Star Trek: The Promellian Gap 52176

[UncleRice]

Ok, let's see what happens if I cut and paste from my web page.
Ayaka's Battle

Chapter 1

Stardate: 52176.1

March 6, 2375

Gul Rakvot Sat in his captain's chair brooding. He did not trust this Dominion toady that sat nearby on his bridge. Nor did he trust the Breen diplomat on his bridge. He did not know how or why, but somehow the Cardassian Union was going to suffer for this alliance. Of that he was sure. He would have preferred it if the diplomats were in their own ships, but neither the Jem'Hadar fighter on his port side nor the Breen Attack ship on his starboard side was as roomy as his attack cruiser, so here they were on his bridge.
"I'm detecting a ship!" the tactical officer announced."
"What type is it?" Gul Rakvot asked.
"Scans are inconclusive," the officer replied. "It has a mass of one million tons and is scanning a large asteroid."
"It could be a Federation ship." Ketran, the Vorta next to Gul Rakvot interrupted. "We should destroy it!"
"We are in Menthar space, Federation space is all the way on the other side of Cardassian space!" Gul Rakvot objected with a glare, "but it is close to our borders, so take a closer look."
The three ships diverted and closed in on the ship.
"The ship is Otaku in design," the tactical officer announced and put the ship on screen. The ship was bright red and looked like a flattened and elongated bubble. Warp engines wrapped around the top and bottom from side to side. "It appears to be a frigate."
"Who are they?" Ketran demanded.
"They are a minor race from planet Akihabara," Kadak, the Breen diplomat replied. "They have their home planet, one planet they took from the Ferengi a century ago, and several artificial environments in Menthar space. They are dangerous when attacked."
"We too have found the Otaku dangerous to attack a couple of times," Gul Rakvot confirmed. "We should ignore them and focus on our mission and return to Cardassia Prime."
"No!" Ketran objected. "We will attack! We need to know their strength!"
"This is not the time!" Gul Rakvot insisted.
"You were put under my command!" Ketran glared back as his two Jem'Hadar guards stood close staring menacingly at Gul Rakvot.
"My crew would be happy to join you in this attack!" Kadak said in agreement.
Gul Rakvot turned with a glare. "Fine!" he growled. "One of you will attack from the front, one of you will attack from behind, while I attack from the side."
"Breen are not afraid to attack head on!" Kadak volunteered.
The Breen ship swooped in toward the front of the Otaku ship while the Jem'Hadar ship swooped in from behind. The Otaku ship's shields were already up. Four beam weapons on the front of the Otaku ship and four beam weapons on the back of the ship fire simultaneously on attacking ships and hit them squarely.
"Their shields have dropped by twenty five percent!" the Cardassian tactical officer reported referring to the allied ships.
"Why didn't my ship even try to dodge the phasers?" demanded Ketran.
"Those were verteron beams," the tactical officer replied. "Verteron beams are nearly impossible to dodge."
"What's wrong, Ketran," Gul Rakvot asked, "you worried?"
The Jem'Hadar ship fired a polaron beam and the Otaku's ship's shield let it pass. It's hull was ripped open under the onslaught.
"Not at all!" Ketran replied with confidence. "Dominion superior weapon technology has clearly rendered your concerns ridiculous, Gul Rakvot,"
The Breen ship fired it's energy dampening beam and the Otaku shields flickered out.
"Our new weapons are also quite effective!" Kadak boasted.
The Cardassian ship joined in opening fire on the Otaku ship from above and more and more hull plates on the hapless ship exploded into space! Suddenly the Cardassian tactical officer yelled a particularly rude and easily translated expletive causing everyone to turn to the screen. The Otaku ship had blossomed with over two dozen photon torpedoes simultaneously! Their incandescent contrails followed them as the sought out their targets like an angry swarm of bees.
The Jem'Hadar ship dodged some of the swarm headed for it, but the torpedoes that hit left it tumbling and the ones that missed swung around in graceful arcs and struck their targets on the way back around. Like wise, the Breen ship swerved, but again the ones that missed came back around and hit home on the wounded ship.
The attack cruiser evaded nothing. The torpedoes swarmed the armored ship and pounded it. The cruiser's shields popped like a soap bubble. Gul Rakvot's chair launched into the air as a plasma conduit under his chair burst. He blocked the impact with the ceiling with his arms and then rolled as his chair came back down. Emergency personnel burst into the bridge as the plasma conduit was shut down.
"Gul Rakvot!" The EMT called, "Are you OK?" he asked running a medical scanner over him.
He rolled up on his feet. There were bruises, but his chair had taken the worst of it. "I'm fine, what of my crew?" he demanded.
The medical officer turned to look over at the other two bridge officers and checked what they medical techs were doing.
"They are alive, but badly burned," he reported. "We will get them to the medical bay right away!"
While the medical techs were carrying away the wounded, Gul Rakvot noted that Ketran had been shielded by the two now dead Jem'Hadar while the Kadak had been shielded by his environmental suit. 'Dang! They lived!' he snarled to himself.
"What's our status?" Gul Rakvot asked the new tactical officer as he arrived.
He worked the damaged console a moment before answering. The main screen flickered back to life and the Otaku ship appeared on the main view screen. "The Otaku ship has several major hull breaches, it has vented a lot of plasma, there's lot's of ionic radiation, and I detect no life signs or reactor activity."
"What about my ship?" Ketran demanded.
The Jem'Hadar ship appeared on the view screen. "Major hull damage to the bridge, no life signs."
"What about my ship?" Kadak demanded.
The view screen shifted to the Breen ship. "Your ship is missing it's whole top half, no life signs."
"Fire on the Otaku ship!" Ketran demanded. "Leave nothing!"
The tactical officer worked over his panel a bit and then replied: "We don't have any weapons."
"How long till we can fix them?" Gul Rakvot asked.
"That will be a bit of a problem," the officer replied as an image of the front of the ship showed on screen. "The main weapons array has been blasted off our ship. There is a big hole where we are supposed to have our front disruptors. As for the aft weapons, we are missing the rear 50 meters or so of our ship. Then there are the fused shield generators. And the plasma fire in the transporters. And the dead atmospheric systems."
"We need to send a message to headquarters," Ketran decided.
"Good luck with that," the tactical officer replied, "our subspace communicator is also fried. We may get it back on line in a day or two."
"Do we at least have warp drive?" Gul Rakvot asked.
The tactical officer checked. "Yes, we have warp drive. It's damaged, so we are limited to about Warp 4.9, but we have warp drive."
"This is all your fault!" Ketran screamed at Gull Rakvot.
Gul Rakvot pulled his side arm and levelled it at the two diplomats! "Go to your quarters and don't let me see you again until we get back to Cardassia!"
The Diplomats fled for their rooms.
Gul Rakvot turned to the tactical officer, "Get us back to Cardassian space as fast as you can without breaking anything else! Alert me immediately when the subspace com system is back on line, even if I'm asleep." The attack cruiser gingerly turned from the ravaged ships and debris field and set off for Cardassia.
[edit]Ok, looks like I need to do something with the line breaks.[/edit]

 

[Gul Re'jal]

Lack of tactical sense in the Vorta didn't surprise me at all. But the Breen guy? He must really be only a diplomat, because I can't imagine someone so stupid to order to attack a dangerous species could be a part of dangerous warrior species himself. The Breen seemed to have more tactical sense than that.

And they both paid the price for their arrogant thinking. Or rather--their ships did.

I wonder where this all is headed

However, I must admit that Japanese words take me out of the story. Otaku and Ayaka are real Japanese words and I have problems associating them with an alien race in red bubble ships

And yes, adding additional spaces between paragraphs would make it easier to read.

 

[UncleRice]

Ayaka: From Japanese 彩 (aya) "colour" combined with 花 (ka) "flower" or 華 (ka) "petal".
I originally had the ship painted with overlapping flowers of various colors, but I decided to change it to red. slightly less over the top.
Since TOS had a Roman world, a Nazi world, and a 1920s world I figure I'd be ok with an anime world.

 

[UncleRice]

Ok I've found a major flaw in this story line. Anime and Manga are highly visual story formats. I don't have the skills for that yet and I haven't watched / read either in half a decade when I wrote the first story in this storyline. Worse, I was never good at anime. So I'm going to initiate a full retrofit on the story line and just restart later. If there are any other issues anyone sees let me know so I can fix them.

 

[Sandoval]

Ok I've found a major flaw in this story line. Anime and Manga are highly visual story formats. I don't have the skills for that yet and I haven't watched / read either in half a decade when I wrote the first story in this storyline. Worse, I was never good at anime. So I'm going to initiate a full retrofit on the story line and just restart later. If there are any other issues anyone sees let me know so I can fix them.

You're over thinking this or just making excuses to stop writing.

There's no reason why you can't continue writing this story if you wish, regardless of how visual Anime and Manga are.

You're not drawing a comic or cartoon, you're writing a piece of fan fiction. They are separate entities.

 

[UncleRice]

Excuses don't work for me very well. This story set is coming out of my brain like a venting plasma conduit. It's a messy process that has me dreaming about phasers when I sleep. Writing this is a bid for sanity. I've dumped some of the anime stuff as it was acting like a shoe that was too tight. Any who, I've reworked chapter 1 a bit and wrote chapter 2 let me know if it's better or worse as I'm working on chapter 3.

Star Trek Promellian

Lani's Battle

Chapter 1

Stardate: 52176.1

March 6, 2375, Time: 06:38:09


Gul Rakvot Sat in his captain's chair brooding. He did not trust this Dominion toady that sat nearby on his bridge. Nor did he trust the Breen diplomat on his bridge. He did not know how or why, but somehow the Cardassian Union was going to suffer for this alliance. Of that he was sure. He would have preferred it if the diplomats were in their own ships, but neither the Jem'Hadar fighter on his port side nor the Breen Attack ship on his starboard side was as roomy as his attack cruiser, so here they were on his bridge.

"I'm detecting a ship!" the tactical officer announced."

"What type is it?" Gul Rakvot asked.

"Scans are inconclusive," the officer replied. "It has a mass of one million tons and is scanning a large asteroid."

"It could be a Federation ship." Ketran, the Vorta next to Gul Rakvot interrupted. "We should destroy it!"

"We are in Menthar space, Federation space is all the way on the other side of Cardassian space!" Gul Rakvot objected with a glare, "but it is close to our borders, so take a closer look."

The three ships diverted and closed in on the ship.

The tactical officer announced and put the ship on screen. The ship was bright red and looked like a flattened and elongated bubble. Warp engines wrapped around the top and bottom like a belt.

"Is it Tzenkenthi?" Ketran asked.

"It is a Gui-Xing space frame," the tactical officer reported. "It appears to be a frigate."

"Who are they?" Ketran demanded.

"They are a minor race from planet Kui-Xing," Kadak, the Breen diplomat replied. "They stole warp technology from the Ferengi just a century ago and took a planet from a Ferengi corporation with cobbled together ships. They have set up several artificial environments in Menthar space as well. They have not seen serious combat since. Our privateers hit them occasionally. Our new energy dampening beam should shut them down hard!"

"We should ignore them and focus on our mission and return to Cardassia Prime." Rakvot countered. Diplomatic missions are a bad place to initiate conflict with unknowns."

"No!" Ketran objected. "We will attack! We need to know their strength!"

"This is not the time!" Gul Rakvot insisted.

"You were put under my command!" Ketran glared back as his two Jem'Hadar guards stood close staring menacingly at Gul Rakvot.

"My crew would be happy to join you in this attack!" Kadak said in agreement.

Gul Rakvot turned with a glare. "Fine!" he growled. "One of you will attack from the front, one of you will attack from behind, while I attack from the side."

"Breen are not afraid to attack head on!" Kadak volunteered.

The Breen ship swooped in toward the front of the Kui-Xing ship while the Jem'Hadar ship swooped in from behind. The Kui-Xing ship's shields were already up. Four beam weapons on the front of the Kui-Xing ship and four beam weapons on the back of the ship fire simultaneously on attacking ships and hit them squarely.

"Their shields have dropped by twenty five percent!" the Cardassian tactical officer reported refering to the allied ships.

"Why didn't my ship even try to dodge the phasers?" demanded Ketran.

"Those were verteron beams," the tactical officer replied. "Verteron beams are nearly impossible to dodge."

"It should not be possible to aim verteron beams so quickly!" Ketran objected.

"What's wrong, Ketran," Gul Rakvot asked, "you worried?"

The Jem'Hadar ship fired a polaron beam and the Kui-Xing's ship's shield let it pass. It's hull was ripped open under the onslaught.

"Not at all!" Ketran replied with confidence. "Dominion superior weapon technology has clearly rendered your concerns ridiculous, Gul Rakvot,"

The Breen ship fired it's energy dampening beam and the Kui-Xing shields flickered out.

"Our new weapons are also quite effective!" Kadak boasted.

The Cardassian ship joined in opening fire on the Kui-Xing ship from above and more and more hull plates on the hapless ship exploded into space! Suddenly the Cardassian tactical officer yelled a particularly rude and easily translated expletive causing everyone to turn to the screen. The Kui-Xing ship had blossomed with over two dozen photon torpedoes simultaneously! Their incandescent contrails followed them as the sought out their targets like an angry swarm of bees.

The Jem'Hadar ship dodged some of the swarm headed for it, but the torpedoes that hit left it tumbling and the ones that missed swung around in graceful arcs and struck their targets on the way back around. Like wise, the Breen ship swerved, but again the ones that missed came back around and hit home on the wounded ship.

The attack cruiser evaded nothing. The torpedoes swarmed the armored ship and pounded it. The cruiser's shields popped like a soap bubble. Gul Rakvot's chair launched into the air as a plasma conduit under his chair burst. He blocked the impact with the ceiling with his arms and then rolled as his chair came back down. Emergency personnel burst into the bridge as the plasma conduit was shut down.

"Gul Rakvot!" The EMT called, "Are you OK?" he asked running a medical scanner over him.

He rolled up on his feet. There were bruises, but his chair had taken the worst of it. The soles of his shoes had melted and were sticking to the floor. "I'm fine, what of my crew?" he demanded.

The medical officer turned to look over at the other two bridge officers and checked what they medical techs were doing.

"They are alive, but badly burned," he reported. "We will get them to the medical bay right away!"

While the medical techs were carrying away the wounded, Gul Rakvot noted that Ketran had been shielded by the two now dead Jem'Hadar while the Kadak had been shielded by his environmental suit. 'Dang! They lived!' he snarled to himself.

"What's our status?" Gul Rakvot asked the engineering officer as he arrived.

He worked the damaged console a moment before answering. The main screen flickered back to life and the Otaku ship appeared on the main view screen. "The Kui-Xing ship has several major hull breaches, it has vented a lot of plasma, there's lot's of ionic radiation, and I detect no life signs or reactor activity."

"What about my ship?" Ketran demanded.

The Jem'Hadar ship appeared on the view screen. "Major hull damage to the bridge, no life signs."

"What about my ship?" Kadak demanded.

The view screen shifted to the Breen ship. "Your ship is missing it's whole top half, no life signs."

"Now see," Rakvot noted, "that is what happens when you fail to recognise Cardassian superior tactical wisdom."

Ketran glared at Rakvot and yelled: "Fire on the Kui-Xing ship! Leave nothing!"

The engineering officer worked over his panel a bit and then replied: "We don't have any weapons."

"How long till we can fix them?" Gul Rakvot asked.

"That will be a bit of a problem," the engineer replied as an image of the front of the ship showed on screen. "The main weapons array has been blasted off our ship. There is a big holes where we are supposed to have our front disruptors. As for the aft weapons, we are missing the rear 50 meters or so of our ship. Then there are the fused shield generators. And the plasma fire in the transporters. And the dead atmospheric systems."

"We need to send a message to headquarters," Ketran decided.

"Good luck with that," the tactical officer replied, "our subspace communicator is also fried. We may get it back on line in a day or two."

"Do we at least have warp drive?" Gul Rakvot asked.

The tactical officer checked. "Yes, we have warp drive. It's damaged, so we are limited to about Warp 4.9, but we have warp drive."

"This is all your fault!" Ketran screamed at Gull Rakvot.

Gul Rakvot pulled his side arm and levelled it at the two diplomats! "Go to your quarters and don't let me see you again until we get back to Cardassia!"

The Diplomats fled for their rooms.

Gul Rakvot turned to the engineering officer, "Get us back to Cardassian space as fast as you can without breaking anything else! Alert me immediately when the subspace com system is back on line, even if I'm asleep." The attack cruiser gingerly turned from the ravaged ships and debris field and set off for Cardassia.

 

[UncleRice]

Star Trek Promellian

Lani's Battle

Chapter 2

Stardate: 52176.2

March 6, 2375, Time: 07:30:43


Almost an hour had passed since Lani had seen the Cardassian ship leave. None of the functioning passive sensors could detect any new ships arriving. She could not justify waiting any longer. She fired up the small cold start anti matter reactor near the center of the ship. It refilled it's plasma battery and powered up the internal scanners. The ones that still worked revealed a disaster. The upper and lower main reactors were still in good shape, but the upper warp drive was damaged. She tried to contact the bridge, but there was no response. She checked the environmental controls. There was no air. That was not supposed to happen! The bridge was in a vault made of armor plating two point five meters thick and buried in the center of the ship on Deck 14. She accessed the internal cameras. There was a big hole in the bridge. A security robot in the bridge responded and she had it look up the hole. One of the Cardassian disrupters had burned through three meters of armor, blown a hole through the top warp coils, burned through another three meters of armor, missed the upper reactor by a meter or two and burned through the bridge armor causing explosive decompression on the bridge. It had almost held, but not quite. She looked for other personnel.

Lt. Tega Sevana and Ensign Vi Solari were injured and trapped on deck 13 next to the bulk head. They were loosing air. An emergency force field was all that separated them from the vacuum of space, and it was flickering. It's power regulator was damaged. Lani's self repair system transported some of the fractured hall beyond the force field into the recycler on deck 14 where it was broken down and it's molecules were dumped into the matter storage unit below on deck 15. The replicator fabricated an air lock door and it was transported into place sealing the hall beyond the force field. The force field was then recycled and replaced in the same manner allowing the hall to be repressurize. Heat was now a problem. She needed to repair the plasma conduit so the local heaters would work. Lani focused on that task.

Lt. Tega regained conscientiousness. Her eyes were on fire and she couldn't see. There was a piercing pain in her throat, and she couldn't feel anything below the middle of her back. She checked her cybernetic implant. She had been out for about an hour. The wireless com circuit reached out and made contact with her verteron beam pistol. It was at her side where it belonged. It contacted the local life support panel. The air pressure had dropped slowly for an hour then abruptly returned to normal. That meant Lani's self repair system was active. Good. Vi was near by. She could feel her implant. 'Vi!' she sent via wireless signal. Vi stirred. 'Vi! Wake up!'

'Huh? What?' Vi replied.

'The ship was badly damaged. What's your condition?' Lt. Tega.

Vi looked around. The emergency lighting gave just enough light so see. 'I've suffered multiple burns and I'm trapped by a large metal pipe. You, on the other hand, are very bad off.'

'Where are you?' Lt. Tega asked.

'I'm to your left, Aunt Tega' Vi replied.

'I have an Idea,' Lt. Tega said and moved gently to pull her pistol. 'I can link up with the tactical camera on my pistol and substitute it for my vision. I'll see if I can free you.' She set the pistol on cut and fired on the pipe. In a few seconds the pipe fell free.

'Ow!' Vi cried as it fell in her lap. 'I can now move, but everything feels worse now.'
'Go find a working auto-doc and get in it,' Lt. Sevana ordered. 'I can't have you passing out trying to help me.'

Vi crawled over to the nearest cabin, opened the door, and crawled in. 'Found one,' she reported. 'I'll be out in a minute.

One hundred seven seconds later Vi returned. 'Woo! It's an older model. Those older models always leave me woozy when they are done.' she remarked pushing back her pink hair. Her clean sun yellow uniform nearly glowed in the dark corridor.
'So let me experience the woozy now,' Lt. Tega requested. 'I'm having my implant block my pain, so be quick.'

'Ok, here goes,' Vi said grabbing Tega by the shoulders. Vi drug her into the cabin in put her in the auto-doc and closed the lid with a push of a button.

"Patient Identified!" a cute voice squeaked. Lt. Tega Sevana. Medical file found. Initiating auto heal." Lt. Tega partially dematerialized in the auto doc's transporter beam. The shrapnel embedded in her did not match any normal body content and was filtered out of the matter stream. Likewise, the smoke in her lungs was red flagged and filtered out. The auto doc didn't have a complete copy of her last transporter pattern, but it did have enough biometric data on her to know the dimensions her bones were supposed to have and knew when one was broken. It knew a generic bone pattern and used it to reassemble her bones. The lacerations, deep and shallow, in her did not match the biometric data and her flesh was reconnected using the appropriate generic patterns in it's data base. Like wise, the torn neurons in her spine did not match spec, so were reassembled using more generic patterns and her biometric data on file. She was low on blood, so artificial blood was infused. Finally it filtered out the dirt in her bright red uniform and repaired the tears. Over a dozen times Lt. Tega dematerialized and rematerialized until she was whole again. She opened her reconstructed eyes to see a cute cartoon nurse on the display above her face. "You're all fixed up!" she said in her cute squeaky voice. "Your blood chemistry may take several minutes to regain it's equilibrium, so be careful!" she warned. "Thank you for choosing Solari Mark 2 auto docs."

"Open," Lt. Tega ordered and the lid opened. The motion made her head swim. "Gah!" she exclaimed covering her eyes. "You're right, these older units do leave you woozy."

"Yeah, the mark 4's have more positronic cylinders and better scanners," Vi replied with a nod. "They do a better job of getting blood chemistry right."

"Have you gotten hold of Lani yet?" Tega asked.

"No, the power is out in this section of the ship," Vi replied. "The air scrubbers are running on back up power. The cold is going to be a problem soon."

Lt. Tega gently sat up, carefully opened her eyes one at a time, and pushed back her blue hair. "There will be emergency blankets in the closet. and there should be a medical grade stasis unit not to far away if it comes to that."

Abruptly the lights blinked on full strength and the girl cried out and covered their eyes. A cartoon woman appeared on a display screen and said: "The heat should be back on soon. I had to fix some plasma conduits and reconnect to more of my positronic cylinders."

"Lani! You live!" Ensign Vi cheered.

"Lani, report. What happened?" Lt. Tega ordered.

"About an hour ago a Cardassian attack cruiser, a Jem'Hadar fighter, and a Breen Attack ship performed a three point attack on us," Lani began. "The Jem'Hadar ship appears to have fired a polaron beam that slipped passed my shields like they weren't there."

"Shields are supposed to do more than look shiny!" Ensign Vi objected."

"The Breen ship fired an energy dampening beam at me," Lani continued. "It felt like a Menthar aceton assimilator, only a thousand times stronger. My immunity to the Menthar technology limited the effect. I dumped my remaining power reserves into the photon torpedo launchers and fired. What's left of the Breen and Jem'Hadar ship is floating in the debris field, and Cardassian ship limped away leaking plasma."

"What's your damage?" Lt. Tega asked. "What's our casualty count?"

Lani displayed a diagram of the ship showing the destroyed sections. "I have multiple major hull breaches. I have multiple plasma conduit breaches. I have no warp drive, no weapons, no shields, no subspace radio, very limited scanners, and I have an aft section I cant contact yet. Lt. Commander Tencta Andid and a crew of twelve engineers are working on the warp drive. I've found two dozen of our Z'Niani scientists alive and have put them in stasis. I think there are a couple more in the aft section."

"That's only thirty eight or forty of us," Ensign Vi counted, "there were four hundred of us on board. What about the rest?"

"They are confirmed dead or are missing," Lani replied.

"What are your objectives?" Lt. Tega asked.

"Objective 1: regain contact with the aft section and secure any survivors there," Lani replied. "Objective 2: Rebuild the subspace radio so I can alert Kui-Xing Prime. Objective 3: Regain warp drive so I can head home. I expect it will take two days."

"We need to assume the enemy will be returning," Lt. Tega mused. "That means we should make the cloaking device objective 4. We need to both run and hide as soon as we can instead of waiting for the rescue party."

"Acknowledged," Lani nodded.

"Maybe we should have joined the federation in warring against the Cardassians when they fought last time," Ensign Vi mumbled." We knew the Cardassians were going to be trouble sooner or later."

"That would have been a bad Idea," Lt. Tega objected. "That was almost thirty years ago. Most of our fleet were of the second generation warp seven variety. They were boxy and our most powerful ship had to transform into a robot before it could fire it's main gun. The amount of technology we salvaged from federation ships blown up in that war was immense. Like wise The Tzenkenthi War introduced several superior technologies that have been essential."

"Yet we are still playing catch up," Ensign Vi grumbled.

"Lani, are those unique weapons still floating out there?" Lt. Tega asked."

"Yes," Lani nodded. "At least I think so, I see them out there."

"We need to assimilate that technology!" Ensign Vi exclaimed standing up.

"Vi!" Lt. Tega snapped. "We aren't supposed to use that word!"

"What word? Ensign Vi asked.

"Assimilate," Lt. Tega replied. "We scan and download advanced technology and download it onto the public net, not assimilate."

"That's stupid!" Ensign Vi insisted.

"If we meet up with the Federation and we say: 'We assimilate technology,' we will scare them," Lt. Tega countered. "We don't want to scare the Federation."

"Fine!" Ensign Vi pouted, "We need to scan their weapons, copy their computer files, so it can be dumped on the public net. That will require a couple of tool kits and a mobile computer with a backup power supply."

"What kind of chassis do you need?" Lani asked.

"A photon torpedo chassis," Lt. Tega suggested. "Can you get me a photon torpedo?"

"Yes," Lani nodded. "I can transport one into the hallway."

"I can pull an emergency powers supply out of the cabin next door and a few of your positronic cylinders so you can fly it out there." Ensign Vi mused as the whine of a transporter could be heard from the hall.

"We need EVA suits and a couple assault riffles," Lt. Tega noted pulling a weapon off the wall in the cabin.

The two opened the case of the torpedo case and pulled out the antimatter device and warp continuation engine. Lt. Tega eyed one of the anti-mater capsules with a smile. They cut holes for rotating nozzle maneuvering thrusters. A plasma battery snapped into place. Ensign Vi installed a positronic cylinder rack and plugged in the cylinders she had pulled from the cabins nearby. A pulse transmitter was mounted. A hostile interface unit was mounted in a new hole in the nose. The mods took nearly six hours to complete. The girls suited up for EVA.

"Ungh!" Lt. Tega grunted shoving against the modified torpedo. "Give me a hand, Vi," she asked.

"Lani, can you drop the gravity to 1%?" Ensign Vi asked.

The modified torpedo launched down the hall. "Very funny, Vi," Lt. Tega said scowling at Vi's smirk. Lani used the thrusters on the torpedo to guide it out the improvised airlock. "Take this bag of toys with you and I'll take the other," Lt. Tega said holding out a bag.

They followed the modified torpedo out through the hole in the hull. Lt. Tega tied her bag of toys to the edge of the hole and followed to the Jem'Hadar ship. The Jem'Hadar ship tumbled dangerously fast in three different directions. Lt. Tega fired photon grenades at the ship's extremities until it stopped tumbling. She led the way into the ship.

'Only one Jem'Hadar is still on board,' Lt. Tega sent. 'My tricorder says he's frozen solid and missing part of one arm. The rest of the crew was probably sucked out when that giant hole in the roof was blown off. He even has his assault riffle. on his him yet. We should take him back and put him in stasis.'

'The main computer is without power as expected,' Ensign Vi noted and pulled an access panel off. 'Good, the power regulator is in tact. I can feed the plasma directly to the regulator.' She removed the power cable to the regulator and attached the one from the modified torpedo. The computer blinked to life. She attached the hostile interface probe to the computer. 'Ready?' she asked holding up her right fist. Lt. Tega nodded and the both pointed their fists at the computer. Probes shot out of their cuffs and into the computer. The computer resisted for twenty seven seconds before it yielded. 'Wow, this computer taste different, but the security is poor. Once you are through the outer security, the data isn't even encrypted.'

'Lani, can you handle this?' Lt. Tega asked.

'Yes,' she replied.

'Good, help me scan the polaron beam directly Vi, they may have intentional inaccuracies in the files,"

For five hours they scanned the polaron beam, the shields, the warp engines, and the computer's circuit structure. Finally, with the torpedo towing the Jem'Hadar corpse they were ready to leave.

'I'll be right with you,' Lt. Tega sent. 'I'm going to play with some toys first.

Fifteen minutes later they were headed back to their ship. They put the Jem'Hadar in stasis, ate some food, and went to sleep.

Back on board the wounded Cardassian attack cruiser, Gul Rakvot was dreaming that he was slaughtering Vorta, founders, Jem'Hadar, and Breen in great numbers. It was a good dream. It ended with him being woken by his aide.

"Gul Rakvot, sir," the aid called.

"What is it?" Rakvot asked.

"The subspace radio has been repaired," the aid reported.

"Has anyone else been told?" Rakvot asked.

"No sir," the aid replied.

"I need to make a private transmission," Rakvot informed. "I will make it from my quarters."

"Do to some technical reasons, the radio only works from your personal office," the aid noted.

"That is convenient," Rakvot noted.

"Thank you, sir," the aid saluted and left.

Rakvot sat in his chair and called his commander's office. Legate Damar answered.

"Gul Rakvot! Why didn't you call in as scheduled?" Damar demanded.

"I had an incident involving my guests," Rakvot replied. "I'm sending you a log. Watch it."

Damar watched the log of the battle. "I see," Damar mused. "Confining them to quarters was justified, but that will get you in trouble when none of the rest would have. Set course for Kelvas V. I will have a ship intercept you and pick up your guests. Once that ship is out of range, divert to Omekla III for repairs. Once they are complete go to Unefra III and stay quiet. You may be safe there. In the mean time. I will send Gul Revok with a fleet to collect the debris. They should get there in about eight or nine hours."

"I see," Rakvot noted. " I suspect my subspace radio is about to suffer another failure."

Damar nodded and the link was broken.

 

[UncleRice]

Ok, Third and final chapter of this episode. This will be all for a little bit. I have to do some work on designing the Gui-Xing ships so I know what they can what kind of hardware they can hold before I can write the next episode.

Star Trek: Promellian Gap

Lani's Battle

Chapter 3

Stardate: 52178.0

March 6, 2375, Time: 23:16:48

Precisely four hours after going to sleep, Lt. Tega Sevana and Ensign Vi Solari were woke by their cybernetic implants. There was no time to waste on REM sleep.

"I finished replicating a new subspace radio shortly after you fell asleep," Lani announced. "Admiral Dirk Malik left a message for you both.

"Play message," Lt. Tega sent while she chewed on her rations.

A gray bearded man in a red uniform appeared on the screen. "Lt. Sevana, Ensign Solari, good work on that Jem'Hadar ship. We've already dumped the data on the public net. Get what you can from the Breen ship, but when the warp drive is back on line, I want you on the ship ready to move. We've sent the ninth carrier group to rescue you, but it will be a couple days. I agree that the risk is too great to not have you on the move and cloaked as soon as possible, even if it's only warp two. Lt. Commander Andid will contact you when he is almost ready for Warp. We will talk more when you return."

"When is the warp drive estimated to go back on line?" Ensign Vi asked.

"Lt. Commander Andid estimates four hours," Lani replied.

"Then we best get to work," Lt. Tega decided.

They suited up and glided out of the hole in the hull again. Lt. Tega retrieved the bag of toys she left tied at the opening and continued toward the remains of the Breen ship. Several carefully placed shots from a photon grenade launcher stopped the ship from tumbling. The entire top of the ship had been torn off. They descended directly onto the computer and hooked up to it.

"Thirteen seconds," Ensign Vi noted. "They have upgraded their computer security, but it's a derivative of what they used to use. It's tastes frosty."

"The data is encrypted," Lt. Tega noted. "Is that a problem?"

"Not at all," Ensign Vi replied. "We'll transmit the data back to Gui-Xing Prime encrypted and let them work on it. We have enough to do."

"Good," Lt. Tega acknowledged. "Help me scan the energy dampening beam then."

They spent two hours scanning the weapon and did a cursory scan of the warp system and shield emitters before Lt. Commander Andid called them.

"Lt. Sevana, Ensign Solari, report," he radioed.

"We are at the Breen wreckage, Commander," Lt. Tega replied.

"Warp drive will be operational in thirty minutes," he announced. "I want you on board by then."

"Acknowledged," Lt. Tega replied. "Vi, help me with my bag of toys."

Fifteen minutes later they launched back to their ship. Ten minutes later the entered the hole in the ship three minutes later they were through the airlock.

"Lani, full gravity, please" Lt. Tega requested. The gravity returned. "Commander, we are back on board."

"Very good," her replied. "We go to warp in thirty seconds."

The ship groaned and shuddered as it picked up speed.

"We're limited to warp three point seven," he informed.

"What about the cloaking device?" Lt. Tega asked. "Will it work?"

"Maybe?" he replied. "Let me give it a try." several seconds passed. "The cloaking device is sort of working," he reported.

"Sort of?" Lt. Tega queried.

"It's badly out of adjustment," he explained. "If someone is far enough away, they probably won't see us. If the two of you could help re-tune the system I think we can make it better."

"Just tell us what you need," she replied.

Minutes later on board Gul Revok's ship the navigator announced: "We are here." and a Keldon class ship, six Jem'Hadar fighters, and a freighter dropped out of warp.

"The Gui-Xing ship is missing!" the tactical officer alerted.

"Have our ships been stripped?" the female changeling asked.

"I'm not detecting any changes since they were originally destroyed, but there is a lot of ionic radiation interference." the tactical officer replied.

"Can you pick up a warp signature?" Revok asked.

The tactical officer examined the area, "There is evidence of recent warp activity, but it's very faint. We will have to do some hunting."

"Have the freighter scoop up the ships while we hunt."

The Keldon orbited the battle site scanning carefully while the old freighter vacuumed the air from it's cargo hold and opened it's big doors. A tractor beam carefully pulled the wrecks into the cargo hold. The big doors closed and the cargo hold began to be repressurized.

"I think I have their trail," the tactical officer reported. "I don't know what the Menthars and Promellians did here, but it's like the fabric of space is still hammered from it. The strength of the warp trail suggests they were going about warp 1.1, but the decay rate suggest about warp 4."

Back on the freighter Ketran walked up to the remains of the Jem'Hadar fighter and opened his tricorder. His face abruptly showed alarm, but it was much too late. He died first in a massive explosion that turned the freighter into a ball of incandescent plasma!

"What was that?" Revok demanded. "Did we get attacked by a cloaked ship?"

"No, the explosion came from within the freighter," the tactical officer replied. "Yield was about ten point three isotons. I'm picking up that much more antimatter in the debris cloud."

"A booby trap!" Revok growled and hammered his fist on his chair. "They booby trapped the ships!"

"We have the coords of their planets don't we?" the female changeling asked.

"Yes," Revok replied.

"Then we will crush them after we have crushed the Federation Alliance," she decided. "There will be plenty of time to deal with them later. Return to Cardassia."

 

[Gul Re'jal]

Borgish, with verteron pistols and very advanced technology. An interesting mix.

Such an advanced technology had to be developed only recently, relatively speaking, if they had stolen warp drive from the Ferengi merely a hundred years earlier. I guess access to warp gave them access to more and stealing and "assimilating" is their typical tactics.

 

[UncleRice]

I figured that in the century before they suffered some Ferengi raids, they had focussed on computer technology and developed cybernetic implants and a pubic net that resulted in a fifty year revolution turning them into a planet of five billion sovereign individuals. It' like a Wikileaks based society.