More Than meets The Optics
by Admiral2
2483 words
-------------------------
On its way to a routine assignment patrolling the Neutral Zone, the Romulan Warbird D’Kara detected a strange object transiting the space between two outer systems. The warbird’s commanding officer, Commander Ryken, decided to intercept and investigate. It took little time for the D’Kara to arrive in the vicinity of the object, and as soon as it entered visual range the tactical officer magnified it on the bridge screen.
“It’s a cube,” someone blurted out. Indeed, centered on the viewscreen was a black, slowly rotating cube. Its sides were riddled with engravings that could barely be made out in what little light the object was reflecting.
Ryken’s eyebrow went up. “Could that be a Borg cube?”
“Too small,” the tactical officer said. “The object is barely a third the size of one of our scout ships.”
“A probe of some kind, then? Perhaps the Borg have learned caution?”
“There is no indication of Borg technology. We’ve nothing like it recorded in our data banks.”
Ryken frowned. “Well, whatever it is, it’s violated Romulan space. Decloak and give it a warning hail. If it doesn’t leave or respond within ten seconds, destroy it.”
The bridge crew carried out Ryken’s orders. Exactly ten seconds after the hail was made, with no response from the cube, the tactical officer fired a photon torpedo. The weapon exploded dead center on one of the cubes’ sides, but instead of suffering any damage the device began to rotate faster and come alive with sparks of energy. As the Romulans became transfixed by the sight, and before anyone could order the shields to be put up, the cube released a massive blue bolt of energy that struck the D’Kara dead on. The energy shorted out systems all over the ship as it shocked the crew.
Ryken shook his head to clear it. As he recovered he started to call for a damage report, but a loud, grating rakrakrakrakrak sounded throughout the ship before he could speak. “What was that?” another officer said, timidly.
No one had a chance to answer, because just then the D’Kara fell apart around them. Bulkheads detached and folded in on themselves, decks gave way, seats and control panels fragmented, and while all this happened sharp, spiked metal appendages emerged and began killing the crew.
By the time another warbird arrived in the area to find out what happened, D’Kara and the cube were long gone.
-----------------------
“The quarterly security reports, Major,” Constable Odo said as he handed Major Kira Nerys a PADD. Kira was in command of the station while Captain Benjamin Sisko and many of the other senior officers were off in the Defiant on Federation business. As was her custom the Major had taken over Sisko’s office as well while he was gone.
Kira checked the PADD’s display. “Thank you, Odo,” she said, “but you didn’t have to bring this in person.”
Odo cleared his throat. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something. I was thinking of taking a leave of absence sometime in the near future.”
Kira’s eyes widened a little. “You?!” She smiled. “I’m sorry, but it’s a rare thing for you to ask for leave time.”
Odo grumbled. “Apparently you’re not the only one who’s noticed. Several of my officers have been telling me that I don’t take enough time off.”
“I think they’re right. If anybody on this station deserves some time to relax, it’s you. I think we can spare you for a few days. Can I ask where you’re planning to go?”
“I haven’t decided yet, but there’s a historical exposition opening on Bajor that intrigued me when I heard about it, so I thought…”
Just then the officer of the deck in Ops sounded Yellow Alert. Kira and Odo rushed out of the office. “What’s going on?” Kira asked from the command platform.
“A Romulan Warbird just decloaked 50 kilometers from Docking Pylon 3 and is closing at full thruster speed,” the deck officer, a Starfleet lieutenant, said.
“Hail them,” Kira ordered, wondering what the Romulans were doing in Bajoran space.
A Bajoran militia officer carried out the order. “No response,” she said. “The ship’s telemetry markers identify it as the D’Kara.”
“On screen,” Kira said. A second later she was watching as the big, green spacecraft closed in on Deep Space Nine.
Odo watched right along with her. “There’s something odd about that ship…”
“You mean besides the obvious?” Kira asked, then she turned to the Bajoran officer. “Keep hailing them.”
The officer hailed and Kira and Odo watched as the warbird remained unresponsive and got closer to the station, until it finally slowed to a stop about a kilometer away. Then it seemed to just sit there for a minute or two, and Kira wondered idly if some Romulan commander had decided to go sightseeing.
Then the warbird seemed to collapse in on itself, breaking up and bending and folding until what was floating before the station was no longer a D’deridex-class Romulan warship, but a massive, humanoid automaton with arms, legs, a torso and a head with red, glowing eyes…eyes that were glaring at DS9.
“No…” Odo muttered.
“Red Alert!” Kira called out.
The shields went up immediately as the alert klaxons sounded. It wasn’t a moment too soon. Just a second later the automaton stretched its right arm toward the station and extended a multi-function weapon system. The station trembled as the weapon unleashed a steady flow of photon torpedoes and disruptor blasts.
“Shields down to 80% and decreasing fast!” The officer at Tactical called out.
“Return fire!” Kira called out.
On her command, the station’s weapons pylons began targeting the automaton with phasers and quantum torpedoes. The weapons impacted, but did little besides momentarily distracting the creature from the bombardment. When it recovered it extended another weapon system from its left arm and pressed the attack.
“That won’t do any good!” Odo called out. Kira looked toward him. She was used to his face showing very little emotion, so she was unprepared for the look of fear mixed with rage she saw there. “I know what this thing is!”
“How?!” Kira asked. “Can all Romulan ships do that?”
“No,” Odo said. “This creature is no longer Romulan, but it can do anything a warbird can do, along with a few things that nothing you’ve ever seen can do! I never thought I’d actually see one…” When he saw that Kira was still confused, he explained. “Ever since I’ve come in contact with my people again I have made brief connections to the Great Link, to learn more about them. There is a collective memory there, about a war fought long ago, in the early years of the Dominion, against a race of sentient machines.”
“Machines? You mean like the Borg?”
Odo laughed mirthlessly. “Worse than the Borg. The Borg will only steal your technology. These creatures will bring it to life and turn it against its masters! It’s an ability handed down from their creators, whom they worshipped much the way the Jem’Hadar and Vorta worship the Founders.”
“Well, who are their creators?”
“It’s unclear. Apparently they work through physical devices, the way the Prophets work through the orbs. The Founders first encountered the devices when they were beginning to make their greatest strides in conquering the Gamma Quadrant. They were cubes, and they seemed to exist to create beings suited to fighting changelings.”
Kira looked back at the screen as the station continued to shake. “Let me guess: that’s because the cubes created machines with the ability to shape-shift!”
Odo nodded. “It’s limited! They can only change into specific objects, ones suited to their size and mass, but it’s enough to sneak into an enemy formation undetected and strike without warning!”
“All right, but why is it here? Does it want to use the wormhole to get to the Gamma Quadrant?”
Odo looked at her and shook his head. “The other reason the Founders had for suspecting the cubes’ purpose was the fact that their creations tended to be single-minded, and would often plow through and ignore legions of Jem’Hadar for the chance to kill a single changeling. Don’t you see? As advanced as a Romulan Warbird is, it’s not sentient, and given sentience it would at first function at the level of an animal, an animal with an instinctual need to kill Founders…”
It hit Kira like a train. “And you’re the closest Founder to wherever it was created.”
Odo nodded. “It’s here because it wants me!”
They both braced themselves as the tremors got worse. “Shields down to 40%” The tactical officer called out. “Continuing counterattack!”
Kira checked the status readouts on the main screen. “We’re doing some damage!”
“Not enough,” Odo said, “and not quickly enough to save the station! We won’t beat it this way. There’s only one thing to do…”
Kira cut him off with a glare. “No! There has to be another way! You’re not going to leave just so…!”
“I am leaving the station, but not to do what you’re thinking! There is another way!” He went to the Science station and used it to scan the automaton. He smiled when he saw what he wanted, then headed for the turbolift. “I’ll be in Transporter Room One! Get ready to lower the shields on my mark!”
“What good will that do?” Kira said.
“It will make Laughing Boy out there think he’s won, and he might lower his shields so that he can transport me aboard, or simply break through the station with his own two hands and grab me. Either way, he’ll be vulnerable and I’ll be ready for it!” With that, the lift descended from Ops.
-------------
In Transporter Room One Odo tore open an emergency arms compartment and grabbed a palm-held phaser. As he set the device he gave orders to the transporter technician. “Transport me to the coordinates I sent you as soon as you have word that the enemy’s shields are down!” He ran up to the transporter pad without waiting for acknowledgment and tapped his commbadge. “Odo to Ops. Lower the shields now and let us know the moment the automaton does the same!”
“Acknowledged!” Kira’s voice said. “Shields are down!” A moment’s pause. “It worked! The machine’s shields just went down!”
The technician began the transport cycle. At the last second Odo made his body pliable and rubbery, knowing that when he rematerialized it would be inside the monster’s inner workings. It was a wise precaution. Just as he became whole again a series of gears and alloy plates shifted and forced him to bend and twist around them. He grunted and converted his body completely to fluid, absorbing his commbadge and the phaser into his center of mass. In this form he flowed through the shifting body of the automaton, avoiding the movements of its joints and artificial muscles, feeling the energy of its nerve impulses as it worked. This also protected him from the machine’s internal defenses, which assaulted him all the way as he flowed to his destination, a large chamber in the center of the automaton’s chest. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew that just behind the wall he had come to was a large ball of energy, which somehow gave the creature life. With grim resolve, Odo moved the phaser to the edge of his mass, then formed a hand to hold it, then fired it into the chamber.
The automaton convulsed as its chest exploded in a burst of concussive energy, then it shuddered a few times before the glow left its eyes and it went adrift in space.
Odo had been moving again by the time the machine’s chest exploded. He was searching for a specific mechanism, hoping against hope that he could recognize it and get it to work with the automaton no longer functioning. It took long, frantic minutes, but he finally found the device and formed another hand to trigger the manual control. There was a loud, grating rakrakrakrakrak, then Odo moved as the walls and gears and joints shifted and disappeared into bulkheads and decks and control panels, until the automaton had turned back into the D’Kara, heavily damaged but immediately more familiar.
Odo solidified himself as he toured the darkened ship. He found no trace of the crew as he made his way to the bridge, and wondered idly if they had somehow managed to get away or been thrown out of the ship when it converted. The presence of many unused escape pods made him think it was the latter.
On the bridge, Odo was surprised to find many of the stations manned. As he entered, the Romulan sitting in the command chair turned his head to face him. Odo started to say something, but the Romulan Commander began to shimmer, as did the bridge crew, then they all faded away. Holograms, Odo thought. The automaton’s last gasp.
“DS9 to Odo,” Kira’s voice said. “What’s your status?”
Odo tapped his commbadge. “I’m fine, Major. The automaton is dead.”
“Are you sure? We saw it turn back into a ship.”
“That was me. It’s dead, and I’m assuming its crew is dead as well.”
“In that case, we’ll beam you back.”
“Not just yet. There’s something I want to try to find. Odo out.”
Odo left the bridge and went back to touring the remains of the ship, making his way to every undamaged cargo hold. Finally he found what he was looking for. In the largest cargo hold, standing as tall as a small building, was a large, black, engraved cube.
Odo smiled as he addressed the device. “So what was your plan? Use the Warbird to destroy me, then have it turn you on the station?”
Odo stopped smiling when the cube began to glow and spark.
He tapped his commbadge. “Transporter room, lock onto my bio-signature and beam me back!” After that he took off the badge and tossed it and the phaser aside. He dematerialized just as the machines came to life looking for something to destroy.
------------
Some time later, runabouts from the station were towing the D’Kara toward the Bajoran sun. They would let the ship travel there on its own once it had built up enough momentum. “Are you sure that will destroy it?” Kira asked Odo as they watched.
Odo shrugged. “At worst, it will keep the thing too busy to try and convert Bajoran technology.” He thought for a moment. “After this, I believe I will take that leave.” He turned to her. “Would you care to join me?”
She smiled. “I’d have to wait for Sisko to get back.”
Odo nodded. “Fair enough, and we’ll have an interesting story to tell him when he returns.”
Kira laughed. “That we will...and we’ll let him tell the Romulans what happened to their ship.”
by Admiral2
2483 words
-------------------------
On its way to a routine assignment patrolling the Neutral Zone, the Romulan Warbird D’Kara detected a strange object transiting the space between two outer systems. The warbird’s commanding officer, Commander Ryken, decided to intercept and investigate. It took little time for the D’Kara to arrive in the vicinity of the object, and as soon as it entered visual range the tactical officer magnified it on the bridge screen.
“It’s a cube,” someone blurted out. Indeed, centered on the viewscreen was a black, slowly rotating cube. Its sides were riddled with engravings that could barely be made out in what little light the object was reflecting.
Ryken’s eyebrow went up. “Could that be a Borg cube?”
“Too small,” the tactical officer said. “The object is barely a third the size of one of our scout ships.”
“A probe of some kind, then? Perhaps the Borg have learned caution?”
“There is no indication of Borg technology. We’ve nothing like it recorded in our data banks.”
Ryken frowned. “Well, whatever it is, it’s violated Romulan space. Decloak and give it a warning hail. If it doesn’t leave or respond within ten seconds, destroy it.”
The bridge crew carried out Ryken’s orders. Exactly ten seconds after the hail was made, with no response from the cube, the tactical officer fired a photon torpedo. The weapon exploded dead center on one of the cubes’ sides, but instead of suffering any damage the device began to rotate faster and come alive with sparks of energy. As the Romulans became transfixed by the sight, and before anyone could order the shields to be put up, the cube released a massive blue bolt of energy that struck the D’Kara dead on. The energy shorted out systems all over the ship as it shocked the crew.
Ryken shook his head to clear it. As he recovered he started to call for a damage report, but a loud, grating rakrakrakrakrak sounded throughout the ship before he could speak. “What was that?” another officer said, timidly.
No one had a chance to answer, because just then the D’Kara fell apart around them. Bulkheads detached and folded in on themselves, decks gave way, seats and control panels fragmented, and while all this happened sharp, spiked metal appendages emerged and began killing the crew.
By the time another warbird arrived in the area to find out what happened, D’Kara and the cube were long gone.
-----------------------
“The quarterly security reports, Major,” Constable Odo said as he handed Major Kira Nerys a PADD. Kira was in command of the station while Captain Benjamin Sisko and many of the other senior officers were off in the Defiant on Federation business. As was her custom the Major had taken over Sisko’s office as well while he was gone.
Kira checked the PADD’s display. “Thank you, Odo,” she said, “but you didn’t have to bring this in person.”
Odo cleared his throat. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something. I was thinking of taking a leave of absence sometime in the near future.”
Kira’s eyes widened a little. “You?!” She smiled. “I’m sorry, but it’s a rare thing for you to ask for leave time.”
Odo grumbled. “Apparently you’re not the only one who’s noticed. Several of my officers have been telling me that I don’t take enough time off.”
“I think they’re right. If anybody on this station deserves some time to relax, it’s you. I think we can spare you for a few days. Can I ask where you’re planning to go?”
“I haven’t decided yet, but there’s a historical exposition opening on Bajor that intrigued me when I heard about it, so I thought…”
Just then the officer of the deck in Ops sounded Yellow Alert. Kira and Odo rushed out of the office. “What’s going on?” Kira asked from the command platform.
“A Romulan Warbird just decloaked 50 kilometers from Docking Pylon 3 and is closing at full thruster speed,” the deck officer, a Starfleet lieutenant, said.
“Hail them,” Kira ordered, wondering what the Romulans were doing in Bajoran space.
A Bajoran militia officer carried out the order. “No response,” she said. “The ship’s telemetry markers identify it as the D’Kara.”
“On screen,” Kira said. A second later she was watching as the big, green spacecraft closed in on Deep Space Nine.
Odo watched right along with her. “There’s something odd about that ship…”
“You mean besides the obvious?” Kira asked, then she turned to the Bajoran officer. “Keep hailing them.”
The officer hailed and Kira and Odo watched as the warbird remained unresponsive and got closer to the station, until it finally slowed to a stop about a kilometer away. Then it seemed to just sit there for a minute or two, and Kira wondered idly if some Romulan commander had decided to go sightseeing.
Then the warbird seemed to collapse in on itself, breaking up and bending and folding until what was floating before the station was no longer a D’deridex-class Romulan warship, but a massive, humanoid automaton with arms, legs, a torso and a head with red, glowing eyes…eyes that were glaring at DS9.
“No…” Odo muttered.
“Red Alert!” Kira called out.
The shields went up immediately as the alert klaxons sounded. It wasn’t a moment too soon. Just a second later the automaton stretched its right arm toward the station and extended a multi-function weapon system. The station trembled as the weapon unleashed a steady flow of photon torpedoes and disruptor blasts.
“Shields down to 80% and decreasing fast!” The officer at Tactical called out.
“Return fire!” Kira called out.
On her command, the station’s weapons pylons began targeting the automaton with phasers and quantum torpedoes. The weapons impacted, but did little besides momentarily distracting the creature from the bombardment. When it recovered it extended another weapon system from its left arm and pressed the attack.
“That won’t do any good!” Odo called out. Kira looked toward him. She was used to his face showing very little emotion, so she was unprepared for the look of fear mixed with rage she saw there. “I know what this thing is!”
“How?!” Kira asked. “Can all Romulan ships do that?”
“No,” Odo said. “This creature is no longer Romulan, but it can do anything a warbird can do, along with a few things that nothing you’ve ever seen can do! I never thought I’d actually see one…” When he saw that Kira was still confused, he explained. “Ever since I’ve come in contact with my people again I have made brief connections to the Great Link, to learn more about them. There is a collective memory there, about a war fought long ago, in the early years of the Dominion, against a race of sentient machines.”
“Machines? You mean like the Borg?”
Odo laughed mirthlessly. “Worse than the Borg. The Borg will only steal your technology. These creatures will bring it to life and turn it against its masters! It’s an ability handed down from their creators, whom they worshipped much the way the Jem’Hadar and Vorta worship the Founders.”
“Well, who are their creators?”
“It’s unclear. Apparently they work through physical devices, the way the Prophets work through the orbs. The Founders first encountered the devices when they were beginning to make their greatest strides in conquering the Gamma Quadrant. They were cubes, and they seemed to exist to create beings suited to fighting changelings.”
Kira looked back at the screen as the station continued to shake. “Let me guess: that’s because the cubes created machines with the ability to shape-shift!”
Odo nodded. “It’s limited! They can only change into specific objects, ones suited to their size and mass, but it’s enough to sneak into an enemy formation undetected and strike without warning!”
“All right, but why is it here? Does it want to use the wormhole to get to the Gamma Quadrant?”
Odo looked at her and shook his head. “The other reason the Founders had for suspecting the cubes’ purpose was the fact that their creations tended to be single-minded, and would often plow through and ignore legions of Jem’Hadar for the chance to kill a single changeling. Don’t you see? As advanced as a Romulan Warbird is, it’s not sentient, and given sentience it would at first function at the level of an animal, an animal with an instinctual need to kill Founders…”
It hit Kira like a train. “And you’re the closest Founder to wherever it was created.”
Odo nodded. “It’s here because it wants me!”
They both braced themselves as the tremors got worse. “Shields down to 40%” The tactical officer called out. “Continuing counterattack!”
Kira checked the status readouts on the main screen. “We’re doing some damage!”
“Not enough,” Odo said, “and not quickly enough to save the station! We won’t beat it this way. There’s only one thing to do…”
Kira cut him off with a glare. “No! There has to be another way! You’re not going to leave just so…!”
“I am leaving the station, but not to do what you’re thinking! There is another way!” He went to the Science station and used it to scan the automaton. He smiled when he saw what he wanted, then headed for the turbolift. “I’ll be in Transporter Room One! Get ready to lower the shields on my mark!”
“What good will that do?” Kira said.
“It will make Laughing Boy out there think he’s won, and he might lower his shields so that he can transport me aboard, or simply break through the station with his own two hands and grab me. Either way, he’ll be vulnerable and I’ll be ready for it!” With that, the lift descended from Ops.
-------------
In Transporter Room One Odo tore open an emergency arms compartment and grabbed a palm-held phaser. As he set the device he gave orders to the transporter technician. “Transport me to the coordinates I sent you as soon as you have word that the enemy’s shields are down!” He ran up to the transporter pad without waiting for acknowledgment and tapped his commbadge. “Odo to Ops. Lower the shields now and let us know the moment the automaton does the same!”
“Acknowledged!” Kira’s voice said. “Shields are down!” A moment’s pause. “It worked! The machine’s shields just went down!”
The technician began the transport cycle. At the last second Odo made his body pliable and rubbery, knowing that when he rematerialized it would be inside the monster’s inner workings. It was a wise precaution. Just as he became whole again a series of gears and alloy plates shifted and forced him to bend and twist around them. He grunted and converted his body completely to fluid, absorbing his commbadge and the phaser into his center of mass. In this form he flowed through the shifting body of the automaton, avoiding the movements of its joints and artificial muscles, feeling the energy of its nerve impulses as it worked. This also protected him from the machine’s internal defenses, which assaulted him all the way as he flowed to his destination, a large chamber in the center of the automaton’s chest. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew that just behind the wall he had come to was a large ball of energy, which somehow gave the creature life. With grim resolve, Odo moved the phaser to the edge of his mass, then formed a hand to hold it, then fired it into the chamber.
The automaton convulsed as its chest exploded in a burst of concussive energy, then it shuddered a few times before the glow left its eyes and it went adrift in space.
Odo had been moving again by the time the machine’s chest exploded. He was searching for a specific mechanism, hoping against hope that he could recognize it and get it to work with the automaton no longer functioning. It took long, frantic minutes, but he finally found the device and formed another hand to trigger the manual control. There was a loud, grating rakrakrakrakrak, then Odo moved as the walls and gears and joints shifted and disappeared into bulkheads and decks and control panels, until the automaton had turned back into the D’Kara, heavily damaged but immediately more familiar.
Odo solidified himself as he toured the darkened ship. He found no trace of the crew as he made his way to the bridge, and wondered idly if they had somehow managed to get away or been thrown out of the ship when it converted. The presence of many unused escape pods made him think it was the latter.
On the bridge, Odo was surprised to find many of the stations manned. As he entered, the Romulan sitting in the command chair turned his head to face him. Odo started to say something, but the Romulan Commander began to shimmer, as did the bridge crew, then they all faded away. Holograms, Odo thought. The automaton’s last gasp.
“DS9 to Odo,” Kira’s voice said. “What’s your status?”
Odo tapped his commbadge. “I’m fine, Major. The automaton is dead.”
“Are you sure? We saw it turn back into a ship.”
“That was me. It’s dead, and I’m assuming its crew is dead as well.”
“In that case, we’ll beam you back.”
“Not just yet. There’s something I want to try to find. Odo out.”
Odo left the bridge and went back to touring the remains of the ship, making his way to every undamaged cargo hold. Finally he found what he was looking for. In the largest cargo hold, standing as tall as a small building, was a large, black, engraved cube.
Odo smiled as he addressed the device. “So what was your plan? Use the Warbird to destroy me, then have it turn you on the station?”
Odo stopped smiling when the cube began to glow and spark.
He tapped his commbadge. “Transporter room, lock onto my bio-signature and beam me back!” After that he took off the badge and tossed it and the phaser aside. He dematerialized just as the machines came to life looking for something to destroy.
------------
Some time later, runabouts from the station were towing the D’Kara toward the Bajoran sun. They would let the ship travel there on its own once it had built up enough momentum. “Are you sure that will destroy it?” Kira asked Odo as they watched.
Odo shrugged. “At worst, it will keep the thing too busy to try and convert Bajoran technology.” He thought for a moment. “After this, I believe I will take that leave.” He turned to her. “Would you care to join me?”
She smiled. “I’d have to wait for Sisko to get back.”
Odo nodded. “Fair enough, and we’ll have an interesting story to tell him when he returns.”
Kira laughed. “That we will...and we’ll let him tell the Romulans what happened to their ship.”
