The PDF
Weeping Sore was not the most impressive Viidian ship to ever see space. Her ionic weapons and her spinal railguns were both nearly unusable as their target acquisition programs were completely shot to hell and their firing procedure was missing three vital checksums that normally let them lob kinetic and energetic death downrange. Normally, the telescopes and scanners would sniff out an enemy ship, then the information would bounce to the ship's Tactical Pens. There, Zipheads, focused by the Phage into biological computers, would turn blurry and incoherent data into profiles, weak points, identified silhouettes. Then the information would bounce to the Tactical Managers, who would decide which ships needed to die. Then those orders would bounce from TacMan back to the Tactical Pens, where the Zipheads would - with their hyperfixated diligence - target this particular part of space, that shield weak point, this nacelle, that fusion core heat bloom.
Then TacMan would get all the credit for the fireworks.
But the PDF
Weeping Sore currently did not have a Tactical Pen. They did not have a single ziphead aboard. Every single 'Focused' 'crewman' had been transported off their ship when the crew had, upon hearing the words 'free cure to the phage' and 'immediate defection', riddled their furious Pod Captain with disruptor bolts, bludgeoned their Internal Security Officer to death with a wrench, and threw the Political Officer out of the ship via the port airlock. The new acting captain had, until the airlock sealed itself on the furious 'you will all pay for this!' on Political Officer Gorel, been a lowly Pod Lieutenant named Tasih Viron. He had been three months behind in his payment on his cure and his skin had begun to turn prickly and gray, his internal organs tingling with the sensation of the dormant (but never defeated) Phage ready to turn him into slurry.
He had thought volunteering for this dangerous mission would get him the credit to buy another six months of Treatment.
Instead, he was sitting on the command chair of his bridge, passing the empty hypospray that he had jammed into himself a half hour before back and forth between his palms. He felt better than he had in his entire life.
Cured. The word still felt surreal to him. But that good mood had run into a serious problem with what Captain Janeway, the angelic woman who had just...given the entire crew of the
Weeping Sore their futures back, had said.
"You want us to fly into a fight with a Haakonian and Talaxian battlefleet?" he asked - joining a chorus of other shocked Viidians from the newly turncoat ships.
"Yes," Janeway said. "We don't need you to fight. If this works, you won't fire a shot. All we need you to do is act like you
might shoot."
And so, Acting Pod Captain Gorel found himself having to try and get the
Weeping Sore's warp field online and in the right direction. It was harder than he expected. For one thing, the Technician Managers had no zipheads to ask for specific answers to specific questions. And when the TechManagers asked the computer directly, they found library architecture that had been organized
by and
for zipheads. Jargon, acronyms inside of acronyms, shorthands and bizarre interlinkages that made total sense to zipheads who had been hooked into the library for their entire career as Focused persons...as slaves...but to someone just arriving, they were as welcoming as the Dragon's Den from the final battles of the Liberation. Mined, trapped and ambushed to hell, but instead of particle guns and plasma mines, it was hyperlinks that would be labled something like "anak-sook_2.2.final.text" that led to a completely unsorted pile of text data.
Still.
Despite all that.
The
Weeping Sore managed to arrive about half a minute behind the USS
Voyager.
***
Janeway sat in her command chair and frowned as Tom threw up the engagement map. A fleet battle was a terribly complex thing, doubly so when it was pitched like this. The Talaxians had fallen back several AU to find a defensive position around Saturn. There were several elements of their fleet scattered around the dozens of moons, using them as cover and camouflage, while the Haakonians were organized into a triple chevron - their light ships and pickets fingering forward in huge delta sweeps that let them overlap and cover one another as they approached the polar orbits of Saturn, while their battleships sat in a rectangular box almost five hundred thousand kilometers across. The idea was that the pickets would spot any Talaxian lunge, move to slow it down, and that big box would shift and bring the withering weight of their broadsides and dorsal guns to bear and crack the Talaxians apart.
It all came down to the question: Could the Haakonians keep their organization in the face of Talaxian wolfpack tactics? If the Haakonian formation fell apart and a dagger of Talaxian torpedo ships got in close, they could turn several Haakonian battleships into so many expensive tombstones - the ships were too large, their guns too fixed for defenses to be anything but shields and armor, and no amount of shielding, no amount of plasticrete and synthsteel armor could handle being whacked by five or six antimatter torpedoes.
It was a fascinating question, and if this had been a vidgame, or a simulation, Janeway might have been interested to see the answer. But each of those ships had hundreds, if not thousands, of terrified spacers aboard, of multiple species. She had read the dossier on the Haakonian Order: Their fleet was led by the Haak caste, which were all native Haakonians, but their empire included Talaxian colony worlds, Kazon splinter movements, and other, minor species like the Numiri and the Vhnori. The Talaxians, meanwhile, were equally as weighted towards Talaxians - but they had several Haakonian worlds (claimed to be turncoat colonies that preferred democracy to dictatorship - and for all Janeway knew, the claims were true) and they, also, recruited from anyone who was willing to become a citizen of the Republic.
Each of those men and women were, at this moment, preparing to die and to kill in the cold vacuum of space.
Janeway nodded. "Open hailing frequencies." At T'are's nod, she spoke. "All ships - attention. This is the USS
Voyager, and an escort of liberated Viidian ships. You will stand down immediately and-"
"We're being jammed, sir," T'are said, shaking her head. "They don't want to listen."
Some bastard out there wanted to see ships cracked and burning.
And Janeway wasn't going to have it.
She considered her options, and sighed. "Tom Paris. Target Mimas. Photon torpedo. Full spread."
Tom whistled, quietly. "You sure, captain?"
"We need to get a lot of people's attentions and communicate, very clearly, what exactly is going on here," Janeway said.
Tom nodded. D-91 leaned in, voice soft. "The ecological effects..."
"I'd rather lose the rings than these ships," Janeway said. She smiled. "Besides. They're not even older than sharks."
D-91 nodded, and the USS
Voyager shuddered as her prow torpedo tubes fired, fired, fired, fired. The impact was almost secondary to the rate of fire, the pinpoint accuracy, the corkscrewing way they swept through space, clearly able to avoid any point defense fire aimed their way, and the sheer volume of them.
If we can fire this many as a demonstration, how many do you think we have, motherfuckers? The torpedoes thumped into Mimas, the smallest moon of Saturn, and pinpricks of blue-white fire bloomed across the surface. Cracks ravened across the moon and, with a silent, terrible grace, a good chunk of the hundred kilometer wide potato shaped moon began to spill into space, cherry red, molten fragments shooting off and away as the entire moon came to pieces.
"...sir, we're receiving a message from Admiral Dovank Trelar Haakkorash and Admiral Banix!" T'are said.
"On screen," Janeway said, with a grim little smile.
Admiral Haakkorash and Admiral Banix appeared, flanked side by side on the screen.
"I admit," Admiral Haakkorash said. "I'm impressed." His grin was fierce. "I respect a woman that makes a statement-"
"By the Stars and Moons, do you know what destroying that moon is going to do to the ring system!?" Admiral Banix exclaimed. "Those rings are partially stabilized by that moon!"
"I'm aware," Janeway said, simply. "But we in the Federation think that people trump rocks. Which is why I'm rather disappointed to see so many supposed adults ready to die and kill for them. Your two peoples have been at peace since the Treaty of Rinax...and the last war you fought killed millions of people - and for what? For a few parsecs?" She shook her head. "Are you two really so eager to bring that genie out of the bottle? To force it onto a world that has only just begun to grow." She managed to bring that out without a hitch. Her mind echoed the words:
Two years. Two Years. She ignored it. She didn't ignore the gentle caress of Phoebe, in her mind. That was the echo she really cared about.
Admiral Haakkorash scowled. "My orders are clear. To secure this world before the Talaxians can take it. With it, they would be an immediate threat to the Haakonian Order."
"Funny, those are our exact orders too," Admiral Banix said.
"Then we have very little to talk about," Admiral Haakkorash growled.
"Actually..." Janeway settled in her seat. She smiled, ever so slightly. "There's a historical epic of my people. We often call on such historicals, for inspiration. We've had a blood soaked past - looking to it for answers and solutions is a fair sight better than reinventing the wheel again, yes?" She grinned. "It's called...
Casablanca."
The two admirals looked curious.
"Tom Paris, bring up out astronavigational map," Janeway said. She stood, pointing. "Your two states both have boarders reaching down this direction. There will be fighting here, here, here, as you explore and expand. This world is just the first of it. But what if...it could be the last of it? What if there was a neutral world, with the infrastructure to support and extend exploration operations for three, four, a dozen empires! Imagine it, friendly shipyards that don't produce warships and guns and bombs, but serve as the jumping off point to find new resources - dilithium is a hell of a lot easier to find in K-class and M-class stars than in a little yellow dwarf like here. And that's what matters more than some...subpar subspace transmitters and primitive isoliniar processors, which is all that Earth-2 can even produce."
Admiral Banix frowned. "And who keeps the peace between our fleets, then?"
"Well...if you scan Earth-2 closely, you may notice something. Specifically at coordinates 37 by 122..."
The two Admirals turned to subordinates. Banix made a grunting noise. Haakkorash snarled. "What the...where did those combustion burning primitives get disruptor-" He stopped, turning back to Janeway, who smiled slightly at him.
"The world may not be as easy to claim as you initially suspected," she said. "Especially if you remember Mimas. So. Choose. Do you want a future of cooperation. Or do you want to see...just...how...
fast our torpedoes are?"
There was a long silence.
Admiral Banix grinned. "I need to send a subwave to the President. She's going to
love this." Her eyes sparkled. The screen flicked off.
Haakkorash frowned. Then he growled. "Is Haaktriar in that bloody ship?"
"Haaktriar?" Janeway asked, blandly. "Never heard of him."
Haakkorash growled. "If I find out Prime Minister Jetrel and his...
centrist coalition is behind this, if I find out that weasly little half-Talaxian mutant is spinning his webs, trying to keep us out of a just and proper war, I am going to
wring his little neck!" He made a cutting motion and the screen blinked off.
Janeway and the entire bridge crew turned to look at Neelix...well, Neelix Sr. He was shaking his head slowly.
"I can't decide," he said, slowly. "If I want to give my nephew a hug and a kiss...or throw him out an airlock without a spacesuit. How much of this was his plan?"
Janeway laughed. "I think whatever amount, we better not let him take credit." She took a seat, tugging her uniform straight. "No sense giving him an even bigger head."
***
"
Casablanca?" Lindy asked as she and Janeway stood by the transporter array, watching as the emitters were charged and Torres worked on the console, her face focused and intent.
"Yes," Janeway said.
"How the hell did referencing some city in France help?" Lindy asked.
"It's not-" Janeway blinked. "Wait, you've never seen Casca..." She paused, then tapped her combadge. "Computer, when did
Casablanca come out?"
"The film
Casablanca was released in 1942." Lindy's eyebrows went right up and she laughed, then leaned her head against Janeway's shoulder, her voice soft.
"So, it came out three years after I died?" Lindy frowned. "And it didn't come out at all on Earth-2. I think the film production got a bit messed up, what with Europe being turned into so much cinders and ash and radiation." She snuggled in close. "It's a bit chilling to think about. Like someone walked over my grave." Janeway slid her arm around her shoulders, squeezing her tightly.
"We'll be sure to add it to your media," she said. "...actually, Khan might have a copy. For all I know, he's a Bogart fan."
Lindy's nose wrinkled. "He's better than Hitler, but..."
"We got it!" Torres said, stepping back as she did so. "This should punch right through the quantum interference."
Janeway stepped away from Lindy - but Lindy followed after. No one on the crew said boo. Torres, T'are and Amy Strong all got onto the pads. The emitters grew brighter and brighter and Janeway nodded to Harry Kim. "Energize," she said as Lindy found her hand and squeezed tighter. There was a flare of light...a wrenching sensation...and then they stood in a large metal room. A gleaming catwalk ran beneath them, and below stretched a nearly infinite seeming drop. Crackling energies buzzed along the walls as what had seemed like a cave of steel resolved into building sized machinery - reaching up, reaching down. For miles. The heat was less intense than the probes had suggested - but the noise was louder than Janeway had expected. She winced and tapped her combadge, creating a sound in the exact opposite harmonic frequency of the air roar. The sound muted out and she turned to Torres.
"Holy of holies," Torres said, holding her tricorder up. "This is a megastructure. This entire planetary core, it's...ma'am, I'm detecting antimatter reactors in here. Millions of them. They're in semi-stable energy states too."
"You mean they're making antimatter as fast as they're using it?" Amy asked, frowning.
"And have enough energy left over to run...whatever these systems are. That's impossible," Torres said, quietly. "Well. Impossible for us."
"What does that all mean?" Lindy asked.
"It's a perpetual motion machine," Janeway said. "It goes faster, not slower. Thermodynamics say's impossible."
"There has to be entropy somewh-" Torres said.
A
bink sounded and a human man with a bright, cheerful smile appeared before the whole group. He was dressed in a flashy green and white skintight suit, clinging to his body like he was in...well, in Starfleet. He stepped between them and the rest of the catwalk, saying: "I'm dreadfully sorry, guests are not allowed in this area. It's not safe. Please, let me escort you outside."
"It speaks English?" Lindy asked.
"Must have a universal translator. A good one too, it looks human," Torres said, then shouted at the projection, loudly and slowly. "We are not guests. We are explorers. What is this place?"
The man stood still, perfectly still, as if he was registering that. "Ah! Are you a hostile military, a colonizing force, or prospective purchaser?"
Torres glanced at Janeway. Janeway gave her a subtle nod.
"Purchaser," Torres said, dryly. "Give us the sales pitch."
The man stood perfectly still, then bowed. "Of course! This is a Keeper Historical Recreation. Our top of the line quantum duplicates are preserved in their state, unaware of the universe around them - but when you arrive, and when you step down among them, they will live out their lives, reactive to your presence. And when you wish, the world may be reset, altered, reconfigured. This world, Earth, has a deeply fascinating history and we Keepers have selected several fascinating historical eras for you to enjoy and explore and learn from."
Torres looked at the man, then back at Janeway, then back at the man. "...this is a
theme park?"
The man looked wounded. "Please! It is an
exceptional theme park!"
"Then I have an error to report," Janeway said, her voice tight, controlled as Lindy gaped at the man. "The people on this world are running down. They're stopping."
"Well, that's..." The man paused. "Oh good heavens. My apologies, it seems this world has not been reset for some time. The computational machines are capable of simulation and growth, but not perpetual simulation and growth. When an actor's cache for change and growth has hit a pre-set limit based on various factors ranging from their previous lives, the complexity of their situation, how much their life has diverged from the base point they were quantum copied from, they are suspended so the entire system doesn't crash. Fortunately, it's quite simple to reset them!"
Janeway turned back to Lindy. "I..." She said.
"I'm..." Lindy gulped. "I'm just a photograph?" she asked, her voice tight. "Just...just a copy?"
Her voice cut Janeway to the quick.
---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0 (spent 1 momentum to reveal the truth of Earth-2)
CURRENT TRAITS
TRAIT:
"Two Years To Doomsday" [Level 1]
Blocks: Medicine (Quantum Duplicates) | Blocks: Diplomacy (Panicky Crowds)
[ ] Let the world know, and accept their decision.
[ ] ask the Keeper to reset the world periodically.
[ ] stay here as long as it takes to fix this - even if it takes years.
[ ] Write In
