Looks like the Bounty fantasy crew is losing its luster a little... Maybe the game needs a rewrite with more accurate reproductions... Thanks!! rbs
Star Trek: Bounty - 206 - "Any Resemblance to Actual Persons is Purely Coincidental"
- Thread starter BountyTrek
- Start date
Part Two (Cont'd)
“Now this is more like it!”
Denella called out her affirmation even as she slammed her elbow straight into the stomach of her opponent, causing them to stumble backwards in the fighting arena. The Orion followed up her latest attack with a sweep of her leg, which turned her opponent’s stumble into a full-on collapse to the ground.
For a second, she thought that would be enough. But her bikini-wearing adversary was evidently made of sterner stuff than her scandalous outfit suggested.
With a glint in her eye, the fake Denella sprang back up from the ground with cat-like grace, before charging at the other woman. Denella parried her attack, but not before her adversary was able to scratch her long nails down her arm, with enough force to draw blood.
She winced and spun away, cursing the way that her opponent seemed determined to drag this down into some sort of catfight.
As the latest head-to-head scrap raged on, Jirel suppressed a wince of his own where he sat at the periphery of the holographic fighting arena.
“This is not more like it,” he grumbled, as Natasha ran a dermal regenerator across an ugly welt on his face, “I thought the holosuite safeties were on.”
“They are,” the medic noted, “But they don’t stop you from getting hurt. Especially if you don’t keep your hands up.”
Jirel winced again. Partly from the pain, and partly from the attack on his fighting style.
The new game that Administrator Trolow had devised to settle their little legal dispute was somewhat less elegant than the previous one. In essence, instead of fighting crew versus crew out in space, they were now fighting one-on-one with their fictional doppelgangers. Jirel versus Jirel, Natasha versus Natasha, and so on. A best-of-five contest, with the first side to three wins being victorious.
The Trill had felt fairly confident about their chances when the terms of the game had been explained, despite some fresh complaints from the rest of the crew. But that confidence had evaporated as soon as the considerably more muscular version of him had unleashed a fearsome punch at his poorly-guarded face, sending him to the floor of the fighting arena almost immediately.
“Still,” he managed, as Natasha finished her treatment of his, in a way, self-inflicted injury, “At least you got it back to one-all.”
Natasha scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“Right. I didn’t even get to land a punch. As soon as we stepped into the ring, she just cried out for help and then fainted.”
Despite their situation, Jirel couldn’t help but allow a slight smirk to cross his face at the sight of Natasha’s sudden indignation.
“Well, you know, she’s the damsel in distress, after all—”
“I’m well aware of what she is,” she fired back, “And I really don’t want to talk about it, ok?”
With the Trill’s injuries treated, she packed away the small medkit that Trolow had furnished her with, as Jirel observed her demeanour and sensed that her powers of righteous indignation weren’t likely to be forgotten that easily.
“But,” he replied eventually, “You…do wanna talk about it quite a lot, right—?”
“Just watch the fight.”
“Can do.”
They returned their attention to the fighting arena, just in time to see the overall-clad Denella deliver the final act of the third part of the contest, catching the bikini-clad Denella as she leapt forwards with fingernails deployed, deflecting her attack and slamming her body to the canvas below.
With the fake Denella defeated, the real one stood over the unsavoury manifestation of the exact sort of slave girl fantasy she’d spent so long trying to escape from.
“Now,” she growled with palpable disdain, “Put some goddamn clothes on.”
As she stalked off to where Jirel, Natasha, Klath and Sunek were waiting, Administrator Trolow stepped into the arena. The lighting in the holosuite turned bright again, and the defeated fake Denella was spirited away by the computer.
“Well,” Trolow nodded, “That makes it two to you, and one to the creator—”
“You really don’t need to call me that,” Mazur sighed from where he slouched against the wall on the opposite side of the fighting arena to the Bounty’s crew.
“So that means,” Denella pointed out quickly, “We win one more fight and the program gets deleted, right?”
Trolow nodded in affirmation, as Mazur scowled.
“And so,” the Wadi man continued, “Let the game continue!”
He stepped away from the arena again, just as the lights dimmed and the stoic form of the Starship Bounty’s take on Sunek shimmered into existence inside the ring.
“Hah!” the real Sunek piped up, stepping forwards and turning back to the gaggle of Bounty crewmembers, “And I’m gonna be the one that wins it for us. So suck on that, losers!”
“He is aware that we’re all on the same team here, right?” Natasha muttered to Jirel.
“Sunek, just be careful, ok?” Denella offered, “Don’t get cocky.”
“Cocky? Moi?” the Vulcan replied with an affected air of innocence, as he took a backwards step towards the arena, “Impossible!”
He took another step backwards as his colleagues gave him a litany of differing glares that strongly suggested they weren’t buying that claim.
‘Come on, trust me,” he continued as he stepped inside the fighting arena proper, “That lame version of me is just a dumb robe-wearing stereotype. There’s no way he can handle my—”
Having stepped too close to his silent adversary during his backwards journey, he was silenced by an immediate neck pinch from the robe-wearing version of Sunek. In an instant, he slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“Intriguing,” the robe-wearing Sunek noted with a raised eyebrow.
“Ha!” Mazur called out in glee, “And that squares it up again!”
Jirel, Natasha and Denella stared dumbfoundedly at the slumped form of their pilot on the ground, even as the other version of Sunek vanished as quickly as he had shimmered into existence.
Then, the three of them turned to the one remaining bullet in their gun.
“Well, buddy,” Jirel shrugged, “Guess it’s all down to you.”
Klath felt the blood lust inside him rising, as he stepped into the ring with a growl…
****************************
Two hours later, Klath was still growling.
As was Klath.
The other Bounty crew members, including the conscious-again Sunek, along with Mazur and Trolow on the other side of the arena, were starting to get distinctly bored, as the deciding bout in their fighting tournament entered its third hour.
While Klath’s opponent was a mute, eight foot tall killing machine clad in impenetrable armour, Klath himself was still Klath. And as such, he wasn’t backing down.
He was assisted in his efforts by the holosuite’s safeties. Which, as Jirel had painfully discovered, couldn’t entirely prevent injury, but still guarded against serious ones. Meaning that neither version of Klath was able to land the requisite strength of blow to end the fight. All Klath had to do was endure the pain of each fresh blow to his aching body. And he was doing that with a warrior’s style.
He roared again as he thundered his entire body into the vast torso of the monstrous fictional Klath, using all his remaining strength to push him backwards towards the ground. But the beastly Klath managed to keep its footing, and swatted the real Klath away with a huge swing of his gigantic arm.
Klath went flying across the fighting arena, snapping several more minor bones as he did so. But he gritted his teeth against the fresh rush of pain and forced himself back to his feet with a roar of defiance, even as his opponent charged him.
The original Klath saw this latest attack, but as he had done several times in the fight already, he used his adversary’s rather slow sensibilities against himself. He braced for a second, and then dived out of the way just as the attack arrived, leaving the monster to slam into the ground instead, accompanied by a fresh roar of pain.
On the sidelines, despite the fight that was still rampaging on, and what was at stake on the outcome of it, the audience were tiring significantly faster than the two fighters were.
“I mean, I still definitely want Klath to win,” Jirel offered, “But at this point…I just want it to end.”
“It’s the holosuite safeties,” Denella sighed as she kept her attention on the fight, “It means he can’t actually get injured seriously enough to lose. Which means he just has to endure the pain.”
“And Klingons can endure a hell of a lot of pain,” Natasha nodded.
A fresh bellowed roar from the Bounty’s weapons chief from inside the area succinctly confirmed that statement.
“I mean,” Sunek added, “I don’t think neck pinches should even be allowed in this sort of fight. It’s just unfair, y’know?”
It was far from the first time that Sunek had voiced his unhappiness with the manner of his defeat since he had regained consciousness. But it was an argument that continued to fall on a gaggle of unsympathetic ears.
Jirel broke his attention away from the never-ending Klath versus Klath encounter to glance over at his pilot.
“You…do know how to do one of those neck pinch things, don’t you?”
Sunek momentarily looked a little flustered, before recovering enough of his confidence to respond.
“Psh. Does this Vulcan know how to do a Vulcan neck pinch? What a dumb question.”
“Ok,” Jirel mused, “It’s just…I’ve known you for a long time now, and I can’t actually remember seeing you do one of those.”
“No, me neither,” Denella chimed in.
“Nor me,” Natasha added.
“Wha—? Well, of course I don’t normally do them! Because when I fight, I fight fair!”
There was a long, knowing pause, punctuated only by the further roars and crashes from inside the fighting arena next to them.
“So,” Jirel offered eventually, “You can definitely—?”
“Oh, I can neck pinch, buddy. You wanna get neck pinched? Cos I’ll neck pinch all of you, right now! Just form an orderly—!”
The Vulcan’s defensiveness was interrupted by a loud klaxon that echoed all around the holographic arena. It was loud enough to cause both versions of Klath to pause, mid-grapple.
Seconds later, the eight-foot armoured Klath shimmered out of existence, leaving the real Klath grappling with thin air.
Another second later, Administrator Trolow stepped into the arena from the other side of the room and shook his head.
“This game is proving…inconclusive,” the Wadi said with a sad shake of his head.
“Not to mention boring!” Mazur called out from behind him.
“And so,” Trolow continued, “As the arbiter, I am forced to declare this entire contest a draw!”
This was enough to cause Mazur to pace over to the administrator’s side, looking annoyed.
“Now hang on, a draw? So all of that was completely pointless?”
“And it wasn’t a draw,” Sunek argued, “Cos my guy didn’t fight fair, so he should be disqualified from the whole—”
“Shut up, Sunek,” Denella cut in, “But…what now?”
There was a pause as Trolow considered the situation. Then, a wider smile crossed the Wadi’s face as he came to a fresh realisation.
“Ah, but of course! The right game was here in front of us all this time!”
“I don’t understand,” Jirel responded dumbly.
Trolow tapped a small controller in his hand. In an instant, the entire arena disappeared, replaced with the more familiar confines of the holosuite grid itself. Except for one wall, where a huge advertisement remained in place. The same advertisement depicting the fictional Starship Bounty crew that they had first seen some hours ago.
Advertising their latest ‘epic’ adventure. Captain Jirel and The Quest for the Stone of Unity.
Trolow gestured to the advert with satisfaction.
“The perfect game. Bring me…the Stone of Unity!”
End of Part Two
“Now this is more like it!”
Denella called out her affirmation even as she slammed her elbow straight into the stomach of her opponent, causing them to stumble backwards in the fighting arena. The Orion followed up her latest attack with a sweep of her leg, which turned her opponent’s stumble into a full-on collapse to the ground.
For a second, she thought that would be enough. But her bikini-wearing adversary was evidently made of sterner stuff than her scandalous outfit suggested.
With a glint in her eye, the fake Denella sprang back up from the ground with cat-like grace, before charging at the other woman. Denella parried her attack, but not before her adversary was able to scratch her long nails down her arm, with enough force to draw blood.
She winced and spun away, cursing the way that her opponent seemed determined to drag this down into some sort of catfight.
As the latest head-to-head scrap raged on, Jirel suppressed a wince of his own where he sat at the periphery of the holographic fighting arena.
“This is not more like it,” he grumbled, as Natasha ran a dermal regenerator across an ugly welt on his face, “I thought the holosuite safeties were on.”
“They are,” the medic noted, “But they don’t stop you from getting hurt. Especially if you don’t keep your hands up.”
Jirel winced again. Partly from the pain, and partly from the attack on his fighting style.
The new game that Administrator Trolow had devised to settle their little legal dispute was somewhat less elegant than the previous one. In essence, instead of fighting crew versus crew out in space, they were now fighting one-on-one with their fictional doppelgangers. Jirel versus Jirel, Natasha versus Natasha, and so on. A best-of-five contest, with the first side to three wins being victorious.
The Trill had felt fairly confident about their chances when the terms of the game had been explained, despite some fresh complaints from the rest of the crew. But that confidence had evaporated as soon as the considerably more muscular version of him had unleashed a fearsome punch at his poorly-guarded face, sending him to the floor of the fighting arena almost immediately.
“Still,” he managed, as Natasha finished her treatment of his, in a way, self-inflicted injury, “At least you got it back to one-all.”
Natasha scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“Right. I didn’t even get to land a punch. As soon as we stepped into the ring, she just cried out for help and then fainted.”
Despite their situation, Jirel couldn’t help but allow a slight smirk to cross his face at the sight of Natasha’s sudden indignation.
“Well, you know, she’s the damsel in distress, after all—”
“I’m well aware of what she is,” she fired back, “And I really don’t want to talk about it, ok?”
With the Trill’s injuries treated, she packed away the small medkit that Trolow had furnished her with, as Jirel observed her demeanour and sensed that her powers of righteous indignation weren’t likely to be forgotten that easily.
“But,” he replied eventually, “You…do wanna talk about it quite a lot, right—?”
“Just watch the fight.”
“Can do.”
They returned their attention to the fighting arena, just in time to see the overall-clad Denella deliver the final act of the third part of the contest, catching the bikini-clad Denella as she leapt forwards with fingernails deployed, deflecting her attack and slamming her body to the canvas below.
With the fake Denella defeated, the real one stood over the unsavoury manifestation of the exact sort of slave girl fantasy she’d spent so long trying to escape from.
“Now,” she growled with palpable disdain, “Put some goddamn clothes on.”
As she stalked off to where Jirel, Natasha, Klath and Sunek were waiting, Administrator Trolow stepped into the arena. The lighting in the holosuite turned bright again, and the defeated fake Denella was spirited away by the computer.
“Well,” Trolow nodded, “That makes it two to you, and one to the creator—”
“You really don’t need to call me that,” Mazur sighed from where he slouched against the wall on the opposite side of the fighting arena to the Bounty’s crew.
“So that means,” Denella pointed out quickly, “We win one more fight and the program gets deleted, right?”
Trolow nodded in affirmation, as Mazur scowled.
“And so,” the Wadi man continued, “Let the game continue!”
He stepped away from the arena again, just as the lights dimmed and the stoic form of the Starship Bounty’s take on Sunek shimmered into existence inside the ring.
“Hah!” the real Sunek piped up, stepping forwards and turning back to the gaggle of Bounty crewmembers, “And I’m gonna be the one that wins it for us. So suck on that, losers!”
“He is aware that we’re all on the same team here, right?” Natasha muttered to Jirel.
“Sunek, just be careful, ok?” Denella offered, “Don’t get cocky.”
“Cocky? Moi?” the Vulcan replied with an affected air of innocence, as he took a backwards step towards the arena, “Impossible!”
He took another step backwards as his colleagues gave him a litany of differing glares that strongly suggested they weren’t buying that claim.
‘Come on, trust me,” he continued as he stepped inside the fighting arena proper, “That lame version of me is just a dumb robe-wearing stereotype. There’s no way he can handle my—”
Having stepped too close to his silent adversary during his backwards journey, he was silenced by an immediate neck pinch from the robe-wearing version of Sunek. In an instant, he slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“Intriguing,” the robe-wearing Sunek noted with a raised eyebrow.
“Ha!” Mazur called out in glee, “And that squares it up again!”
Jirel, Natasha and Denella stared dumbfoundedly at the slumped form of their pilot on the ground, even as the other version of Sunek vanished as quickly as he had shimmered into existence.
Then, the three of them turned to the one remaining bullet in their gun.
“Well, buddy,” Jirel shrugged, “Guess it’s all down to you.”
Klath felt the blood lust inside him rising, as he stepped into the ring with a growl…
****************************
Two hours later, Klath was still growling.
As was Klath.
The other Bounty crew members, including the conscious-again Sunek, along with Mazur and Trolow on the other side of the arena, were starting to get distinctly bored, as the deciding bout in their fighting tournament entered its third hour.
While Klath’s opponent was a mute, eight foot tall killing machine clad in impenetrable armour, Klath himself was still Klath. And as such, he wasn’t backing down.
He was assisted in his efforts by the holosuite’s safeties. Which, as Jirel had painfully discovered, couldn’t entirely prevent injury, but still guarded against serious ones. Meaning that neither version of Klath was able to land the requisite strength of blow to end the fight. All Klath had to do was endure the pain of each fresh blow to his aching body. And he was doing that with a warrior’s style.
He roared again as he thundered his entire body into the vast torso of the monstrous fictional Klath, using all his remaining strength to push him backwards towards the ground. But the beastly Klath managed to keep its footing, and swatted the real Klath away with a huge swing of his gigantic arm.
Klath went flying across the fighting arena, snapping several more minor bones as he did so. But he gritted his teeth against the fresh rush of pain and forced himself back to his feet with a roar of defiance, even as his opponent charged him.
The original Klath saw this latest attack, but as he had done several times in the fight already, he used his adversary’s rather slow sensibilities against himself. He braced for a second, and then dived out of the way just as the attack arrived, leaving the monster to slam into the ground instead, accompanied by a fresh roar of pain.
On the sidelines, despite the fight that was still rampaging on, and what was at stake on the outcome of it, the audience were tiring significantly faster than the two fighters were.
“I mean, I still definitely want Klath to win,” Jirel offered, “But at this point…I just want it to end.”
“It’s the holosuite safeties,” Denella sighed as she kept her attention on the fight, “It means he can’t actually get injured seriously enough to lose. Which means he just has to endure the pain.”
“And Klingons can endure a hell of a lot of pain,” Natasha nodded.
A fresh bellowed roar from the Bounty’s weapons chief from inside the area succinctly confirmed that statement.
“I mean,” Sunek added, “I don’t think neck pinches should even be allowed in this sort of fight. It’s just unfair, y’know?”
It was far from the first time that Sunek had voiced his unhappiness with the manner of his defeat since he had regained consciousness. But it was an argument that continued to fall on a gaggle of unsympathetic ears.
Jirel broke his attention away from the never-ending Klath versus Klath encounter to glance over at his pilot.
“You…do know how to do one of those neck pinch things, don’t you?”
Sunek momentarily looked a little flustered, before recovering enough of his confidence to respond.
“Psh. Does this Vulcan know how to do a Vulcan neck pinch? What a dumb question.”
“Ok,” Jirel mused, “It’s just…I’ve known you for a long time now, and I can’t actually remember seeing you do one of those.”
“No, me neither,” Denella chimed in.
“Nor me,” Natasha added.
“Wha—? Well, of course I don’t normally do them! Because when I fight, I fight fair!”
There was a long, knowing pause, punctuated only by the further roars and crashes from inside the fighting arena next to them.
“So,” Jirel offered eventually, “You can definitely—?”
“Oh, I can neck pinch, buddy. You wanna get neck pinched? Cos I’ll neck pinch all of you, right now! Just form an orderly—!”
The Vulcan’s defensiveness was interrupted by a loud klaxon that echoed all around the holographic arena. It was loud enough to cause both versions of Klath to pause, mid-grapple.
Seconds later, the eight-foot armoured Klath shimmered out of existence, leaving the real Klath grappling with thin air.
Another second later, Administrator Trolow stepped into the arena from the other side of the room and shook his head.
“This game is proving…inconclusive,” the Wadi said with a sad shake of his head.
“Not to mention boring!” Mazur called out from behind him.
“And so,” Trolow continued, “As the arbiter, I am forced to declare this entire contest a draw!”
This was enough to cause Mazur to pace over to the administrator’s side, looking annoyed.
“Now hang on, a draw? So all of that was completely pointless?”
“And it wasn’t a draw,” Sunek argued, “Cos my guy didn’t fight fair, so he should be disqualified from the whole—”
“Shut up, Sunek,” Denella cut in, “But…what now?”
There was a pause as Trolow considered the situation. Then, a wider smile crossed the Wadi’s face as he came to a fresh realisation.
“Ah, but of course! The right game was here in front of us all this time!”
“I don’t understand,” Jirel responded dumbly.
Trolow tapped a small controller in his hand. In an instant, the entire arena disappeared, replaced with the more familiar confines of the holosuite grid itself. Except for one wall, where a huge advertisement remained in place. The same advertisement depicting the fictional Starship Bounty crew that they had first seen some hours ago.
Advertising their latest ‘epic’ adventure. Captain Jirel and The Quest for the Stone of Unity.
Trolow gestured to the advert with satisfaction.
“The perfect game. Bring me…the Stone of Unity!”
End of Part Two
I can see the lightning scar on Jirel's forehead now... Thanks!! rbs
Part Three
“This is an even stupider idea.”
It was the sort of refrain that Jirel was used to hearing since they had arrived on Markon V, and one that remained objectively accurate. But equally, it remained one he felt he had no choice to ignore.
“Hey,” he shrugged back at Natasha, “At least this time we know exactly what we need to do.”
He looked around the table in the Bounty’s dining area at the nonplussed faces of Klath, Natasha and Denella as they finished their respective breakfasts and continued to debate the latest plan to win back their likenesses from Martus Mazur’s holosuite program.
Administrator Trolow had run through the rules for the latest ‘game’ before they had called things a night and headed back to the Bounty to rest. They would be playing the Captain Jirel and The Quest for the Stone of Unity holosuite adventure alongside the fictional, computer-controlled crew. Both with the same goal in mind, to secure the Stone of Unity and return it to the designated winning point in the game.
That was it. First one back to base with the prize won.
Still, while the plan seemed straightforward, it was clear that it wasn’t popular.
“I am tired of these…games,” Klath growled, now patched up after his epic encounter with his opposite number in the fighting arena the previous evening.
“Hey now,” Jirel argued back, “You liked the last one, right? So did you, Denella.”
The Orion woman sighed and shook her head, recalling her own fight with the scantily-clad Orion from the Captain Jirel game.
“It was therapeutic. But it wasn’t fun. None of this is. I’m not sure you’re getting how much I hate that…depiction of Orions. The sort of thing everyone thinks about when they see the green skin.”
“I just can’t believe that sort of fantasy still exists,” Natasha sighed sympathetically, “Now we know so much more about the Syndicate.”
“It’s always there,” Denella shrugged, “People find any excuse to live out the fantasy. You know, centuries ago, when they first stumbled across the slave girl trade, even humans had a theory that Orion women actually controlled the men using pheromones. That they were somehow willing participants in everything that was happening to them.”
“Um,” Jirel replied, scrunching his nose up, “That…doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. But I guess people don’t worry about that so long as they can enjoy their little slave girl fantasies. Guess there’s nothing weird about enjoying that if you’ve convinced yourself that the girls are doing it of their own volition.”
Jirel, Natasha and Klath pondered this in silence for a moment, as Denella pushed several unhappy memories from her years in the Syndicate to the back of her mind.
“Either way,” she concluded with a firm nod, “I really want that program gone.”
“We all do,” Natasha affirmed, “But I still think this is an even stupider idea.”
Jirel grimaced and attempted a further act of defence.
“It’s not a—”
“Yeah, it is.”
The foursome at the table turned to see Sunek idly walking into the room carrying a padd. He ordered his own breakfast from the Bounty’s replicator before joining them.
“Nice of you to join us,” Jirel noted, “Alarm not go off?”
“What?” the Vulcan replied with confusion, “No, I’ve been awake for ages. Thought I’d take a look at exactly how stupid this new idea is.”
He waved the padd for emphasis. Now it was the turn of the others to look confused.
“What do you mean?” Klath eventually grunted.
“Well,” Sunek continued through crunches of toasted saffir bread, “Seeing as none of you thought to bother, I decided to take a closer look at this dumb Captain Jirel series. Read some reviews, news articles, that sort of thing. And it’s not good news.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Denella pressed.
“It means that, as dumb and two-dimensional as the characters are, this is still a money-spinning holosuite program. Which means that something as easy as ‘find the Stone of Unity’ involves going through a million different twists and turns and side quests. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up wasting hours getting nowhere while that robe-wearing idiot and his buddies are racing to the finish line.”
Jirel felt his spots start to itch as he felt the eyes of the others returning to him with fresh accusatory glares.
“But,” he tried, “It can’t be that hard to figure out, surely? It’s just a holosuite program.”
“It’s a holosuite program that’s made Markon V a ton of latinum,” Sunek pointed out, “You don’t do those kinds of numbers if everyone’s completing it in one go.”
“And our…opponents will know this whole thing inside and out,” Natasha pointed out, “While we won’t know what we’re doing.”
“We never know what we are doing,” Klath grunted unhappily.
“Exactly,” Jirel nodded.
“He didn’t mean that as a compliment—” Denella began.
“I know. But I’m taking it as one. Cos we always get through these things, right? Hell, since we’ve all been one crew, we’ve seen off angry Jem'Hadar, Vulcan cults, Nimbosian cowboys, murderous Pakleds, a huge mugato—”
“Wasn’t a mugato,” Sunek called out. *
“—time-travelling cranks and all the rest of it, right?”
“Hmm,” Natasha mused as she drained her raktajino, “When you put it all like that, it almost sounds like we’re the ones in the badly written holosuite program…”
After a short, awkward pause, Jirel continued his best stab at a heroic captain’s speech to his crew, standing up from his seat as he did so.
“Well, we got through every one of those adventures, and we’re gonna get through this one as well, I can tell. That Stone of Unity is ours!”
His impromptu speech at an end, he was a little unhappy at the palpable lack of a response it seemed to get from his small audience.
“You gonna pop your shirt off for an encore, Captain Jirel,” Sunek guffawed.
Jirel’s heroic stance wilted slightly.
“Well,” Natasha sighed, “As confident as I’m sure that little display has made us all, I feel like we need a…Plan B.”
“We’ve still got my ‘photon torpedo to the computer core’ idea,” Denella pointed out, only slightly in mirthless jest.
“Tell you what we do need,” Sunek offered as he crunched down on his final bite of food, “Someone who knows the ins and outs of the whole program. So we don’t get any nasty surprises.”
At this, Jirel’s face lit up a little more, as a new idea formed in his head.
“Actually, that’s a good point,” he nodded, “And we might have a way of getting just that…”
As the Trill smiled knowingly, the unimpressed looks made a swift return around the rest of the table.
* - Sunek's right. It wasn't a mugato.
“This is an even stupider idea.”
It was the sort of refrain that Jirel was used to hearing since they had arrived on Markon V, and one that remained objectively accurate. But equally, it remained one he felt he had no choice to ignore.
“Hey,” he shrugged back at Natasha, “At least this time we know exactly what we need to do.”
He looked around the table in the Bounty’s dining area at the nonplussed faces of Klath, Natasha and Denella as they finished their respective breakfasts and continued to debate the latest plan to win back their likenesses from Martus Mazur’s holosuite program.
Administrator Trolow had run through the rules for the latest ‘game’ before they had called things a night and headed back to the Bounty to rest. They would be playing the Captain Jirel and The Quest for the Stone of Unity holosuite adventure alongside the fictional, computer-controlled crew. Both with the same goal in mind, to secure the Stone of Unity and return it to the designated winning point in the game.
That was it. First one back to base with the prize won.
Still, while the plan seemed straightforward, it was clear that it wasn’t popular.
“I am tired of these…games,” Klath growled, now patched up after his epic encounter with his opposite number in the fighting arena the previous evening.
“Hey now,” Jirel argued back, “You liked the last one, right? So did you, Denella.”
The Orion woman sighed and shook her head, recalling her own fight with the scantily-clad Orion from the Captain Jirel game.
“It was therapeutic. But it wasn’t fun. None of this is. I’m not sure you’re getting how much I hate that…depiction of Orions. The sort of thing everyone thinks about when they see the green skin.”
“I just can’t believe that sort of fantasy still exists,” Natasha sighed sympathetically, “Now we know so much more about the Syndicate.”
“It’s always there,” Denella shrugged, “People find any excuse to live out the fantasy. You know, centuries ago, when they first stumbled across the slave girl trade, even humans had a theory that Orion women actually controlled the men using pheromones. That they were somehow willing participants in everything that was happening to them.”
“Um,” Jirel replied, scrunching his nose up, “That…doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. But I guess people don’t worry about that so long as they can enjoy their little slave girl fantasies. Guess there’s nothing weird about enjoying that if you’ve convinced yourself that the girls are doing it of their own volition.”
Jirel, Natasha and Klath pondered this in silence for a moment, as Denella pushed several unhappy memories from her years in the Syndicate to the back of her mind.
“Either way,” she concluded with a firm nod, “I really want that program gone.”
“We all do,” Natasha affirmed, “But I still think this is an even stupider idea.”
Jirel grimaced and attempted a further act of defence.
“It’s not a—”
“Yeah, it is.”
The foursome at the table turned to see Sunek idly walking into the room carrying a padd. He ordered his own breakfast from the Bounty’s replicator before joining them.
“Nice of you to join us,” Jirel noted, “Alarm not go off?”
“What?” the Vulcan replied with confusion, “No, I’ve been awake for ages. Thought I’d take a look at exactly how stupid this new idea is.”
He waved the padd for emphasis. Now it was the turn of the others to look confused.
“What do you mean?” Klath eventually grunted.
“Well,” Sunek continued through crunches of toasted saffir bread, “Seeing as none of you thought to bother, I decided to take a closer look at this dumb Captain Jirel series. Read some reviews, news articles, that sort of thing. And it’s not good news.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Denella pressed.
“It means that, as dumb and two-dimensional as the characters are, this is still a money-spinning holosuite program. Which means that something as easy as ‘find the Stone of Unity’ involves going through a million different twists and turns and side quests. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up wasting hours getting nowhere while that robe-wearing idiot and his buddies are racing to the finish line.”
Jirel felt his spots start to itch as he felt the eyes of the others returning to him with fresh accusatory glares.
“But,” he tried, “It can’t be that hard to figure out, surely? It’s just a holosuite program.”
“It’s a holosuite program that’s made Markon V a ton of latinum,” Sunek pointed out, “You don’t do those kinds of numbers if everyone’s completing it in one go.”
“And our…opponents will know this whole thing inside and out,” Natasha pointed out, “While we won’t know what we’re doing.”
“We never know what we are doing,” Klath grunted unhappily.
“Exactly,” Jirel nodded.
“He didn’t mean that as a compliment—” Denella began.
“I know. But I’m taking it as one. Cos we always get through these things, right? Hell, since we’ve all been one crew, we’ve seen off angry Jem'Hadar, Vulcan cults, Nimbosian cowboys, murderous Pakleds, a huge mugato—”
“Wasn’t a mugato,” Sunek called out. *
“—time-travelling cranks and all the rest of it, right?”
“Hmm,” Natasha mused as she drained her raktajino, “When you put it all like that, it almost sounds like we’re the ones in the badly written holosuite program…”
After a short, awkward pause, Jirel continued his best stab at a heroic captain’s speech to his crew, standing up from his seat as he did so.
“Well, we got through every one of those adventures, and we’re gonna get through this one as well, I can tell. That Stone of Unity is ours!”
His impromptu speech at an end, he was a little unhappy at the palpable lack of a response it seemed to get from his small audience.
“You gonna pop your shirt off for an encore, Captain Jirel,” Sunek guffawed.
Jirel’s heroic stance wilted slightly.
“Well,” Natasha sighed, “As confident as I’m sure that little display has made us all, I feel like we need a…Plan B.”
“We’ve still got my ‘photon torpedo to the computer core’ idea,” Denella pointed out, only slightly in mirthless jest.
“Tell you what we do need,” Sunek offered as he crunched down on his final bite of food, “Someone who knows the ins and outs of the whole program. So we don’t get any nasty surprises.”
At this, Jirel’s face lit up a little more, as a new idea formed in his head.
“Actually, that’s a good point,” he nodded, “And we might have a way of getting just that…”
As the Trill smiled knowingly, the unimpressed looks made a swift return around the rest of the table.
* - Sunek's right. It wasn't a mugato.
Looks like Jirel has a plan.
Now they're in real trouble...
Thanks!! rbs
Now they're in real trouble...
Thanks!! rbs
Part Three (Cont'd)
The trio of Wadi teenagers stared back at the Bounty's crew with profound confusion.
Today was proving to be almost as surreal as yesterday. Except, this time it was their heroes that had eagerly tracked them down. Calla, Devro and Jarro had been mooching around the Markon City promenade when they had been confronted by the familiar figures, who had asked them to join them at a local cafe.
Now, over a round of raktajinos and sodas, they were slowly coming to terms with what they were hearing.
“You want our help?” Calla managed eventually.
“Y—You?” Devro stressed, “Want…our help?”
“Very much so,” Jirel nodded back across the table, “We need the people who know Captain Jirel and the Starship Bounty better than anyone. And that seems to be you.”
He gestured to them with as supportive a smile as he could, but the reactions of the three Wadi seemed to suggest he wasn’t getting through to them. He quickly turned to the other Bounty crewmembers for some additional support.
“Right guys? We need them, don’t we? Remember…what’s at stake here…”
That final comment seemed to galvanise the others, reminding them that as much as they disliked this latest facet to their situation, they very much needed to win. Whatever it took to do so.
Jirel motioned to Klath, who stifled a grimace and glared across the table at Calla. Despite his rather brusque response to her during their previous meeting, she had still spent most of the conversation so far staring in awe at her hero.
“Jirel is right,” he offered eventually, “Your assistance would be…appreciated.”
This seemed to settle the debate as far as the Wadi girl was concerned. And, not for the first time, she took the lead in their side of the discussion.
“Ok. So…what do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Natasha replied, “We’re, um, very interested in the game, you understand. The characters, the rules, any tips or tricks—”
“The exact location of this ‘Stone of Unity’ thing,” Sunek added, “Anything, really.”
After a glance at her friends, Calla shrugged and began.
“Well, I guess we could start from the top. So, um, Captain Jirel is the estranged prince of an ancient Trill kingdom…”
The real Jirel felt several knowing glances being sent his way. He mustered a shrug.
“Hey, I’m an orphan, remember. It’s not impossible—”
“It is,” Denella sighed, nodding at Calla, “Please, carry on. I have a feeling that if we stop every time you say something impossible, we’re gonna be here a while.”
“Um,” Calla continued, “Klath is a genetically engineered warrior from an alternative future timeline…”
This equally impossible explanation was met with a stony silence from the grumpy Klingon.
“…Sunek is an exiled Vulcan mystic with the secrets of the galaxy inside his mind…”
“Not a million miles away from the truth—”
“Shut up, Sunek,” Natasha patiently sighed.
Calla paused and glanced over at Denella, who tensed up at the fresh attention.
“Um,” the Wadi girl continued, “Denella is…a bit of a mystery, I guess. There’s a lot of theories flying around with the fans about her real character.”
“Personally,” Jarro jumped in excitedly, “I think she’s a double agent from the Orion Syndicate. Sent to infiltrate the crew and…seduce them for information.”
“Why?” Jirel asked.
“Um,” Jarro responded, a little more sheepishly, “I…haven’t worked that out yet.”
“But she’s also an engineering genius,” Calla offered, “She’s the best character to have around to break into any enemy ship’s systems. And she designed the entire Starship Bounty herself. Including her…BRL.”
Denella sighed even more deeply and forced herself to ask the obvious question that she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to.
“BRL…?”
“Bikini Replicator Link-up,” Jarro answered, a little too enthusiastically, “Designed to equip her with any one of sixteen pre-programmed bikini designs.”
“Right,” the real Denella simmered through gritted teeth, “How fun for her.”
Jarro shrank back from his own favourite character, as Natasha reluctantly spoke up.
“And what about me?” she sighed in preparation for the inevitable, “What’s my character’s big stupid backstory, hmm?”
The three Wadi teenagers glanced at each other. Then, after a suitably awkward pause, Calla looked back at the doctor and shrugged again.
“Actually…we kinda assumed your character wasn’t based on a real person. We thought the writers felt like they needed another female character, so they just…improvised.”
“Y—Yeah,” Devro added, “All Natasha really does is drop a load of exposition to set up the story and then kinda just…gets kidnapped.”
If Klath and Denella’s unhappy looks hadn’t been strong enough, Natasha’s own glare managed to beat them both.
“Actually,” Calla added, “The feedback from players was apparently really bad early on. But then in Adventure Seven: The Revenge of the Deltan Love Spell, the writers put you in that catsuit, and…the complaints kinda dried up.”
Natasha found herself beating her own record for unhappy looks almost as soon as she had set the new benchmark.
Despite their situation, Jirel couldn’t help but break into a cheeky smile.
“You know—” he began.
“Jirel,” Natasha growled back, “Don’t. If you value your life, just…don’t.”
The Trill didn’t. Instead, he wiped the grin from his face and turned back to the Wadi sitting across from him.
“So, that’s the characters,” Devro concluded, “I—I guess Captain Jirel is still the most popular one to play as. But a lot of people now prefer Klath since they introduced some more fluid attack moves in the last major update.”
“Fascinating,” the Klingon muttered.
“I think we need more,” Jirel said a little more supportively, “Like…what is this Stone of Unity? And what’s the best way to…get it?”
“That depends,” Jarro shrugged, “Are you playing mission-based, or open-world?”
Jirel stared blankly back at the Wadi. Sunek sighed and jumped in.
“Open-world,” the Vulcan answered, nodding at Jirel, “Not that this idiot would know the difference.”
“Hmm,” Jarro mused, “That makes things harder to explain.”
“Why?” Klath grunted.
“Because the easiest route depends on the initial scenario, which is always randomly generated. If you go mission-based, you have the same checkpoints to pass. But open-world can go in any direction the program wants to go.”
“Great,” Natasha sighed, “So we’re screwed.”
Another awkward pause descended. Eventually, Devro offered a thought.
“Um…I—I guess, if you really want our help, there’s something we could do.”
“What’s that?” Jirel asked.
“W—Well, if we know which holosuite you’re in, then we could tap into the audio controls and communicate with you directly. Maybe…give you some tips?”
Jirel instinctively looked over to his engineer to gauge whether that plan was feasible or not, given his own relative lack of knowledge in that area.
“It’s possible,” the Orion woman shrugged back, “So long as they knew the audio frequencies of the holosuite. How come you know about that?”
Devro suddenly found himself under the intense gaze of the Orion engineer, rather than vice versa, and he shrank back in his seat. In the absence of a response from him, Calla rolled her eyes and stepped in.
“Devro’s done that before, when some of our other friends have been playing. He’s getting serious with these little engineering projects."
Denella continued to regard the Wadi, her expression softening slightly.
“I—I guess,” he managed eventually, “I just think it's all…kinda cool.”
“Huh,” Sunek grinned, gesturing at Denella, “See? You’ve got something in common after all. You’re both huge nerds.”
Denella ignored the predictable jibe, and nodded back at the young Wadi boy.
“Well…I guess that could work then. Thanks.”
Devro mustered a hopeful smile back at her. And she was forced to begrudgingly appreciate the fact that, for the first time since they had met, he was doing his utmost to maintain eye contact.
“Ok, perfect,” Jirel nodded, “Sounds like we’ve got ourselves a plan. So, let’s go, my brave and fearless crew.”
He stood from the table and flashed a grin at the others, even as they shook their heads in his direction.
“Um, one more thing,” Calla piped up as the Bounty’s crew began to leave, “Why are you so determined to do well in the program?”
“Um, duh,” Sunek replied, “Cos we wanna get the whole thing—”
“Cos we wanna get a good score, y’know?” Jirel jumped in quickly, “Administrator Trolow’s gonna be watching, and it’d be embarrassing if the real crew of the Bounty got a bad score, right?”
The trio of Wadi youngsters considered this, then nodded in understanding.
As the Bounty’s crew resumed their exit, leaving their fan club behind, Natasha glanced at Jirel.
“Why bother with the lie?”
“Because the truth was that we need to do well in this so we can get their favourite holosuite program deleted forever.”
Natasha nodded back with a sigh.
“Is it just me,” she mused, “Or are we starting to feel like the bad guys in all of this?”
“Just remember why we’re doing it,” Jirel pointed out, “And remember that, whatever plans we’re making, you can be sure that Mazur’s trying to cheat as well…”
****************************
“I was not trying to cheat!”
Martus Mazur groaned in exasperation as Administrator Trolow stared unhappily back at him, evidently unmoved by his defence.
“You were attempting to reprogram the game after I had finished setting the parameters, again. I have to warn you that your continued interference is becoming an issue.”
The El-Aurian glared back across the desk in his own private office in the main administration building of Markon City, unmoved by the appeal towards his sense of fairness.
“And I have to warn you,” he replied with a measured tone, “That you’re seriously starting to jeopardise our fortunes with this whole affair. You’ve had two clear opportunities to rule in Double M Entertainment’s favour already, and you keep giving that irritating lot another chance.”
Trolow stood in front of the desk and folded his arms, shaking his head slowly from side to side in patient frustration.
“For one so creatively gifted, you continue to misunderstand the Wadi way. Games are good, but games must be fair. Latinum is but an afterthought.”
“Huh,” Mazur scoffed, “You’d better not let your Ferengi overlords catch you saying that.”
“Nevertheless,” the stout Wadi administrator continued, gesturing to Mazur’s computer terminal, “I have removed all of your meddling from the program.”
“All of it?! But I wasn’t even really doing anything—!”
“According to my checks,” Trolow cut in, “You had already added a number of new enhancements to the Starship Bounty, and increased several skill parameters across the entire crew. Not to mention adjusting the randomly-generated aspects of the game to tip them in their favour.”
Mazur pursed his lips, a little taken aback at the skill with which the entirety of his efforts had been uncovered.
“You see,” he offered after a moment, “This program is in a state of constant development. I was just sending through a few new updates from the writers—”
“Do not test my patience. Now…shall we go?”
Trolow gestured to the door of the office with an air of impatience.
“You go,” Mazur shrugged, “I’ll catch you up.”
As tactics went, the master con artist conceded to himself that it was a particularly weak attempt to gain a further chance to adjust the program. And as the Wadi administrator remained where he was, gesturing to the door again, he realised that his efforts to fix the program in his fictional crew’s favour would have to wait a little longer. He couldn’t do anything while he was being watched like this.
With a frustrated sigh, he stood up and walked with Trolow to the door.
“If this little game of yours costs us the program, just when we’re on the verge of franchising this across the quadrant and making our fortunes, I’m not going to be happy. Latinum might be an afterthought to you, but it definitely isn’t for me. And I’ve done a hell of a lot to put Markon V on the map with all this.”
“You should have faith in your creations,” Trolow pointed out as they walked, “Surely they will be easily able to win this little challenge.”
Mazur snorted unhappily at this.
“Of course they will. I’m not worried about that part. But I’ve spent enough time with that little crew of Jirel’s to know that they have a way of ruining everything. Just like they ruined everything for me before.”
“I thought they said you shot one of them in the foot—?”
“Technicality,” Mazur grumbled.
The game-loving administrator and the unhappy con artist walked on down the corridors of the main administration building, towards the designated holosuite on the promenade that they had reserved for the final Starship Bounty challenge.
Trolow had already explained the rules of the game to everyone.
The real Bounty crew and the fictional Starship Bounty crew would be dropped in at random points of the program’s open-universe setting, in their respective ships. From then on, with Trolow monitoring their progress from outside the holosuite, it would be a straight fight to be the first to complete the program’s objective and bring the Stone of Unity back to the designated end point.
It would be, as far as Trolow was concerned, a fair and friendly game.
Next to him, as they walked on, Martus Mazur continued to wonder exactly how he was going to tip the odds in his favour.
The trio of Wadi teenagers stared back at the Bounty's crew with profound confusion.
Today was proving to be almost as surreal as yesterday. Except, this time it was their heroes that had eagerly tracked them down. Calla, Devro and Jarro had been mooching around the Markon City promenade when they had been confronted by the familiar figures, who had asked them to join them at a local cafe.
Now, over a round of raktajinos and sodas, they were slowly coming to terms with what they were hearing.
“You want our help?” Calla managed eventually.
“Y—You?” Devro stressed, “Want…our help?”
“Very much so,” Jirel nodded back across the table, “We need the people who know Captain Jirel and the Starship Bounty better than anyone. And that seems to be you.”
He gestured to them with as supportive a smile as he could, but the reactions of the three Wadi seemed to suggest he wasn’t getting through to them. He quickly turned to the other Bounty crewmembers for some additional support.
“Right guys? We need them, don’t we? Remember…what’s at stake here…”
That final comment seemed to galvanise the others, reminding them that as much as they disliked this latest facet to their situation, they very much needed to win. Whatever it took to do so.
Jirel motioned to Klath, who stifled a grimace and glared across the table at Calla. Despite his rather brusque response to her during their previous meeting, she had still spent most of the conversation so far staring in awe at her hero.
“Jirel is right,” he offered eventually, “Your assistance would be…appreciated.”
This seemed to settle the debate as far as the Wadi girl was concerned. And, not for the first time, she took the lead in their side of the discussion.
“Ok. So…what do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Natasha replied, “We’re, um, very interested in the game, you understand. The characters, the rules, any tips or tricks—”
“The exact location of this ‘Stone of Unity’ thing,” Sunek added, “Anything, really.”
After a glance at her friends, Calla shrugged and began.
“Well, I guess we could start from the top. So, um, Captain Jirel is the estranged prince of an ancient Trill kingdom…”
The real Jirel felt several knowing glances being sent his way. He mustered a shrug.
“Hey, I’m an orphan, remember. It’s not impossible—”
“It is,” Denella sighed, nodding at Calla, “Please, carry on. I have a feeling that if we stop every time you say something impossible, we’re gonna be here a while.”
“Um,” Calla continued, “Klath is a genetically engineered warrior from an alternative future timeline…”
This equally impossible explanation was met with a stony silence from the grumpy Klingon.
“…Sunek is an exiled Vulcan mystic with the secrets of the galaxy inside his mind…”
“Not a million miles away from the truth—”
“Shut up, Sunek,” Natasha patiently sighed.
Calla paused and glanced over at Denella, who tensed up at the fresh attention.
“Um,” the Wadi girl continued, “Denella is…a bit of a mystery, I guess. There’s a lot of theories flying around with the fans about her real character.”
“Personally,” Jarro jumped in excitedly, “I think she’s a double agent from the Orion Syndicate. Sent to infiltrate the crew and…seduce them for information.”
“Why?” Jirel asked.
“Um,” Jarro responded, a little more sheepishly, “I…haven’t worked that out yet.”
“But she’s also an engineering genius,” Calla offered, “She’s the best character to have around to break into any enemy ship’s systems. And she designed the entire Starship Bounty herself. Including her…BRL.”
Denella sighed even more deeply and forced herself to ask the obvious question that she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to.
“BRL…?”
“Bikini Replicator Link-up,” Jarro answered, a little too enthusiastically, “Designed to equip her with any one of sixteen pre-programmed bikini designs.”
“Right,” the real Denella simmered through gritted teeth, “How fun for her.”
Jarro shrank back from his own favourite character, as Natasha reluctantly spoke up.
“And what about me?” she sighed in preparation for the inevitable, “What’s my character’s big stupid backstory, hmm?”
The three Wadi teenagers glanced at each other. Then, after a suitably awkward pause, Calla looked back at the doctor and shrugged again.
“Actually…we kinda assumed your character wasn’t based on a real person. We thought the writers felt like they needed another female character, so they just…improvised.”
“Y—Yeah,” Devro added, “All Natasha really does is drop a load of exposition to set up the story and then kinda just…gets kidnapped.”
If Klath and Denella’s unhappy looks hadn’t been strong enough, Natasha’s own glare managed to beat them both.
“Actually,” Calla added, “The feedback from players was apparently really bad early on. But then in Adventure Seven: The Revenge of the Deltan Love Spell, the writers put you in that catsuit, and…the complaints kinda dried up.”
Natasha found herself beating her own record for unhappy looks almost as soon as she had set the new benchmark.
Despite their situation, Jirel couldn’t help but break into a cheeky smile.
“You know—” he began.
“Jirel,” Natasha growled back, “Don’t. If you value your life, just…don’t.”
The Trill didn’t. Instead, he wiped the grin from his face and turned back to the Wadi sitting across from him.
“So, that’s the characters,” Devro concluded, “I—I guess Captain Jirel is still the most popular one to play as. But a lot of people now prefer Klath since they introduced some more fluid attack moves in the last major update.”
“Fascinating,” the Klingon muttered.
“I think we need more,” Jirel said a little more supportively, “Like…what is this Stone of Unity? And what’s the best way to…get it?”
“That depends,” Jarro shrugged, “Are you playing mission-based, or open-world?”
Jirel stared blankly back at the Wadi. Sunek sighed and jumped in.
“Open-world,” the Vulcan answered, nodding at Jirel, “Not that this idiot would know the difference.”
“Hmm,” Jarro mused, “That makes things harder to explain.”
“Why?” Klath grunted.
“Because the easiest route depends on the initial scenario, which is always randomly generated. If you go mission-based, you have the same checkpoints to pass. But open-world can go in any direction the program wants to go.”
“Great,” Natasha sighed, “So we’re screwed.”
Another awkward pause descended. Eventually, Devro offered a thought.
“Um…I—I guess, if you really want our help, there’s something we could do.”
“What’s that?” Jirel asked.
“W—Well, if we know which holosuite you’re in, then we could tap into the audio controls and communicate with you directly. Maybe…give you some tips?”
Jirel instinctively looked over to his engineer to gauge whether that plan was feasible or not, given his own relative lack of knowledge in that area.
“It’s possible,” the Orion woman shrugged back, “So long as they knew the audio frequencies of the holosuite. How come you know about that?”
Devro suddenly found himself under the intense gaze of the Orion engineer, rather than vice versa, and he shrank back in his seat. In the absence of a response from him, Calla rolled her eyes and stepped in.
“Devro’s done that before, when some of our other friends have been playing. He’s getting serious with these little engineering projects."
Denella continued to regard the Wadi, her expression softening slightly.
“I—I guess,” he managed eventually, “I just think it's all…kinda cool.”
“Huh,” Sunek grinned, gesturing at Denella, “See? You’ve got something in common after all. You’re both huge nerds.”
Denella ignored the predictable jibe, and nodded back at the young Wadi boy.
“Well…I guess that could work then. Thanks.”
Devro mustered a hopeful smile back at her. And she was forced to begrudgingly appreciate the fact that, for the first time since they had met, he was doing his utmost to maintain eye contact.
“Ok, perfect,” Jirel nodded, “Sounds like we’ve got ourselves a plan. So, let’s go, my brave and fearless crew.”
He stood from the table and flashed a grin at the others, even as they shook their heads in his direction.
“Um, one more thing,” Calla piped up as the Bounty’s crew began to leave, “Why are you so determined to do well in the program?”
“Um, duh,” Sunek replied, “Cos we wanna get the whole thing—”
“Cos we wanna get a good score, y’know?” Jirel jumped in quickly, “Administrator Trolow’s gonna be watching, and it’d be embarrassing if the real crew of the Bounty got a bad score, right?”
The trio of Wadi youngsters considered this, then nodded in understanding.
As the Bounty’s crew resumed their exit, leaving their fan club behind, Natasha glanced at Jirel.
“Why bother with the lie?”
“Because the truth was that we need to do well in this so we can get their favourite holosuite program deleted forever.”
Natasha nodded back with a sigh.
“Is it just me,” she mused, “Or are we starting to feel like the bad guys in all of this?”
“Just remember why we’re doing it,” Jirel pointed out, “And remember that, whatever plans we’re making, you can be sure that Mazur’s trying to cheat as well…”
****************************
“I was not trying to cheat!”
Martus Mazur groaned in exasperation as Administrator Trolow stared unhappily back at him, evidently unmoved by his defence.
“You were attempting to reprogram the game after I had finished setting the parameters, again. I have to warn you that your continued interference is becoming an issue.”
The El-Aurian glared back across the desk in his own private office in the main administration building of Markon City, unmoved by the appeal towards his sense of fairness.
“And I have to warn you,” he replied with a measured tone, “That you’re seriously starting to jeopardise our fortunes with this whole affair. You’ve had two clear opportunities to rule in Double M Entertainment’s favour already, and you keep giving that irritating lot another chance.”
Trolow stood in front of the desk and folded his arms, shaking his head slowly from side to side in patient frustration.
“For one so creatively gifted, you continue to misunderstand the Wadi way. Games are good, but games must be fair. Latinum is but an afterthought.”
“Huh,” Mazur scoffed, “You’d better not let your Ferengi overlords catch you saying that.”
“Nevertheless,” the stout Wadi administrator continued, gesturing to Mazur’s computer terminal, “I have removed all of your meddling from the program.”
“All of it?! But I wasn’t even really doing anything—!”
“According to my checks,” Trolow cut in, “You had already added a number of new enhancements to the Starship Bounty, and increased several skill parameters across the entire crew. Not to mention adjusting the randomly-generated aspects of the game to tip them in their favour.”
Mazur pursed his lips, a little taken aback at the skill with which the entirety of his efforts had been uncovered.
“You see,” he offered after a moment, “This program is in a state of constant development. I was just sending through a few new updates from the writers—”
“Do not test my patience. Now…shall we go?”
Trolow gestured to the door of the office with an air of impatience.
“You go,” Mazur shrugged, “I’ll catch you up.”
As tactics went, the master con artist conceded to himself that it was a particularly weak attempt to gain a further chance to adjust the program. And as the Wadi administrator remained where he was, gesturing to the door again, he realised that his efforts to fix the program in his fictional crew’s favour would have to wait a little longer. He couldn’t do anything while he was being watched like this.
With a frustrated sigh, he stood up and walked with Trolow to the door.
“If this little game of yours costs us the program, just when we’re on the verge of franchising this across the quadrant and making our fortunes, I’m not going to be happy. Latinum might be an afterthought to you, but it definitely isn’t for me. And I’ve done a hell of a lot to put Markon V on the map with all this.”
“You should have faith in your creations,” Trolow pointed out as they walked, “Surely they will be easily able to win this little challenge.”
Mazur snorted unhappily at this.
“Of course they will. I’m not worried about that part. But I’ve spent enough time with that little crew of Jirel’s to know that they have a way of ruining everything. Just like they ruined everything for me before.”
“I thought they said you shot one of them in the foot—?”
“Technicality,” Mazur grumbled.
The game-loving administrator and the unhappy con artist walked on down the corridors of the main administration building, towards the designated holosuite on the promenade that they had reserved for the final Starship Bounty challenge.
Trolow had already explained the rules of the game to everyone.
The real Bounty crew and the fictional Starship Bounty crew would be dropped in at random points of the program’s open-universe setting, in their respective ships. From then on, with Trolow monitoring their progress from outside the holosuite, it would be a straight fight to be the first to complete the program’s objective and bring the Stone of Unity back to the designated end point.
It would be, as far as Trolow was concerned, a fair and friendly game.
Next to him, as they walked on, Martus Mazur continued to wonder exactly how he was going to tip the odds in his favour.
Maybe Jirel et.al. already have...
Part Three (Cont'd)
“Why is it always Nausicaans?!”
Jirel groaned in frustration even as Sunek threw the Bounty into another tight evasive maneuver, allowing the burst of disruptor energy that had been heading for them to skim past the edge of the ship’s starboard wing.
That near miss was only a fleeting respite. Almost immediately, a fresh alert chimed out from Klath’s tactical readings.
“Nausicaan battlecruiser firing again,” he reported urgently.
“Ugh,” Sunek griped as he turned the Bounty into a further hasty change of direction, “I didn’t even think the Nausicaans had battlecruisers. Aren’t they still at the ‘hitting things with clubs’ stage of evolution?”
“Focus, Sunek,” Jirel cautioned as a further flurry of disruptor fire whipped past them.
“Hey! I’m totally focused—!”
The Vulcan was interrupted as the latest shot from their Nausicaan foes slammed into the Bounty’s shields, pitching the entire ship around on its axis violently enough to nearly fling Jirel from his centre seat completely.
“Except for just then!” Sunek added, without a trace of humility, “Cos you distracted me!”
As the pilot steadied the ship, Jirel resisted the temptation to continue bickering, and instead called back to Denella at her engineering console.
“Damage?”
“Um,” the Orion offered, glancing over the holosuite-generated controls, “Shields…at seventy-nine percent.”
Despite the intensity of their immediate situation, Jirel couldn’t help but spin around to regard his engineer. Either side of her, Natasha and Klath glanced up from their own stations.
“What the hell does that mean?” the Trill asked.
“I don’t really know,” Denella shrugged, gesturing at her console, “But that’s all the information the program seems to want to tell me, damage-wise.”
“It’s probably supposed to be dramatic,” Sunek called back.
“Is it?” Jirel asked, still perplexed.
“It is not especially useful information, tactically-speaking,” Klath pointed out.
“I mean, it almost sounds good, right?” Natasha added, “Seventy-nine percent seems pretty high, all things considered?”
“Guys!” Sunek yelled out, as he pitched the Bounty around again, “Sorry to be a pain, but we’re still getting shot at here!”
The other four occupants of the cockpit swiftly moved past all seventy-nine percent of their remaining shields and focused back on the battle.
They had barely started their quest for the fictitious Stone of Unity before the vast Nausicaan ship had dropped out of warp directly in their path and opened fire. Despite the huge size difference between the two ships, and unlike their earlier encounter with the decidedly overpowered Starship Bounty, they were actually holding their own surprisingly well. But equally they didn’t seem to be making any inroads into their enemy’s defences.
“Right, Klath, give ‘em hell,” Jirel called out as Sunek swivelled the Bounty around to face the Nausicaan vessel.
The Klingon’s burly hands danced across his controls. A volley of micro-torpedoes lanced out from the Bounty’s forward launcher and slammed into the other ship’s shields, followed up with twin blasts from the phaser cannons.
“Direct hit,” he reported with satisfaction.
“Damage?” Jirel asked as Sunek banked the Bounty out of the path of a return of fire from the Nausicaans.
Klath paused for a second as he stared at his readouts, before grumbling slightly.
“Their shields…are at ninety-two percent.”
“Right,” Jirel sighed.
“This is so stupid,” Denella groaned, “People actually find this fun?”
Instead of a response coming from inside the cockpit, it came over a static-flecked comms link that flared into life out of nowhere.
“Um,” the awkward voice of Devro pierced through the bursts of static all around them, “Y—Yes. We find it fun.”
“Can you hear us?” the similarly muted voice of Calla joined the impromptu conference call in the Bounty’s cockpit.
“Yes, we can,” Natasha called back.
“And this is definitely not fun,” Denella added.
“Seriously!” Sunek yelled out again from the middle of his latest evasive maneuver, “We are getting shot at! A lot!”
“Who’s shooting?” Jarro’s voice crackled through.
“Sorry,” Devro added by way of explanation, “I—I’ve been able to patch into an audio link, but we’ve got no visual access.”
“Nausicaans!” Jirel called out, “Nausicaans are shooting! And we can’t put a dent in their…shield percentage. Any ideas?”
The Trill felt a little ridiculous asking for help from a group of teenage holosuite addicts. But he got over it by the time that Klath’s latest volley of weapons fire failed to bring down their enemy’s shields and Sunek performed another desperate evasive move.
There was a momentary pause over the comms link, and only static filled the room. Then, Calla’s voice returned.
“The Nausicaan battlecruiser from the Battle of the Opatervea Sector mini-game?”
Jirel looked blankly around the cockpit for some sort of answer. Natasha shrugged and called back to their invisible coaches.
“We’re in the Opatervea Sector, if that helps?”
“Ok, perfect,” the Wadi girl replied, “That one’s easy.”
“Strongly disagree!” Sunek called back.
“You, um, just need to lead the Nausicaan ship into the Opatervea Nebula.”
“Why?” Jirel asked.
“It’s pretty obvious,” Jarro chimed in, “Because the corrosive gases inside the nebula will corrode the Nausicaan ship’s hull.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Sunek shrugged, as he sent the Bounty warping towards a distant reddish nebula, with their opponents in hot pursuit.
“Wh—?” Jirel scoffed in disbelief even as his pilot went to work, “How were we supposed to know that?!”
“It’s easy once you see the clue,” Devro’s voice explained, “Y—You just have to realise that ‘Opatervea’ is an anagram of ‘Evaporate’.”
“That’s a clue?!” a flabbergasted Jirel replied.
“I hate this so much,” Denella muttered to herself.
“Welp, whatever's going on, we’re here,” Sunek reported as the Bounty dropped out of warp directly in front of the Opatervea Nebula.
“The Nausicaans are gaining,” Klath reported with urgency.
Jirel looked out at the deep red cloud that now dominated the view through the cockpit window and shrugged, in the absence of a saner plan.
“Take us in, I guess.”
The Bounty eased forward into the crimson cloud. And despite the fact that they were playing a decidedly silly holosuite program and were in no actual peril, Jirel found himself tensing up.
“The Nausicaan vessel is following,” Klath noted, “It is…”
His report tailed off as he glared at his tactical readouts with confusion.
“What?” Denella asked.
The Klingon re-checked the readings, then looked back up at the Orion.
“It has…disintegrated.”
Jirel swung around again in shock. Denella searched for an appropriate response, then just opted to repeat her previous question.
“…What?”
“He’s right,” Natasha nodded, checking her own readings, “The entire battlecruiser has just…fallen apart. Down to the atomic level.”
“How?” Jirel felt compelled to ask.
“And why didn’t it affect us?” Denella added, before shaking her head and correcting herself, “You know what? Doesn’t matter. Let’s move past it.”
The other four in the cockpit all silently agreed with that plan.
“So,” Natasha offered, “What now?”
Again, the response to the question came from outside of the holosuite itself, as Calla’s voice returned over the crackling comms link.
“You need to head for the secret Nausicaan lair on Argus II and recover the map that contains the precise location of the Stone of Unity.”
The response to this order came from a distinctly unhappy Klath.
“How can it be a secret lair if you know precisely where it is located—?”
“Klath,” Denella sighed, “Let’s keep moving past it.”
The Klingon reluctantly conceded the point with a curt nod, as Jirel gestured to the Bounty’s Vulcan pilot.
“You heard the lady, Sunek. Argus II it is.”
As the Bounty emerged from the Opatervea Nebula and shot back to warp towards its new destination, the fleeting silence that had descended over the cockpit was punctured by a chirp from Denella’s console.
“Huh. Good news, I guess.”
“What?” Jirel asked.
“Our shields are back up to ninety-four percent.”
“Why is it always Nausicaans?!”
Jirel groaned in frustration even as Sunek threw the Bounty into another tight evasive maneuver, allowing the burst of disruptor energy that had been heading for them to skim past the edge of the ship’s starboard wing.
That near miss was only a fleeting respite. Almost immediately, a fresh alert chimed out from Klath’s tactical readings.
“Nausicaan battlecruiser firing again,” he reported urgently.
“Ugh,” Sunek griped as he turned the Bounty into a further hasty change of direction, “I didn’t even think the Nausicaans had battlecruisers. Aren’t they still at the ‘hitting things with clubs’ stage of evolution?”
“Focus, Sunek,” Jirel cautioned as a further flurry of disruptor fire whipped past them.
“Hey! I’m totally focused—!”
The Vulcan was interrupted as the latest shot from their Nausicaan foes slammed into the Bounty’s shields, pitching the entire ship around on its axis violently enough to nearly fling Jirel from his centre seat completely.
“Except for just then!” Sunek added, without a trace of humility, “Cos you distracted me!”
As the pilot steadied the ship, Jirel resisted the temptation to continue bickering, and instead called back to Denella at her engineering console.
“Damage?”
“Um,” the Orion offered, glancing over the holosuite-generated controls, “Shields…at seventy-nine percent.”
Despite the intensity of their immediate situation, Jirel couldn’t help but spin around to regard his engineer. Either side of her, Natasha and Klath glanced up from their own stations.
“What the hell does that mean?” the Trill asked.
“I don’t really know,” Denella shrugged, gesturing at her console, “But that’s all the information the program seems to want to tell me, damage-wise.”
“It’s probably supposed to be dramatic,” Sunek called back.
“Is it?” Jirel asked, still perplexed.
“It is not especially useful information, tactically-speaking,” Klath pointed out.
“I mean, it almost sounds good, right?” Natasha added, “Seventy-nine percent seems pretty high, all things considered?”
“Guys!” Sunek yelled out, as he pitched the Bounty around again, “Sorry to be a pain, but we’re still getting shot at here!”
The other four occupants of the cockpit swiftly moved past all seventy-nine percent of their remaining shields and focused back on the battle.
They had barely started their quest for the fictitious Stone of Unity before the vast Nausicaan ship had dropped out of warp directly in their path and opened fire. Despite the huge size difference between the two ships, and unlike their earlier encounter with the decidedly overpowered Starship Bounty, they were actually holding their own surprisingly well. But equally they didn’t seem to be making any inroads into their enemy’s defences.
“Right, Klath, give ‘em hell,” Jirel called out as Sunek swivelled the Bounty around to face the Nausicaan vessel.
The Klingon’s burly hands danced across his controls. A volley of micro-torpedoes lanced out from the Bounty’s forward launcher and slammed into the other ship’s shields, followed up with twin blasts from the phaser cannons.
“Direct hit,” he reported with satisfaction.
“Damage?” Jirel asked as Sunek banked the Bounty out of the path of a return of fire from the Nausicaans.
Klath paused for a second as he stared at his readouts, before grumbling slightly.
“Their shields…are at ninety-two percent.”
“Right,” Jirel sighed.
“This is so stupid,” Denella groaned, “People actually find this fun?”
Instead of a response coming from inside the cockpit, it came over a static-flecked comms link that flared into life out of nowhere.
“Um,” the awkward voice of Devro pierced through the bursts of static all around them, “Y—Yes. We find it fun.”
“Can you hear us?” the similarly muted voice of Calla joined the impromptu conference call in the Bounty’s cockpit.
“Yes, we can,” Natasha called back.
“And this is definitely not fun,” Denella added.
“Seriously!” Sunek yelled out again from the middle of his latest evasive maneuver, “We are getting shot at! A lot!”
“Who’s shooting?” Jarro’s voice crackled through.
“Sorry,” Devro added by way of explanation, “I—I’ve been able to patch into an audio link, but we’ve got no visual access.”
“Nausicaans!” Jirel called out, “Nausicaans are shooting! And we can’t put a dent in their…shield percentage. Any ideas?”
The Trill felt a little ridiculous asking for help from a group of teenage holosuite addicts. But he got over it by the time that Klath’s latest volley of weapons fire failed to bring down their enemy’s shields and Sunek performed another desperate evasive move.
There was a momentary pause over the comms link, and only static filled the room. Then, Calla’s voice returned.
“The Nausicaan battlecruiser from the Battle of the Opatervea Sector mini-game?”
Jirel looked blankly around the cockpit for some sort of answer. Natasha shrugged and called back to their invisible coaches.
“We’re in the Opatervea Sector, if that helps?”
“Ok, perfect,” the Wadi girl replied, “That one’s easy.”
“Strongly disagree!” Sunek called back.
“You, um, just need to lead the Nausicaan ship into the Opatervea Nebula.”
“Why?” Jirel asked.
“It’s pretty obvious,” Jarro chimed in, “Because the corrosive gases inside the nebula will corrode the Nausicaan ship’s hull.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Sunek shrugged, as he sent the Bounty warping towards a distant reddish nebula, with their opponents in hot pursuit.
“Wh—?” Jirel scoffed in disbelief even as his pilot went to work, “How were we supposed to know that?!”
“It’s easy once you see the clue,” Devro’s voice explained, “Y—You just have to realise that ‘Opatervea’ is an anagram of ‘Evaporate’.”
“That’s a clue?!” a flabbergasted Jirel replied.
“I hate this so much,” Denella muttered to herself.
“Welp, whatever's going on, we’re here,” Sunek reported as the Bounty dropped out of warp directly in front of the Opatervea Nebula.
“The Nausicaans are gaining,” Klath reported with urgency.
Jirel looked out at the deep red cloud that now dominated the view through the cockpit window and shrugged, in the absence of a saner plan.
“Take us in, I guess.”
The Bounty eased forward into the crimson cloud. And despite the fact that they were playing a decidedly silly holosuite program and were in no actual peril, Jirel found himself tensing up.
“The Nausicaan vessel is following,” Klath noted, “It is…”
His report tailed off as he glared at his tactical readouts with confusion.
“What?” Denella asked.
The Klingon re-checked the readings, then looked back up at the Orion.
“It has…disintegrated.”
Jirel swung around again in shock. Denella searched for an appropriate response, then just opted to repeat her previous question.
“…What?”
“He’s right,” Natasha nodded, checking her own readings, “The entire battlecruiser has just…fallen apart. Down to the atomic level.”
“How?” Jirel felt compelled to ask.
“And why didn’t it affect us?” Denella added, before shaking her head and correcting herself, “You know what? Doesn’t matter. Let’s move past it.”
The other four in the cockpit all silently agreed with that plan.
“So,” Natasha offered, “What now?”
Again, the response to the question came from outside of the holosuite itself, as Calla’s voice returned over the crackling comms link.
“You need to head for the secret Nausicaan lair on Argus II and recover the map that contains the precise location of the Stone of Unity.”
The response to this order came from a distinctly unhappy Klath.
“How can it be a secret lair if you know precisely where it is located—?”
“Klath,” Denella sighed, “Let’s keep moving past it.”
The Klingon reluctantly conceded the point with a curt nod, as Jirel gestured to the Bounty’s Vulcan pilot.
“You heard the lady, Sunek. Argus II it is.”
As the Bounty emerged from the Opatervea Nebula and shot back to warp towards its new destination, the fleeting silence that had descended over the cockpit was punctured by a chirp from Denella’s console.
“Huh. Good news, I guess.”
“What?” Jirel asked.
“Our shields are back up to ninety-four percent.”
I was a Dungeon Master long enough to know that's a lie... Thanks!! rbs
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