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Post TNG: Father, I Love You.

Part 34

In the beginning, at the height of the Dominion War, like an awakening day present, mostly undressed, straddling lasciviously a 40-liter keg of biomimetic gel(creating somewhat of a drought for this commodity which would mire up other peoples plans to save the day no doubt.), demonstrating what a wonderfully profitable place it is to be planted under her rump, after somehow silently piercing into the forbidden confines of this then Subcommander’s billet behind the armour of a 60 kilometer long Romulan City Ship, really more accurately a mobile garrison entrenching the Hirogen boarder, she’d deftly and surreptitiously skirted magically past the vessel’s impenetrable shields, ineffable paranoia and inscrutable security, with only the aid of a set of rubber ears, to flip this loyal Romulan with what she’s sitting on and the stone killer ass which was sitting on it. Two presents from the darker aspects of the Federation, to grease the burgeoning friendship between their two stodgy Empires beneath visible levels, both the Earth Woman (for a night at least.) and the diabolical active ingredient to perhaps hundreds of weapons of mass destruction the Federation was far to namby-pamby to use with it’s own bright clean hands were part and parcel a subtle reimagining on the classic 30 pieces of Silver needed to buy that portly Romulan soldier into a submissive reflection to the needs of the Federation. Years after these facts, the Romulan Ambassador to Earth owed his magnificent and bloody rise to power to Elizabeth Paula Shelby, and if he wasn’t still abominativly in love with her because of their one night of mucky passion (A Romulan “Night” is equal to 31 Earth hours, and alternately his lot generally regard mating as a marriage ceremony.) and how back then technically it was treason to break with the conventions outlawing the collection and assemblement of biogenic weapons, not to say about using them in the least at the behest of the empires mortal enemies, as he clearly did clearing the way heroically for the Romulan fleet to annihilate a few solar systems occupied by Jem’Hadar kennels…

But we all know that the Romulan Ambassador’s first loyalty has never been to Romulus or even to the Empire he was born, but that was all a very long time ago and Elizabeth’s credit was cutting into the red with this dirty operation in which he was acting out a skit written for him by the fabulous knee-weakening Captain Shelby to rise up the hackles of the Federation Council routing off what should have been a superb implosion of Starfleet eating itself supposedly leaving the gristlier chucks of these spaces for the more civilized deserving communities to quibble over before Shelby twists the knife and changes everything, That is if she has accounted for his predictable treachery since it’s a bit sour if he’s not allowed to make a little cash out of the event . But for all his attempts to rip them into a furor, that half-breed Spock was not at all helpful. “Super Sperm is benign” INDEED! The story Spock is pontificating about Jonathan Archer being raised form the dead is of course filed as campfire chalk to amuse children which no one really believes in who doesn’t want to end up having their rationality doubted, much like “The great bird of the galaxy” roosting on planets playing cuckoo switching out their eggs with celestial bodies… Spock of Vulcan is going to bring the head about peacefully before all of Shelby’s ducks are in a row and then everyone is going to be sweeping up the rubble from this do dally all exhausted from climaxing prematurely when the real enemy rears it’s head to crack the whip. Not that the Romulan really believed that he knew the full truth about the coming storm, though he had faith in her enough that if he did most of what he was told then all would turn out well for everyone happily ever after mostly.

“I insist that Ambassador Spock be subjected to immediate medical testing to disclose if hasn’t been co-opted or manipulated by any alien infestation or brain washing from this “Super Sperm” before we so READILY take his opinion as gospel. This council has been the victim of more than enough tampering and [/b]adjustment[/b] over the last decade that even the smallest grain of suspicion must be finely examined for veracity… The enemy is at the gates, now is not the time to - ”

“SHUT UP!” The Tellerite Ambassador dictates inerrably. “Read some damn history books ROMULAN, the Vulcan had 15 pounds of angry Cosmic Jelly Fish tied into his pain receptors boiling away trying to break him! And he didn’t blink! …Of course by the end of it he couldn’t see either but that’s beside the point. One more word out of your stupid Romulan mouth and I’ll burry my fist through it you arrogant idiot.”

Typically the villain uses scripture. “I have a right to speak in this forum.”

“Mr. President I adamantly petition that the Federation declares war on the Romulan Star Empire because this idiot is an asshole!”

All eyes look towards Boyce, the inept President of the United Federation of Planets who had been parlaying to some maker philosophies that there is still a Federation standing by the end of his term in office between every heartbeat since he was pushed into office. Half the time the core systems found out the day has been saved “somehow” before the details of the canceled threat came to light through the winding other dimensional canals of the subspace radio network, but having all this “news” so bloody and imminently raw was too much dicky ticker. In his first week in office the Tal Shiar had executed a Section 31 operative in his bedroom who had then been disintegrated by a bareknuckle stooge mouthpiece of Alyanna Nechayev who made it clear that he was under her protection in so as long as he didn’t get in the way of the Admirals plan’s which is exactly what the matter at hand was. He didn’t know what she wanted him to say and what not to say to get a shiv in the ribs next time he uses the communal showers(First among equals but still equal, especially in filth.). “Ahhhhhhhh… I don’t think we need to go that far. The Romulan Ambassador has been very illuminating in even his animated fashion. I’m sure he’s not trying to comport past his brief and be rude in any real sense. Isn’t that right Mister Ambassador?”

The Romulan can feel the wave crashing underneath him. “How did I become the enemy? I’m helpfully forewarning you of possibly the annihilation of your empire! Open your eyes!”

An incredibly famous eyebrow arches. “Who is going to annihilate the Federation?”

Only half believing the wild wooly tale Shelby had told him, the Ambassador squirts out a little more of her bullshit. “The Dominion of course. The Founders of the Dominion are Super Spermicide. They might now have nothing against us even as they start blowing up planets to hasten the infestation, but this is hardwired into their DNA. If you thought they had a bit of an over-reaction dealing with solids, you have no idea how tetchy they get around liquids. Super Sperm may be benign, but we all have a first hand account on how blood thirsty Super Spermicide can be. You have to nip this in the buds before the rest of the galaxy decides you are unaccountable to manage your own territories without degenerating into a breeding ground and killing ground for Intergalactic Issue…. I only have your best interests at heart, and this is what you must do next…” (His ears twitch evily.)

“FELTCH THIS! Who the hell are you to tell us what to do Romulan!? ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!” The Andorian Ambassador plants one blue fist on the counterface his delegation marks as their own, ankles rubbing, swing-vaults his entire body over and past the next two delineations of the amphitheatre some 12 feet forward and 10 feet down toward the Council Room floor, drawing mid-flight a “ceremonial” icepick sharper than a Ferengi’s Sunday best, challenging his mortal enemy (They have been yelling old-hat at each other for months.) to a duel in a language anyone can understand, as he lands deftly like a crouching ninja… “YOUR MOMMA!”
 
Part 35.


Lord Garth Master of the Universe couldn’t believe how Star Ships these days had become mobile geriatric wards, this Star Ship Captain in his face trying to stare him down in so how Enterprise’s phaser batteries couldn’t was easily into his 80’s if a day and showed it in the total stodginess of his bearing. Lord Garth master of the Universe was living proof that you can be as old as you act with the help of a little pixy dust, but this “Picard” fellow appeared old enough to be the grandfather of dirt itself. Sonja had painted a different picture of him entirely, from what he’d pulled from her mind on the subject “Picard” was mythic and unstoppable, and the perfect picture of health, which was ludicrous since Lord Garth Master of the Universe could clearly smell this buckling wreck was a month away from showing off the first telltale distinctions of Irumodic Syndrome… Though they say the proof is in the pudding, yes? “Where is my woman Picard?”

“My engineer is in labour with my Grandson.”

“Your grandson? You look like neither a duotronic processor bank nor a Spaniard. Really Picard, what tosh.”

“Some years ago, Data took to heart that my family tree was cut short and so I legally adopted the android at his adroit behest. Ornamental and sentimental but certainly what killed him. I believe my family is cursed. Data promised me that there would be a Picard at the end of our civilization and if he was very careful, there would even be a Picard at the heat death of the Universe assuring the immortality of my family I had been too lackluster to safeguard myself…Everything is about family I figured out considerably too late. ”

“I can identify with a family man. Good values. You and I Picard, we could be friends. So take me to where my woman is before I throw you throw a bulkhead into space… If it’s at all not too much trouble Captain.”

“None at all. Just follow me.” Picard point to the open doorway leading into the holodeck and Lord Garth Master of the Universe is gently sauntered off into a wild goose chase by wily Jean-Luc Picard into the bowels of a simulation which should keep Lord Garth Master of the Universe distracted for months as long as the stupid thing didn’t go on the blink again.
 
(Sorry Tom.)

Part 36

“This is going to hurt a lot.” Deanna believes might be the most helpful unconscious thought she’ll be able to string together for the next week as she orders the Titan’s Primary Deflector Array to start jamming the telepathic wavelengths of ether-space with insidious distraction and pain - - ZAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaAAANG! …Half or more of Riker’s personality had just been sliced off at her own behest, fortunately all the other telepathic races were (except the Vulcans who balked at the thought they could be stymied by any obstacle and had refused to be) put into stasis, but such extraordinary measures were going to be needed to level the playing field if this crew didn’t want to be mice in a trap toyed with by the angry god living on the surface below. Deanna had had her fair share of being toyed with by this creature and had no desire to ever return to this back-ass of nowhere which senselessly murdered her best friend, but she had orders.

Nodding officiously to her XO, passing command of the Titan, Deanna rises for the oversized chair she borrowed from her fat husband, rallying the troops on the way to Transportor Room 1. “Gentlemen we have 12 hours to scout the planet for the remains of Tasha Yar or evidence of some civilization built from her corpse before the monster down there gets it’s teeth back. We’re on a mission from Jean-Luc Picard, nothing could be more honorable or righteous… But please lets be a little careful down there I value every one of you and love you all like I was your sister.”

Despite being such a little thing, there was no doubt anyone who could send a whale like Will Riker to the infirmary from over-rambunctious snuggling so often, if not weekly could obviously stop a deranged aquabuffalo with a well placed elbow. No one had any reservations about following their counselor into combat because it cut down on the group therapy afterward since the field commander could full in the gaps and connect the dots with out having gouge at any of these burly goons feelings like a bloody counselor. That, and if she was the last thing they saw before some Breen disrupted them to death, well it wasn’t an all-bad view to deal with.

“I want Titan out of range as soon as possible, Armus could back to strength earlier than we expect or not be debilitated at all in the slightest. That thing is a killer. All four shuttles are lunching utilizing a basic survey pattern and will secondly act as buffers to transport us around the curvature of the planet marking out suspect aspects of this world and putting us were we need to be. Teams of two gentlemen. Pair up.”

8 alpha males slouch into couples which are predictable if you had be following the ebb and flow of Titans’ sexual round table which made all the billet hopping more orderly by half… The technology being used was insanely advanced since she even got her commission that her crewmen were all beamed together towards radically different corners of the globe simultaneously. Deanna remembered when you still needed permission from the Captain for a site–to-site transport because it was a bit of a craps game keeping people half out of walls and floor carpeting, the future might finally be here but they were still fighting tooth and nail for basic liberties.

Deanna remembered this world. The sky was still messed up. Someone too smart for their own good assumed Armus must have fits where “it” just lashed out at nothing in the particular with incredible destructive force but… How would that explain the huge honking city on the Horizon? The power structure maintaining this planets sentient ecology had drastically changed in perhaps exactly the way Jean-Luc had feared… Captain Riker taps the communication pin gently buzzing against her nipple (It had been a fantastic side effect of this everyday device that sometimes because of varying vibrations, pitch, tone or volume welling out of the transceivers fine clock work that even the iciest shrill pill of a female could be brought to a heady flaming orgasm accidentally when they were supposed to be duty minded and clear headed… Although it wasn’t till much later that Deanna suspected that this orgasmating was not an accident at all but Darker minds in Starfleet were obviously abusing areolas fleet-wide to instill loyalty and love to the command crew making regular PA announcements from the more susceptible sex mad ensigns… Goodness she’d herself had trouble standing at all during the first months of exploration aboard the Enterprise whenever Will would belt out “Battle Stations” or “Shields Up” that it was practically palpable the effect he’d inflict on every member of the crew who were female and a number who where not, whimpering lustfully while the Romulans charged weapons… She guesses it’s better than being petrified and Deanna Riker is the last person to accuse anyone else of playing mind games to rock the boat on this issue.) “Barney I can see a city. I do not remember seeing a city when we scanned this planet… Two clicks “east” of my position. Is their any evidence, can you see it from up there?”

“Negative Ma’am.”

“Typical.” The acting Captain snorts with her perfect nose. “Why do I suddenly feel like Dorothy looking for a yellow brick road?”
 
Part 37


Bellowing “My Momma?”

“Your Momma!” Ranting!

Balking “My Momma?”

“And your sister!” Sneering!

The Romulan, easily twice the rotundnness of this spry Andorian half and half and half again the Romulans age, exaggerated all his grunting and wheezing, pushing his sweaty girth off the bench mark they let him use while visiting this enemy mine, sounds which had more to do with a bad back as well as there being too much of him to resist gravity, but then the Romulan is stepping on toes( claws and tentacles.) idling his way, awindnigly himself like a sheep spiraling down a mountainside literally tenderizing the amphitheatre’s congregation with bloody all little apologies tasking lean focus at the stairway heading assentedly leading to this strutting azure turk upstarts designated combat area, much like where Brutus done in Caesar, and when the Romulan finally gets there… A huge snotty glom of purple pink blood speckle snot sprays the front row of councilors as the Andorian gleefully carves a 6 inch trench into the side of the Romulans pompous and suddenly now mostly missing, yet still exploding face…

“Oi? Hang on… That’s not right?” Akimbo antennae.

“Everybody knows! No one cares!” With that blaring lipless chortle, the mostly faceless “Klingon Ambassador for Romulus to the Federation” leaps at Lwaxanna’s little lover totally eclipsing the fervorous ice monkey with a keg sized belly stamping the Andorian flat like a minty blue penny as their respective breast plates mashed into one another… Sumo Wrestling had taken the Klingon Home World by storm a hundred years back and to this day remnants of that humanese fetish only survived in Klingon culture after it had been plageristically retconed to have always been preeminently and traditionally Klingon from the hilt.

(These two bucks had been working towards this sort of melee for a while now ever since the Andorian had seen fit to publish poetry detailing the Klingon squashing him’s, ardent interest in his overduely erotic woman, how could she help it if she dripped sex and some people lacked the self-control to act tactfully while hiding their trouser tents, not that most everyone didn’t sigh appreciatively in the presence of Lwaxanna Troi with no lines being crossed which didn’t entice a girly giggle. Some of the super dignified and important were placing wagers on the outcome below like they were in an ancient circus than an ancient forum, and others were collecting on past bets that this here was finally happening here and now, and not later or before. For a culture with no money to speak of it is absolutely fabulous how the spirit of gambling and usury had continued in such a resistant environment.)

“ORDER!” The drowning President tries to stop the fisticuffs without getting inbetween these two action packed men because it just looks too messy and a little frightening. “Ambassador Bluuush! STOP IT! …You are not a rolling pin! There will be order or else…” Boyce suddenly didn’t know if his next words would be declaring war on the Romulans or the Klingons… Bluuush was really a Klingon? Wow, he must have missed one hell of a memo. “Or else, um… MARINES!…??”

Finally, able to intercede over and above the necessities of diplomatic immunity, steeled with sterling orders from the top, 15 jackbooted Starfleet Marines separate the tussling dignitaries, not that the Andorian seemed to have had much at all left to fight with since they’d probably have to grow him a new spine from the clone banks form the looks of this altercation, but three phaser rifle barrels wedged against the Ambassadors head, urging the fatty to think about getting off the Jellied Andorian.

Separated a little by pushing and dragging.

“You’re a Klingon!” The Andorian continues to chew the amazing realization when he should be dying, while be held up to a standing position his broken legs wouldn’t even consider pushing against gravity for dignity’s sake to achieve. The Klingon however needed 5 men extrenuousing all their muscles just to hold the purple blooded juggernaut back, who all despite their pretty braided dress uniforms seemed more like water wings for this fat bugger than security. “Twofaced deceptive disingenuous lying Changeling bastard!”

The former Romulan hurls a marine at the Andorian Councilor as if he were a pyramid of milk bottles. “Twofaced deceptive disingenuous lying Changeling bastard?? Of all the gall! As if you’re some paragon of honesty? You are a million times worse than I ever… Look at “its” blood. LOOK AT ITS BLOOD!!!”

And true enough, the white tinted turquoise paste spread across the textiles describing blue bloody murder was gaining consistency and complexion, raising in hue to a golden crumpetlike pallor and life, which all and sundry were deathly familiar with… And then this ‘blood” jiggled a little faster, like stark lost sheep desperate to return home began swilling about like water in reverse up a plughole until every drop which had spilled from the Andorian had re-entered the body and the councilor re-attained a picture of perfect health. Inversely the marines tenderly aiding the injured dignitary just seconds earlier now considered this “man” as if he was made out of untouchable shit and bile. EVIL shit and bile as they repulsed to a safe distances and aimed their weapons at the greatest enemy their people had ever seen (Since the Romulans and Klingons.).

President Boyce wanted surgery. Anything to get him out of making a decision right now, god forbid a being forced to make a speech off the cuff which was supposed to inspire the brass and tackle, as if he knew how to write a speech or “inspire” without approved sentiments and words fed to him like lashings in favour of independence by his most trusted advisors who had pushed him into the highest office in the first place, having a hand up his ass most of the time was comfortable especially compared to here and now being directionless and deflated when choice actions must be made and the entire Federation must act upon them. His government seems to have been invaded from within and without simultaneously by it seems several independent bastards. The press will call him an unintelligent pussy if he just continues to sit here like an unintelligent pussy fussing internally while the empire cracks at the edges… My god, it’s been like two minutes since any one had said something waiting for Boyce to lead the occasiono…

“My husband apologizes for any noses being bent out of shape.” The huge voice of the Ambassador from Betazed decries. “My husband just likes to visit me at work and remind me how beautiful I am with constant adoration now and then. This is not an invasion. Isn’t that right Odo?”
 
Part 38.

Nog was trying to sleep with him again. Again AGAIN really, considering how Jake was still reinduring his pubescent personal history, fretting presumptuously pretrospectively that if he’d ever reach the actual proverbial present, that then he’d not still plod on forward overshooting where he really belongs by too much. Hot Ferengi brandy breath on the back of his neck. Why Jake let his little buddy drink anything harder than Root Beer the Emissary’s son fearfully asked himself stuffed full’a uncooperating teems of horrid memories he’d rather be rid of considering how sex mad and gender blind his footloose friend became after a few squirts of Orion Brandy to the back of his throat. Fortunately all these historical sieges against Jakes virginity were usually over before they started. Resultant with a blind jittering Nog collapsing mid sentence like the stump of a cut down redwood also being cut down, pants ‘round his ankles, snoring, furiously rubbing his lobes against usually that superstained near-sentient carpeting still left intact since the Cardassian’s were running the place, till they glowed like iridescent ping pong paddles… Once Station Security had registered this furtive autoOOmax as a nonlocalized power source after the static charge on some skirting boards had built up to some insane wattage that Odo had become sure there was a bomb, but that was then and this was an entirely another then, so in the name of all that was scientific why Mrs. O’Brien, far more breathtaking than Jake had ever really realized in these olden days, tolerated this sort of behavior in her classroom baffled Jake to wits end considering she wouldn’t let him even chew gum without rapping his knuckles with a meter ruler. Bloody relative morality, as if Nog was infinitely more appreciated because so much less was expected of him to achieve so comparatively so much, committing some squiddling pathetic amount of effort for him to become just the tiniest fraction less debauched or degenerate.

Mrs. O’Brien talked about Galileo. Any clock would think the era at hand was near the end of Jake Sisko’s first year aboard the infamous Deep Space Station, when that evil nun had cut Mrs. O’Brien’s class size in half catcalling heresy as a prelude to some complicated assassination attempt midway to her unstoppable rise to the position of evil pope. The evil pope that is, who died at his famous father’s side in the Fire Caves after boinking Gul Dukat to within an inch of his life… It’s too early to make obvious changes but eventually removing Winn from the equation might be enough derail Ben Sisko from ever dying? No. His father had to die. Change that and everything would unravel UNPREDICTABLY… But the Nun? Winn. She could be useful. With the total disarray of the provisional government at the moment, the Nun had the power to put aside military considerations now casually to attend to the coming storm. As the once and future host of Kostamogen, grandchild to a Prophet, son of the emissary and an amateur historian it would ironically be “child’s play” to badger this religious zealot into fulfilling pen and wrote of a new scripture from someone like Jake with the bloodline it would be impossible to claim counterfeit since the immediate future is as open a book to him as any other full-blooded wormhole alien. Jocob is conveniently a living religious icon, not that anyone knows yet, but whan has that eve3r stopped him.

“Nog, (pssssssssssst.) wake-up, you’re going to give yourself a rash… Useless.” Jake thinks back to these early days aboard his fathers command before even the first hint of the Dominion (other than Odo of course.) had ruminated through the Wormhole putting a frown on everyone’s brow. “Nog” Jake hisses under his breath trying to stay under the radar of the authority figure preaching dissent, “I really need your help. We have twelve years to save the galaxy from being, well I don’t know really but it’s really nasty… You’re asleep. Why am I bothering? [ARRGH!] I keep telling him to stick to synthohol, but noooo-ooooooooo.”

“Jake! Pay attention to the lesson or you’ll be copying the dictionary after class.” Jake Sisko in the next two years of his beleaguered education would eventually copy out the entire Federation basic dictionary then be forced to further move onto the Vulcan Dictionary to distract Kieko O’Brien from whipping his bottom with a yard stick for being such a naughty naughty boy. Good times, if only he’d known they were good times.

After class, another grueling 4 hours was wasted trying to drown out an all risen and shined Nog’s feebish slathering about how much clothing Mrs. O’Brien had been wearing and how more perfect she would be with just a scarf or Ski mask or if Major Kira… Jacob collected on some obvious wagers and investments he’d made a couple months earlier during a brief temporal layover. With these ill-gotten returns, and a mild abatement on the human philosophy for mutual improvement, Jake could either buy a small moon or become (stay) the most powerful financial entity in the sector, not that Quark wouldn’t be damn curious itching to find out how so much credit and latinum, hundreds of bricks, was passing through his homebase without a fleck of it being milked by his stubby painted fingers. Imagine every drop of rain from a thunderstorm missing your person as you run round starkers under that gale’n’slew with your tongue out ravenous for a drop and you remain bone dry and maybe dying of dehydration? Jake charitably commissioned an aqueduct for the southern provinces, potentially reinvigorating several villages and surrounding farmlands, all but starving for a little hope. This man in child’s clothing was sure someone had done something like this about now, and maybe it was him, but it was more than enough of a donation to insist on meeting with any public official he chose to force about anything he desired, and perhaps even to be taken seriously as few 12 year olds can be. This all took seconds at a computer terminal mind you. Hiring Bodyguards to push the obstinate out from underfoot took a little longer and might have been a mistake because not 5 minutes later they all bumped into his father looking lean and happy with a healthy and huge head of nappy hair hiding his impressive scalp.

Nog bolts.

“Jake-O… Who are your new friends?” His YOUNG Father asks about the two men left standing, who should be in a holding cell for suspected kitten strangling or even actually strangling kittens. Jake was keeping rough company it would seem and this tiny child’s goons looked for some tersest order to rough up the Starfleet Officer from their boss but didn’t find any.

“Oh? Dad…” the son pushes back the tears and tries to act the part. “I’m working. These two men said they needed a guide… They’re tourists. Need to get from A to B without winding up lost hip deep in sludge from the waste processing plant.”

“Money?” There’s a scowl on his fathers face. Total disapproval. He’s going to blame Nog eventually.

“This isn’t he Federation dad. Money is useful. It’s necessary.”

“It’s a necessary evil. Now if you’ve promised these men to take them somewhere safe, I’m sure I won’t have to assign a security detail to accompany the three of you, but I do not want you to take any currency in exchange for just being helpful, it’s immoral and tacky. Remember our Philosophy. I did raise you better than this Jake.” Ben Sisko stares down the two thugs. “The two of you should be more careful about the company you keep, there are some very powerful people around here mighty protective of this child. Do we have an understanding?”

The one who had a face like a raw chicken replied to Commander Sisko’s challenge “We are honorable businessmen, my friend Vincent and I, will treat your son like our own young, you have nothing to be concerned about. I personally apologize if we have in any way offended your customs Commander but naturally I am more aquatic than land dwelling, so you might understand how all this “air” is fouling up my sense of direction? Young Jake here is a Godsend since I can barely see a few feet in front of me in this panorama of light and blaze. Although if it is truly too much of an inconvenience, then I can make other arrangements to make sure I am not completely a fish out of water in space.”

Jake knew that with in the next 2 minutes there would be a continuous transportor fix locked into intermediate scans of his life signs. Any secret trip to Bajor right now was completely out of the question without seriously putting his father’s nose out of joint or… Commander Sisko punches chickenface in his chickenface.

“DO NOT TALK DOWN TO ME ABOUT MY CHILD!” Chickenface sails through the air like an Elaysian. Sisko sticks his hands on his hips and pushes his pecs forward like some swaggering sea pirate of old Earth marking his territory and certainly asserting his dominance “Get the hell off my Station and stay the hell away from my son or I’ll throw the two of you into the station’s fusion reactor.”

They bail.

Overly concerned, the father sends the son to their infirmary to be scanned for explosives, poisons or tracking devices as if Jakes “Employee’s” had been attempting to kidnap him, or something equally shady but no one without lobes with some similar wing span to a pterodactyl could be that freakily greedy to double-cross Jake after the giant retainer he’d already levied into these person’s bank accounts. A terrible investment. He should have just bought a phaser. People are so unreliable. Jake never knew how much time he had in any waypoint before he fell forward… but the famous author had never been anywhen longer than a day as yet and he was pushing that boundary already while just about accomplishing squat in so far as for creating some sort of better tomorrow yet… “Julian, I need to ask a favour of you.”

“Julian? Well I suppose there’s no reason why I need to be called “Doctor” Bashir if we are going to become close friends young man.” The Doctor mocked saccharine for being bitter.

“I need you to compartmentalize a segment of your personality acting as if the conversation we are having will have never happened so that you can be free and clear to move at the right moments to save the Federation from complete destruction without jostling necessary future events.”

“What?”

“Compartmentalize your personality.”

“What?”

“Compartmentalize your personality.”

“Compartmentalize my personality?”

“Just visualize a box inside your mind and then hide this conversation with a series of triggers to quizzle the tumblers, then and hide it from the majority of your consciousness.”

Jake assumes that Bashir is using his “constipated” face to method act his way out of this inquisition “I can’t do that. These ears, although devastatingly handsome, framing my boyish good looks perfectly, I do assure you they are in no way pointy.” Bashir is playing the game with the usual facades.

“But you’re genetically Engineered.”

“What?”

“Genetically Engineered.”

“No. No, I don’t think I am.”

“Yes, yes you are.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I don’t remember being Genetically Engineered?”

“Prophets preserve us from ham.”

“You’re religious?”

“I believe in myself. Don’t change the subject.”

“O? What were we talking about?”

“This is beneath you Julian. No one could ever seriously mistake a preganglionic fiber for a postganglionic nerve and still be half as accomplished as you’ve proved yourself this year. You’re on fire. You have the skill sets and knowledge base of someone four times your age, and even then, no one, not even a Vulcan can specialize in everything as you seem to have done effortlessly… I think of you as a friend, I am not going to betray your secret or discredit you achievements Doctor Bashir. Just make a box.”

“Who are you? You’re not a little boy.” Bashir edges towards a weapon. A laser scalpel.

“I need an ally. Can’t you trust me?”

“How can I trust you when I don’t know who you are?”

“I am Jacob Sisko, exactly as I seem to be.”

“No.”

“Make a box.”

“I don’t know who you are or what you have done to Commander Sisko’s son but - ” In one deft genetically enhanced movement, it looks like Bashir is making a move for the scalpel but then like a double jointed Cossack dancer our kindly almost angel faced Doctor kicks the tiny 12 year old in the face. Jake doesn’t even see stars to act as some sensory division between talking to Doctor Bashir and waking up in one of Odo’s holding cells in what he assumed was still the same point in time since his body hadn’t seemed to have grown any.

“You are awake.” The Changeling lays the playing field.

“Doctor Bashir has gone insane!” Jake grabs for his face which although numb, he is quite surprised to find had not been scuffed off from aggressive contact with Julian Subitio Bashir’s foot. “He tried to kill me! Hey?! Why isn’t he in holding!?”

“He is. You both are. If I don’t come to some understandable conclusions I’ll personally throw both of you out an air lock.”

“O. Seems drastic. Where is my Father?”

“Talking to Doctor Bashir.”

“Talking?”

“He might ask for pliers to pull out the Doctor’s teeth. But that all depends on if you are who you say you are.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” Jake is in a holding cell. His friends and family are quite put out right now that the “real” Jake Sisko might be missing. This is bad. Very bad.

“Our Doctor claims that you are not who you appear to be. An insurgent. Possibly a danger to the Station. A surgically altered Romulan midget? An illusion casting telepath… He didn’t go into believable details.”

“Odo... You know me! I’m me!”

“The burden of proof is on the two of you equally because how do I know either of you are who you say you are? You could be working in tadum? Obviously, if one of you makes your way out of this finger pointing melee it will act as a shield against any further later aspersions or doubt towards the legitimacy of your identity.”

“The prisoners dilemma?”

“Every interrogators nightmare, but not something I assume that would already be part of your syllabus with Mrs. O’Brien. Or do you research 19th century Earth philosophy for your own amusement?”

“Just some crazy Holonovel I saw.” Jake winced, he had to be 12. What didn’t a 12 year old know?

“Doctor Bashir hypothesized possibly that you might even be a Changeling like myself. That you could hold the key to all the secrets behind my existence. Not the most likeliest of outcomes obviously, and it’s possible Dr Bashir might have just been trying to manipulate me, but... Are you a Changeling?

“Do I look like a Changeling?”

“I don’t know. What does a Changelings look like?”

“If I were a Changeling Odo, I would have reverted to a liquid state immediately after Doctor Bashir knocked me out.” Jake folds his arms in victory. Not sure however how this would benefit him however.”

“It’s interesting that you should know so much about my biology.”

“Quark sneaks into your quarters sometimes when you’re regenerating to wizz in your bucket.”

The look on his face is priceless. “What?”

“It’s common knowledge. Ask Morn.” Jake can’t help but smile.

“Ridiculous. It’s just as likely that you pretended to be rendered unconscious to prove that you were not a Changeling isn’t it? Or that you are a completely different sort of shapeshifter, or that you are some sort of parasite controlling Jake Sisko in some manner? The problem is more prevalent in Deep Space, but then I do have to be reminded continuously by all the pretentious humans about, that this is the frontier and not the locus of a civilization with a hundred thousand years of recorded history.”

“ …Or that I am really Jake Sisko, and it is Doctor Bashir who has been replaced by an enemy spy or saboteur and it is he who is a danger to station security. Ask yourself, if I did want to do something bad, would I achieve those ends through impersonating a 12 year old boy, or the Station’s CMO?”

“You don’t sound like a 12 year old boy. You do sound like a adult.”

“It’s amazing how the Borg murdering your mother can cut childhood short a little.”

“I don’t have a mother.”

“You might have a mother.”

“I might. I’m not exactly certain how my species copulates or reproduces but Starfleet has approached me, thinking that since I may be immune to assimilation I would be an excellent representative to open a dialogue with the Borg. Discuss terms, draw lines in space, and assure the survival of this quadrant. Although I would be keenly interested in asking such an ancient and well-traveled species if they had ever seen anything like me before.”

“And if they hadn’t destroyed them?”

“I hadn’t considered... No.”

“What would a Changling Borg look like? An ooze of gold liquid seething with nanites rolling like a wave assimilating everything in it’s wake… Are you certain you are immune? Can you risk it that you are not? The consequences of some one with your abilities adding it’s biological distinctiveness to the collective would be disastrous fro all life in the universe.”

“I doubt the Borg destroyed my world. The best guesses suggest I originated from the gama quadrant.”

“If not the Borg, then maybe someone else?”

“Stop being so maudlin.”

“Last son of a demolished civilization? Space Moses? You can’t be so unilaterally depressing to think that your family threw you out with the bathwater?” It’s all logically possibly Jake thinks, even though it’s three ballparks away from what he knows for a fact actually happened. “There might have been some huge catastrophe, insane casualties, possibly an incurable plague if not massloaders leveling your cities form orbit? There’s no reason to believe that you weren’t abandoned and discarded because your parents didn’t love you. Have you read Superman?”

“Nietzsche?”

“No, Siegle and Shuster.”

“You will not take control of this interrogation.”

“The ordinary earthworm from my homeplanet has a peculiar tendency to not only mostly ignore being cut in half by wanton children but each half recovers assuming it is the complete worm going about with the full capacities of the original… Have you ever cut yourself in half Odo?”

“No.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to have a brother? Because that that is what it would be like. Another you. Someone to talk to, confide in. Talk about your feelings for Colonel Kira. Think of the logistics, which would enhance your job… You could leave little living bits of you all over the station with enough intellect and responsibility to listen for trouble and then report back with perti… Oh?”

Odo is not buying what Jake is selling.

“Do you really think I’d cut myself in half probably committing suicide just because you tried to make it sound like a good idea?”

“Not immediately.”

“So. You’re from the future. When does Kira get promoted?”

“It’s not safe for anyone if I was to admit that and you know it.”

“Especially for everyone aboard this station if you’re lying or still working against our definition of the common good because of esoteric future knowledge, that you have come back in time to murder a baby who will one day grow up to become a despotic dictator… I’ve met your kind before and you’re all too arrogant for your own good. For good or ill, I intend to make my own future...”

“You will find your people.”

“Will I now?” Odo snorts. This is not autonomic. It’s an opinion.

“It’s not going to be pretty.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Some years from now, just over a decade from when you finally believe you’ve earned a little peace, karma is stingy, the natural enemy of your species is going to try to co-opt all humanoid life in the Galaxy… Well, just mammals I think, maybe marsupials? Reptiles might be safe? Basically anything that can breed with a human being is going to be eclipsed by a superior genetic code. While this is happening, in mankind’s darkest hour, you will be in command of a fleet of starships that need to move quickly, to save the day. Saving the day is good. You get to be a hero.”

“You are an excellent liar.”

“I’m a writer. I have a book of short stories, some poetry too. Nominal reviews.”

“And I should believe this story because?”

“Three words.”

“Which are?”

“Three words which will make your entire body quiver with homesickness.”

Odo rolls his eyes.

“Are you ready fro it?”

“No.”

“The Omarion Nebula.”

“OOO.”
 
Part 39.

Enterprise is a warship not a playpen. The crèche, a rarely lighted oubliette off the main guts of sickbay is a barely used. Most think the door leading in there, is hiding Beverly’s private crapper or something else equally as private. This “area” in principle was totally a proviso for the unexpected. You can love the unexpected. Surprise can be joyful. In retrospect. Coupled Officers planning families sanely chose a different posting than this mobile weapons platform intentionally placed in harms way every second of every day and especially today. Before this week started there’d been half a dozen children born on this ship for one reason or another since Enterprise’s commissioning, but never raised. Refugees, temporal events or aliens with perilously short gestation periods. Rapid back-aging once even. That baby eventually became a pillow stain. Stuff happens. This is the frontier after all. This is the Enterprise after all. This is the Enterprise on the Frontier doubly after all. Well, usually they are on the frontier, farther from home than this, but the same logic still applies. This is the Enterprise. There is a tradition to think of. Weird is their business. And today “weird” meant a plethora of identical babies log jamming the undersubscribed resources of Enterprise’s all but forgotten minuscule Nursery slash Crèche. Beverly’d the futurist had to replicate a dozen extra cots and wall brackets to keep up for the anticipated squash in living space for the many many miracle children projected incumbent from the Grand-central-Station-like loins of Lieutenant Commander Sonya Gomez. 5 perfectly normal babies, so far, in just a little more than a standard 26-hour day. Tucking linen into a cot, hoping the minor nursely nursery duties would seem like a holiday from the pressure of the current catastrophe. For all of 3 Earth minutes probably. Beverly, ruminated something she heard the Klingons bluster continuously “Today is a good day to die.”

“Most days are, Red.”

“Huh? …Hello?” Beverly, didn’t know who she was talking to. The room was empty, well except for all the tiny children. Crap. Surely the babies could not talk? That would be far too predictable. Most of the magicspacerapebabies grew into adulthood, with an inbuilt encyclopedic knowledge of all space faring cultures in just a few days after their birth before turning into godlike floating sparkly energy beings claiming to have learnt so much and mastered what it is to be human. What is the opposite of Hubris? No one even bothered writing up that humdrum story for the medical publications any more. Horny space god with no patience to allow for a decent upbringing hijacks womb. “Is anyone there?”

“You are Picard’s Woman.”

“I prefer “Red” to “Picards Woman” but my name is Beverly.

“Glad to meet you Beverly.” The nothingness replies.

Bev looks under a cot just to be sure… “You do know that you are invisible? Disembodied?”

“O, Yes, I know.”

“Would you care to show yourself if you can?”

Lord Garth Master of the Universe obscured behind the shadows of larger atoms came into view magically. “Is that his child inside you or more of this(he makes a broad gesture describing how boundless the problem at hand is, similar enough to how that escaped fish the fisherman lost is described.) mess?”

“O. It’s you.”

“Plays I write don’t tend to be bogged down with too many characters at the 11th hour.”

“This is the 11th hour?”

“Well, I think so.”

“You are bag of sunshine.”

“That’s almost accurate.” (Wink.)

“What?”

“New baby or old baby. Are you infected?”

“I have been pregnant for sometime, but thank you for the concern.”

“Fortunate.”

“Knowing what I do now. Very.”

“Though they can still burrow in and force a miscarriage.”

“What?!” (Rage followed by speculative squint.)

“This is how the world ends Red. Not with a bang, but a contraction.”

“If you get close to a point, make it. In 7 months I might have something to be worried about if we can’t lock this down. I’ve been infected before. Not this. Other stuff. Bad stuff, from the worst places, and I still got better. This isn’t the end. This is a medical emergency, which means I am the pointman, not Jean-Luc... Can you help or are you just a crazy old man disturbed by the sound of his brain rotting?”

“Manners.”

Beverly wonders if Zeus is about to start throwing thunderbolts? “We are in the middle of a situation.”

“I served under Jonathan Archer you know. Aboard the original Enterprise. A great man.”

“And I traveled through time to slept with General Patton. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Really?”

“He was married. I don’t talk about it much.”

“If you become old enough, mad enough. You see patterns.”

“You are trying to help?”

“It feels conceivable. I might be. I’m not sure.”

“Moments ago, you were talking about the end of life in the Galaxy.”

“Life is a death sentence.”

“Aren’t you immortal?”

“O, sorry. Forgot. Didn’t mean to rub your nose in it.”

“I forgot it’s impossible to have a rational conversation with a mad man.”

“It’s not completely impossible.”

“Garth you can be a hero.”

“I haven’t been a hero in decades.”

“Nice change of pace.”

“Can you smell that? Poopy diapers.”

(Sigh.) “I need you to focus. You must be here for a reason. To help me put an end to this... I’ve read the papers on your issues. Your grasp of reality as much as your power over reality… Even when you just think you’re a character in a book or some other fantasy… You are still a Starfleet Officer. It is your duty to save lives.”

“Dishonorably Discharged Red.”

“When has that ever stopped you? …And don’t call me Red.”

“I’ll call you a corpse in a foot locker if you take that damn tone with me. I created the Universe. Show some respect.”

Since Lord Garth Master of the Universe entered this fiasco by accident as much as prophecy if you believe all his mad revisions of the facts (in his dream journal he is yet to write, but he read years ago, he has never told a lie.) he’s been mostly an observer, sure a terribly scary and dangerous observer and possibly with his space warping abilities someone at his mercy might survive being strained at a molecular level of all the super sperm in their system, but then what would Mankind and all life as we know it learn from this whole dilemma then, that if this empire strikes-out because the road is piled high with adversity and even treachery, becuase they’re all subdeffectively ineffective, what will they learn from this except of course that relying on providence is aces! So why strive? Why crawl out of mediocrity at all if there are no consequences for hastening doomsday because God’s like Garth Master of the Universe is holding their hand like a father holds the hand of a son learning to toddle? Isn’t that the very core of the Prime Directive? A skinned knee will teach your kid to toddle with more interest and care.

“What is happening here, it has happened before. Many times. Treated like a cancer, mass graves have been built and filled with healthy woman leaking the babies of Soong. They have to be buried alive. It’s impossible to kill... Smart little beggars. Powerful too. Strange days when you talk about being in a fist fight with something as small as a teardrop. You are so beautiful.”

“That’s hardly important.”

“Just like Jack said. Glowing.”

“Jack.”

“Your husband.”

“I know who...”

“He’s dead.”

“I know he’s dead.”

“You think I’m lying?”

“You can’t have…”

“I know everyone. I vacation in the thoughts of entire cultures.”

“Great.”

“What did I say about your tone Beverly?”

“This is still my sickbay. You are a guest.”

“I’ll tell you about Jack.”

“I don’t want to hear about Jack.”

“He kicked me in the face once. I zapped him back. Called it a draw.”

“Zapped?”

Lord Garth Master of the Universe wiggles his fingers like a conjuror and curving his eyebrows Vulcanly too. Wizards. Subtle and quick to anger. She assumes the mime show is about beams of “stuff” blasting straight out of his fingertips like he had phasers slipped up his sleeves. Q isn’t even this disjoint.

A thought dawned. “You, you wouldn’t have deformed his DNA any with that “Zapping”? My boy is... He has a condition.”

“We all try to leave a legacy. Affirmative Action. Drag the rest of humanity up Mount Olympus by its bootstraps. That makes me… I so rarely find my children after the fact. How is my son?”

“Wesley not your son. What the hell are you…”

“Grandson, whatever, I supplied vital kinks in your child’s building blocks. Made him “what” he is today… And you wouldn’t want him any different than that would you?”

“Are you being glib about mutilating my husband and son?”

“So you believe me?”

“No. Mad ranting can be glib. Would you leave, just leave. Please. I have beds to make. Therapeutically I was making a bed. You are not therapeutic. I have to get back to my patient before her symptoms begin to flare again.”

“Poor Sonya. Little brood cow.”

“Send her a card. She’s not up for visitors at the moment.”

“The first time I saw Super Sperm, Adrik Soong was ramming a syringe of it into the corpse of Jonathan Archer. That was a very grim day for the Federation. All those people dying… And Spock, such a powerful figure, even as a child. Waving around that foolish laser weapon as if he was conducting trains or playing “velocity” as everything went to shit.”

“I’m not listening.”

“Then how did you know when to say that?”
 
Part 40.

It had seemed like a good idea until Jonathan Archer exploded. Literally exploded. Pop! I don’t mean he started yelling, well yes there was yelling, but you’ve already heard that part of this story, so after he finished yelling, the President popped like a rapidly expanding cloud of carbonated sausage meat. The crowd looked on in horror at the redeadening of friend and glorious leader. Then brushed Archer-goo off their dress uniforms… Not quick enough, Jonathan left some terrible stains that would be remembered for years, which never quite came out in the wash ever. Sally Archer was screaming and bawling, because they brought her back down from Enterprise when they thought it was safe. It wasn’t. She had quite the history with her boy dying over and over again but I’m getting ahead of myself.

“Mr. President?” The Vulcan Admiral enquires of her former C.O. now assuming a quieter prostrate state a few steps away from where the mad scientist swindled the reaper. That was 5 minutes ago when there was still gray in his hair.

“Captain… If that.” Jonathan looks at his lush hands. He’s young. 25 maybe?

No one knows what to say, so no one says anything.

The respite won’t last. Jonathan is taking into account his surroundings… Vulcans, Soong, Devastation… This was, the greatest explorer of the 22 second century realized his “funeral”. His funeral was a warzone, and it seemed obvious who was to blame… “When is this going to stop Adrik? I’m going to be a child soon… Am I going to uncombine or implode or… I went fishing with Emory and Danika once, there was snapper just slapping its tail on the deck trying to get back into he water… I’d probably evaporate before I could flap and slap my tail on the cobble, if it was to go that far, if I was to devolve all the way back into… ?”

“John...” Adrik tries to reduce the impact, taking a step toward his old friend. Spock intercedes between Soong and Archer with speed which would impress Barry Allen. It’s an impotent act, nothing can stop Soong from doing what he wants right now, he’s operating in a completely different league than these mortals, but some false modesty seems appropriate. Spock is left intact. “I just thought there was no point in bringing you back John if you were already past your expiry date. You’ll level out well before… Um? Puberty? No younger, I think? This isn’t exactly a science.”

Archers voice breaks backwards. “Why? God, why?”

“Because you’re my friend.”

“Adrik, I barely know you.”

“That’s not the point. I know you. Over the last hundred years… We’re close. Well, as close as a Criminal Genius and a President can be without… I was always annoyed you never pardoned me John. Your replacement will look like an ass after this. I barely flexed my intellect and… Well here I am.”

“I’m dying aren’t I?”

“I’ve recombined prefetal stemcells with bionanites suspended within a protomatter interface. It’s an interesting technology. After a few more hundred thousand generations, the bionanites will be able to integrate with even smaller prelife aspects. It’s all a matter of attacking disorganized potential-life before the spark hits, making sure it doesn’t have the first opportunity to steer it’s way down the wrong path into anything even infinitesimally deviant from the image of god.”

“God? You’re bringing religion into this?”

“If the Klingons didn’t kill him too, of course.”

“What?”

“John. This Federation you made is wonderful. But I can make it better. I promise you I will.”

“Why?”

“Why does a man do anything?”

“No, why would you do this to me?”

“I wanted to say good bye.”

“What?”

“I wanted to say good bye.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“This isn’t a second chance?”

“Nope.”

“I want a second chance.”

“Not in the cards John, and you’ve had like 8 chances.”

“This is unconscionable.”

“I just wanted to say good bye. It’s a little perverse to extend this all beyond a brief conversation.”

“Perverse?”

“The natural order of things does deserve a little respect.”

Archer thinks he is about to lose it again. “You pulled my body back from death, and then my mind out of that Vulcan whor… Prelate T’Pau, just to say “goodbye”? Are you insane!? …You’re not exactly one for half measures?”

“No. I’m not. Goodbye.”

Everyone’s side arm, and anything else that seemed like technology exploded, not harshly, just a few loud “claps” followed by a little black smoke puffing out of all the (thousands and thousands of - ) transtators on this side of Archer IV. Someone had a good idea in orbit on Enterprise. 5 Science Labs you know(This is weeeeeeeeeell before any refit.)? Figured out the right sort of beam or radiation or bollocks to turn the shield off from the inside. Insti-middle-ages but. The shimmer around Soong from his personal forcefield stopped being obviously there. Without worrying about breaking his other hand, Spock immediately lands his blow truly, breaking the old mans nose who is lucky the young Vulcan hadn’t been wanting to thread his fist though the humans old brittle skull like a toothpick through a pickled onion, because he could have easily.

Woman on top. “If he tries anything, cut his hands off.” Admiral T’Pol suggests to her new protégé who already has his boot wedged on Soong’s throat as if the old man’s Adams apple was a pedal to bring about the scientists immediate death.

She actually crouches. “Jonathan.”

“T’Pol.” A 10-year-old boy is smiling at her.

“You didn’t get old?”

“I am middle aged.”

“How tall am I?”

“One thousand 224 millimeters.”

“There’s not much time left.”

“Jonathan, I am concerned.”

“What happens when these things are finished with me?”

“You are Patient Zero.”

“This is so odd. It seems as if you are growing. But I know that’s not what is happening.”

“HE’S PERFE – (COUGH!)” Spock tightens his heal on Adrik Soong’s neck.

“We could all, already be infected.” She addresses everyone in earshot. T’Pol’s eyes wander across the remaining 3-dozen or so security personal and UE Militia. Looking for some sign that this is how the universe ends. “Does anyone feel healthier?”

No one thinks their kinks and aches are vanishing. Maybe it’s a rash diagnosis? Actually I’m telling you that it is a rash diagnosis. You already know that a lot of people die today. Just wait you bloodthirsty ghoul, it’ll start soon.

Support from Enterprise beams down. Sally Archer is among them. She races to her son’s side. He’s possibly from the looks of it no older than 7 years.

“Your communicator.” T’Pol puts her hand out. One of the medtechs hands over his device without question. “Enterprise. Beam down a Laser Rifle. This is now a quarantine situation. General Order 24.”

Someone just walked over their mass grave.

Sally is wailing and holding her boy as he recedes away into nothingness in her snug tight embrace. Considering what is happening, she should be damn careful that he doesn’t crawl back up inside her soon enough., but a mothers love is too often self destructive.

“Mrs. Archer. I have to kill your son. He is infested with an unknown unpredictable technobiological infestation.” T’Pol regards the first time she was on this planet with no mirth. The humans wanted to have a ridiculous “camping” event. The planet tried to kill them. Charles tried to kill her. This world is not to be trusted. ”You have one minute. Then step aside.”

“It’s my boy. My Johnny. You can’t take him away from me again. It’s not fair! Everyone keeps taking him away from me!” Sally is as old as dirt. Her father fought in the Eugenics wars. The enemy showed no mercy unfamiliarly. Khan’s weapons were more ironic than deadly, since that conflict was about ideology as much as military pursuits like capturing flags and holding hilltops. The Augments had sniper systems which were able to genetically modify their opposition into something worth the time to stress over fighting, from a distance of at least 2 miles. Then there’s the gas attacks which cured congenital illnesses hiding in the crevices and undersides of the UN peace keepers DNA holding the line in Africa, but what they did to their POWs was nothing short of a complete overhaul. And then they were just set free. “Why assert victory over a corpse?” Khan pouted. “When you can turn the enemy into an unwilling living sandwich board for your point of view? Ask a man to sacrifice his life pointlessly for an immaterial cause, you’ll get an answer, but triple his IQ and then ask him the same question again.” It was an odd time to be alive and only human.

“He is being eaten.”

The light was going out of Johnny’s eyes. The 5 year old in Sally’s arms ight actually be a 5 year old intellectually speaking, his brain was becoming far to uncomplex to house the life time of experiences Jonathan Archer called his own which was the basis to all his ability to reason. Another 30 seconds and the incredible regressing man will have even lost his animal cunning. “He’s going to stop getting younger. He’ll… I’ll have a new child to raise, I’ll be a mommy again… I?”

“No you will not.”

“Please let me keep my baby. I don’t have anyone.”

“No.”

“You green blooded inhuman heartless Bitch!”

“They have a taste for human. I will not assume these things will turn off when this task is complete. Soong is infamous for making egregious errors in judgment. A misplaced decimal point is all the difference between genocide and a tacky conjuring trick.”

“But…”

“20 seconds. If you don’t put him down, I will shoot you too Mrs. Archer.”

Sally bites her lip. “I love you Jonathan.” It’s understandable the poor woman can’t hold back her tears. She’d had to do something similar for Henry when his illness all went on to far. The naked human can’t be older than a year right now, which Sally places face down on the ground. The baby begins to cry probably demanding his mother pick him up again.

“Goodbye old friend.” T’Pol mumbles, thumbing the laser to it’s highest setting. Then toggles the device to incinerate a man she had come to tolerate over the years. The process of the babies destruction did not go exactly as predicted however because the nanite colony youthenizing Archer while T’Pol was euthanizing Archer spat the dummy and went completely ballistic over being attacked. POP! The baby exploded.

“In 23 hours, 54 minutes and 12 seconds, Enterprise is going to cleave the crust off the mantel of this planet if there is even the slightest indication that what just happened to the President is at all in any matter contagious. This goes no further.” Admiral T’Pol Chief executive of the Explorative branches of Starfleet sites as fact. “Soong explain to me exactly what you thought you were doing and I might not have you hanged from that tree over there.”
 
Part 41.

A Starfleet Officer had been murdered on this world, something like that is not taken lightly by many extraordinarily tense people. A prescribed amount of punishment is expected to be exacted, or else others might dare to assume they could unthinkably bugger about with similar demonstrations of disrespect to the Fleet or anyone else who labours under the protection of their standard. Five Black Starships arrived a month later, raining a thousand grim shades of hell for 15 hours just to finally stun the lonely undead monster running scared from the orbiting sadists spewing unending pain from above like drunk Zeus in no way embodying peaceful exploration. This system of pacification was repeated repeatedly for nearly a year until a “Zoo” could be finally furbished stiff enough to hold down the evil creature that preyed on doe eyed peaceful explorers curious about the wondrousness around them, with such a pointed precision that the creature would be vivisected magnificently without respite for potentially the next ten thousand years barring no maintenance or book keeping.

There was built here a Torture Factory.

The creature had been stretched thin like taffy for 30 miles in every direction from where they geothermically staked it to the core of the planet through dozens of it’s nearly 2 dimensional cooked vital organs as a billion amps multidimensionally continuously ravaged this pitiful thing’s useless bitter rejected existence, restricting the ironbound tension of it’s greasy obsidian skin enough to allow even Elephants finally the joy to experience trampolining as gleefully as they’d care if they could endure the commute to this ass end of no where. Pegged just so, that “it” could be inescapably anchored and submerged into a gruesome acidic foot deep ocean comprised of the stomach digestive juices of Horta annihilating “it’s” constantly regenerating (what passed for) flesh second after second after second ad infinitum. Moral of the story: Don’t fuck with Star Fleet.

During all of this, petrified for her children’s safety, brief as some of their existences were, Tasha remembered from the worst days of the fallen world which fucked over her childhood that when Starfleet Officers in Black Uniforms traveling in Black Starships didn’t bother to hide, that unmarked mass graves were being dug. So she hid. It didn’t matter that this “Service” as some called it, was avenging the discourtesy of her own purposeless death, because people like this did not deviate from the fine points of their agendas just because the foundations of their crusade gave way in the face of Miracles, even naked, pregnant again and somehow alive after being flash frozen from a space burial and scorched during re-entry miracles. Natasha Yar thought that even with whatever functional type of immortality like a bug she had caught, there would never be a good time to test this durability in battle that “how well” she could win out against a starship populated by hundreds of soldiers while herself being terribly unarmed, who all would then probably after subduing this androids concubine, the service would treat her clinically like a guinea pig in some mad Frankenseinish reverse engineering experiment to replicate her seeming gift of immortality en mass… If, that is, they didn’t disintegrate her on sight to assure their essential historical record of invisibility. The last of Service left after 2 years, but the sound of Armus’ endless screaming kept her awake reminding the blonde breeder or their work hereabouts on this barren world for years after, although eventually Tasha got used to the sound of blinding shrieking girly agony from the thing which had killed her and it did stop being so utterly satisfying. Eventually. Almost.

20 years on after Tasha first died, 25 years? Who could tell? Stars and planets revolved differently here, as with everywhere else which wasn’t Earth obviously, and it’s not like she had to eat or sleep since she’d become the mother of all demons to mark the passing decades and the spread of her hips. Somehow, the Loneliness had gotten so bad she’d spend too much time with Armus as they would rant off about how unfair it all was, almost all her time really, although Tasha was not a fool. “It” was staying in the cage built by the men in black monsters for forever if she had her own way so that “it” didn’t eat her or worse. The 20 or so chosen surviving children talked to it as well. Learned from “it”. Tasha had never considered herself as becoming a mother but considering she was the only food source on this dead world, her nearly daily supply of fresh meat, once a stone was taken to it’s skull became first food and then building materials… I mean none of her boys were allowed to enter puberty after the first batch started producing “thinking sperm” when they played with they selves and in rare occasions each other, which then went to war with the other thinking sperm flying free from the sacks of it’s also freshly pubescent brothers scrotum encampments turning arguments into the continent shaking bitch slapping of gods. After that near miss, and the next few near misses, and misses, every one of Yar’s children were marked for death as they was born. Whether they were “allowed” minutes or 10 years depending on what Tasha and Armus projected their society would need most or she just felt like… Tasha cried a lot. Tasha was sure that she wasn’t human on a mental, or even spiritual level anymore, since it was apparent her flesh wasn’t too easily falling into that comfortable old category.

It was probably because the pain of child birth, that curse inflicted on woman for giving Adam the Apple, had been cross stitched and rewired inso far as that every birth fired off a sexual pleasure response all over her massive body half a dozen times better than when she was getting any that Yar had accepted her monstrous situation without a level of insanity worth complaining about, even though a hundred babies die every month because of a distinct lack of milk(O, there’s enough to nurse a dozen or so from her basket ball sized milk melons, but that’s no where near enough fro everyone.) for even those they don’t intentionally euthanize, but what better use is there for the flesh and blood of the expired than to become sustenance for the still living? Her children, as she did herself, all wore the skin of her children for protection from the elements as much as the scrawling city in the distance is built from the skeletons of her progeny. Sometimes in fear of being made into even more brick and mortar, her kids killed her, to end the cycle, but she always came back, but it’s not as she came back exactly the same physically. What was inside her supercharging… ultraastrocharging her reproductive system had rebuilt her body over the years to make continuous discharge of ankle biting moglings less disruptive and even pleasura… Tasha was round. Huge and round like an earthball or a Hutt or Humpty Dumpty, with these tiny little mostly useless T-Rex-like arms and legs poking out of the folds of her bloated grandmother oak sized trunk. She was hardly mobile. Her kids had to roll her about like Sisyphus and his big boulder.

Yar’d gotten into this fracas because for once in her strict life she acted like a girl and let her knees go weak. Stupid Knees. Tasha should have realized something was fishy when no one warned her the choice of spitting or swallowing was clearly in question that first time, as she nearly choked to death during oral sex with her Tin lover. It’s a good thing his thingy was made of plastic and a little tougher than it looked or she might’ve bitten it off rather than just left her mark, which prenostalgically she had inclined that his next lovers (For the next million years?) might ask about the impression she made on him. Finally Tasha was a long lived enough mate she assumed for Data except that biologically she was already perpetually his mate, so she hated him. She beamed that hate outinto the universe and hoped for at the least a glancing blow… The drinking didn’t help her grim moods either, but when all you have to get drunk on is the fermented blood of your children, Tasha had written some of the darkest angst ridden poetry about “love” being a complete “bastard” in this or any other Universe. Which doubled down in depth when Tasha eventually noticed, after spending so much time in his company, years of listening to his self interested issues and him hers, that she was having “feelings” for Armus… Not that they had interlocking squidgy biology but he was the last male “thing” alive on the planet that hadn’t sprouted out from her vagina, and despite all else which was going on, that was a singular line she was never going to cross, so… Her universe changed. Something was off balance.

There was an unfamiliar silhouette on the horizon. People. It was People. After 40 years. 30? People. Tasha could see some of her boys had already greeted these strangers and they were bringing them to… Well, they call Tasha “Mother” and even “Mom”. Armus tried to convince her that she’d earned a toffee title like “Queen Mother” since she was literally responsible for the birth of a nation… He can be funny sometimes when he’s not creepy. What they were wearing, these People, was not what she was familiar with but… Starfleet uniforms have been quicksilver since the beginning refusing to hold the line against the imperiousness of fashion’s tyrannical drive. They had come for her, and she really felt no shame for the explanations of what her life had become because… “Deanna?” Tasha Yar had spent so long just talking to the same face, the uniform countenance of all her children that, these “people” seemed utterly alien to her but she was sure that that was, just 29 feet in front of her that it was her friend Deanna at the head of this landing party. “Deanna, is that you?”

The beautiful brunette had to step out of the way of a small flood erupting from the under carriage of the bulbous thing which knew her name. Seconds after that, one of the children with a sharpened jawbone skipped up to the new kid on the block (chopping block) hacked into the umbilical with one deft blow and then with the experience which comes from performing the same simple task hundreds of times a week (Of Late, quintuplets had been the least of her problems that Tasha was making litters twice the size as if she was dingo or something?) The makeshift axe drew back for a second blow, this time to split the mewlings skull into useful fractions like a coconut upon the same familiar thumb motions the Roman Emperors of old use to chose between mercy and blood for the fallen Gladiators in the coliseum.

She’s not a telepth, empath right now. Remember her ship is bollocksing the telepathic wavelengths with static right now, but even half blind the acting captain can see that she’s walked into the middle of an execution: “DON’T!”

“What?” Tasha yaps like some one used to getting their own way.

“Don’t kill the baby.” Deanna cups her own belly in reserved fear for that brat’s safety too.

“Why? The others will die of thirst if we don’t juice this one.”

“What?”

“It’s practical mathematics. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few Deanna.”

“How do you know my name, is… Is that you Armus?”

“(hummpf.)Kill it later honey.” Tasha motions to the seven year old who carries off the new born by one ankle towards the bone city. “You are breaking the Prime Directive. That boy is supposed to be dead now. You are endangering the tenuous pickled seesaw of which this society balances on by imposing your pompous alien morality on us. You are a bad, bad Starfleet Officer. Do you want to be defrocked?”

“What? No. That boy was going to kill that baby… That’s not what the Prime Directive is for… Oh my god? …Tasha?” Deanna can’t believe the transformation from what she knew before into this Harkonenish skin cube, which from a distance might be mistaken for an oddly hued cache of hay bails. “Tasha, what happened to you?”

“How is Data?”

“Dead.”

“Good. Saves me the trouble of doing it myself.”
 
Part 42.

The blonde’s precision and timing were the enemy here, that something in her cunning plan was going to go balls up soon and she couldn’t be sure which nuance of a thousand inter-colliding bodies ignorant of the others need was about to blend into utter complete music. The universe is naturally composed of music. Free will makes for ugly noise. Her righteous husband blathered on about his 6th sense so often she wanted to punch him in the face more than she did already, if that were at all possible. These two star-crossed lovers were usually quickly covered in sexy bruises at the climax of the simplest conversations about anything from laundry to empire building turning her ass the same shade of purple as his hauntingly attractive Baldwinesque set of iris’. Though Shelby also had a prognostic physical tell of her own that she intelligently didn’t feel the need to telegraph, which unconsciously expressed physically her inner turmoil and wariness, as a worrisome ache from her ring finger. Elizabeth had first thought this itch would disappear right after she tied that man of hers down. Though generally it was she who was tied to the bedposts during… Captain Shelby is not half the ball and chain potent enough to clip that boys wings, and why are all the metaphors for marriage so negative? But too late, a short story is already long, her prognostic finger was acting up with an annoying ache which had the lady in charge relieved that keyboards went the way of the dodo 300 years earlier as she started to make the tough choices.

There was this prisoner, who Shelby was pandering with kid gloves, which might know where any spanners had been flung into Shelby’s “works” for all things relevant to the coming battle. The gentle approach was yielding no acceptable results. Maybe Shelby could interrogate classically and browbeat Janeway, bleed her a little, but the bob f(r)amed Admiral had probably just gone through all that already from the last (evil) people to hold her as a hostage in fear of the coming storm, so it was time for someone to play the role of “Good Cop” to the bitter end, and honestly Shelby didn’t think that was too much of a stretch from her actual character to try out on a trial basis for this once. Elizabeth directed the strung out Admiral looking for an excuse to tweak, through the Excelsior’s holodeck Arch into a Denobulan spa for a strict pedicure of all things, apparently, this is how regular women who don’t have the universe tipping on their shoulders “bond” because lets face it, even at Top Speed, it was going to take them half a day to get to the Mutara Nebula and kick destiny in the sack. They had time to kill, and Shelby considered with a little applied make up and rasping, that she could shave 10 years off the appearance of a haggard crone like Kathryn Janeway, for which she should be eternally grateful! You don’t want to consider the amount of laughter scuttling about the fleet when it was authenticated proper that Janeway didn’t even seduce her XO during her seven year detour. Utterly unheard of prudentialness!

The holographic scenario began to unfold.

A quite naked Event Director, swanning about merrily with a healthier smile than a human with a scalpel might grow, and no more than that extensive crescent to cover up the length of interesting swirls of shades and freckles eeking a winding path towards oddly designed nether regions, from guest to emergency to guest to PR necessities, inside this imaginary vista of summertime near the poolside of a swanky resort of some sort intended obviously for the affluent and powerful which Janeway did not recognize the species or locus of, approached the not quite yet 50 Terran years old Admiral and not quite 40 Terran years Captain, instantly creating the impression with a single girlish smirk that her two guests were not quite dressed for the weather. Gendered male perhaps, two attendants approached the three women after the event director clapped twice after raising her hands above her head to do so (In unison two the non holographic human woman here were infuriated how gravity didn’t impact in the least on this faux woman in front of them’s perfect chest dumplings.) presented the Soldiergirls with a set of sarongs so as the two working women might down beat their professionalism for a tiny duration in an effort to acclimatize with the perspective a leisure trying to drown them. Janeway turned up her nose, but Shelby began to disrobe. To Janeway, this here alien decadent posh “hotel(??)” reminded her of that island paradise on Tallax which Neelix made so popular with her crew during the second year after Crewman Dalby had stuck a pool cue up one of the more mischievous holograms bottoms for trying to hustle the oafish humorless Maquis Thug, after which all Starfleet officers were barred from Sandrine’s forever until the end of time by Sandrine… And it seemed like cheating to bend the holograms after they made such a fuss while they charmingly thought they were all real people with real concerns and feelings. Instead of regulation cotton briefs and supports, it appears as if Shelby had been wearing a foolishly coloured one-piece bathing suit under her uniform which was probably just the holodeck tapping it’s “Autocensor” since whatever she was wearing under that photonic glamour was unsuitable for this “interrogation” even if it did seem like every fiber of her being was screaming “Hey Kathy, it’s been years since you went for a swim!”. It’s almost impossible to do much of anything “nude” in one of these places after the last few years of scandal and inappropriateness without a system crack to kick the fun and games well into an NC17 degree of recreation. “You’ll find something modest to swim in under your uniform if you chose to need it, and you might find after being interred and tortured for information that I need a couple laps in the pool. A soak in the spa, any half measure to wash off an interrogation is in itself more torture you’re heaping on yourself for no reason. A shower after all you’ve been through isn’t going to make a dent in the bottle up… What have you been bottling up Kathryn? You do have a lot to tell me about what you think is going on today Admiral Janeway and I might even explain to you what’s really going on... You do want some one to take the blinders off right? Well you don’t get that sort of freedom with out paying the organ grinder.”

“Did you just call me your monkey?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“Good.”

“Not my monkey. But I have a pretty good idea whose monkey you are.”

“I’m no ones monkey!”

“We’re all someone’s monkey.”

Janeway has been put onto an infirm footing once more because she’s laughing on the inside so hard to think any sweet idiot out there might think it was possible to butter “someone of her outrageous reserve and station” up. Janeway did not have a price(everyone has a price.) and this certainly felt like a bribe to turn her affection which pissing off the Indianaian who no one is being honest with as yet in so far as every next bugger is trying to squeeze information out of her with “kindness” and… Oh for the days when the Borg Queen would just drill into her skull through her eyeball to capture her personality completely and rinse her soul through a meat grinder. How simple all that was. How (*&ing efficient! The Borg (Wow, this is so mightily delayed Stockholm Syndrome!) were so much more honest than this greasiness. If Seven is to be believed, then positronic copies of all of her crew from that suicide mission a couple years ago, including herself, and her future self a year after that were still trapped inside the Borg Hive mind which used their identities as donkeys for the decision making processes on how to best take over the universe and their life experience used as a reservoir to feed upon for the intensifying of the girth of their collectives alknowingness. Best not to think about all that too much. Copies. It’s hard to be the fairest one of all when clones and duplicates keep squashing the bell curve. I mean, it’s not like she’s been untoward about ever instance of being doubled by a couple different situations over the years, some times it’s not that bad to be able to rely on some one infinitely trustworthy and competent for once… A few of those doppelgangers are still out there close and closer to federation Space and still trying to make it “home” not even cognoscente that the definitive Kathryn Janeway already made it home first and isn’t in the mood to be supplanted by some creepy cheap copy… “What are we doing here?”

“We’re having some girl time.”

“Do you really expect me to fall for the “nice” ruse? I know all about you Captain Shelby.”

Shelby uses her mock shock look “What are you talking about? You’ve had a hard couple days, I just thought you could use some down time?”

“Where are we? I don’t recognize the attendants.”

“Denobulan.”

“Oh.”

“All this was annihilated by the Romulans.”

Janeway **Hurrumphs!** “Cowardly attack.”

“It was a completely successful military objective. They intended to destroy this world and they intended that there was not supposed to be any survivors. Perfect soldiers. How often did you tell your Kazon enemies from the boondocks what you were aiming at on their ships as each torpedo left Voyagers Torpedo tubes, or offering those mortal enemies an engineering detail from your own ship to enhance their weapons and shields to even the odds a little all in the name of fair play. In war the enemy dies or you do.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“Don’t make it so easy.”

“I am going to court martial you so badly that you grand children are going to born in the stockade.”

“Take your shoes off.”

“Why?”

“I’m having a pedicure. You might as well too. The beautician is late. I thought you might… Honestly do your ten toes feel like they are all they can be? Or are you too bashful to show me what mangy talons you got hiding under those boots?”

“You’re going to show me the blandishing aren’t you?”

“What?” Shelby tries to keep her reserve down that the jig is up.

“This is Denobula you say.”

“this isn’t part of my anterior agenda..”

“Lull me into a false sense of security after a solid pumicing, then holographically depict the extermination of every Denobulan within eye shot and the world around them burning to the point that every layer of skin and fur is burnt off then layer after in layer in slow motion during the historic atomic firestorm which founded the United federation of planets.”

“Grim.”

“Then spout off with some preachy diatribe about how past is prologue, and this could happen again with a single faltering in our vigilance as Starfleet officers… Is that what you had in store for me?”

“That sounds terribly dramatic. Do you have an IQ of 40 or some such Kathryn, that you might fall for some soppy pageantry like that?”

“Worlds die. Wars rage. Space is vast and vastly full of complete nut jobs.”

“We are on the cusp of something awful and prophetic… I’m only trying to stop devastation like this from happening again. Happening to our home for gods sake.”

“Me too.”

“Whose orders are you really acting upon? You’re not cagey enough by half to have burrowed into this mess on your own merit.”

“Well that depends.”

“On whose orders I am acting upon?”

“Exactly.”
 
Part 43

You do understand that infinite Energy is only a practical description of the Universe itself? An engineer literally has to squeeze the entire universe into a fuel tank just to force an engine to reach infinite speed for a single solitary moment. Not that there’s anywhere to go, since the universe doesn’t exists any more after it’s been used up. Well maybe there’s some waste product some “life” could survive inside? But it’s out and out impossible even if you could design this engine which of itself is also part of the universe and therefore should be stuffed in the same fuel tank with the rest of the universe and the fuel tank itself like autoconsuming Oroborus(Unless of course we used other universes as a fuel source? But how many even barren universes would we sacrifice to move just a little faster across already traversable distances?), but then again 300 years ago they were whining about the same infinite fuel necessities for cracking good old reliable Warp One, which is also just on the other side of the light speed barrier and equally impossible physical impossibility requiring the use of infinite energy again too. A scientific fact which on-paper, is still the complete and utter truth. Unless you cheat, and god do we cheat, we cheat a lot with the cunning creation of impossible subspace bubbles; that section off the universe wherein “anything goes” but won’t allow the out spread of chaotic effects destroying real space like a cascading virus of unreality, which would never happen, it’s more about real space crushing that which is different like some sort of “physics-ism” …Wherein inside impossible things like propelling faster than the speed of light is now possible while only applying a substantial fraction of all the energy in the universe because the ship thinks it is in a different universe that is maintaining more agreeable constants and properties after the formerly true nature of space has been “warped” into something usefully other-universal.

So what does “infinite speed” have to do with “transwarp speed”? Let me explain. Supposedly, Transwarp Speed is what happens after Infinite Speed. These days Infinite Speed is called “Warp 10”, a theoretical ceiling where physics start breaking down reissuing all sorts of familiar relativistic problems we thought we were well past. So the closer you get to warp 10 the more you’re basically weighed down with mass also approaching an infinite where-after you tend to occupy infinite presence, and time as you know it also just flies out the window as continuity slows to the point that you’ll never ever never ever reach w... But if you somehow do get there, all space in the universe simultaneously becomes a chair you’re seated on, so you don’t need to go anywhere, because you’re already there. It’s a mess. I’m not a Doctor, but even I know that that doesn’t sound healthy well before anyone brings up the word “salamander”. Infinite speed is a trap just like .9999999 C is a trap, you become too bogged down in ultraphysics to be able to get anywhere properly, which is why we’re interested in the drop off into slower speeds after infinite speed, such in such that “after” infinite speed you’re under the purview of new physical laws which allow you to travel at the equivalent of Warp 9.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999, Which is easily 30 to 60 masses of propulsion faster than our ships are these days capable of while only applying the same amount of fuel our traditional warp reactors needed to stoke our warp reactors to impel Starships at warp 2. It’s just a question of Fuel economy. Running out of natural resources is damn scary which every culture has to face down as its consumption rates outstrip their ability to hunt and gather from the beginning with wood tech cultures in thatched huts wondering where the forests have gone all the way through to now and beyond. Expand or die is a maxim quickly replaced by recycle and do more with less or drown in sewage.

Before the Borg, with the original Excelsior experiments, we’d thought that it was only a matter of “warping” regular space inside an atypical warp bubble; effectually stripping away reality so as to reduce dimensional resistance to a massive negative number would pierce the barrier. That didn’t work, so we came at the problem backwards for a bit of a laugh forcing Excelsior to exhibit incredibly dense Subspace bubbles around herself which Theoretically would create an environment capable of reducing the wall between achievable speed and infinite speed to something negligible, as in perhaps infinite speed was now 15kph and not hundreds of thousands of times the speed of light… Of course this was all before the Warp Scale was recalibrated, the target they were aiming for back then was “Warp 35”. Those experiment’s, and a dozen others equally as insane and radical were all complete failures, even after Montgomery Scott’s clever little sabotage during the Genesis Debacle was reversed, the whole project was declared a pipedream. That was until we met the Borg. Legend has it, during one of those barely averted Borg invasions some years back, that the Enterprise D, oddly under the temporary command of the dancing Doctor transitioned itself immediately across a vast stellar distance using a “Borg Transwarp Conduit” to finally capture the android Lore after some Wagner like epic struggle between good and evil. The Op was supposed to be beyond Top Secret, but with nearly a thousand people holding somewhat temporary assignments because this was all just a few months before that pretty little councilor crashed our flag ship into the side of a planet which “jumped out in front of me!” a friend of mine swore Riker, well “Troi” back then, had been cackling about one greasy night after a tremendous amount of alcohol, so frankly it wasn’t an easy conspiracy to keep under wraps. The Borg, Lore and Transwarp. It’s a story demanding to be told from rooftops, but you can’t seriously bandy about a word like “Transwarp” and not expect ears to prick up because Transwarp is the Holy Grail for warp engineers and speed junkies.

The first roadblock to reverse-engineering this technology into something practical from what the Enterprise salvaged off the Borg in 2367, after the many tentative “tests” was creating a double blind, but not only couldn’t we build another Conduit ourselves, we had a hard enough time proving that “the Conduit” even existed for the first 5 years, other than you know, that it worked and that it had nothing to do with infinite speed to push our ships from point A to Point B which was tell tale from the brief travel lag but seriously, I mean 20 times what we’re used to isn’t nothing to be sneezing about, even if it’s not infinite speed, especially if Starfleet has a manned mission to Andromeda on the Books in only 200 years, we’ll take what we can get. Simultaneously while we were making our first breakthroughs, Tom Paris, from Voyager during it’s lost years, without an ounce of help from the Borg managed to snap past the practical limit of Warp Ten inside our universe. However his consciousness was splayed across thousands of star systems which provoked an insane evolutionary response from his body that he turned into a… Yes, I already mentioned the “Salamander” but that’s exactly what he transformed into. That technology was quickly abandoned since navigation seemed impossible even for a computer or a holographic pilot, but if you didn’t care where you were going, and didn’t care about what you evolved into by the time you got there, then it was a huge step forward in the technology of constructive suicide. A few years later, Voyager repatriated a Borg. A pretty young thing, she wears clothes that look like nudity. But she could answer questions, fill in the gaps between what we knew and what we didn’t or what we only thought we knew. Not that Voyager was in much of a position to let the Alpha Quadrant in on most of its findings for quite some time. So like the Americans stole their Nazi scientists to win the space race in the 20th century, we stole a Borg to catch up, thankfully putting our Federation on an even keel with the Borg before they might eat us... Hopefully.

With Seven of Nine’s guidance, her head is too big already to really use words like “leadership” she transformed a flailing “inquiry panel” into an initiative which began laying the keel for the first Federation Traswarp capable Star Ship a month after she was urged to take an interest in the project, and a year after that the USS Raven under the Command of Captain Harold Kim exited a completely stable transwarp conduit only seconds after entering the other side near the Martian perigee directly into a “fire fight” with the Enterprise E. The Ravens chief weapon was the ability to control photonic matter inside a holographic umbrella covering a volume of nearly 60 thousand cubic kilometers. As in, the ship could generate explosions or generate solid objects of just about any composition of any size that could do anything a hologram on a holodeck could do… The Raven, for instance, could instantly wrap an opposing vessel in 300 million tons of replicated tritaninium crushing their shields or simultaneously assault their opponent from 8 million directions with nonlocalized phaser fire… or depending on who was the Captain of this vessel, and the tenacity of his or her imagination they could start to get really ridiculous. 15 thousand foot tall avatars of Reginald Barclay’s “Three Musketeers” parody of the classic Enterprise D command Staff were seen during one battle drill 2 months earlier, hacking and swiping at incoming quantum torpedoes with their foils quite successfully. The “Riker” Musketeer is only 10,000 feet tall to retain the original psychosis of the original programmer. The Rikers are like Royalty; they know everyone loves them. It’s just a joke and part of the cultural ethos that everyone has read the Enterprise D logs, although “people” were yelled at, and the program was immediately boxed. But really this technology is first generation “magic” which most of the space gods trying to impress Kirk must have been using with their Abraham Lincolns and Giant clutching hands and other such near mystical manifestations that wrestled that famous Star Ship for elbow room in formerly deep space. Supposedly we as a species, as a collaboration of species were finally ready technologically to fight gods on an level playing field almost and no longer just rely on luck and chance to win out on a wing and prayer while being hopelessly outclassed.

The Enterprise E is already wrapped in replicated tritainium before the Raven has even completely exited its transwarp conduit on the edge of the combat theatre. Seemingly ruining the flagships warp bubble and shields as much as the poor girls paint job. I can see how this maneuver would be the standard go-to scholars mate for any Commander with a killer instinct, although this teethy sic hasn’t ever been used on the battlefield before now for any successful counter measures to be anticipated against or prepared for, no matter how the simulations in which this gambit proved to be a humane and instant deathblow previously, so the battle is seemingly over and finished and no one is planning on further bringing in the 4 million ton banana cream pie to bounce off their walnut shaped nugget of metal in space for an immoral childish overkill. Of course I said “seemingly” because Captain Kim’s victory over Picard only seemed to be absolute and uncontroversial because who else but Captain Picard would be ready to employ the Picard Maneuver at a moments notice? Even more “of course” comparing the capabilities of the Enterprise E to Jean-Luc’s almost childhood command of the USS Stargazer, which began nearly 60 years earlier is like comparing a bicycle to a helicopter. The Enterprise was everywhere. There was as many as 80 Star Ships Enterprise at one point and the Enterprises stamina to maintain this ruse seemed inexhaustible as each and every warp hopping Enterprise and it’s streamed shadow seemed as ultimately as real as the next and last that the Ravens Tactical Officer barely out of the academy kept fumbling after the wrong 20 or 30 “Enterprise” at the same time never quite winning this game of whack-a-mole-80-Star-Ship-Monte to strike the right target she was truly interested in. A consolation being of course that it didn’t take long for the Enterprise’s gunner to note the hundred or so Quantum Torpedoes which they had unloaded into the Ravens shields in the first 40 seconds were effectually now a power source being harvested to strengthen those same shields while having less than negligible but actually zero harmful effect on the Raven that if the Enterprise were given a thousand years and unlimited quantum torpedoes, she could not have even relied on the forces of erosion to chip away at the Ravens defenses. Picard’s science officer identified the holographic umbrella quick enough and realized that although they didn’t have the raw power to “break it”, that she had already hacked into the fleet registry 6 weeks earlier during another mad mission after a cadre of Orion Slavers had seized the USS Crazyhorse, so the Enterprises tactical database already had the most recent prefix codes for every ship in Starfleet including, it would seem if the stencils on the primary hull of their attacker could be trusted that it was the USS Raven trying to destroy them. On an actual line Ship this wouldn’t work, because those prefix codes are personalized by their Captain or engineering crew almost immediately any one official asks for an update, if they’re not actually randomized continuously for fear of having their underwear pulled up over their heads like what’s about to happen here and now because… This ship here, “the Raven” wasn’t supposed to have been commissioned or let out of the shipyards for another couple months, it was probably still being built, so it’s obvious that most everything on it and about it and in it, was still completely in keeping with factory specifications. After a brief explanation, Captain Picard had complete control of the Raven’s holographic Umbrella and shredded the USS Raven’s weapons and engines with it’s own arsenal.

Victory aside, this is no time to be smug. Jean-Luc has a thousand people under him to organize to receive a couple hundred disgruntled Starfleet Officers as POCWs, who chose the wrong side of this fledgling Civil War for the moment, or were not even aware that there had been a battle raging for the last 7 minutes and so Picard begins issuing the correct orders on what remains his bridge after dispensing with an opponent supposedly three generations ahead of his own vessel, before they he can even think about separating the willing traitorous to the misled or ignorant. “This is Captain Picard. Reconfigure holodeck 2 into emergency holding area 6 and see that the crew of the Raven are beamed directly there… Security, phasers on stun, don’t turn your back on those people for an instance and arrange a three shift duty rotation of 12 crewmen permanently stationed there in. Beverly… Triage. No one is to be removed form the holding area with out my say so.”

Picard was morally obligated to take on Prisoners. But if he did, the same thing would happen which always happened. Phaser fights in the Jeffery Tubes deciding a tug of war over command for his vessel. The crew of the Raven might have been arrogant to think they could take Enterprise, but he would in turn be arrogant enough to think that no one in that crew scrambling for life pods and suffocating in space wouldn’t be insanely capable enough to turn the tables on his command if he showed an ounce of compassion or mercy… These were Starfleet Officers. In preparation for the next alien scumbag which might seize control of Enterprise next, Picard had actually installed bedding and food hidden away in secret compartments in several Jeffery Tubes all over the enterprise because Picard was an old man with an old back and there was no good reason not to have a meal and pillow waiting for him next time he almost loses control of his vessel… But then, despite everything else, they were still Starfleet officers and everyone is just following orders to preserve the Federation. He can’t blame his “enemy” for following their conscience? And no one deserved to die just because they were ignorant about who deserved their loyalty so Enterprise followed the usual procedures for the third time in as many days to begin emergency transports of the Ravens crew and “men”-overboard still spewing out of the hull breech’s racked from even Picards Gentle phaser raping of the Raven’s carbon scarred hull, but it was the Starfleet way to do things. The human way to do things, being compassionate in victory, not that this minor hurdle counts as much in the grand scheme of things, routing the balloon headed flailings of a green turk Captain who can’t even tell good from evil. Even solar wind sheer was slowing the Enterprise down more than “Captain” Harry Kim’s abortive blockade of the sol system.
 
Part 44.

“Oi! You! …You’re not supposed to be here.” Boothby barks at a barely coalesced Jake Sisko entering the continuum. “Friends of mine had to cut two of Shelby’s fingers off to find out what you are really up to Mr. Sisko. O, never fret. We put her digits back where they belonged and she doesn’t remember a thing. Not even a scar, but she might ache in cold weather without explaina… Or even consider that it’s all about her subconscious psychosomatic demand for a wedding ring from that gent with the purple eyes. I like him. He’ll go far.”

“What?” Jake smelt the sooty Wellington rain raising damp from his stripy groin advertising unitard obviously still a size too small since he’d last noticed a growth spurt… but this wasn’t Wellington. He must have just transported from the Pennington institute to visit Nog at Star Fleet Academy. Earth. Mostly harmless. “What?”

“The amount of temporal energy preceding one of your visitations Mr. Sisko stinks like broken plumbing for weeks beforehand your actual arrival, if you are aware of what to look for with even a plumb ordinary tricorder. This is not aiding in the good health of the universe young man. You’re an ecological calamity, jamming up reality herself like oil spills used to soil the beachfront and butcher seal colonies. Your aggravated trundling through time will not be tolerated much longer.”

“What?” This fashion dictum focused on material minimalism society model Humans abided by, impressed to conserve replicator allocations to a sensible level after an extreme energy crisis from mad flittery a few generations back when an accountant noticed that there were 400 times as many pairs of socks on the planet earth as there were people, cataloged among the most minor of the Romanesque astringencies becoming then acceptable, had yet to really level out to disassociate any flair with intense taboo. Ergo, Jake needed clothes that fit him.

“What “what”? Speak up son! Use your words! You’re supposed to be a writer in command of unique uses of language… You did become a writer? The psychohistorians said you would be a writer! I never thought you had the shoulders to follow in your father’s footsteps… O? You’re lost? I’ll speak slowly. You are on Earth, in my garden. A few days before that shmuck Leighton tries to become king of the world. I’ve been waiting for a profitable occasion to dispose of Lieghton while he implodes, don’t try and credit me with his circus; I’m just using that bearded prig as a dustpan shovel to gather up the less obvious problems in the fleet. Static cling. Red-flag all the troublemakers and sweep them under a black hole, and maybe give a few others the opportunity to prove me wrong.”

Unacclimatized as yet Jake’s fuddled eyeballs squint at the muddled form of an old man making noise without really saying anything. “ …Boothby?”

“Yes?”

“Boothby the gardener?” That’s what Jake liked about Bajor, they made their clothesthemselves, so really they had divisions and layers. Jackets, jumpers, vests, buckles, buttons, collars, belts, an actual presence of “being” …Not like these skintight wrestling trunks which are barely indifferentiable from spray-painted nudity.

“I know you’re from the future, plodding back to where you come from, but do you know who I am? Hmmmph?” Boothy gives the boy the worst hairy eyeball ever; Jake is gormless to match wits because of the timelag. “Good. You don’t know who I am. That’s good. That’s very good.”

“You’re Boothby the gardener… but you knew I was coming. Me. You’re can’t be Boothby the gardener. You’re… ”

“O, Yes I am. I’m the gardener. I’ve been tending to this garden for two hundred years.”

“What?” But after checking in on the Pennington Institute, from the smell (Artificially created rainforests invent some seriously distinct weather.), the younger Jake who was suppressed right now, had traveled to Starfleet academy to try and find that cadet he palled around with, and that’s were he’d popped into the here and now from the recent past straight into an inquisition.

“I thought we got past this “what” business?”

“Sorry. My head is swimming.” Jake is almost in his happy place where he can control the words coming out of his mouth without putting time on it’s ear accidentally by being too honest. Although, time might already be on it’s ear?

“I used to enjoy swimming. But my joints are not up to that any more.”

“ …I usually have time to vomit or pass out, settle my bearings before I have to get into the thick of some sort of intrigue… So, you are a gardener, but you’re also more than a gardener? And you’re a really old gardener?”

“Yes.” There’s a smile hidden there even Mona Lisa would refer to as subtle. “But use a word like “old” again and I’ll take to the back of your head with a trough.”

“But… Who are you? What are you?”

“The Gardener.”

“No really.” Jake had been tagged and bagged. This old man dressed up like a… well exactly what he claimed to be, the infamous groundskeeper of Starfleet Academy. Boothby an ancient and earthy figure who made sure everything was beautiful and all the weeds were taken care of without any one noticing his presence for the most part, but he had ears. Everyone knew he knew everything and… People listened to him and asked his advice. Unusually powerful people talked of him fondly…

“You’ll figure it out.”

“You’re not just a gardener.” Made sure everything was beautiful… Taking care of the weeds… Knew everyone?

“Your friend Garak was once a gardener.”

“O.” SPY!!!

“Yes “O”. But then gardening on Romulus is a completely different skillset.”

“You’re like Garak?”

“No.” Laughter.

“No?”

“I’m like the people Garak used to work for, but I can trust you to keep a secret?”

“Can you?” Jake felt like he was losing it. Not that he was sure what “it” was.

“Secrets are only powerful if they’re kept.”

“I guess?”

“Well that’s excellent. If you can keep my secrets, then obviously then I can keep your secrets. Quid pro quo!”

“Yes? I suppose… No. What are we really talking about?”

“The usual stakes.” Boothby sits down, rubbing his knees a little. God knows what he put those billion year old hinges through ever day to keep up to the expectations of a job suited for someone half his age. Half the age he appeared to be. Granpa was 120, but this guy was preserved!

“The fate of the galaxy?”

“And change.”

“You said I shouldn’t be here.”

“If you’re meddling in my operation or not, you certainly shouldn’t be.”

“I have no contro…”

“I know you’re already trying to change time Mr. Sisko. I think that you had better be doing that for a very good reason. I am the ultimate authority on such matters. Wouldn’t it be nice to proceed with my blessing?”

“You’re the gardener.” Jake wonders if this old man was really some sort of god? I mean Jake, technically was a god himself. If Jake Sisko could be a God, then anyone could be a god.

“It’s a very important job.”

“This is ridiculous. What’s really going on here?”

“Please, you’re from the future not me. You’re in command of a greater quantity of truths than I could ever possibly be.”

“I… ”

“Cat got your tongue?”

“Wait. I need to think. Just stop talking.”

“ …As you wish.”

Jake can feel walls closing in. “I’m… Righto… The summit with those Romulans, the explosion, I’ve only been, this body has been on Earth half a day... But you know about Admiral Leighton’s coup days in advance… You’re behind it?”

“God, no.”

“Really?”

“You told me to stop talking. Do you want me to stop “stop talking” or to start “stop talking”? I’m an old man son, it’s so hard to be obliging with the young if they can’t express themselves proper.”

“Just answer my question please.” Jake needs to calm down. The first person to raise their voice is usually the loser of a conversation.

“Why?” Like a cat playing with a one legged mouse.

“Because I’m asking nicely.”

“Key to the universe that is.”

“My mother would agree.”

“Good. A lovely woman. Now, listen carefully son, because I’ve already told you once that I’m not involved in Leighton’s crap, although I am taking advantage of the confusion, it saves me the trouble of creating my own confusion. I have every faith in your father for sorting this mash out before… ”

“People die?”

“Not really. People die all the time. People are dying right now, but I tend to find that an appropriate mortality rate makes the worst told lies suddenly more than believable. Think about it, a hard won victory is more memorable and savory, and nothing is more hard won than wading through blood to the finishing ribbon. Don’t look at me like that Sisko, this is history, your history, these people have been dead to you for many years, decades perhaps… Dead is dead, for you at least and these deaths assure the foundations of your present.”

“Are you section 31?”

“What?”

“Section 31.”

“I heard you.” **Chuckle** “That’s a very clever description for what I do. I’ve not heard it before. Yes, very funny. Descriptively historic… Not my style at all, but… Someone might have been talking when they shouldn’t?”

“So, you’re section 31?”

“I guess I probably am. Well, I might be… Unless I’m being framed? You could be confusing me for some evil cancer because someone else has put the idea in your mind? Is there some defining aspect from which you would know I was Section 31 that… Is it such a bad thing if I was?”

“Are you about to poison Odo?” Jake dearly needs to see an air of shock n his opponent.

“I want to say no, but I don’t think there’s any real point in denying it.”

“Then, you’re Section 31.” Grasping at flushed straws.

“O, am I now?”

“Yes you are.”

“I did prefer being nameless and mysterious. Names afford too much power to the enemy. If a hundred of my enemies all have a different name for me, then they can hardly consolidate a lynching all that easily can they? I suspect that’s why god toppled the tower of Babel and afflicted us with the curse of languages.”

“You sound like Gandalf.”

“Good Book.”

“No one takes time to really enjoy the classics anymore.”

“I’m waiting for you to try and stop me.”

“Stop you what?” Jake sees an inroad to coolness.

“Poisoning your friend.”

“Oh that? No big. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it will all work out for the best. Feel free to just continue on as if I’m not here. Poison away.”

“Work out for the best? Poison away?”

“Yes, the best. Evil plot activate!”

“For someone with an intrinsically heroic nature you’re being awfully glib about murder and genocide.”

“O, you know genocide is fantastic. Good for the economy. All those kids getting out of the universities need somewhere to work.” Jake feels like he’s channeling Garak. Jake had spent time on their homeworld during the reformation of Cardassia for the FNS after the fall of the Dominion. He’d seen Garak trot about being frightfully clever to the fourth estate.

“Mr. Sisko, is it ”fantastic” as far as you are concerned or as far as I am concerned?”

“What do you think?”

“No, what do you think?”

“Well, you do have the Federations best interests at heart?”

“I am the Federation.”

“What?” Is he serious?

“I am the Federation.”

“O? You are?” He is serious.

“I am.”

“You are the Federation?” God help us, he’s a loon.

“Yes.”

“You’re not crazy are you?”

“No.”

“You are the Federation?”

“I founded the Federation, United the Earth before that, ruled Austria before that and Japan before that. I’ve been alive for a very long time and used almost everyone with an ounce of power for the last 400 years as my personal sock puppet. I am responsible for the direction and protection of every human being, and every other being under my standard alive today, yesterday and tomorrow. I am the Federation.”

“Have you listened to yourself?”

“I’m not crazy.” Conviction without consternation.

“Suuuuuure.”

“Jake. Look at me. Look at my eyes.”

“You’re not trying to hypnotize me?”

“Hypnosis is for losers with no patience.”

“Look, I know about this moon, it’s an asylum for the perfectly mad where you will be able to hang out just peachy. Been there in the future just recently… Wait? Did I get my tenses correct?” Bait.

“I’m all powerful, you should take me seriously.”

“You’re dressed in overalls covered in fertilizer.” He could be anyone’s grandfather, but there’s something dark going on.

“I’m a committed gardener. How should the ruler of the galaxy look?”

“I don’t know. Golden with a crown I suppose?”

“O, I’m the crazy one?”

“Yes, you’re the crazy one.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not!”

“I bet you a million bars of Latinum that you are.”

“I have a million bars of latinum, do you?”

“No.” Money never really made sense to Jake.

“So you’re good with me killing Odo?”

“Poisoning him, or killing him?” Jake wonders if he is changing the future already?

“He has to die. You don’t think he’ll die if I just poison him?”

“Of course not, I’m not a monster.”

“I’m a monster.” This man is a crocodile!

“You’re a monster and the Federation?”

“Damn it all. I’ll just kill him.”

“NO!”

“Why?”

“Is that how you plan on winning the Dominion War?” Letting out some line, affording some slack.

“I have several irons in the fire.”

“Do you?”

““The Dominion War” seriously? Is that what we are going to call it? That is so bloody bland! Now the Bolians, they know how to name a good war they do.”

“We’re human. It’s expected of a species which calls their home world “Dirt”.”

“Touche.”

“The Tal’Shiar and Obsidian order were eradicated a few weeks ago, if you are Section 31, I know for a fact that no point of the Dominion war was won or lost on the sway of your say so Boothby. It was fought by Soldiers, not creeping assassins, or conscienceless spies using blackmail and leverage.”

“Really?”

“I’m a journalist. I lived through it all.”

“You know that I play the long game. Poisoning Odo with an invisible pathogen that will lay dormant yet mobile for years, spreading out among his brothers and sisters until not a single glob of them is safe, completely squared against deaths door. And now, because of you, I know first that this is a good thing, and second that Odo will survive out the other end of my devilish little failsafe, which draws me to a single conclusion, that my organization is outted, probably branded evil and blamed for all manner of things that that Necheyev woman has done, and maybe a cure is extracted from one of my people who creates this most outlandish name for… And then you cure the Founders of the Dominion in exchange for peace... Which Mr. Sisko was already my plan all along.”

If Jake is being conned by a master manipulator, then surely the opposite of what he is thinking, what he has been driven and forced to think must be the actual truth… “You’re making this up as you go along.”

Oh bugger. “No, I’m not.”

“You weren’t even going to poison Odo till I touched on the Subject were you?”

“Maybe? What happened to you thinking that I’m a crazy old man who spent too much time in the sun?”

“Is history contingent on my actions or am I changing things?”

“Are you even sure that this is not a totally mutable parallel reality?”

“I’m not sure about anything. Whatever I’ve said, whatever you think you need to do to second guess me to prove that you’re in control of the situation Boothby, however you want to topple my world view, know this, for the sake of every man woman and child 10 years from now, you cannot destroy the Dominion… They are eventually going to save us all from complete annihilation by an unimaginable foe.”

“An unimaginable foe? I can imagine a lot boy.”

“I swear to you, unimaginable.”

“Then tell me. Expand my puny imagination.”

“No. I don’t want you to save the day. That’s the Founders job. I already sorted it out. And if this act of generosity, saving us, just happens to wreck two thirds of their warfleet or more, then the safer we’ll all feel living at the mouth of the wormhole next time they decide our way of life is intolerably disorderly.”

“O, look at that. You have a dark side.”

“I’m not a child.”

“I reserve my right to change my opinion.”

“And what’s your opinion?”

“Bog off.”

“What?”

“Go away.”

“You’re not going to say thank you?”

“Try not to walk into any walls when red squad turns the light off.”

“Close enough.” Jake bogs off.
 
That's three posts in three days. Been writing out of order and sitting on stuff for a while. The next chapter is well off past the horizon unless I get reeeeeeal drunk tomorrow.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year. :)
 
Part 45.

Lars could feel the life in him logjamming on the way out. The poor broken bastard couldn’t even fly through space no more under his own beautiful violation. He was spent. In lieu, using the solids travel machine was a touch humiliating but reduced into his tepid fragile static condition, the still proud Changeling didn’t have time to be vain and flounder about trying to push himself between constellations at thruster speed while being ankle tapped by that greedy bugger the Grim Reaper. These torturous moments had to be his last seconds, or at least considering the rising increments in pain he’d been dealing with over the last few months, they’d better be his last damn moments since the equity in staying alive was running on empty. After weeks in the company of these primates, they’d almost become tolerable… He was so close to home where he’d been told they knew how to amend him of this blasted infection, which that filthy Odo person had lumbered him with when they had linked like pizza dough. Kneaded, tossed and hammered. What Lars wouldn’t give for one more link. He’d watched the solids aboard indulge in their sex act, and had been invited to join in on one occasion but their physical union was so superficial it might as well be spooning. Not like a good hard link. Typically something so sensational which felt that salaciously good did need to be incurred with serious consequences if the universal scales were to balance out and make sure no two Changeling, or the species itself et all didn’t link themselves into complete indolence, but such a round about death sentences did seem like rough treatment to keep cosmic morality in check, no? But once you’ve caught and terminal malady it’s not like a more terminally malady would frighten Lars into a life of frigidity.

“Captain! We’re here!” Came the holler from the navigator’s young dark green lips.

Any Orion crew was prepared to make immediate mercurial changes to their heartfelt beliefs after/during any threat through aftermath of bloody insurrection, or merely even the introduction of a fresh batch of ripe females… (Klingons too, but only with other Klingons. They’ll never be admitted into the federation until they stop the practice of slavery and boat whores (Not that holotechnology hadn’t all but stamped out the use of slaves as Boat whores.).) In the beginning of this relationship, Lars had killed three of the olive Humanoids, informing the rest to behave, who got in line with the “new” order rather quickly after this unimpressive authority figure secreting not a jet or leaking any cloud from his mind control aerosol gland like the usual uppity ups, and they set course for what this alien believed to be the “current” homeworld of his people not that Lars had been too impressed with the Founders of the Dominion from hearsay and myth so far after Odo pinned his origins to the ground where his roots’d started.

“Good. Main screen.” Lars states clear mindedly painting no impact from his condition, he thinks, despite being riddled by an unnatural agony, which would smelt a lesser man, well any man really, so it’s a good thing he ain’t a man, but something infinitely superior, if you asked him, that is. Lars is enthroned on a seat in the middle of the bridge, which had all the command switches similar enough to the bridges of Starfleet vessels with people running about to his orders with faces all the shades of a Teran forest. The image on screen, put there by his command, was of the world at hand which quickly took back the crew of murderers and rapists unsure of their own safety currently because they’d never parked in orbit of a planet with a face before, or more to behold fearfully a planet with “a mouth”, or even furtherly more accurately disturbing than that: “teeth” …Singularly each tooth was the size of a country all but ready to maw and chew readily any passing careless spacemen. Lars stamped his foot, which sounded like thunder, and the chain of command resumed and his crew put off freaking out for a couple hours. So, there was this “face” protruding off the edge of a world sweeping around a local star at 200,000 miles an hour and rotating 90,000 miles an hour on its axis, and 40,000 miles in diameter which was not unfamiliar to Lars since he’d once had sex with it. Linked like reconstituted, recycled bubble gum scraped from the underneath of... Odo seemed to have a weight problem.

The ship shook.

Formerly the “diplomatic” officer aboard the OS Interceptor: Columbian Neck Tie (The Universal translator is sometimes too clever for it’s own good. Maybe the translation should more accurately be “Gaping Neck Incision” which is something Orioneesely poetic about only half cutting through someone’s neck till you find spine and then watching it flap in the wind. They’re pirates. They want people to surrender without a fight so there are more (less damaged) slaves to sell on the block.), is making a place for himself in the new paradigm under the merciless Changeling or at least making the appearance of so being/doing “Scans say… I think the planets atmosphere is expanding to encroach us Captain… It is an unconventional and impossible movement but… An attack?”

“No. Communication.” Lars explains with as much effort as he can spare for a simp who needs the basics highlighted. Billions of metric tons of Founders were all now under the single mental dominance of the dirty bastard who gave him the space clap. This was not good.

The new Captain is impossible to read (Odourless) beyond an apparent terrain of disapproval that shows no possible temperance whatsoever as yet. “Yes Of course Captain. Communication. About?”

“There’s a fair chance he knows I am here. Me and him. We’re the same.” Lars grumbles gnashing his teeth like tectonic plates metaphorically unlike the other changeling not a million miles away who could do so literally. “The Dominion has fallen.”

Odo’s pixilated mountain ranges designed to appear gobbish from space above moved in the usual way like a regular countenance not 90 thousand feet away… but producing sound on top of that optical illusion with enough to reduce the shields by another %15 from the gale of vocabulary saying simply “Lars” was amazing if not impossible, which considering what volcanic depth from the planet that that “air” was drawn from, the Captain of this Orion Interceptor didn’t want to think about how bad that Odo’s breath was beyond paint pealing left as an early benchmark.

“That dispels any illusion I can hide behind my chair or your skirt.” There is a sprinkle of worry that the crew can notice which they try to ignore. He hadn’t tried to communicate with humour before. But there was more to suppress right now than that their captains composure might be breaking.

The Diplomatic Officer gives Lars some slack… “But you came looking for him? It? You killed my friends so that we would take you here and now… This is not what you expected. Is it going to eat us?”

“No. I came looking for billions of individuals. That might mass have been my people, continue to be their remains, but right now, it’s just a thing that ate their corpses and used their personalities for gravy… That there is a single person who seems to have accumulated the mass of the Founders under the auspices of a single hard lined and obstinate intellect… It’s obvious that Odo, that face you see up there, that’s his name, used to belong to a lone Changeling a few inches shorter than I am at war with his entire species because he had to be right no matter the cost, his name is… Was, “Odo”, and it is clear to me that he has eaten the rest of Founders.”

She gulps a little “O.”

“It’s more than likely that he’s developed a taste for us. Me.”

The crew is waiting for an order, or more word from the planets faces face “O.”

“He’ll gnash you and this ship to get to me.”

Then why the hell are we standing still she wonders “O”

“O indeed. Probably all Changelings are Odo by now. I’ve been away in oparts unknown. Thinking about it, there was no real way other than that that he could have stopped the Dominion War. He’s probably starving. I am the last morsel separated from his gestalt intellect in the remaining universe (probably). This tin can you call a ship might as well be cling wrap.”

Personal safety aside, the Diplomatic Officer come hostage negotiator found a chink to wedge into. “You have to be jumping to conclusions? It’s just a planet. Practically stationary. You might be over-reacting? We should run.”

“At that size he should be able to eek warp 4 without reducing mass… And if it reduces mass, then there will be thousands and thousands, maybe millions, of him all being able to march at twice the speed of this vessel… But politically, he hasn’t done anything I haven’t considered myself at some point. Damn it. We have to run. WARP SPEED NOW! HOP TO IT!”

Emerald fingers dash about consols pushing a lot of buttons, beckoning word to below decks to the scarred engineers swimming in radioactivity loading the pile in the atomic engines control cadmium swizzle rods twirling subspace screw towards full power bringing the superb intensity of speeds like Warp 7 to the needs of this ships 300 year old Captain’s pleasure. They began to run. Futilely or course, but ran they began to.

“Warp 4.8 and Holding. Captain” The navigator addresses the state of the vessel that knows from experience to warm the engine up a little before mashing the throttle to avoid anything or anyone melting unnecessarily.

“You stupid woman, that “planet” is going to fold space and… Increase speed to warp 9. FASTER! Stoke the boilers with your souls if you have to!”

The ancient atomic warp drive still running on (mono)lithium like some sort of museum piece twists the hulk of the Columbian Necktie like a squidgy form the astrometrinomical forces weighing against and opposing throughout the ship from a dozen other conflicting dimensional layers as they pump the gas to ludicrous speed.

Lars addresses the fear clouding the room… “We have to be quick and smart. We will survive.”

The diplomatic Officer makes her stand “Your status has changed “Captain”.”

“You can’t hurt me.” Lars braces himself.

“I wasn’t threatening you.”

“You’d better not be. Don’t think that thing will let you live if you jettison me. This location is the deadliest secret. You’re all as fucked as I am.”

“There’s an infinite liberty in being utterly doomed.”

“What does that mean girl?”

“Suddenly I’m guessing you have as little purpose as you have a home, and being hunted for food can’t be an entertaining prospect. You need friends. Powerful friends. Like us.”

**Snort!!** “I don’t need your friendship. Keep a fix on that planet… If it starts moving. Moving after us… Unload everything. We can’t hurt it, but we should be able to mask our warp trail for a while.”

“You seem worried.”

“This changes everything.” Lars’ crest all immobile and solid is begging to reduce itself into a puddle to express his desolation right now. But illness has fixed his form harshly.

“I completely agree. Join us.”

“Do you now. How exciting for your tiny mammal brain. You’ll be lucky if I don’t kill you all as a half hearted diversion.”

“Join the Syndicate.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Bide with me, renegotiating our relationship right now would not be unbeneficial to either of us “Captain”. You could legally and actually be our captain. We wouldn’t be adverse to following the lead of someone as obviously powerful as yourself since your skill set could further obviously be very profitable if it was able to operate under the protection of the Syndicate and in return, we can protect you. We have thousands of ships and enough fire power to corral that thing into a sun if it scares you.”

“You want me to be a criminal?” Lars has lived like a solid from time to time. Their trinkets and luxuries are useless and unappealing to him… But to not be killed by Odo would be nice.

“You’re already a pirate, “Captain” and I am your desperate hostage. You’re a criminal collecting hanging offenses like there were the skulls of your ex-wives. You should join us.”

“Really? The Orion Syndicate?”

“We were once an empire at the throats of the Klingons on the verge of assimilating th... Some say our fall from grace has allowed for growth into areas of opportunity that more conventional empires are too meek to delve towards. The smallest tribute is required to come under the protection of the Syndicate… I will even stop trying to think of ways to kill you.”

“You’re all solids. I would be alone again. At least I used to have an option of returning to the great link.”

“Yes. Mostly. There are some Horta in our ranks who become superheated and liquid at certain depths and temperatures…”

“That’s hardly the equivalent of what I define as unsolid…”

“Join us.”

“But I hate you. On principle I am insanely Xenophobic.”

“That sounds like a real emotion. We can fan the flames of that hatred into something useful. That’s how friendships start.”

“I’m not what I used to be.”

“You’re dying.”

“You’re only not dead right now because I may need you. Everything is relative.”

“I appreciate the promotion.”

“To slave?”

“First officer.”

“Oh really now?”

“There are two more places you can find the cure…”

“Earth, and Deep Space Nine obviously.”

“Set a course for Earth.”

“Is that a threat to your hostage, or an order to your first officer?”

“The entire Dominion. You are willing to take on my enemies?”

“I see an outcome from all this chaos where you rule the Dominion and maintain a favourable opinion of the Orion Syndicate if not a formal alliance. The future is uncertain but the riskier the road the greater the profit. If we kill that thing for you, then you’re the only Changeling left. The Jem’Hadar’s God. I need an answer.”

“I’m chewing your offer over.”

In the foreground the navigator has something important to say “Captain. That planet. It just broke the warp barrier. It’s chasing us… Warp Two, Warp Three… At that rate of acceleration, we’ve got ten minutes till it intercepts us and...”

Lars boldly returns to the central control chain trying not to convey the true wreck his body actually is… And maybe he won’t die in the next 3 days or so that it will take this alien crew to chart a course into human space with this behemoth following him like a down hill snack since it seems he only has ten minutes till his total destruction becomes completely unavoidable. Lars hedges his bets. “Whatever. I’m in. Desperate bedfellows and all.”

“Yes Captain.”
 
Part 46.

“When all 9 rings of hell’s sphincter broke loose with a “mighty twang” on Archer IV Ayelborne, and the Quarantine was declared land locking the runt Chancellor, as us humans were about to begin destroying the planet to get on top of the infection… Well, suddenly Gorkon’s 12 Klingon support ships were more than enough to see that no stupid humans would dare murder of the terrible ruler of the Klingon Empire… Even if he was still in short pants… Hells Claymare, even the mere threat, the inclined supposition of doing in the brat meant harm to us and meant war to them, and they love a good war and better still they love a bad reason for a good war. Peace, alliances, treaties be damned we were unwittingly hosting a regicide pure and simple, not too smart, even if the boy was just a proxy figurehead pushed and pulled with the promise of lollies and breast milk to curtail political favour and power between ancient piano teethed puppeteers. The Klingon fleet just let it wail and almost immediately felled two Federation Starships. Heavy Battle Cruisers even! Gone. In the first 30 seconds. What we had thought was nigh unstoppable was right then blowing in the solar wind. Quite the wake up call.” Our portly narrator took a moment to commiserate all the people he knew that were freeze dried by vacuum flash a couple light years behind them on the spacebattle-spcaefield they were accelerating away from at 400 and 80 times the speed of light. “It was a damn bad day to talk about trust and love.” After the fact also, he wonders where they keep the mop to tidy up his libation he just autonomically fed the deck plating? If you disregard his personality, then by his own pickled standards, this able-crewman here was being accommodating as a lord to these two fostered aliens he’d been forced to bunch up and co-habituate between in his shoebox sized quarters because of the rushed mass exodus during that fit the stormy Klingons had after the President was laid to rest, woken up and then shrank away into a fleck of spunk because they seemed like his kind of people after they’d opened almost a dozen bottles of this and that, who were ingenuously just about in love with every ridiculous word coming out of his fume spout maw because perhaps clinical insanity was a rare novelty where they come from? Filling up their mugs (and most of the carpet) for a hundredth time at the least, since he began rambling after they admitted they had become lost in the clutter of their immediate memories since they’d all bolted off Archer IV within an inch of their lives being cut short, that the two of them weren’t quite completely clear about the politics behind the actual tug and push of the main participants amok about ado…

“A bloke has to wonder how much more formidable the Klingon Warrior would be if it were not constantly shite-faced and inbred from excessive cousin-rape. In Starfleet, strong drink is an aberrant safety valve the authoritarians turn a blind eye to as long as most of the job gets done, so don’t think I’m a hypocrite just because I embody that exception… But how much more unstoppable might these grisly fuglies be if only they’d invent another convenience to help their drinking wich is slowing their killing like the half dozen other patents they stole from humans which they’d not had the genius to consider themselves: like perhaps “the cup holder”? If they had cup holders Claymare, I think it most likely they could fire twice as many torpedoes as they do now but still conveniently at twice as many targets as a sober person might notice, Oh, and they weren’t mad about the straw too, said it was for women, but the straw would turn their backward culture upside down, but red alert on the bridge of a Klingon D3 Warship is like a Bachelor Party anywhere else in the universe that the tactical officer might be whoring the kitchen staff while lobbing missiles at the enemy and singing. Worst improv ever. Gordon Bennet Ayelborne! It’s a wonder these buggers made it out of their middle ages without bringing more than feudal chivalry with them. God help us all… Because no one else will! You figured that out right? You know how we were in a death-sandwich that ships either side of us, less than 20 hours ago were reduced to flotsam and jetsam while we squeaked through because Admiral T’Pol was saving our bacon? They’re self sabotaging to a fault and call it honor since… Now there’s a woman I could take home to mum with a little pride, not that I go into the whole emotionless thing usually you understand, but power is sexy so I wouldn’t have any recriminations about sucking on the points of her ears for half an hour or so. You know what I’m talking about Claymare. Heh? That lady has been keeping the Federation intact since my grammy was in diapiers, how is that not a turn on? Then ther’re all those entirely nude paintings of her by that dead one armed bastard Malcolm Reed which started cropping up after his estate was returned to the state. Childless. Word is, is that not all of the series were drawn entirely from his imagination, that for a time they were…”

(Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp!)

“Ayelborne buddy you bite lemon and then lick the salt, and Claymare… Oh dear. Now I honestly don’t really know what you two are or where you’re from, because I wouldn’t rightly know that you weren’t human unless you hadn’t told me last night, so I’m blatantly presuming that you two enjoy the same rare bigotry as I do, to dislike any “people” who habitually attempt to eradicate you week in, week out, so try not to be insulted if I rant a little astray of polite with the xenophobia, to err is human, to forgive is divine… Whatever, let’s just say that I do not turn the other cheek, but any sort of space fleet your lot has, whatever level of technology, navy, armada, armaments… all the knobs and whistles… I bet you haven’t seen a put down like yesterday before, right? I haven’t seen a punch up like that since the battle of Cheron, but it was like “whoosh” and “ka-pow” and “boom” and frankly that Barney is going to be seen as mythic for the history books if it’s not going to be retroactively re-classified Ultimate Secret, for who knows what reasons, even though the Federation News Service seemed to tridocument most of the really choice explosions, it’s still quite sad how easily they can put genies back in bottles these days. Although, that’s not what’s got everyone talking. Fricking Nanite plague. Ridiculous twisted science fiction horse-hockey stealing the limelight, because 9 times out of ten when it came down to the final results, the primary brunt was a few dozen dogging ships the size of sky scrapers with their blundering phasers sneezing into each others shields until one side relented. Well not relented so much as melted, crushed and exploded because Klingons don’t surrender and Klingons don’t take prisoners, so playing fairly when it’s the mute vs. the deaf is just another way to get our viscera handed to us for Christmas gruel, but really it’s quite hard to figure out what’s fair in a fight to the death because you’re a moron if you’re left holding anything in reserve when your last breath hisses out past your teeth? Twelve D3 Heavy Battle Cruisers! Twelve bloody Warships just looking for an excuse to be a bastard, and as soon as that excuse reared up, they went bezerk. Human meat is a crude offal you can find in any butchers shop from one side of the Klingon empire to the other, so it’s not exactly as if they’re afraid of us (apparently they have no problem with us selling Klingon openly either, and welcome us trying to get some.) but that Terrorist funeral crasher Doc Soong (Prof Soong?) forced Enterprises hand to slap him with it’s big gun, spewing Pluto’s halitosis all too close to the remaining guests still trying to scarper, or enjoy the standoff crowing that “it was a good day to die”, barely a stones throw from the pinpointed focal locus of the impact ridge from the Enterprises dual phaser emitters (So maybe 50 yards away from where little L’ll Gorkon (they’re so cute when they’re young. Like hedgehogs.) playing soldier who was intent on earning himself some honor no matter the danger, who is by the way going to have a bitch of a sun tan for the rest of his life after being exposed to that much radiation) but apparently a near miss grazing that 5 year old rug biter we didn’t even know was nearly in the way is officially a failed death threat, which has some terminal legal ramifications and protocol, even if no one considered that he was in range when the fire order was given, so the Grand Chancellor’s honor guard in near orbit instantly gummed up the widest definition of the combat theatre with photonic spatial mines propelled into counterrevolution towards the rest of the guests parking orbits before they beamed down their own shock troops to secure their leader… I dread the day they figure out how to cloak something that small and explosivey Claymare, because half of Star Fleet is going to be shredded into steel confetti before we can get our head around a couter measure fot something so merciless, but that’s tomorrow’s war. Right now it was just thousands of warp jumps far too close to a gravity-well and pot shooting, as every bugger and their targ went looking for flank or weakness in the opposition. Or more honestly, the best weakness.”

They pass to the left, and drink.

“We’re fragile Ayelborne. Human consciousness is generally held together with an ounce less of balled snot and self-deception than is really needed to do the job proper, so there ain’t no-one one bad day away from a good snap you understand? Yes? Yes you do? No you don’t. Let me explain. Early on, during a meticulously violent (Paris Section) UESPA Sophist Department’s (Irish)-tearoom formal mixer with Starfleet Intelligence’s Over 40’s All-Star Volley Ball League (The Acronym is still in use, but currently they don’t play Volley ball at all.), the right collection of people had been finally been found who could suitably make it seem that black was white, or that maybe even that ultra-indigo was oblique-chartreuse, which is just spiffy since these were the twofaced typists tasked towards teletexting a treatise on a malevolent and irregular decision that was counterintuitive to everything which had come before, that alcoholism is good. Odd no? But honest injun, mere alcoholism is infinitely preferable to SPACE-CRAZINESS. Which it is. So considering the alternative, a fleet akin to bedlam, never fear that the Admiralty equalized the most extreme personalities the same way Wellington rallied an army of mostly Englishmen to stomp Napoleon, because even if everything seems Bristol fashion, spat on and scrubbed to a blinding gleam till every germ of a psychosis is wound tight into a scalpel on even the trimmest Starship in the Terran Fleet, there’s usually at least 10 blotto drunk red shirts who are otherwise self-medicating themselves from taking mutinous, treasonous, insurgent, immoral or unholy action as there’s otherwise an open recourse for taking advantage of a near inexhaustible supply of refabricated fleet brand alcohol in some corner of any Earth vessel where he or she can vent like the shrillest kettle running his or her mouth off about the last dozen clusterfucks well above his pay grade (that’s me Ayelborne.) to others who really don’t want to be included in such glad handed politics (That’s you.) and scotch breath (me again), rather than acting out with torpedo banks anointing themselves Emperor and pacifying frontier worlds (That’s Lord Garth, Master of the Universe. Not heard of him guys? O, he’s a right romantic bastard.) because the voices of their darker angels would’ve made a good case if their synapses weren’t firing at half mast… I must digress. The brass knobs needed that amoral public committee loaded with enough PHD’s and polit-o-judicial clout to rationalize well after the point, as to why they’d already decided that it is well preferable to have line crewmen falling asleep at their posts stinking of gin vomiting on billion billion credit consoles, rather than seeing these same prig sops butchering their fellow crewmen after some depressed metaphysical identity schism that limboed under the officially thorough psyche Academy evaluations because these spring loons weren’t then freshly thrown into the mouth of madness yet until after finally they met the depths of space where it was cold and scary and their brains couldn’t elasticate or accept so broad a universe stretching away in every direction when there wasn’t no “god” in plain sight, a god mind you Ayelborne, who they couldn’t find no matter how they anticipated they might trek deeper still into his heavens looking for her, since it was the journey which made them madder rather than the destination which was some finite diagnosis of interstellar finishing tape insanity… Or perhaps one of a million other excuses about how the weariness of space madness might insert itself seeming spontaneously into a bloody blood soaked epidemic blowing from one rotted out mind to the next during the first days of exploration and colonization like it were some living thinking malevolent parasite, which is exactly why I am utterly sauced on right now and don’t feel a lick of guilt.”

“Yesterday was a bitch Claymare.” This geyser visaged blathering human continued, kicking back another mug easily out pacing his houseguests. “You were there. We didn’t do anything, but those mangy freaking flea bags still tell stories to their snaggletooth children about how the pink skin Teran cowards stole their damn sexy head bumps, 7 bloody generations on (Klingons grow up quick. Claymare, a six-year-old Klingon is physically imposing enough to snap a water buffalo’s neck in a fair fight after fathering half a dozen litters from the slack kneed low land peasant-girls too drunk and mollified by poetry to throw furniture harder.) and they’re still galvanizing on like it was yesterday: To music! Loud terrible monstrous mad progressions into paranoia’s asshole and manic depres… If you can call Klingon Opera “music” with any conviction I’m a monkey’s (a lower primate.) uncle, but that’s why we forewent actual boarders with the Empire eventually after some idiot hunting parties got some bright ideas about embiggening their honor a touch past the joke, that we practically had no choice but dictate a massive and intractable tract it would take their best ships days to sneak across in plain sight allowing for layers of no-mans-lands full of duck blinds and pouncing points… Damn it Ayelborne, don’t look down your nose at me like that, The Klingon Neutral Zone is a terrific idea because there’s billions of them gingering the warpath only four days off at barely warp 5 thinking about us with the sort of lust that makes you wonder if you’re better off being food or a lover because they’ve been in space perfecting how to kill anything they can barbeque since Elizabeth I was put on the thrown. Bah! You can’t tell me that we’re too civilized to need something like the Neutral Zone Claymare, when we should be able to talk our problems with these animals out? Believe in them? Trust them? You can’t talk to animals and you can’t trust animals! Something had to give. It was becoming impossible to ignore each other, even if the Vulcans were making it worth their while. Peace during the first half of the 23rd century with the Klingons had only been secured by reaffirming (in blood) our firm commitment to turn our backs on the science of Eugenics since the former Vulcan Fleet, the very backbone of the mothball fleet was still bolstering the few warships built by and solely in control of the Federation at the time. We might have been promising them maniacs solemnly that we would never cut our genitalia off for all the redundancy that bloody document imposed, although it was nice not to worry about an invasion fleet from Qo’noS arriving suddenly for some unremembered (on our side of the fence, did I mention the effluatic screaming they pretend is a melody? Horrid, tritely spectacularly insultingly guttural impersonation of music.) slight, not that we trusted them to rationally keep their promises Claymare. All that aside, when the Chancellor of the Klingon High Council shows up to a Federation State Funeral with a retinue of 12 heavily armed Starships he hadn’t decided to mention to anyone planning the event, well parking issues were the least of everyone’s concerns Ayelborne. Though the Klingons laughed their asses off later when they were told that 12 ships was considered a threat to us humans hosting Johnny Archers Funeral. Conversely they also claimed they could put the entire Federation to the sword with just three. They laughed for about our fears for as many months as we tut-tutted over their pontification of the ridiculous. Drunk people do tend to laugh for an exaggerated period of time over “stuff” which isn’t funny at all and makes no damn sense (That would be me again.) and trust me for all I might say that half of us career military are spending most of our spare time drowning in the bottle: Klingons are always drunk and it’s basically a sign of weakness to suggest that they need sober wits to match any enemy they might find. Maybe these stinky space sasquatches were really laughing because one ship was enough to threaten a Terran and they were laughing hoarser that if they really wanted to make trouble they would have brought a lot more than 12 ships. See! Drunk! Drunker! No sense! If it weren’t for their birthrate Claymare they’d still be preindustrial. Too many fricking knuckle draggers per capita, but bugger me what an allotment of capita.”
 
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