STAR TREK: A Long Road (Voyager Fix It Quest)

[DragonCobolt]

Kar drummed his thumbs on the hard, much loved metal of his console, and peered up at the cracked, repaired, cracked, repaired, and cracked again screen that displayed his orbits. The elegant curve of his parabolic arc swept him right through the dark side of Talamon right when he wanted it too. He checked his navs, then checked them again, then grinned and drummed even harder, humming the song squeaking out of the headset he had taken off and let float away.

He was going to do it.

He was going to do it.

Kar glanced around the small cabin that had been his home for what felt like his entire life. There was the VR headset in the back, there was the bed nook, there was the bioprocessor that was turning his spit and sweat and piss into water, with the algae vat in the back, visible as a glass pane so he could check to make sure the contained green glop was still there and growing.

And growing it was. His great great great great great great grandfather had spent his entire life, growing glass boned and spindly, breeding that algae through as many generations as he could, tweaking it until it was just the most perfect kind of oxygen emitting, food producing pile of glop you could want. Kar took pride in that. He took pride in every part of the ship, because every part of the ship stretched back and back and back and back, to his ancestors. To his people. To his Sept.

Not what people called Septs these days. Not the fake, shitty mockeries that stamped around space and pretended that they were Kazon.

Kar paused, then, seeing a blinking light on his console. It wasn't one that was used often.

It was a tachyon burst.

Kar frowned.

Every ship in his Sept had a tachyon receiver and a tachyon emitter. Subspace radio. But you only used it for big emergencies. Important things. Stuff you had to say now. It was for bad news, disasters, and maydays. There was a saying his father had said: good news waits. Bad news has to hurry.

Kar gulped, then tapped away at his console. The screen flickered and winked as he managed to connect the subspace transmitter to the main computer system and have it function properly. He still had to debug it, but that was fine. It gave him something to focus on. Then when he saw the message, it was a tight clenching squeeze in his belly. Fierce and terrible.

It was Lan.

"Oh no," Kar whispered.

He flicked on the message.

Lan appeared on the screen, her growths cut straight and pretty, in the most fusion-flash new style. She was sitting back on her bed, looking chagrined. She didn't look like she had cancer, so, that was it. Kar felt his heart thudding slightly as he leaned forward in his seat. "Lan?" he asked, not quite ready to believe that she would actually react. She was six light hours away, in the Septhome in the belt. But there she was, smiling shyly and nodding.

"Hey Kar..." she said, quietly, brushing her fingers along her green growths, her orange skin darkening. "I..." She bit her lip. "I know...it's not really...I know you're doing your big shot soon, but..."

"Yeah?" Kar asked.

"...I'm seeing someone else," Lan said, her voice blurting out. "I want to see someone else, I mean."

Kar, stupidly, wished he had the cancer now.

"What?" he asked.

"You're just always gone so long!" Lan exclaimed. "I want a boyfriend that's here, not out monopole hunting nine months out of twelve. I want someone who can hold me at night, who...who has bigger dreams than staying in a backwards Sept! I want to join Sept Ogla and see space, and...and travel faster than light and meet aliens! And I...I don't see you being a part of that. But Xon is! And...and...and..." She looked as if she had been working herself up to this and was realizing it had all come out wrong. Kar, if he had been...slightly older than eighteen cycles, might have noticed the sudden stricken look on her face, the horror in her eyes. He might have reflected this was no easier for her - that she had spent just as long psyching herself up, considering her future, and felt just as much pain at realizing that there was no room for him in it. But...Kar...

Did not.

He scowled at her. "Fine! You go join the Ogla jackboot bastards, and see if I ever talk to you again!" He slammed down the button and hung up as Lan opened her mouth to say something.

The screen went black.

***​

Kar drifted. He drifted in space and in time.

He approached the point he had worked for a good chunk of his life. Kar didn't just hunt monopoles and dilithium out in the asteroid belt. He also did, as many teenagers did...stunts. Things to get him recognition, attention, admiration, views! And everyone knew that Sept Ogla ships were in orbit around the big fat gas giant Talamon pretty much thirty six, five. They had a secret base on one of their moons, and they didn't want anyone getting close enough to disturb it. Well, Kar had planned to shoot through the dark side of the gas giant, around the moon, and within a few hundred thousand kilometers of their fancy pants base, all without them noticing.

After all.

He was in a tiny fusion burner. Next to those big antimatter ships that the Septs and aliens (not that he'd ever seen an alien) flew, his ship was basically space dust.

Instead of being keyed up, excited, focused, Kar just leaned back in his seat and watched the stars while an old Kazon lament - Su Tolomor Vora Ma Ta Tale - rang out of his speakers. He'd always used to hate the song, which had been about watching Tazinar burn from orbit as the Takers carved the continents into chunks and cinders, as their cubes came down to begin to extract. But now? Now he felt that pain. His own heart had been ripped out and stomped on by more advanced things. Aliens.

Aliens!

"Next she would have talked about Voyager," Kar muttered. Then, angrier. "Fuck Voyager!"

It was Voyager's fault, he was sure of it. Everyone was talking about it on all the nets, all the Septs, and it filtered into his Septhome, and into his ship. Voyager did this and Voyager did that, and now some aliens he had never heard of were at peace, and blah blah blah, it was stupid. And Lan was stupid. And Kar was stupid. And the universe was stupid! And-

"Collision alert."

And he should just-

"Collision alert."

Kar blinked.

He jerked his head up and almost knocked himself from his restraints as he goggled down at the alert.

There was an unexpected piece of debris in his way, detected by his skimcraft's sensors.

"Uh..." Kar whispered. He tapped away at his console, scanning it, then scanning it again with a wave of focused emissions. The bounce back was clear. It was a ship about the same size...no, a little bigger. The hull composition was wildly different from any ship he'd ever seen, even Ogla ships. And it looked like it had been damaged, badly. A good chunk of it was floating in a debris pattern around the rest of the ship. There was a life sign aboard.

Kar frowned.

Then he got a visual bounce and saw it.

It was gray and boxy, with two sleek nacelles to either side - though one nacelle had been shattered in half. As it floated, though, he saw a symbol he had seen on the nets a million times. The swoop of a delta shape.

"Voyager," Kar growled.

---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0
CURRENT TRAITS: None

What does our sad Kazon do?
[ ] The Stardiver only has a grappler, but Voyager looks damaged. Maybe Kar can steal it! That would impress Lan! And then she'd want him back!
[ ] Open hailing frequencies and start cursing the stupid aliens out for being idiots and getting their ship busted up!
[ ] Ignore them and keep moping and listening to sad songs.
[ ] Write in

Who is on the shuttle? Choose between 1 to 3 (use a plan vote if you want just a solo character)
[ ] Brian Wacoche
[ ] Torres
[ ] D-91
[ ] T'are
[ ] Kes
[ ] Tuvok

 

[DragonCobolt]

Kar frowned, slightly.

He had an idea.

"Show her the stars..." he muttered as he reached down and started to program in course changes.

He had enough delta-V.

...maybe.

***
​

"How long will it take?" Kes asked as she sat back in her seat, fidgeting her legs together.

"It likely is the same as it was the last time you asked, Miss Kes," Tuvok said from where he was perched. The shuttle's agrav systems had been shut down, so he had taken the most logically convenient spot - out of the way and relatively comfortable for himself. The fact that it meant he was now upside down compared to Kes and Torres - something that made Kes's ground-born stomach flip flop every time she noticed him - was no nevermind.

"Actually, the constant harassment makes me work faster. It reminds me of the Captain," Torres said, her voice dry as she frowned, then shoved herself away from the wall. "No, not really." She said, before Kes could ask the obvious question. "But I actually have a situation report to give."

Tuvok arched an eyebrow.

"It's verklempt," Torres said.

"An appropriate state for a piece of technology designed by a human," Tuvok said, his voice dry.

"We could fix it if we had the power to run the replicator, but since the thing that's broken is the power cells, and my spares aren't enough to finish the patching, we're on low energy systems. Air cyclers, subspace transmitter, the lights." Torres gestured around herself in the shuttle's cabin. "And it's not like we can send a subspace message without the Ogla noticing us."

Kes groaned. "Fuck."

"We have to consider the possibility that our only option is to signal the Ogla," Tuvok said. "While they will take us prisoner, the Captain can then negotiate for us to be released. While embarrassing and costly in a material sense, it is better than losing our lives."

"Ugh," Torres said.

"I don't particularly look forward to being interrogated by Sept Ogla. Do they even have fast penta?" Kes asked, frowning. "They might just resort to beating us with rubber pipes."

"That'd actually be a relief, fast penta makes my nose itch," Torres said, wiping some grease from her hands.

Kes snorted.

Tuvok pursed his lips. His eyes lifted and he frowned as he peered out of the glassy cockpit of the shuttle. They were in a very slow spin since the micrometeorite impact had disabled them. It was one of the one in a million situations that happened more often in space than people liked to admit - and normally would have been merely startling, rather than potentially lethal. The only difference between shields fizzling for a second and a deflector screen gently flicking the chunk of zipping rock or metal away was that this hadn't been a simple chunk of rock or bit of space dust. They had been hit by some fragment of dilithium crystal, hissing through space at a fraction of C. It had bored through their shield, blown through the nacelle, and exploded out the other in the time it took Torres to open her lips to say what the hell is that? as the sensor picked up the unusual energy/mass readings.

"If the stuff wasn't so damn useful in engines, we'd be shooting it at each other," Torres muttered as she looked out the window at the nacelle again.

"Do you see that, Kes?" Tuvok asked.

"Looks like a...huh, it's gone," Kes said.

"That appeared to be a fusion torch flare," Tuvok said, nodding slowly. "Relatively close, short burst." He turned his head to look at her. "I know that clairsentience is relatively short ranged-"

Torres started grumbling under her breath. "Space is too damn big."

"-but can you attempt to perceive what, if anything, is out there?"

Kes gulped, nodded, squared her shoulders, closed her eyes, and focused. She frowned while Tuvok waited patiently and Torres started to fiddle with a piece of machinery she had pulled from the wall. The tiny, quiet click click click of metal on plastic and the faint shifting sound of Torres against the floor was the only sound beyond the hiss of the air vents and the sound of Kes' breathing. Kes scowled. "I can't..." she said.

"Here," Tuvok said. He placed two fingers on each of her temples. "My strength to your strength. My mind to your mind. I will be the current. You the river." His eyes closed and he focused. Kes closed her eyes tighter, her hand reaching out as she touched her fingers to the glass. They remained perfectly still and silent.

Torres looked between the two of them.

She was roughly as psychic as a rock.

It felt kind of like being next to two orchestral musicians playing their hearts out when you were deaf. She didn't hear anything and...it kinda looked a little goofy without the context. She went back to futzing with the attitude control unit - when Kes gasped, opening her eyes. "It's a Kazon ship."

"Ah shit," Torres muttered. "A Ogla scout craft?"

Then.

"Wait, why the fuck would they be using a fusion drive? Not impulse?"

"It's not a Ogla scoutship," Kes said, shaking her head as Tuvok removed his fingers from her temples. Her frowned. "It's...I...I don't know what kind of Kazon it is."

"We can assume that we've yet to learn every detail about the Kazon people," Tuvok said. "Each of their septs is different. It is to be assumed that within the septs, there is yet more difference, yet more complexity. Torres, can you bring our sensors online?"

"Sure," she said. "It'll cut our life support time down by a day, but, hey, if I'm spending two weeks in here with you two, I'm going to space someone first, and that'll bring us back up by the loss." She started to plug cables in, while Tuvok nodded. A few moments later, the screens flickered on and then the Kazon ship appeared before them - a blunt, ugly looking brick, covered in engines and solar collectors. It appeared to be mostly reaction mass tanks - as required by it's preposterously primitive engine. But despite looking like it came from the 1990s, it still had a subspace transmitter antenna, which doubled as a replacement for radiators, bleeding off waste heat into subspace, like most modern ships did.

"Maybe he's a reenactor?" Kes suggested.

"Should we try and com him? Directional lasers may be mind bogglingly primitive, but they're hard to pick up when they're point to point," Torres said.

"Do we have a directional laser communication system on the shuttle capable of uplinking with a vehicle of that primitive nature?" Tuvok asked.

"Damn it, Tuvok, this is a type-8 shuttlecraft, not a Belter party bus!" Torres said, scowling. "Of course we don't have a directional laser communication system on this shuttle that could talk to that thing." She grinned. "I'm just a really good engineer."

"There's...another method that might be even stealthier," Kes said. "...I mean, a clear and a teep working together can chuck their thoughts really far."

"A teep!?" Torres asked.

"That is an Okampan term for-"

"A teep!?"

"Yes, it-"

"A teep!" Torres shook her head. "That's the worst term for a telepath I've ever heard."

Kes grinned. "Well, yeah, we have to keep teeps in their place. Don't want them to think they're hot stuff, just cause they can read your mind and spill all your dirty secrets."

"Teep..." Torres pushed herself to the back of the shuttle. She pulled out a type-2 phaser and started to take it apart. "What do you call a telekinetic?"

"Teek, duh," Kes said, then looked back at Tuvok.

Tuvok looked as stone serious as she'd ever seen him. "I happen to prefer kine and path," he said. "As those are the different parts of the word."

Kes inclined her head.

---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0
CURRENT TRAITS: None

What do our bold Starfleet officers do

[ ] Risk cobbling together a laser com
[ ] Risk a subspace com and hope the Ogla don't listen in
[ ] Try telepathic communication
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

Kar hummed to himself as he focused on the deceleration burns. Keeping them out of Ogla scanner sweeps was the hard part, but he was damn proud of how well he was doing. Now, to be fair, he wasn't exactly in the most highly searched spot. In fact, he was kind of out of the way. But still! He was being careful and that counted for a-

"Hello?"

Kar screamed as the blond alien appeared in his room.

He jerked backwards and swung his chair around, his eyes wide as he saw the alien. She was...

Oh.

Kar froze and tried to cram the scream back down his throat, into his lungs, and hold in there as he spread his arms, leaning back against the chair and arching an eyebrow. "H...Hello," he said, his voice cracking infuriatingly as he tried to sound suave. Suave, damn it! Because the alien, who had appeared in his room, was the prettiest girl that he had ever seen. Blond, bright eyed, pale skinned, with adorable little pointed ears that twitched up in the cutest ways as she watched him - then grinned a bit as he puffed up his chest. "I mean. Hey. I'm Kar." He said. "...this is my ship, Stardancer." He realized his voice might have cracked again and pitched it a bit lower. "...who are you?"

The alien girl put her hand over her mouth.

"Curious."

Kar screamed again. The other alien was not nearly as cute - at least, not to Kar's teenage, heterosexual sensibilities. He was tall and dark, with similarly pointed ears, but he spoke with a calmer affect than the bubbly smile that the blond was giving him.

"It seems your psychic abilities, combined with my telepathic ones, have led to a deeper mind to mind connection than is normally allowed by Vulcan telepathic techniques," he said, then turned to face Kar. "I am Tuvok. This is Kes. We are in some distress and require your assistance."

"W-Wh..." Kar blinked. How was he supposed to say anything to that? He had been planning to steal their ship. Then his eyes settled on Kes, who smiled at him. "My name's Kar..." He said, then realized, he had already said that. "A-And I'm here to rescue you!"

"Aww, thanks," Kes said, cheerfully. "But, uh...what are you doing out here in this ship?"

"Oh, uh, I was...gonna...buzz the Ogla," Kar said, realizing that might actually seem impressive.

"You're not Ogla?" Kes asked, curiously.

Kar blinked at her, about to explode. But then he remembered two important things. The first was that she was an alien. But the second and far more important...

Spirits and ancestors, she's so freaking cute! Kar grinned and slowly leaned on an armrest, trying to look cool and casual - even if the maneuver took a lot of extra muscle and strain in microgravity. Not that the two of them seemed to need gravity. Since they were, uh, psychic projections or something. He figured that wasn't something he had to worry about too much. "The Ogla are, like, the government. But my Sept is, like, a real sept. We keep our traditional ways alive - we live like our Kazon ancestors did, have the old religion, the old faith, ya know." He nodded. "And the Ogla let us, uh, not pay taxes and stuff cause of a treaty. We just...have to stay in the parts of space they don't want. Ya know."

"Curious," Tuvok said, frowning.

"Uh, so, like, I mostly do monopole mining, dilithium prospecting, ya know...no big deal..." Kar said.

"In this?" Kes asked, blinking. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Nah, it's fine," Kar said. "Only, like, two of my cousins have died, and they were pretty stupid. If you're stupid, you die young out here."

"And how old are you?" Kes asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Like, ya know, I'm an adult!" Kar said, in a way almost exactly designed to convince no one that he was an adult. Then, quickly, he pounced. "And what are you two doing out here? Also, like, I heard the Voyager is a huge battleship, but that looks like a shuttle." He saw Kes' expression. "S-So, where are hiding the main ship, since...you're obviously in a shuttle." He coughed.

Tuvok and Kes exchanged a glance.

Then, muffled, as if a voice was speaking through the wall, Kar just barely heard a voice. "Who is this moron?"

"Oh, wow, we connected well enough even Torres can tap in," Kes said, then bit her lip, slightly. "And uh, our ship is somewhere safe..."

She exchanged a glance with Tuvok. Something wordless passed between them, which went right over Kar's head. Part of this was that they were literally telepathic.

---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 2 (you rolled...really well)
CURRENT TRAITS:

Telepathic Connection (level 1)​

Conducts: Diplomacy (telepathic)​

​

Do you tell him the truth or not? And what IS the truth?
[ ] Truth
[ ] No Truth
[ ] Write in

What is the truth?
[ ] Sept Ogla has deployed a vast Borg screening minefield through the most easily traversed part of space ahead of them and refused to give any codes to the crew of the Voyager. To slip through, they need a map.
[ ] Sept Ogla is breaking the anti-singularity tenants of the Kazon and working on an advanced weapon system to use on Voyager and the crew is sneaking in to sabotage it
[ ] Sept Ogla has kidnapped Brian Wacoche and several other crewmembers from the Val Jean while they were on a scouting mission and stumbled into a Ogla fleet. Now, they need to be rescued.
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

From Kar's perspective, Kes spoke first.

From Tuvok and Kes' perspective, there was a flicker-fast private conversation.

Logically, you should inform him of our mission, Tuvok said.

Me? And we should? I...kinda thought secret missions were meant to be secret?

Firstly, we lack any kind of way of effecting the completion of the mission by ourselves. With the assistance of this Kazon teenager, we may be able to salvage the mission. While not my first choice, it is preferable to putting our comrades and starship any any further danger. Secondly, from circumstantial evidence, we can infer that the Ogla and the sept that Kar belong too have a long, and unfortunate relationship - friendly states do not confine people they respect and treat well to singular areas of space. Need I remind you of the history of Vulcan Faux-Surak supremacist and their treatment of pre-Romulan clades, or Terran settler-colonial treatment of tribal nations such as the Cherokee and Sioux or early Belter civilizations?

Kes frowned. That makes sense.

Thirdly, he is clearly infatuated with you.

Kes snorted.

All this passed before Kar had even blinked as Kes smiled at him. "Well, the crew of Voyager detected a string of high energy tachyons coming from this research base. It was along the course of our flight - and...well..." She looked a little wan. "There's a lot of Kazon septs. We want to get some diplomatic goodwill with some of them. That's why we began our long ranged observations. But one of our spy-sats got between a Ogla ship and the base, and we cracked their communication codes. The tachyons are from an attempt to build a transwarp capable photon torpedo. If they could perfect this weapon system, then they'd have a serious arms advantage over Voyager and every other Kazon sept." She pursed her lips. "And, well...that was why they wanted it. They want to force Voyager to stop and hand over its technology - to turn the ship into scrap and strand the crew in the Delta Quadrant. I mean. The stranding part is kinda incidental to the stealing technology part..."

"Right..." Kar said, slowly. "And, uh...what makes transwarp so special? Don't all your ships go to transwarp?"

Kes giggled - but she made sure to sound playful, not amused. Kar blushed, but he didn't look angry, so she figured she nailed it. "Transwarp is a change in...well, basically, warp fields? They're like bubbles. But depending on the speed and strength of the bubble, they can cause damage to the galaxy's fundamental structures. This limits how fast any warp drive can go, right? But transwarp is a big broad term that covers every way of cutting closer and closer to that speed limit - using different kinds of fuel, like, cleaner burning fuel in a gas burning car versus something really filthy like leaded gasoline. Or, in the Kazon's case, changing the shape of the warp bubble to make it more...aerodynamic. Just, ya know, with space/time instead of air."

"Ahhh!" Kar said. "Like getting a lighthugger up to ramscoop speeds - you have to worry about cosmic space dust as if you were flying in air." He turned to his console. "Fuckin cool!" He started to tap away at the console, bringing up a telescopic view of the third moon of the gas giant they were hurtling towards. "Okay, this is where the Ogla fascists have their fancy fuck research base. We've been peering at it for a long, long time."

Kes nodded and Tuvok leaned over the console, both peering down at it. It matched their scans - but they were a lot closer than the Voyager's scans, giving some additional clarity on the external construction. The nice thing about being in the center of a chunk of Ogla territory was it didn't have quite the same level of paranoic defenses that a deep, deep space station might require. Ships would have had to clear the outer edge of the system, fly past half a dozen Ogla stations and picket ships, and then finally come here without being noticed, so the place wasn't made to take out a fleet. There were just two disruptor banks and what looked like a barracks habitat attached to the main laboratory.

Kar tapped it. "Those? Those are mass produced barracks. I know exactly how many Ogla marines are in there." He looked at Kes, who nodded to him. This made Kar puff up slightly. "It holds a platoon - about three squads, that's thirty bucketheads. Disruptor rifles, body armor, real sons of fucking bitches."

"Their parentage notwithstanding, we need to find a way to avoid drawing their attention," Tuvok said, frowning. "Our original plan relied upon our ability to transport material from location to location. Unfortunately, our transporters are offline due to damage taken by an unlucky dilithim micrometorite strike."

"Oh that shit's Kesslered to hell from all the hard-blast dilithium mining in system," Kar said, in the tone of a teen boy who wanted to show off to the pretty girl. "Since we don't got the fancy gizmos, we have to nuke a dilithium asteroid and catch the chunks."

"Ah," Tuvok said. "That explains it."

"It does?" Kes whispered.

"Yeah, charged dilithium is attracted to other bits of pieces of dilithium," Kar said, nodding.

"It's how it regulates antimatter flow," Tuvok said.

"Y...Yeah, everyone knows that," Kar lied, badly.

Faintly, Torres' voice intruded. "Tell him his people should use fusion taps when they nuke the asteroids."

"We do!" Kar said, then blushed. "When we can afford to rent the taps." He coughed. "Still...you three are lucky."

"Oh?" Kes asked.

"You're looking at the Kazon who led the great Ogla ship rustle of 54's...nephew!" he said, nodding. "My uncle Vilashtom stole three frigates right outta an Ogla starport and blazed them off to turn pirate in the Republic. He's so cool."

"That's not cool!" Kes exclaimed. "Piracy hurts people."

"Y-Yeah, but...but they're just aliens?" Kar stopped, then remembered that the very pretty girl he was trying to impress was an alien. "A-And he doesn't hurt them! He's, uh, one of them gentleman pirates. Now!" He brought up the display again, then swept closer. "What we do is..."

---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 3
CURRENT TRAITS: None

What does Kar suggest?
[ ] If he finishes his buzz-by, they can just jump from the ship to the surface of the moon. The issue is deceleration...
[ ] He could set the Stardancer into high speed - very obvious, very attention-grabby. That can distract the Kazon while the shuttle lands in emergency power.
[ ] Write in

What does Kes suggest?
[ ] She can use her clairsentience to scout the internals of the base before they even land!
[ ] Thanks to her commando training under Neelix, she's practiced suborbital drops, and made sure to bring a few grav-chutes on the shuttle. They can EASILY handle a piddling moon's gravity.
[ ] Write In

What does Torres suggest?
[ ] She immediately calls out which parts of the Stardancer that can be used to jerry rig some function into their shuttle. Which would be a better ship than the Stardiver anyway. No offense.
[ ] She says she can jerry rig a soft landing with the shuttle using their A-grav systems in one big burst right before landing - if someone could provide the Delta-V to get them there!
[ ] Write In

What does Tuvok suggest?
[ ] He can locate the engineering bay of the Ogla base - they can raid for not just the transwarp torpedo. They can also get supplies to fix the shuttle.
[ ] He can locate the shuttle bay of the Ogla base. What better way to steal the transwarp torpedo than in an Ogla shuttle?
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

Torres, annoyed by the fact she was not currently, in the psychic conversation, started doing what Torres always did when she was annoyed: Looking through telescopes at spaceships and thinking about the best ways to take them apart. To be fair, she usually did this while in a Maquis strikecraft, and she usually did it to ships armed with disruptors and shield banks. But the principle was the same thing, and as she peered at the distant shape of the Stardancer, she started muttering under her breath. "I think we could actually cannibalize that fusion drive's internal components. The magnetic focusing bottles can work for dilithium streams into the nacelles..."

Kes and Tuvok both looked up at the ceiling of the Stardancer, where the muffled sounds of Torres' voice echoed into their telepathic communication with the Kazon. Kar started.

"Whoa, hey, she can't have my mag bottle!" he exclaimed. "It took me years to save up for it!"

"Oh it's fine," Torres said, her voice still sounding muffled by her psychic disconnection. "We'll fab you a better one with a replicator."

Kar's eyes boggled. "...you have a replicator?" he asked.

"You know what a replicator is?" Kes asked.

"Of course I know what a replicator is. It's a replicator, it replicates things," Kar said. "Obviously. Like, molecular scale?"

"I mean, if we want to be crude about it," Torres said, dismissively.

"What!?" Kar exclaimed. "You got an atom forge? A god-machine? Like from the old books?"

"Yeah, why?" Torres asked, dismissively. "Also, you wouldn't call it a god-machine if you met any actual gods, kid."

Kar shook his head, then held up his hands. "Wait. You can't just take my ship apart," he said.

"It would help a lot," Kes said, gently, placing her hand on his hand and squeezing.

"...you can take my ship apart, but only if I get...a better one!" Kar said, firmly.

"And I believe the best approach would be to keep our shuttle, repaired and ready for assistance," Tuvok said. "Kes, you are thinking of what I am thinking."

"I am!" Kes said. "We have the grav-chutes. We should use them."

"And Torres and Kar can exfiltrate us once we have completed our objectives," Tuvok said.

"Grav-chutes?" Kar asked, his brow furrowing. Then his eyes widened. "Wait! Wait! Wait! Those torpedoes, you said they were transwarp torpedoes?" At Tuvok's nod, he scowled. "So, they're torpedoes that would give the Ogla an edge over on Voyager? That sounds, crazy advanced. Like, illegal advanced." He nodded. "Like, If word got out about that, then it'd be game over for the Ogla and it would make for one hell of a distraction for your mission! All I have to do..." He grinned. "Is tell Lan!"

Tuvok and Kes exchanged a glance.

Kar was quite pleased with his idea. No he wasn't trying to rub it in her face that her beloved Ogla were evil and out to destroy the Voyager she constantly fangirled over and feel bad about dumping him. This was just obvious, and logical, and a great plan.

"We shall keep that in advisement, if such a distraction is required," Tuvok said, judiciously.

"I thought Vulcans didn't-" Kes started.
Tuvok coughed.

***
​

The Stardancer and the significantly less dramatically named Shuttle-4 came together with a quiet crunch. Torres immediately swarmed out in her space suit, while Kar gaped around himself at the interior of the shuttle, the airlock doors clincked together with a soft hum. He tried to not look impressed, while Tuvok and Kes donned their spacesuits, slung phaser rifles, and attached the belt loops of the grav-chutes. Kes flashed him a smile. "Now, you help Chief Torres as much as you can," she said, nodding. "And keep an eye out for us."

"I got! Will! That is! I-" Kar stammered as the two stepped into the starboard airlock.

The door hissed shut.

"...fuck," Kar muttered, then strapped himself into the seat.

Outside, Torres frowned as she studied the Stardancer. Up close, she made a face. "These bottles are verklempt..." She grumbled inside of her suit helmet, while past her, Kes and Tuvok dropped towards the vast gray hemisphere of the moon drifting by. She tapped on the short ranged coms. "Kid, you're a fucking maniac. You're lucky that your fusion bottle hasn't exploded three times already. I don't know if I can even use half these...is that duct tape!?" She spluttered. "You're keeping your entire radiation shield in place with adhesive tape, you maniac!"

"Hey, my uncle swears by duct tape," Kar said, defensively.

"Yes, but it's not a weld. It's not magic!" Torres snapped. "Well, not...mostly magic. Fucking hell." She started to scramble into the guts of the Stardancer, grumbling as she got to work.

***
​

Kes watched as the ground approached. It was eerie, silent, and getting faster and faster and faster, every second. She tensed, but rather than tucking and rolling as she might with a chute, she kept herself as narrow as she could. The chute kicked on a few meters off the ground and the last few seconds of the approach went from blinding fast to glacially slow, and she settled against the gray dust with two tiny puffs of impact. Tuvok dropped right next to her, with the same sudden deceleration, ameliorated by the tube of artificial gravity and inertial dampening they had both been chucked into.

Tuvok gave her a nod, then moved with the steady, loping strides of someone used to a light, light gravitational field. Kes followed - and the two went belly down at the edge of the crater that the Kazon Ogla base was situated in. It was a collection of domes and bubbles, with a set of two disruptor turrets at the north and south edge. The two of them started to move forward - keeping to the shadows of the moon. Fortunately, the sensor grid was aiming up, and away, looking for bright, energetic approaches. Not for two space suited figures well under their scanning threshold. They came to the airlock adjoining one of the hemisphere shaped domes, and there, Kes whispered.

"What building is this?"

"Engineering storage," Tuvok said, tapping his tricorder against the keypad. The advanced computer technology of the USS Voyager and Starfleet once made things simple: The door clicked open quietly and the two stepped inside. "I believe we can secure additional supplies for repairs..." The door opened and they both stepped in to find that the room was full of boxed and organized bits and bobs required for any technical civilization to survive in space.

It also had a Kazon Ogla technician in a grubby blue pressure coveralls, scowling at the two of them.

"Hey, I didn't have any-" he started, then stopped, seeing the unusual spacesuits. Tuvok stepped forward, his helmet still polarized and gold.

"I am a Kazon Ogla security official, here to perform basic competence checks. Are you aware that your pressure coveralls are poorly fitted about the neck?" The Kazon techie turned his head, trying to peer at his seals, as Tuvok reached out, grabbed his neck, and pinched the nerves here and there and...the Kazon slumped unconscious.

"I need to learn how to do that," Kes whispered, drawing her phaser rifle.

"I will teach it you, as soon as we return," Tuvok said, simply.

---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 3
CURRENT TRAITS: None

The ground team will...
[ ] Immediately make for the labs for the data.
[ ] Attempt to fashion disguises from the supplies
[ ] Gather the repair supplies for Torres to beam up once she's fixed the shuttle
[ ] Write In

Torres has rolled NOT QUITE ENOUGH to succeed! She can succeed with consequences, meaning she creates a Complication!
[ ] Torres can't do it - choose to fail
[ ] Torres can do it, but it'll show up on the Kazon scanners (Complication: Detected!)
[ ] Torres can do it, but it'll break real soon (Complication: That Conduit Won't Hold...)
[ ] Torres can do it cause she's fucking awesome. (Spend 2 Momentum to buy off the complication, lol.)

 

[DragonCobolt]

As the Stardancer and the shuttle floated together, Torres frowned and considered, as she often did at times like this, how she had gotten into this place. She had taken every step that had made sense and seemed reasonable at the time - with the only alternatives being cowardice, disgrace and dishonor - and yet, she still found herself elbows deep in a fantastically ancient fusion reactor that was kept together with duct tape, floating above an alien space base that was preparing to test torpedoes that would, in a single shot, end her and the lives of everyone she cared about, with no help but a stupid alien teenager, all while being seventy thousand light years from home...

It made one almost want to reconsider the ethics of fighting fascism.

"Don't even know if the Cardassians are still fascists," she muttered under her breath. "Maybe, hah, maybe they rose up against their masters. Maybe there's a trial right now. Maybe Gul Dukat's on trial." She wrenched hard at a bolt, groaning. "Maybe...hah!"

"What's that?" Kar asked over the com.

"Nothing," Torres muttered.

The moon floated by as she took the component she was trying to free. Then she kicked off the Stardancer and came to the shuttle - her space suited figure moving through the void with grace and agility. She came up to the busted connector between the nacelle and the rest of the ship and started to get to work. "See, the problem is, your magnetic systems will work to divert energy flow between the main hull of the shuttle and our nacelle. But you don't have nearly the right energy containment topography, we're going to leak everywhere."

"You mean we'll be obvious on sensors and radioactive!?" Kar asked.

"...yeah," Torres said, lifting her head to peer at him through her faceplate - his face was pressed against the glass canopy of the shuttle. "You followed that?"

"I'm not a moron!" he snapped.

"You are mooning after a girl who's a subjective light minuet away when you mine monopoles," Torres said. "Long distance relationships don't work, not when you're a teenager."

"Love can overcome anything!" Kar said, defensively.

"Sure, love can. But teenagers don't fall in love. They fall in stupid and then hormones hit you," Torres said. "If you're preposterously lucky or have really good parents..." She grunted as she tugged free a mangled chunk of Federation technology, then beamed it into her transport waste buffer, where it would get processed down into feedstock. "...then you may live long enough for stupid to become love. But love takes time. And it takes knowing what you're about. It takes the world kicking you in the head a few times."

"...whoa..." Kar whispered.

Torres lifted her head and saw that he was looking at her, like, really looking at her.

Ah shit, Torres thought.

She ducked her head and started to get back to work. "Keep watching the sensors, or the kicking won't be metaphorical, kid!"

"Y-Yes ma'am!"

***
​

Tuvok and Kes started to search the components. "We need a flux magnitar and a triple threaded condensor coil, according to Torres," Kes said, frowning as she walked along the boxes. "Will the universal translator translate engineering speak between- oh, hey, triple threaded condensor coil!" She brightened as she took hold of the box and yanked it down off the shelf as Tuvok continued his searching.

She scowled.

"Empty," she said.

"It appears that the magnitar container is also empty," Tuvok said. "Curious. This is the storeroom. One would imagine spares would be held. Save that those components are required for the moderation and control of warp fields and dilithium matrixes. While speculation may be ill founded...I cannot be remember that this is a base for the experimentation and creation of transwarp prototypes."

"Shit, you think they're using all the bits we need?" Kes asked, frowning as she walked around to come to the front of the storage habitat. There was a low window here, situated right before a console that contained the inventory for the entire base. The only reason she and Tuvok had used their mark one eyeballs rather than checking the far faster registry was simplicity itself: The console was locked in its sleep mode, with a password-pin request on the front. It might have been as simple as 1234 or the birthday of the guard - they didn't know, and inputting random numbers into a secure console seemed like the best way to draw attention to themselves.

"It is-"

Tuvok was cut off by a subliminal rumbling, felt through the floor. Kes and he turned and saw that the white lunar regolith that made up the center of the base was starting to buzz, vibrate, then pull aside as formerly concealed doors began to swing wide. A large, articulated elevator-arm combination came sliding silently into the air, the only hint that it was moving at all coming through the soles of Tuvok and Kes' feet. It locked into place, and perched atop it were a trio of long, bulbous, beetle shaped devices that looked more in common with primitive chemical rockets than any kind of torpedo Kes had seen on the Voyager or the Val Jean. Tuvok immediately pursed his lips.

"No warheads," he said. "Test models."

"They have nacelles," Kes whispered.

Each rocket had a quartet of nacelles, in fact, formed in a perfect radiator pattern and each linked with a circular curve like the discus shape that she had seen on holos of Vulcan science ships in the Voyager's computer banks. She turned back to Tuvok.

"How long do you think we have until they launch?" she asked.

"Test in T-minus six minutes and thirty two seconds," the PA said, the excited sounding Kazon voice echoing off the walls.

Tuvok inclined his head to the side for a moment. "I would say approximately five meklars, the Kazon unit of time most analogous to the Terran minute."

Kes nodded. "Yeah, I figure that too," she said, quietly.

--
MOMENTUM: 3
CURRENT TRAITS

T-Minus Five Meklars (Tier 1)​

Countdown: 5 rounds to torpedo launch.​

​

We're Hot... (Tier 1)​

Countdown: 5 rounds to detection​

​

Aww, mom, why does he have TWO ticking clocks!?

What's your plan?
[ ] Time to maximalize this: Sneak to the launch room, stun everyone from ambush, shut down the launch, steal everything, and leave.
[ ] Lets try some sabotage. A stealthed phaser shot at a precisely chosen component, just enough to weaken it, to cause the whole launch to fail. In the confusion, sneak to the computer bay and start deleting stuff
[ ] Write In!

 

[DragonCobolt]

"Let's deal with the immediate problem," Tuvok said, picking his phaser rifle up and off the counter where he had placed it. Kes grinned.

"I like the way you think," she said, as the two of them started for the door out of the facility. They moved into the narrow, metal corridor - the place felt new and slick to Kes, but she had to admit...after almost a year on Voyager she wasn't sure if that would hold true for much longer. There was a lot more pipework and exposed machinery. The ceiling was lit by bright floodlights, casting everything in a harsh, clear light. The countdown came over the PA as they both came to a narrow doorway that led into the launch chamber. Tuvok took up position on the left and she took up position on the right as the voice echoed off the wall.

"T-minus four minutes, ten seconds."

"Universal translators," Kes muttered as Tuvok held up his tricorder, frowning as his thumb dialed in the scanning system. The screen flickered and the hard gray of the bulkhead shimmered away as they both saw that there were six Kaxon inside - two at the launch console, four bunched near the front of the room, standing before the window looking out at the upcoming launch. The Kazons were a mixture of Ogla scientists, marked out by their white lab coats that seemed to be a galaxy standard for people interested in pushing the sciences, and Ogla naval officials, including one woman who was in the gray-black uniform of their intelligence services, her head mostly concealed by a thick hat.

Tuvok lowered his tricorder once the scan was complete. "You take the desk?"

"And you the window?" Kes asked.

Tuvok nodded to her. He placed his hand on the door, frowning. Kes lifted up her arm to brace her phaser rifle - it had less kickback than a disruptor, but there was no reason to be an idiot about it. She aimed...and then the door burst inwards as Tuvok shoved. She pulled back on the trigger at the same time as Tuvok did - and cones of orange light spilled into the room. The Kazon had started to look at the door - but then they slumped over, collapsing into heaps on the floor, or going prone on the desk, heads laid flat against the buttons.

Tuvok hurried to the countertop, leaning forward as he started to press buttons - the countdown stopped as Kes walked over to start yanking disruptor pistols from the belts of the Ogla naval officers. She grunted as she rolled the intelligence officer over, letting out a soft huh!

"This one's Talaxian," she said.

"Interspecies drift is a commonality in both Delta and Alpha Quadrent," Tuvok said. "It is very few interstellar states that are purely ethnographic in nature, and those that are are highly..." He paused. "Unstable."

"Right..." Kes remained kneeling, looking at the unconscious Talaxian woman. She frowned. "For most of our people's history, we didn't even have a choice to join a Kazon Sept or the Talaxian Republic or...anything." She shook her head. "Which data crystals should I yank?"

"All of them," Tuvok said. "I've deleted their primaries, their backups, but the data can still be retrieved with enough effort."

Kes hurried to the wall and, after considering for a few seconds, she opened it up through the expedient of smashing the butt of her phaser rifle into the wall, prying the metal open, then started to zap the screws with blasts of energy. As each screw flashed into steam, she yanked with her other hand - pulling out heavy, boxy crystals that she touched to her belt mounted transporter buffer. They vanished as Tuvok tapped more buttons, frowning.

"We will be detected shortly," he said. "There are a lot of marines we have not yet stunned - and they have access to orbital surveillance that will detect our shuttle."

"And there's the kid," Kes said, yanking another crystal and tapping it against her buffer. As it shimmered away, she looked back. "He's going to get us out of here, if Torres can fix the shuttle."

"Indeed," Tuvok said. He tapped at his com-badge. "Tuvok to Torres, we have completed our objectives - for the most part. However, things are about to become...quite dicey."

"Well, up here we're good," Torres said. "Except that we're spitting enough hard radiation to fry an egg."

"I see," Tuvok said. He turned back to Kes, who tapped the last crystal against her buffer. Then he turned back to the computers, his brow furrowing. Vulcans could have eidetic memories - it was a function of esper abilities, refined and trained through the practices of Surak and those that followed him. And so, Tuvok had no problem with searching through everything he had seen. The problem was most of it was entirely beyond his training and specialization, not to mention hastily translated by his universal translator. Fortunately, there was a single kernel of information directly related to his field of security.

It explained a mystery that had been bother Captain Janeway since they had first learned of the transwarp torpedo experiment: Where had the Kazon Ogla, not the most advanced of the Kazon Septs, actually gotten the technology that Starfleet had still only come edgingly close to perfecting. Variable warp geometry got the Federation closer to transwarp, but it still had not broken that threshold.

"Uh, Tuvok, what's your plan?" Torres asked.

"One moment," Tuvok said, frowning as he considered everything.

Kes, following her commando training, immediately stepped up and began to weld the door leading to the marine compartment shut. The door itself was thick enough to stop most direct energy weapons, but she had time enough to melt the edges. She hummed as she worked while Tuvok rubbed his chin - his mind going a mile a minute.

Tuvok knew what to do next: They had to exfiltrate, now that they had all the information that was required and had deleted the backups. The only problem was...

---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0
TRAITS:

We're Hot... (Tier 1)
Countdown: 2 rounds to detection (-1 to get to the room, -1 for combat, -1 to get all the goodies)​

What has Tuvok discovered?
[ ] The transwarp torpedo appears to be based on Borg technology - and the artifact is in secure storage.
[ ] The transwarp torpedo appears to have been invented by a Focused Viidian being kept elsewhere on the base
[ ] The transwarp torpedo appears to have been derived from observations of...a Voyager shuttlecraft going transwarp? Ontop of being seemingly impossible, this will mean Sept Ogla will chase Voyager like no one's beezewax!

How do you get the final piece of the puzzle?
[ ] Drop the shuttle on it, pick it up and exfiltrate as fast as you can
[ ] Use the shuttle phasers to sever the marine compartment from the rest of the base, pick up at leisure
[ ] Simulate emergency using the computers, steal in the confusion
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

Tuvok grunted. "It appears that we may have something interesting to report to the Department of Temporal Intelligence when we return."

"The...I...the what?" Kes asked.

"Come," Tuvok said, tapping a few buttons. "I have simulated a radiation leak in the marine barracks. I believe it will buy us time to reach the evacuation point. Torres?"

"On my way!"

Tuvok strode towards the door that wasn't sealed, with Kes following after.

***
​

Torres strapped herself into her seat. "You ever flown in a ship at impulse, kid?" she asked.

"No, never, why?" Kar asked.

"All right, it's going to...feel a little scary." Torres said. "I know Belters from back home, they get...kinda freaked out whenever they ride their first time on a transnewtonian trajectory, or use anything with inertial dampeners. Generations of breeding and aculturation kinda make you suited towards proper newtonian flight and it triggers panic reflexes. If you scream too much, I'll stun you, okay?"

"R-Right," Kar said, his eyes bugging out slightly. "How scary can it-"

The shuttle kicked off, shooting towards the moon - and Kar began to scream. "AAAAAAAAUH!" He put his hands over his face. "Wrong! Wrong! It's wrong!"

"Here, bite down on this!" Torres shoved a glove at him from her many spares. He bit down onto it without thinking. As she spoke, her fingers punched in controls, the moon wheeling in the forward windows. "Now, uh, this calms me down. But when I'm panicking, I like to just hear technical descriptions. And, uh, basically, what you're feeling is the inertial dampener. The reason why they're triggering your panic reflexes is you've got this innate sensitivity to inertial changes that groundpounders and flatlanders don't have - so, when the inertial dampener kicks on, it sets off every subconscious alarm bell you have. The impulse drives also feel wrong. That probably doesn't help. But, hey, there's one advantage?"

She turned back to smile at him - the moon swelling larger and larger. Her looking at him and not at her trajectory caused Kar's eyes to bulge even harder out of his head.

"It's faster!"

The shuttle screamed through the micron thin atmosphere and kicked up about six meters before hitting the deck. The impulse engines flared and the shuttle shot directly at the base, swinging to the side and touching down with a spray of lunar regolith that kicked up a huge plume of dust that scattered beneath the base's southern perimeter. The inertial dampeners dimmed and Kar released the glove from his mouth, panting and trembling.

"You aliens are insane," he said.

"Oh that was the autopilot," Torres said. "You think I'd fly that manual? Who do I fucking look like, Becky? That bitch's crazy."

She craned her head to peer at the base, frowning.

"Where are they?"

***
​

Tuvok and Kes were loping towards the torpedoes - and the components they'd need to salvage off them to get away from the facility - when the first invisible bolt of disruptor fire hit a cleft of regolith, turning it into smoldering canyon of glowing red glass. The suits that they wore registered and alerted them to the energy discharge with a simulated ssssCRACK! - but as the simulation came after it was detected, it came well after the point where they could have gotten to cover. The two of them threw themselves flat, landing in the flat terrain of the open enclosure in the center of the base.

The Kazon marines, it seemed, had decided that they didn't buy the radiation alerts. They also hadn't let the sealed doorlocks slow them. Four of them had emerged, wearing their sleek combat suits. Two were bounding off to a flank, but the other two were crouching and firing away, using several heavy metal crates that were full of engineering supplies and spare O2 tanks as some measure of concealment and cover. Tuvok half stood and launched himself in a parabolic, grabbing onto the edge of one of the torpedo's nacelles, swinging himself around and landing well before the light gravity of the moon would normally have stopped him. With his phaser rifle, he began to fire potshots at the Kazon - thumbing his phaser from conic to beam.

The range, the suits, the cover, would make conic blasts basically useless anyway.

Orange fire sputtered off the walls behind the Kazon marines at the crates, forcing them to keep their heads down, while Kes rolled and, with the trained reflexes of commando and the subtle hints of a clairsentient, found a depression that was nearly invisible to observers, but just deep enough to give her cover.

"Shit," she said as the Kazon started to pepper them with poorly aimed disruptor blasts. one took the nose cone off a torpedo. "I don't think they give a shit about the torpedoes."

"They cannot know they are irreplicable." Tuvok said, frowning. He checked his wrist mounted chron. "I believe any passing Kazon warship will be aware of our presence very soon."

"Shit..." Kes muttered.

Another stream of disruptor blasts hissed overhead. Molten steel bloomed from the walls of the base - and hissing air spurted out in geysers that turned to snow, drifting down over her back.

Tuvok considered his tactical and strategic options.


---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0
TRAITS:

We're Hot... (Tier 1)
Countdown: 1 rounds to detection!!​

[ ] Screw it. Exfiltrate under fire! (the Kazon get free shots at you, but you can leave before being detected.)
[ ] Open fire and hope you can pull out in time (shoot the Kazon, then draw back.)
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

Tuvok leaned around the corner of his cover, then glanced at Kes. "I have-" he started.

Then a disruptor bolt hit him about three inches above and slightly to the right a vulcan organ roughly analogous to the kidney. Misted, bright green blood exploded into the air before and behind him and he dropped to the ground, instantly unconscious and kept alive by a combination of Vulcan fortitude and the immense amount of drugs his space suit immediately began to pump into his body. As he sprawled on the ground, Kes hissed softly as she felt the intense, bone deep terror of a mission that had gone very wrong. They didn't have the time to sprint for the shuttle. They didn't have time for anything...but the most insane idea that she had ever had.

Because, from her position, Kes noticed that the nose cone of one of the transwarp torpedoes had been blasted right off by a stray disruptor bolt. She saw that the warhead compartment was full of sensors, rather than explosives. Of course, the transwarp torpedo was meant to go at transwarp, they wanted every bit of data that they could wring out of the thing the instant it launched.

So.

Kes slammed down the buttons that Tuvok himself had told her to never touch, unless she absolutely had to. Then she hucked her phaser rifle directly at the Kazon men. The phaser rifle began to transmit, on every radio band and sonic frequency it could (even if those sounds were swallowed up by vacuum) the same repeated phrase, translated instantly through their universal systems.

"i have become an explosive device! I will explode in...thirty seconds! I have become an explosive device! I will explode in...twenty nine seconds!"

The rifle slammed into the ground, kicking up a spray of lunar regolith. The Kazon looked down at the rifle, then up at Kes, who sprinted straight for the torpedo.

They did some math.

"Fall back! Fall back!"

The marines started to turn and bound away - one of them abandoning all safety to spring up and over the barracks with a single vaulting leap. Kes didn't have time to be impressed. She was just counting under her breath along with the voice buzzing through her radio, a voice joined by an incredulous Torres. "Kes, what the hell is going on in there? We just got a self destructing phaser alert and Tuvok's bioalert says he got hit by a fucking disruptor!"

"He did!" Kes said, her hands grabbing onto the internal components of the torpedo. She barely noticed the damage she did to the siding as she wrenched backwards. Adrenaline versus cheap aluminum and simple screw bolts. The aluminum was the weak part, and the entire elaborate Ogla sensor technology grid came out in a spray of filaments.

"Shit. We're going to pick you up."

"You sure are, go to, uh, coordinates 98 by 22 by 30, in the third parallel of the terminator!"

"That's five hundred thousand kilometers away and approaching deep fucking space, but, okay, I assume you got a plan," Torres said.

The shuttle screamed by overhead.

"I have become an explosive device! I will explode in five seconds!"

Kes grabbed onto Tuvok. She shoved him, feet first, into the torpedo. The best to deal with acceleration, right? No, shit, that was on your back. Wasn't it? Fuck, she couldn't remember. Fuck, the acceleration would be minimal. The torpedoes went fast by warping spacetime, not by squirting out reaction mass.

"I have become an explosive device! I will explode in four seconds!"

Kes swung herself up. She squeezed in next to Tuvok. Blood smeared all over her - bubbling and boiling out of his wound, despite the best efforts of the suit.

"I have become an explosive device! I will explode in three!"

Kes grabbed onto Tuvok's tricorder. It was still linked to the base's control computers.

Half a dozen Kazon marines bounded towards a crater. Their Ogla equivalent to a staff sergeant - a Yeltak if you were curious - dragged them down into the crater, bellowing. "Inverse square's done all she can for us, lads!"

"I have become an explosive device! I will explode in two!"

Kes brought up the launch controls.

An eager-but-not-exceptionally-bright Kazon private (Ortak) peeked over the rim of the crater.

"I have become an explosive device! I will explode...now!"

The Ortak hissed. "It was a fucking-"

The torpedoes shot into space, stretching as they outran their own light, smearing towards the heavens and leaving behind a tiny white flash.

The psuedo-nuclear fireball that consumed the base only didn't blind the Ortak because his helmet immediately polarized, turning bright gold and reflecting the massive, pillar of blazing fire and molten regolith that streamed upwards, escape velocity jetting it high, high, high into a semi-stable orbit around the moon that had earned herself one brand new crater.

See...

The base still had her tiny, purring antimatter reactor in the basement.

E = MC^2 remained one of the more forceful suggestions of physics out there.

Also, the most pretty. From a distance.

***
​

"You did a good job," Janeway said, standing beside Kes as both of them watched from beyond the safety of a filtration and containment force field - as the Doctor leaned over Tuvok, humming quietly as he worked. The faint buzzing sound of a dermal regenerator, and the quiet burble of life support technology almost blocked out the Doctor's humming. Almost.

"I don't feel like I did a good job," Kes said, quietly.

"I don't think I've seen a mission that had this much bad luck. A dilithium micrometeorite? That's rare, even for a system with that much poorly regulated mining." Janeway turned to face Kes, who looked haggard and hunched. "You should take some time in the holodeck. Once the radiation meds are done with you."

Kes made a face, looking down at her arm - where a med-patch was hissing away.

"The problem with launching without a nose cone," she said.

"Honestly? I'm glad their prototypes didn't work," Janeway said. "Undergoing even warp three without radiation shielding is no fun. I wouldn't want to imagine what transwarp would do to you." She patted Kes's shoulder, gently. "And you got Tuvok home. That's what matters."

The force field opened and the Doctor walked through. "Once again, your only photonic barrier between a messy and untimely death stands triumphant over entropy," The Doctor said, dryly. "And I can't even brag about it. Some dark ages medico from the 22nd century could have done just as well as I had. Maybe not with a Vulcan, but...you humans were busy having a nuke chucking match with the romulans at the time, weren't you?"

"The first Romulan War, yes," Janeway said, smiling wryly. "United Earth versus the Romulans - it was before the Federation. Captain Archer's era, you know." She paused. "You know, one of his ship's logs covered an event where he had to deal with an experimental romulan mine..." She turned to Kes. "Might help you feel less alone out there?"

"Did he also get heavily irradiated and almost kill the chief of security?" Kes asked, smiling dolefully.

"Yes, actually," Janeway said. "You'd also like Trip."

"Who's he?"

"She was an exceptional engineer from the era. Creative problem solver. Also did lots of tricks with improvised explosives using particle guns," Janeway said, then gave Kes a nod. "Keep on the meds."

"Aye, Captain!" Kes saluted, tiredly.

Janeway walked out of the medbay, and found that Torres and Brian Wacoche were waiting for her.

"Good news," Torres said, grinning as she did so. She didn't look tired. She looked energized. "I've ripped the transwarp components to pieces and...while they're not heading in the right direction, they are heading in an interesting direction. There's some really cool articulations we can put into multivariform warp bubble geometries."

"Will it make us faster?" Janeway asked.

"No," Torres said.

"Harder to spot?" Brian asked.

"No," Torres said.

"Will it at the very least save on dilithium wear?" a new voice asked as D-91 ambled down the corridor.

"Also, no!" Torres said, grinning. "But it is cool."

Janeway, Brian, and D-91 all regarded her stonily.

"...and, hey, according to the nerds in astrosci, if we can find some magical diltihium that produces six times as much energy as the current crystal matrixes, or we build an antimatter reactor that can somehow inject 110% antimatter into the mixture flows, we could, theoretically, break the transwarp barrier and blow past Warp 10!" Torres said. "So, uh, tell me if we find either of those."

She started off, a PADD in her hands, nose buried in the engineering data.

"Please tell me you have unalloyed good news?" Janeway asked D-91.

"I do," D-91 said, inclining his head. "Sept Hobii is very pleased with our little mission and have opened a corridor through their space. Now, we can avoid the space dragon, the sentient black hole, and star with arms that likes fighting spaceships that fly nearby." He robotic features flashed up their version of a smile.

"Good," Janeway said. She rubbed her chin. "You know, there are theories about more pure forms of dilithium out there. Better conductors."

"We'll have to keep an eye out, huh," Brian said. He chuckled. "Tom Paris would kill us if we didn't let him go fast. He already wants to kill you for not letting him go on the commando raid."

"Heh," Janeway said. "He'll have to beat Lindy to it. She's also a test pilot."

The three command officers considered that fight.

"Tom would fucking die," Brian Wacoche said, matter-of-factly.

"In seconds," D-91 said.

Janeway...smiled.

***
​

Lar opened the door on the third chime.

"For the last-" she started...then blinked.

The last person she expected to see in the Septhome stood before her door.

It was Kar, smiling at her, holding up a bundle of flowers and a small discreader.

"...Kar?" she asked. "When...how...did...you get here, you were a week and a half away on the last link?"

"I...hitched a ride. With some aliens." Kar grinned. "And, uh...I was thinking! Not as a girlfriend boyfriend, thing. But as two Kazon who want to see more than just what we can here in the Belt, I mean. That is...shit, I mean, we could go together! To sign up! For the...maybe the merchant marine, instead of the navy?"

Lar blinked at him.

"What?" she asked.

Kar blushed, hard. "Fuck, words are hard, cause you're pretty and...and...I was kind of a shit. I was thinking only about me and my missions and mining for monopoles and not what you want. But, ya know...I've...seen that there's a lot more out there than I ever thought." He grinned. "So, I kinda...want to go see them. With you. Too?"

He held out his hand, the flowers wobbling.

Lar took the flowers from him.

"...did you steal these from hydroponics?" she asked.

Kar grinned sheepishly. "Maybe a little."

Lar breathed in their warm scent.

Then she smiled. "Merchant marine, you say?"

ROLL CREDITS​

 

[DragonCobolt]

Amy Strong frowned as she tapped her fingers on the counter and read through the security reports.

"Uh, Captain," she said, turning around to face the rest of the bridge, where Janeway was enjoying her coffee. C'nola and Tom were at tactical and the conn, while T'are was at her post in science - and the whole of the USS Voyager seemed to be thrumming along nicely. "Computer says Harry Kim's been sucked into another dimension."

"Again?" Janeway asked, frowning.

This was, of course, when the door to the bridge opened and Harry's three dimensionally transcendental girlfriends arrived to lodge their complaints. The first and most emphatic was, of course, Princess Lyan Positron, the runaway daughter of the Adept of Positrons, who had chosen to side with Harry against her tyrannical father. She came flouncing into the bridge in her best flowing dress, sword jouncing at her hip. "Katheryn Janeway!" she exclaimed. "You must stop misplacing Harry Kim. Twice in a row? This is getting unseemly!"

"The first time was when he arrived in your dimension, you can't count that time," T'are exclaimed. "And it's not in a row! We've had, like, five adventures since-"

"Where is he?" Soria Flyte, the transforming pegasus girl asked, her wings flapping behind her back. "We were going to go to the holodeck today. If he's been eaten by a space monster!"

"Or stolen by a Caretaker," Bifurcate, the sleek, silvery robot of the trio, added.

"Oh, that's three times," Lyan exclaimed.

"That's not another dimension!" C'nola snapped. "We were jammed into a VR simulation. Same universe."

"It's the principal of the thing!" Lyan said, while her two fellow girlfriends nodded.

Janeway sighed, quietly. "Lieutenant Strong, T'are, scan the ship and find me what kind of dimensional vacuole or subspace crack or godlike being has snagged Mr. Kim. Right now."

The three girls immediately clustered around T'are, who hastily dialed up her masker as she started to type away at her computer. Amy slid her chair closer, and the two put their heads together as Janeway shook her head slowly. She hoped against hope that Harry Kim had arrived in a nice, pleasant dimension. Something he could enjoy! Since it looked like finding him was going to take awhile.

Especially with help like this, she thought, sourly.

Oh, they're just worried about their, ah, partner, Phoebe said, her voice nervous.

***
​

A trilling reveille played and Ensign Harry Kim sat bolt upright in his bed - and slammed his head directly into the bunk right above his. He had about five seconds to think why the hell is there a bunk bed over me? when a pair of legs swung around, and a nearly naked form dropped down next to him. Harry blinked - then yelped as a bladed knife pressed to his throat and the pressure shoved him back into the bed. He held up his hands as best he could as Tom Paris glowered down at him with bitter, hateful eyes.

"Did you try and stab me?" Tom growled. "Really, Kim?"

"What? No!" Harry squeaked, too sleep deprived and concussed to say anything else.

Tom narrowed his eyes, then drew the blade back. He slipped it into a sheath attached to his underwear. "I've got my eye on you kim...phaser captain? That's going to be my post." He backed away from him - then turned his back, with a strange deliberateness, moving to a wall closet that was smooth and flush with the wall. Harry blinked at him - and saw that the cabin that he had once enjoyed all by himself had four beds in it now. The other two beds had two other men, who were starting to rouse and stretch. The whole room had an odd look to it too. Rather than modern polyplast and duranium alloys, it looked like he was in one of those old Constitutions - the kind that had used the cheap polyplast extrusion tech that made everything look like painted plywood.

Tom shucked on a bright red tunic with a black armband - complete with a dagger shaped embalm impaled through a circular planet that must have been Earth.

Harry Kim groaned.

Tom ignored him. The others muttered - one of them whispering. "Looks like Kim is fully aware of his inadequacies today. Think he'll drop himself face first into the recycler."

"No, he wouldn't be brave enough to deny the Chief her sport..." the other man chuckled with amusement. "Isn't that right, Kim? The Chief has her finger...right...on...your...agonizer." He stepped forward, putting his foot on the edge of the bed, grinning down at Harry with nearly daemonic energy.

Harry schooled his features. "I wouldn't want her to miss out on her fun," he said, rubbing his palms against his face. He stood, walked to the closet, and yanked out his uniform.

Just as he expected.

Terran Imperial Navy standard issue red for ops. And, yes.

The Terran Imperial Navy standard issue agonizer.

Tom and the others walked out. Harry started trying to think of the best way to immediately get home - how could he get to the transporter - when the ceiling panel next to the lighting fixture fell down and...

Harry Kim dropped right out of it. He landed, catlike and graceful, and stood with an old type-2 phaser in his hand. The kind used in the 22nd century, just like the walls and ceiling - as if technology had simply stagnated for the past eighty years. Harry stood perfectly still as Evil Harry smirked at him, slowly.

"And everyone wondered...why I shaved my goatee..." Evil Harry said, his voice wicked. "All part of the plan. Now. You're thinking about heading home? Well. Not until you help me."

Harry blinked at his alter ego. It was...bizarre to see someone who looked so like him and yet was so completely unlike him. Harry Kim in the Terran Empire seemed hunched and furtive, his eyes flicking left and right, his shoulders ducked forward, his spine arched a bit, like he was perpetually ready for someone to hit him. It was honestly kind of pathetic. Harry just wanted to get him some...soup or something. But then the phaser pistol recentered itself on his chest and he saw his evil doppelganger flick the switch from stun to light stun - the kind that just hurt real bad. That setting didn't exist on Starfleet phasers. Of course it existed here. Harry crossed his arms over his chest, trying to look brave.

"All right," he said. "What do you want, Evil Harry?"

"Ev-" Evil Harry scowled. "Shut up! I'm Kim. You're Harry. Got it?"

"Sounds fine," Harry said.

"Okay," Kim said, then smirked. "And it's very simple, Harry. I...want you to help me take over this ship. By Emperor Georgio's name - I will be captain of the USS Voyager before the week is out!"

---
DUNNNN DAN DUN DA DUNNN DA DANNN!!!!!
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0
CURRENT TRAITS

Trapped...IN THE EVIL UNIVERSE (Tier 2)​

+2 Complication Range​

Blocks: Diplomacy, Empathy | Conducts: Intimidation, Violence​

​

[ ] Fine. What is your plan, Kim?
[ ] ...the idiot has it on light stun. Take the phaser from him, shove him into the closet, and get to the transporter bay
[ ] Write in