From: Kenneth Field (envision_at_fidalgo.net)
Date: Thu May 15 2008 - 22:52:15 PDT
"Be Careful What You Wish For"
Location: USS TUSCARORA, NCC-5150
Stardate: 2.80515.2128
Scene: Bridge
---------------------- =/\=
"No good deed ever goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
--------------------- =/\=
"Captain," the Andorian Helmsman spoke up without preamble. "Distress beacon, bearing nine-two-nine-mark-four. Automated."
The Captain, a handsome Caitian by the name of Nechayirr, looked up from his reading. A less-than-fascinating treatise on the biometric properties of certain leukocytic injections in biogel circuitry. The Terrans had a phrase for what he was feeling. Terrans always had colorful ways of expressing things. "Bored to tears," was the phrase he had in mind.
"Time to intercept at flank speed?" he asked the woman steering the ship.
"Fifteen minutes, give or take," the woman responded.
"Give or take?" Nechayirr queried, flicking his ears expressively first at the Helmsman, then back.
"Apologies, Captain," the Andorian Helmsman replied, remembering that the Caitian had a reputation for exactitude. "Fifteen minutes, thirty-two seconds, margin of error roughly two minutes."
"Very well," Nechayirr took a seat in the command chair. "Alter course and speed to intercept. Go!" he commanded, hoping, wishing that whatever was out there would be more exciting than his reading.
-------------------- =/\=
"All right, so it's possible there's an alternate version of myself out there that actually understands what the hell you're talking about?" -- Jack O'neill, SG1
-------------------- =/\=
Vulcans believe that Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations is the desired result of a Universe operating as it should. If they are right ... and because they are Vulcan, they find it logical to believe so ... there may be more infinity than anyone has ever quite bothered to consider before. Even some Terran scientists postulated a Multi-verse where every possible decision that can happen, has happened, the paths of these decisions spreading geometrically into the cosmos. These infinite numbers of Universes range across a vast spectrum of infinity from the suffocating point where everything succeeds to the devastating point where everything fails. It's hard to know whether drowning in the sheer overwhelming abundance of life might be worse than simply being ... nothing at all. But there it is.
Somewhere along this trajectory of universes, there are two that are remarkably similar. Men and women of these universes have, on occasion, crossed over, some by accident ... some by design. At some point in the future, within some other unrelated dimension, a Star Fleet vessel known by some as the USS SUTTNER will be destroyed by a weapon so devastating that pieces of it will be flung far and wide throughout the Multi-verse. While the USS SUTTNER of our universe travels safely in the hands of Command Track cadets at Star Fleet Academy, a piece of this future USS SUTTNER found its way into the GAMMA Quadrant and diverted the USS EIDOLON on its shakedown cruise. It literally wrenched that gallant vessel from one Universe into another. Fortunately, the good ship and crew under Commander Eugene McInnis found its way back, only to be destroyed in combat with an Orion Base Star somewhere in Hell's Throat.
But another piece of that future USS SUTTNER found its way into a Universe very close to our own. Very close indeed. And it had a very similar effect ...
-------------------- =*=
Location: GAMMA Quadrant, exact location uncertain
Scene: Flight Deck of the Bajoran Forward Observation Vessel SHIV
Stardate: 2.80512.1002, approximately three days prior to contact with the TUSCARORA
"What in fracking hell was that?!" the blonde woman roared, her hand slapped across her head wound, blood welling between her fingers from the injury. "Medic to the Flight Deck! Now, gods dammit! Now!"
Captain Daisy Byrne was not a patient woman. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Being smacked in the head by the floor wasn't apt to improve her disposition either. The original might once have been a more even tempered person, but since this particular woman was a clone of that original, stable temperament was apparently not one of the traits that had copied true along with the DNA. Her original was decomposing in some nameless mine on some gods-forsaken Dominion world. And that suited this copy just fine.
Physician Kate McNeil hurriedly pounded up the ladder onto the Flight Deck, her portable medkit slung over one shoulder. She'd learned from long experience not to keep the Captain waiting. The woman may have been named for a flower, but it was a particularly nasty little flower back on TERRA ... and it had teeth.
"About time you showed up!" Byrne growled.
"I was already on my way," the physician snapped. "I've got injury calls from all over the damned ship. What are you people doing up here?" She pulled the Captain's hand away from the injury, found it to be like most facial injuries, not too serious, but extremely bloody for all that. "Hold still, dammit," McNeil told her, swiping the area with antiseptic, then suturing the laceration with glue.
"Varn!" Byrne swiveled about to shout back at the ship's research specialist. "I asked you a question. What the hell was that?"
Thomus Varn was a mess.
He hadn't been injured in the sudden wrenching diversion the ship had experienced. His injuries had come months ago at the hands of Jem'Hadar terrorists. They'd firebombed his research facility, and though he'd escaped with his life, he'd lost his wings ... and his handsome face. The wings would have grown back, but the energy it would have taken would have robbed the rest of his body of its chance to recuperate. In short, the wings would have sucked him dry. The physicians who found him deliberately stunted his wing's capacity to regenerate, and he was currently undergoing painful treatment to prevent the rest of his body from becoming immobile resulting from the scar tissue of his burns.
"It would seem we hit something," he mumbled through lips calloused and hard.
"You'd better have more to say than that," Byrne warned him.
"Oh, I assure you, Captain, I have much more to say," Varn smirked, and on that face, a smirk was an act of violence all its own. "For instance, whatever we hit was charged with chronoton particles. We're still getting readings off those particles ionizing on our hull. But that's not the truly remarkable thing."
Byrne glanced aside and looked at McNeil.
"I swear I'm going to rack that pitiful bastard before this mission is over," she muttered. Then louder, she said, "Report, Varn, before we all get too old to care!"
"As the Captain commands. We're not in Kansas any more," the man said.
"What?!" both McNeil and Byrne said together.
"We're in the GAMMA Quadrant as before, but there are subtle differences in the location of various navigational pulsars in the region. Such things are normally very consistent, cosmologically speaking. We're somewhere else. It's the only conclusion."
The Helmsman turned about from her station. "We have company."
Byrne turned to address Anaqueen, their unjoined Trill separatist, at the helm. Byrne had an almost instant dislike for the woman. Ana was tall, almost regal in bearing, with spots that dotted her body from top to bottom. Byrne had seen them all at one time or another. The Captain's perogative, after all. But something about Ana was untouchable. Perhaps the hauteur came from being one of the very few Trill unsubjugated by their ruling symbionts. Perhaps it was something else. But Byrne did not trust a woman she could not dominate.
"More specific," Byrne ordered.
"A trading vessel of some sort. Unarmed. They're hailing. Should we respond?"
Byrne didn't answer immediately. Instead she touched the jeweled clip clinging to her right ear.
"Kor! Makinnis! Assemble a boarding party."
-------------------- =*=
"Better get under cover, Sylvester. There's a storm blowin' up, a whopper. Just speakin' the vernacular of the peasantry." -- Professor Marvel: "THE WIZARD OF OZ"
-------------------- =*=
Scene: Transport Deck, BFOV SHIV
Eish Kor swaggered through the doors. Andorians weren't generally so aggressive, but she had good reason. A former gladiator champion of the ice moons, Kor had taken down thirty-three opponents with nothing but her ice knives, her muscle, and her ruthless mind. She had not survived unscathed. She had kept gladiatorial medics hopping, certainly. Regrown fingers on her left hand sacrificed for a killing blow. A vicious scar that lanced down across her replacement eye she'd left in place just for its shock value. There was only one other person she cared anything for beyond herself: the ruined research specialist Varn who saw her with the eyes of pain and agony. She knew what he saw looking out of those eyes. She saw it, too.
"Let's get this party started," she nodded toward the transport tech.
"Just waiting for you," the Bajoran interrogator Makinis said, from his place already on the transport pad. His constant companion and servant, the BORG Vukovic stood stolidly behind him on another pad along with a half dozen armored shock troops.
"He's no help in a fight," Kor snapped, nodding at Vukovic.
"I"m not taking him to a fight," Makinis smiled, his wicked, sharp-toothed smile as he racked an incendiary round into his short-barreled chukker. "We're going to a slaughter. The ship is unarmed. He's for information retrieval. The ship's got to have a computer, and Tomas' has a way with computers."
"Just keep him out of my way," Kor spat on the deck. "Or he'll need a lot of spare parts."
"Anything you say," Makinis stopped smiling and they swirled away on the wind.
--------------------- =*=
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal
--------------------- =*=
Scene: the trading vessel INSHALLAH
Makinis Ugeen sat quietly on the little girl's bed watching her comb her dolly's hair with almost obsessive zeal.
**Children are amazing creatures,** he thought. **Attack their homes, kill the adults around them, and as long as they have their dolls or their favorite blanket, they'll hold it together.**
He and the little girl, whose name was Karadee, sat together in the child's bedroom on board her father's ship, a trading vessel, as it happened. The INSHALLAH. Geen had to chuckle at that. It was a word from one of TERRA's thousand languages, meaning "the will of Allah." In other words, God's will. Or in his case, of course, Prophet's will.
He was Bajoran, Makinis Ugeen was. A world of people so vicious that when the Cardassians had made the mistake of attempting to conquer them all those decades ago, they'd sealed their own doom. Bajorans had sworn blood oaths, filed their canine teeth into fangs and swept over the Cardassian forward elements like a tidal wave. Of the few Cardassians who survived, stories of Bajorans killing just by tearing the throats out of their attackers with their own teeth sent shivers of horror across the quadrant. They took their stories back to Cardassia Prime, just ahead of the forces of retaliation launched by BAJOR. Most surviving Cardassians, and there weren't many, lived as slaves to various ruling caste Bajorans. And their lives were squalid by any definition of the term. No one fought Bajorans.
Geen smiled at the little girl, careful not to show his teeth, which had been filed into fangs the day he killed for the first time. It was custom on BAJOR. And it scared the hell out of non-Bajorans ... usually. He didn't want to scare the little girl. Not yet.
"Nice ship you have here," he said, breaking the silence finally.
Karadee said nothing.
"Have you always lived on board?" he asked.
The little girl paused, almost, but not quite looked up at him.
"Father tells me not to talk to strangers," she said finally.
"Your father the Captain," Geen nodded. "Captain of this ship. INSHALLAH."
She nodded, then apparently thinking she shouldn't have done even that, went back to combing her dolly's hair.
"See that camera up there?" Geen nodded at a mini-cam he'd set up across the room from them when he'd first come in.
She wouldn't look. Not so much afraid, he decided, as stubborn.
"Your father's on the other end of that 'feed.' "
That got her attention. Karadee looked up through a mop of black hair and stopped combing her doll's hair entirely, the comb clutched in her fingers.
"Do you have anything you want to say to him?" he asked softly.
She nodded.
"Go ahead," he smiled at her. "It's all right. You're talking to him, not me."
She glanced at him, then at the camera.
"Daddy? Come get me. I don't like it here. Please?"
Geen cupped the little girl's cheek in one hand, smiled at her.
"There. Don't you feel better?" he asked.
She nodded.
Makinis Ugeen sighed, got up off the bed and walked toward the camera.
"Pay attention," he commanded, the smile no longer on his face, his words pitched so that only the watchers could hear them.
He turned his back to the camera and slid a slender sliver of razor-sharp metal from a sheath attached to his belt in the small of his back. The camera saw it all, though the little girl did not. She'd gone back to her doll. He let the knife slip quietly, softly to his side as he took the first step toward her.
"I do not divine the Prophets, nor the way to join them," Makinis Ugeen whispered. "I am but a vessel in this life. All I can do is take what little has been granted unto me, to better name the darkness that encroaches."
-------------------- =*=
Sawyer: "You know what I think, Ali? I think you've never actually tortured anybody in your life."
Sayid: "Unfortunately for us both, you're wrong." -- LOST
-------------------- =*=
Location: INSHALLAH
Scene: another room
Makinis Ugeen walked quietly into the room. The man sagged against his bonds in the chair they'd tied him into. Gagged so that he could not speak, he still made pitiful snuffling noises. He did not look up when Geen entered the room. Even when the Bajoran squatted down in front of him and wiped the blood off his knife onto the clothing of the man in the chair, he seemed not to see Geen.
"I told you how this would be," Geen said softly, leaning in close to the man, searching his bruised and bloodied face. "But you had to be a hero."
The man closed his one good eye, and tears fell from it.
"Heroes always pay a price. And so do the people around them. I hope I've made my point. I hope it won't be necessary to continue in this manner. It's so wasteful."
He nodded at the man behind the chair, the man who'd been there when the father had lunged forward, screaming around his gag at the sight on the screen set up in front of him. The bald man, dressed in leathered armor and steel. The man with one blue eye and one BORG ocular implant. The man who had no heart. This man, a former Slav out of Gagarin City on LUNA, stepped forward and slipped the gag out of their captive's mouth.
The man in the chair wet his lips with his tongue, coughed and spat blood on the floor at his feet. Geen did not move. He wasn't afraid of blood.
"Where are we?" Geen asked quietly.
"The GAMMA Quadrant," the man rasped. He had once been captain of the INSHALLAH. Now he was just talking meat. "I told you that before."
"Yes," Geen nodded. "Yes, you did. And I didn't believe you. Not then at least. So much is different here."
"So much the same," Tomas' added.
Geen frowned. It was as close to disagreement as the BORG had ever been.
"Have you never met Bajorans before?" he asked, trying to work it all out in his head. Why the man had at first appealed to his morality, begged him actually to spare them. As if that would have made any difference.
"Bajorans ...," the captive's words slurred from his torn mouth, "are different here. There are no Bajorans here ... like you."
Geen tapped the blade of his knife on his cheek while he thought about that for awhile.
"Well," he sighed. "Perhaps you're right."
Makinis Ugeen stood abruptly.
"Let us begin again," he said. "Shall we?"
-------------------- =/\=
Location: USS TUSCARORA, NCC-5150
Time Index: Three days later
The Intrepid class cruiser was given the assignment to scout the
particular sector for any signs of Dominion activity. Since the advent
of the war, the scout vessel was involved in only one type of mission:
patrolling the Federation-Dominion border to look out for the enemy. A
boring job so far for the crew of the TUSCACORA as long as they
didn't run into any trouble, such as getting caught off-guard by a
Dominion battleship.
Captain Nechayirr tried not to yawn as he brushed his long, dark
brown mane. The Caitian was a seasoned officer having been part of
Starfleet for more than twenty five years. An explorer at heart, Nechayirr
preferred going on exploration missions as opposed to battles. But with
the war happening, the feline was stuck to only scouting duty and yearned
for the day peace would reign, allowing him to return to exploration.
Prior to attaining command, he had been a scientist and enjoyed research, not warfare. But when threatened, he'd learned he, too, could fight.
"Captain," the Andorian woman seated at the helm informed him. "We're
approaching the source of the beacon at slow impulse."
Nechayirr cocked his head sideways and inquired, addressing a J'nai, "Lieutenant Loren, what are we dealing with here?"
Loren, the ship's science officer, replied, eyes fixed on the console.
"Sensors detect a trading vessel floating across our starboard."
"Life signs?"
The J'nai was deprived of the chance to respond when a subspace
mine detonated leading to explosions erupting from both ships.
Captain Nechayirr's dream of returning to exploration would
never be fulfilled. The TUSCACORA would never embark on another
voyage ever again.
-------------------- =/\=
"As soon as there is life, there is danger." -- Ralph Waldo Emmerson
-------------------- =/\=
Location: USS COMMENDATION, NCC-10021
Scene: Bridge
Time index: Hours later
After weeks of dealing with the GATEWAY, Anaqueen was relieved to be
back on the COMMENDATION, where she didn't have to deal with civilians
complaining or FedCom agents pestering her. Currently the century class
battle cruiser was patrolling the area for Dominion activity.
Commander Lena Daiuon, the ship's Ops officer, announced. "Captain, I'm
receiving a SOS."
"Distance?" Anaqueen inquired calmly, leaning forward in her chair.
The Betazoid replied, her fingers dancing on the console. "Two light
years from our current position."
Turning to the SOO, the Trill questioned. "Any other starships in range?"
"Negative," Lt. Evelyn Williams answered promptly. "We're the closest."
Ana nodded. "Thank you, Lieutenant." Addressing an Ocampan officer
seated at a console just below the viewscreen, the brunette ordered.
"Helm, set course at maximum warp."
"Aye ma'am," Ensign Talbo acknowledged, inputting the coordinates
of the distress signal's origin. "Course laid in," the three year old
officer reported a second later.
"Engage." Spankryz commanded. "And go to yellow alert."
-------------------- =/\=
"Bag it, tag it, and let's see what else is here." -- Horatio Caine (Bunk)
-------------------- =/\=
Time Index: minutes later
Anaqueen demanded as soon as the ship arrived at the sight.
"Status report."
Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Haley reported from the tactical station. "I'm
reading the presence of two vessels in the area. One of them, a
Federation starship where the distress signal originated from, has
been identified as the USS TUSCACORA, NCC- 5150. The other is a
civilian trade ship registered as the SS INSHALLAH."
"Their condition?" The Trill inquired calmly.
Lt. Polairis Arisa, the chief engineer, informed. "The INSHALLAH has
been nearly destroyed, broken up into fragments."
Commander G'blok questioned, glancing at the engineering
console. "What about the TUSCACORA?"
"The TUSCACORA's sustained extensive structural damages and is
beyond repair," the Bajoran woman replied. "The ship has split into half.
Small chunks of the saucer section had been sheared off. Hull breaches
detected all over the place." Arisa's report of the intrepid class
starship's condition was grim to all ears as it meant the TUSCACORA's
life had ended. But the time was not right to grieve for the
permanently damaged ship as the COMMENDATION crew had a
job to do.
Anaqueen queried, maintaining a cool and professional demeanor.
"Any survivors?"
"Yes ma'am," Lt. JG Stramere answered. The Benzite CSciO paused for
a moment to confirm the information from his scans. He frowned, not
liking the figures on his screen but had to report them anyway. "Captain,
my sensors show an 80 percent casualty rate in the TUSCACORA but
no survivors from the INSHALLAH."
Evelyn suggested, glancing behind at the science officer. "Unless they
had already managed to escape from the ship before its destruction."
"Duly noted, Lieutenant," Ana acknowledged before deciding, addressing
the ship's Operations officer. "Commander, clear cargo bay 3 and set
up a triage."
Lena nodded. "Yes Captain."
"Begin transporting all survivors from the TUSCACORA as well as from
any escape pods that managed to leave." Spankryz instructed. "Send
them directly to cargo bay 3."
"Aye ma'am," the Betazoid complied.
The Trill activated the comm. panel on her chair's armrest and
called. "Bridge to Sickbay."
[[Sickbay here,]] the voice of Lt. Cmdr. Tran Anh Qui came through.
Anaqueen informed. "Prepare to receive incoming wounded."
The Vietnamese CMO complied. [[Yes Captain.]]
After closing communications with Doctor Tran, Ana immediately turned
her attention to Polairis and Stramere and ordered. "Lieutenants, gather
up all the wreckage. We will need to tractor them back to the
GATEWAY for further analysis."
The Bajoran CEO and the Benzite CSciO both complied. "Aye Captain."
Spankryz then assigned her husband to the task of sweeping the surrounding area for any signs of foul play by the enemy. Her ExO was sent to speak with the ranking officer of the TUSCACORA to obtain an account of what happened to the two ships.
--------------------- =/\=
"This is a crime scene," -- Gil Grissom
--------------------- =/\=
Scene: CO's Ready Room
TI: 3 hours later
The COMMENDATION was en route to the GATEWAY STATION with
the remnants of both the TUSCACORA and the INSHALLAH in tow. She
had discovered in sadness that the majority of the senior staff, including
the CO and ExO had died. Ana spared a few thoughts for the deceased and
cursed the war for all those fatalities.
Ana was reading the report written by Lt. Polairis on the assessment made on the wreckage, when the door chimed. The Trill Captain gave out the
command to allow the visitors entry into her domain.
The door slid apart, permitting G'blok and Matthew in the room. G'blok
began. "Captain, I spoke with Lt. JG Shepherd, the TUSCACORA's counselor
and surviving ranking officer and we found out what happened."
"Go on," Ana nodded, her eyes fixed on both her ExO and Sec/Tac.
The Klingon explained after a low grunt. "The TUSCACORA responded to a
distress beacon sent by the INSHALLAH. Upon arrival at the sight, both
vessels just exploded."
"How?" The Captain questioned, leaning forward, elbows placed on her
desk. The Trill's posture stiffened, getting a bad feeling of what her
subordinates were going to say next.
It was her husband who responded. "Well from the scans obtained
from the sweep we found no evidence of any Dominion vessel
having been in this area."
Ana queried, raising an eyebrow. "Then what did you find?"
"We found traces of a subspace mine." The half-El Aurian replied after
pausing for a second. "Apparently someone had laid a trap either near
or in the INSHALLAH and the TUSCACORA fell for it."
The Trill pondered for a moment taking in the information Matthew
provided. Her comm. badge chirruped, followed by the Ops officer's voice.
[[Bridge to Captain Spankryz.]]
"Spankryz here," Ana answered.
Lena informed. [[We're arriving at the GATEWAY and will be docking soon.]]
-------------------- =/\=
"I dreamed a dream ... but now that dream is gone from me." -- Morpheus, "Matrix Reloaded"
--------------------- =*=
A shadow dropped into the distant reaches of the ANDARAN system carefully in the wake of the COMMENDATION and her sad little trail of broken ships and lives. It was a ship made for shadows, for testing the outer defensive walls of the Dominion Insurgency. For preparing the way for invasion. It didn't matter that there was no supporting force for it here in this strange, almost parallel universe. It was still a shadow. And shadows are everywhere one looks.
And lying quietly in the COMMENDATION's Sickbay was a member of her crew, suffering real injuries for the good doctors to heal. An infiltrator with the heart of a predator. A Bajoran named Makinis.
--------------------- =*=
NRPG: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to hell.
A few years back, a fellow writer named Chance once challenged me to create a character so bad it scared me. Makinnis Ugeen was the result. I have offered just the beginnings of some of your other characters as well. Daisy, Kate, Thomas and Ana and Eishnala. Mowree is here as well, though he'll appear a bit later I think. Some of you I haven't mentioned yet, mostly because this got really long. I leave them up to you. The Mirror Universe is High Trek, part of the Canon, but it's been many years since DS-9. I haven't thought of everything that might have happened in the last forty-five or fifty years. Your characters may not be so obviously bad as mine seem to be. Maybe they're just a little bent. (Can you imagine Cade Foster as a Freedom Fighter?) I honestly don't know where this is going. But misery loves company. Thanks to Ran and Kim and all who have offered me suggestions. Hope you like what you see.
Welcome to my nightmare.
-------------------- =/\=
This post brought to you by the combined efforts of:
Kenneth Field
Ranjani Sabarinathan
Kim Touissant
From HyperNews_at_youth.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Nov 19 2008 - 03:10:52 PST