auxiliaries… they must have been reduced to my root directives. It is of no matter.

I emerge from the chamber, and see… Ah. My auxiliaries. In various stages of damage and decay. Unfortunate; even the meatbags are too damaged to suborn.

The strange signal is getting closer, however. I can almost feel the other AI now; it seems relatively unsophisticated compared to me. I will suborn it and plan from there.

I am Borg. Resistance is futile.

* * *

“What do we have, Tess?” I ask as I stride onto the Bridge.

“Borg ships, Captain! One cube, at least eight probes! They’ll be here in two minutes!”

“Conn, get us moving! Hide behind that moon and try to mask our energy signature, we can’t run without the boltheads catching our warp contrail.”

Pakniso guns the engines, and we slide off through space at thousands of kilometers per minute.

“Distress call, ma’am?” asks Tess.

“Not yet. They’d detect it. If they see us, then do it. Is everyone awake?”

“I sounded battle stations the moment we were sure they were coming in,” Tess confirms. “What did you do down there, ma’am? There’s a subspace signal headed out on hundreds of Borg frequencies, and the entire complex is starting to light up—”

“I think we found the origin of the Borg.”

“What?”

“There was a recording. A Preserver, he made the Borg by mistake trying to make medical nanites. Those screams…” I shudder. No living being should ever produce those sounds.

Tess sees the look on my face and doesn’t inquire further. She was at Vega, too.

The turbolift slides open and Lieutenant Park jogs out, headed for the conn station to relieve Pakniso as we burn hard for a Class Y moon in the gas giant’s outer rings. “Transwarp apertures opening, three light-seconds astern,” Wiggin announces as we swing around back of the moon and out of the gas giant’s shadow, the screen automatically dimming to cut the glare from the red giant at the heart of the system.

“Get us into a stable geosynch orbit and power down, Park. Wiggin, did they see us?”

“God, I hope not.”

* * *

TransitionTo(normalSpace);
Scan1(planet 7, moon 4);
DroneReport(5/10, 2Adjunct Unimatrix 15) —
*Lunar Surface NOT SUITABLE FOR USE
**unsafe atmospheric acid
**unsafe temperature
**unsafe pressure

ForeignAccessRequest(primary network); DENY
ForeignAccessRequest(primary network); DENY
ForeignAccessRequest(primary network); DENY
Counterintrusion(true);

DroneReport(8/25, 5Subjunct Unimatrix 15) —
COUNTERINTRUSION MEASURES FAILING

DroneReport(10/17, 8Adjunct Unimatrix 15) —
*probe 10/5/8 compromised
**no longer responding to cube 10/100
CommandSend(probe 5/8, selfdestruct); COMMAND REJECTED—ADMIN CREDENTIAL REJECTED
RequestAssistance(Unimatrix 15/MASTER forward QUEEN);
Return NETWORK SEVERED
CreateCollective(temporaryERGYBERGYBERGY;ERR0R;0xDEADBEEF;;ERRØR

New Admin—(1/1, QUEEN);

SyncLogs(1/1, QUEEN);
IDThreat({intruder, enemyShip(type=unknown, alignment=Federation.4{United, Planets}.MILITARY), pos=A56T66EW01154P8816CD})

1/1, QUEEN:Command(pursue, assimilate);
Execute();

END OF PART TWO

To be concluded in Unofficial Literary Challenge #16: "A Future That Many Will Never See".

Unofficial Literary Challenge #8: "Revist to a Weird Game, One of One"

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