An Impossible Enterprise III-A
Jenny
anonymous user
- Location
- maryland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Three days before Enterprise reached Unwerta, Iliae Rurliss woke up to a loud, distinctive buzzing sound. She grumbled, annoyed -- she thought she'd changed her alarm's settings to play something more musical, and this felt too early anyhow. It wasn't red alert, at least, so she knew she didn't have to snap awake. Half-asleep, she reached over to snooze her alarm -- and then someone grabbed her arm and started to hoist her out of bed.
"Good morning, ma'am, it's time to get up," a voice sang out. It took Rurliss a moment to place it: Lieutenant Arozirzzi, who had served on her first command, and now on Enterprise. What was she doing in her quarters?
"Is something wrong?" Rurliss mumbled, and opened her eyes. Sure enough, Arozirzzi was standing beside her bed, wearing the ship's standard athleticwear (black shirt with "1701" in white lettering and a commbadge pinned on, black sweatpants, and grey-and-gold gym shoes). Next to her was Chief Piliazzi, Rurliss's yeoman, accompanied by three other Apiata crewers, all dressed similarly. Ah.
"No, ma'am, but you did want to get in more exercise, correct, ma'am?" Piliazzi asked. "It is time for your morning exercise!"
Ah. Right. She'd mentioned that to Piliazzi in passing yesterday evening. Apparently, the Apiata took that sort of thing very seriously. "Ugh. What time is it?"
"0445," Arozirzzi buzzed out, faintly annoyed.
"Fine." Rurliss sighed, but got up out of bed anyway. She knew Apiata, and when they had their minds set on something, it was incredibly hard to get them to stop. And it would be good to get in some exercise this morning. "Very well."
"We recognize that this is a bit of an early hour, ma'am, so I took the liberty of brewing you this." Piliazzi said, then handed her a mug of keikatta.
She took a sip. It was the perfect blend -- sweet and bitter, all at once, with that exotic hint of savoriness she'd come to enjoy from Sydraxian cuisine. Reminded her of ... "Wait, how did you know I like this?"
"It is my job to know your tastes, ma'am," Piliazzi said. There was more to it than that, though, Rurliss presumed.
"Anything happen while I was asleep?"
"It's in the report, ma'am, but you need to get dressed first."
One mug of keikatta, one quick skim of the overnight shift report, and one change of clothes later, Rurliss and the five Apiata were jogging through the corridors of the Enterprise. Piliazzi was setting a fairly quick pace -- not as bad as T'Kel used to set, back in the day, but still faster than she would've liked at this hour.
At first, they jogged in silence. She wasn't sure if the Apiata were cowed by her rank, or just preferred it that way, but if this was going to be a thing, she knew she wouldn't be willing to put up with it for long if nobody spoke. So, a bit awkwardly, she asked, "So, are you all morning people? Is that just a thing with Apiata?"
"Not really, myself, ma'am, but, well, the rest of the Enterprise hive is, so I kinda have to be," Arozirzzi said.
The other Apiata laughed. The lieutenant from Engineering with red hair and a really long name that had slipped out of Rurliss's memory the moment she'd introduced herself said, "You do just fine once we get some rakta in you, 'Zir!"
"You'd never want to sleep in just a bit more? I've got Beta shift anyway!" Arozirzzi protested.
"Miss Ex-Goodwill Ambassador needs her beauty sleep, does she?" Piliazzi teased.
"Wait, you never told us about that!" Chief Hazzixen, from Security, exclaimed.
"Yeah, our 'Zir and her band went on a tour of Sydraxian space way back around Stardate 27140. She's been holding out on us," Piliazzi said. "Only found out through the -- uh, through you, ma'am." It took Rurliss a bit to remember when her yeoman had heard about Arozirzzi's trip to Dar Nakar.
"You're in a band?" the red-haired engineer asked.
"I was," Arozirzzi admitted. "It was years ago, and it just never came up in the time I've been here."
"Wait, 'Lia, when were you gonna tell us?" Hazzixen asked.
Piliazzi sighed. "'Zir's right, it just never came up."
"Wait, Stardate 27140? Is that why you didn't hear about --" Lieutenant (j.g.) Melzirinti, the conn officer, started to say.
"Melz, shh!" Hazzixen buzzed, then whispered, "Not in front of the captain."
Unfortunately for Hazzixen, her voice wasn't as soft as she thought it was. Rurliss was rather curious. What did they want to hide from her? "What were you going to say, Lieutenant?" she asked Melzirinti.
"Well, ma'am, uh, the incident with Palarach," Melzirinti said.
Oh! That explained things. "Oh, you mean the worst meet cute ever?" Rurliss asked, smiling. Once, she would've been embarrassed about how she and Nalaxie had met. But in the last year, she'd come to have a sense of humor about it.
"Ah, yes, ma'am," Piliazzi said. "I know I shouldn't have disclosed it --"
"Why not? It's not like it matters much if you know," Rurliss said, letting some of her old accent slip through. She may be captain, but if this was going to be a regular thing, (and it should, she could already tell she'll need more exercise), she wanted to make sure her crewmates were comfortable with her.
"Well... you're our Captain. Our queen, in a way," Piliazzi said. "And I made you look bad to my work-sisters."
"I don't think it makes the Captain look bad," Arozirzzi said. "I'd say it was clever. You defused a crisis with nothing but your charm, didn't you?"
Sucking up to the boss, are we, Arozirzzi? Rurliss thought, then remembered that if she'd failed back then, if the Sydraxians had resumed being hostile with the Federation, Arozirzzi and her bandmates would've directly been at risk, so. "Yeah, pretty much," she said.
"So, what's she like, this Nalaxie?" the redheaded engineer asked. "Is she right for you?" Hazzixen gave her a look. "Look, in my hive, we workers always got involved in helping our queens pick who they'd mate with."
"Have to say, I'm glad my family isn't involved in picking my partner," Rurliss noted.
"Well, think of it this way, ma'am: we were helping shape the next generation of our family. And from their perspective, well... my mom and my aunts, they basically got to have a whole hive of ... what was that Human word, 'wingman'? Yes, that. A whole hive wingmanning for them."
"Fair enough, I suppose. But she's definitely right for me. She's whip-smart, she's creative, she's funny, she's got a beautiful voice ... and we just get each other. We connected, right from the start, in a way that I've never connected with anyone else." Rurliss glowed.
"Aww!" the Apiata all said.
"Well, I'm glad that my long-running relationship has your approval," Rurliss teased.
"You're our queen. We want you to be happy," Piliazzi said.
"Honestly... what do you really think of me, that aside? What does the crew in general think of me?" Rurliss asked.
"I'm glad to have you aboard," Arozirzzi said. Rurliss gave her a look. "No, really. You were a good captain on Emancipation."
"Well... I haven't really seen you before," the red-haired engineer -- Grizzi-something, she remembered -- said. "But I appreciate that you're willing to put up with this. With my queen back home on Apinae, we had so much difficulty getting her to stay fit..."
"Same," Hazzixen said. "We went to, I want to say, four different hives before we found workers who could make Mom listen."
"I'm on the bridge for Alpha Shift, and from that, I'd say you're a damn good captain," Melzirinti said. "Not least because we'd all be dead otherwise."
"You want me to be honest? Completely honest?" Piliazzi asked. Rurliss nodded. Then she started running ahead of the little group, and gestured for Rurliss to follow alone. When they'd put some distance from the others, her yeoman said, quietly, "To be honest, you've seemed ... sad, a lot. Like you've been bottling up all the stress, all the worries you've had -- and it's unhealthy, ma'am."
"Well, I've got a lot to be stressed about these days... but yeah, you're right," Rurliss acknowledged, just as quietly. "It's just ... I don't want people to see me worried. To see their captain worried -- not now, not while we're operating entirely on our own."
"Look, I'm your yeoman, not your counselor," Piliazzi whispered. "Talk to Roxun."
Rurliss nodded. "I have been, and I will. I promise. Anything else you need to say privately?" she asked quietly.
"No, ma'am." Piliazzi said. She shouted back to the other Apiata: "We're picking up the pace, ladies!" Then she sped up.
***
Two days later, Enterprise dropped out of warp on the edge of the Werta system. Not much of a system -- just a relatively thin Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, and two gas giants, each with a few moons, only one habitable. Its remoteness was part of why Tallael picked it for her little art colony... and why Jenavol and Abeshta had suggested it as their target.
Passive scans had reported, as expected, a single subspace relay and nothing more dangerous than the normal Harmony traffic sensor array. Still, it didn't hurt to be prudent, and so Enterprise made her approach to Unwerta with caution. She built up momentum on her thrusters, but then cut them and coasted in. Eighteen hours later, she took up orbit of Werta II-d, keeping the gas giant between her and Unwerta's sensor arrays.
Runabout Decker and shuttles Sterett, Davis, and Haise left the shuttlebay and began their final approach. They were going in low and stealthy, but still at relatively high speed, looking to pass through the sensor array's detection cone as rapidly as they could, right through a shift change.
Aboard the Decker, Iliae Rurliss, wearing fake Tauni smartglasses, a headscarf covering her ears, and relatively comfortable Horizonian hiking clothes, was sitting in the back with Arozirzzi, Tiirid, Neroth, and a couple other Security and Engineering crewers, along with the chip network jammer and a set of stealth cloaks. The captain was quietly singing to herself. It took Tiirid a moment to make out what she was singing -- a lullaby in the dominant Cardassian language, that roughly translated to this:
Tiirid tapped Rurliss on the shoulder. "Where the hell did you pick up that song, and why are you singing it?" he asked.
"It's attributed to a Cardassian dissident about 30 years from now, in another universe. Long story," Rurliss said. "It just kinda felt a bit appropriate to the moment, sneaking in and all?" She paused, then seemed to realize just what she was saying. "... Okay, maybe it's a little grim. But it is a nice tune."
"A little." Tiirid scoffed.
"It's actually not near as bad as you might think -- the dissident it's attributed to actually survived through to the Fourth Republic, and sang it before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission," Rurliss said.
"In that other universe."
"Yes. I'd like to think we could see a similar future in this universe, without anywhere near as much bloodshed as that one's Cardassia inflicted, and had to face," Rurliss said. She smiled.
Tiirid laughed. "One rival at a time, Captain. Don't get ahead of yourself."
"Fair enough." Rurliss grinned.
"That's cool and all, but you're out of character, 'Elais'," Arozirzzi said, handing her a set of retro-looking headphones built by Engineering to mimic a popular design from Sanctuary. "Here. I've downloaded copies of the latest top-40 hits in the Harmony, as picked up and reprocessed by the Comms Department."
"That seems overly thorough," Tiirid said. "And really? Top-40? I'd think you'd be into something classier. Or at least more bluesy."
"You mean 'Greysong', right?" Rurliss said in a passable Sanctuary accent, donning the headphones. Shifting back to her normal voice, she said, "Top-40 is fine, you're just being snooty."
"Well, ours is. To be honest, Harmony Top-40 is kinda weird, since, well, Singers," Arozirzzi said. "You've gotta wonder how real it is."
"I mean, no offense to either of you, but Apiata and Amarki pop are strange to my ears," Tiirid said.
"Maybe, but at least we know it's honest," Arozirzzi said. "No mind-controlling uploads controlling chart numbers on our side of the border."
"We do have algorithms and focus groups influencing the charts on our side," Tiirid said. "And not to be speciesist, but, uh, you do have queens --"
"Doesn't work that way," Arozirzzi snapped. "More to the point, sure, people tailor music based on what tests well -- if they want to. And nobody's got their thumb on the scale. It's just what everyone likes, ultimately, for better or worse."
"You really think they'd do that?" one of the engineers asked. "Be that petty -- manipulate what music's popular?"
"They're Singers. They wouldn't see that as petty," Tiirid pointed out.
***
It was a crisp morning on Unwerta and Krobik felt the cool mountain air ruffle his feathers. He was high up a mountain covered in closely spaced trees that hid rocky boulders. He was on a dirt trail that barely deserved the name. Behind him it snaked down a horn of the mountain, steep, in some places a staircase of rock or dirt held in place by roots. It came out onto a road running parallel to the Tallael river, and a few kilometres up that river and past several mountains was a valley, and there was the town of Umwerta colony. It was a picturesque valley town spread on both banks of the river. Countless artists of every type made it their home. They came to paint the slopes in winter, all angles and shadow and soft cold pastels, or the vibrant plant and wildlife in the summer; or they came to make music, inspired by neighbours or animals; or they came to walk the paths and let their mind wander. All came for inspiration and a place away from distractions.
Krobik wasn't finding much inspiration. Maybe in suffering. He had gotten to the point in the hike where he started to think about when it would end. One foot in front of the other. The path was so steep in this section it felt like he could lay his belly against it with minimal effort. Not that it had been easy before. The earlier flat sections punctuated by slopes had almost been worse, those short breaks just there to remind you of the misery that awaited. His legs didn't hurt — yet — but he could feel the strain his body was under, as he forced it to keep going on.
As Krobik puffed along behind his much fitter daughter, he wondered why he and Ceri were climbing the mountain.
"Why are we climbing this mountain?" he said, as he leaned against a tree and stopped to rest. Again. "It feels like I'm back on patrol with War Hive Altreizz."
"We are on patrol!" Ceri said brightly, "on the lookout for the most beautiful scenery!"
She jiggled the bag full of art supplies on her back. She was weighed down by that, in addition to a pair of binoculars hanging from her neck, a utility vest whose pockets were stuffed with snacks and outdoor supplies, an integrated water pack with a drinking tube, and her manipulator arm set. Compared to her, Krobik had just his manipulators, plus a backpack with some water bottles and a few protein bars. And he was still struggling.
He stalled for time. "This does... look like somewhere... we'd let you kids play around," he said, taking deep breaths between words, "You know. Run around playing Deadly Islanders or whatever."
"Still could!" Ceri said. She snatched a vaguely rifle-shaped stick off the ground with her foot, "Pew, pew! Defend yourself, Horizonian scum!" She tossed the stick in the air, grabbed it with her manipulator arms, and dashed up the hill, a few paint brushes spilling out of her pack. She took cover behind a tree with surprisingly convincing skill and shouted, "Pew pew!"
Krobik looked up at her and blinked, "I'm a pacifist. You just committed a war crime." He walked up the trail and started stopping to pick up the paintbrushes.
"There are no laws in the Islands!" Ceri said, laughing. She tossed the stick aside, and stepped carefully down the slope back to him, also collecting her spilled supplies. "Anyways, no rush. At least we got here early so no one's passing us. I got beat up here by a Lintrid grandma once."
"I see," he said, nodding. Then, when she was close enough, he jabbed her with one of the brushes. "Haha! I used your implicit racism to disguise the fact I was an Amarki swordsman!"
"Gasp! Damn!" She collapsed on her side against the slope, "Foiled again!" She kicked her feet dramatically, an imitation of dying that was very unconvincing to Krobik (and Tallael).
"Ha ha," he said, grabbing the back of her pack with his beak and helping her to her feet, "Come on, we need to see this natural beauty. Feel the breeze that will bring fresh words to me, before it goes stale with long hours in the sun."
Ceri rolled her eyes, "I'm not too worried about the book. Are you?"
Was he? His book. A memoir. He hated that word. You only wrote a memoir at the start of your career or the end. He was the latter. A reflection on all the things he had done, how he'd done it. A chance to think and recollect, order, organize. But implicit in all that was that he didn't have anything else important to add to the record. Writing the book had been hard going. He struggled with the idea he should have started at all.
"I'm finishing the book," he said, "A man keeps his promise. This is a good remedy for writer's block."
She shrugged and kept going up the path. Krobik kept pestering her to slow down so he could brush off the trail dirt that dusted her wings during her imitation of a Moy's final moments. The view through the trees was getting better as they twisted to the other side of the horn and the land dropped away and the trees thinned. They could see glimpses of the terrain below, the sparkling river cutting through the green. And now, on this part of the slope, the occasional glimpse of a white communications dish.
"I can't believe you're going to paint with that ugly thing in the background," Krobik said, as they stopped for a break and a final attempt to remove Ceri's impromptu dust bath.
Ceri shrugged, "It's good practice to paint and try to mentally edit it out. Imagine it's not there. Or even make a painting and cover it up! So mysterious."
They both started as they heard rocks clinking down the trail, and then saw her. A Horizonian hiker coming down the trail, opaque smartglasses covering her eyes, headphones over her headscarf. Odd, Krobik thought the ranger had said that he and Ceri were the first ones here today. "Hey there," she said, in an imitation of a Dalear accent. From an outlying colony, perhaps? "Heading up this trail?"
"Yes. The view's amazing, isn't it?" he said, coming to a stop and setting down his pack.
"We're not there to admire the view, we're there to paint it!" Ceri said.
"Just you." Krobik said, "Unless you'd like to see me try?"
Ceri giggled at that.
"Honestly, the view was pretty terrible. Lots of fog," the Horizonian said. She looked a little nervous; her hands were fidgeting.
"Well, I think you went at the wrong time," Krobik said, good-naturedly. "Why don't you come along with us?"
"I'm telling you. I was literally just up there. Way too foggy to paint anything interesting." Something felt off about her tone, her demeanor. She'd stopped fidgeting, and seemed to be consciously trying to look like she wasn't nervous. Was she hiding something?
"Maybe you didn't go far enough up?" Krobik suggested.
"Maybe. I couldn't get all the way up the trail. Found this big rotten tree blocking the path." Huh. Krobik would've thought the ranger would've mentioned it if this trail was blocked.
Ceri shrugged. "I could paint the rotten tree? I've been meaning to do more nature painting..."
"That sounds terribly dull. I was thinking of taking the Meadow Hill trail; maybe you could join me? Good views on that one..."
This lady clearly didn't know what she was talking about. He and Ceri had hiked that trail before, and the views were alright, but nothing special. "I'll pass, thanks."
"C'mon, Dad, let's get going," Ceri said, and started up the trail again. Krobik sighed, and hefted his pack ... only for the Horizonian to gesture for them to stop. Ceri didn't, so he didn't.
"Seriously, I really wouldn't recommend you go any further up this trail," she said, following them.
"And why not?" Ceri asked, annoyed. Krobik was unsure himself, and was feeling a bit uneasy.
"I'm telling you, it'd be a waste of time." She kept following them up the trail anyway. The three soon came upon a clearing -- and upon a breathtaking view: the blue-grey gas giant Werta II, coming up over the horizon. Even the Horizonian looked impressed.
About the only thing marring the scene, to Krobik's eye, still was the comms dish, visible on a nearby hill situated in a dull tan square of clear cut forest.
"You were saying, Miss?" Ceri asked. "You know, I think I'm going to paint this." She and Krobik started to set up.
The Horizonian shrugged, and pulled out a sketchbook of her own ... and a pencil. "Wait, you're doing pencil sketches? Not using a sketchpadd?" Ceri asked. There was a dull roar in the distance.
"Sure, why not?" The roaring got louder.
"Doesn't that seem a little ... outdated?"
The Horizonian smiled. "I suppose, but I like it anyway. It's calm--" She was cut off, as a shuttlecraft went screaming past. It looked very odd. Almost like a Starfleet shuttle…
Type-5 shuttlecraft, his mind whispered for him, Common to Explorer Corps. Fitted for ground strike. For a moment it felt like he could see the actual plans for the craft.
As it flew by, it shot a plasma — a phaser — burst at the dish, destroying it. Behind it two more shuttlecraft screamed in -- Type-6, enlongated 'b' variant. Fitted for away team insertion in tactical environments with nose phaser emitter and graviton harnesses. But why?
"Who are you, really?" Krobik snapped off without thinking.
"I'm Elais. I'm new here."
"No you're not!" Ceri shouted, far more angry than Krobik had ever seen her get. The Horizonian dropped her sketchbook and started to reach into her pocket, and then --
And then he seemed to be watching himself from a distance. There was Krobik and there was his body. He was in his body but he also wasn't.
He watched as he sprang forward, faster than he ever knew he could move. Did something twinge in the leg? Maybe. No matter. His body knocked away the clever blue woman's phaser and slammed her into the ground. Minor head trauma likely. Ceri's body joined his, grabbing her throat and squeezing as his body pinned her down. He felt sick and alive as he watched her eyes bulge.
"This isn't going in the memoirs," he said mildly.
***
In the trees, hidden beneath a stealth cloak, Tiirid sighed. Typical captain behavior, thinking she could talk her way out of trouble, waiting until it was too late to try to draw on them. Look where that's getting her now -- tackled to the ground, the younger Tseskiya's talons wrapped tight around her neck, the other helping pin her down. Clearly, the Decker must've missed a local transmitter on its scans.
Well, time to save the day.
Without hesitation he pushed his legs against the tree, the energy giving his jump-slide the needed velocity and strength. The tree in front of him quickly grew bigger and bigger in his sight. At the last second he adjusted his trajectory with his wing and kicked off the trunk, gaining more momentum. And again. He bounced between the trees, swallowing distance with each leap. And again. Bark splintered under his leg and he almost missed the next trunk in his way -- but it was just within his reach. Talons scraped against wood. He regained just enough velocity to carry on. One more push and the clearing came into view.
The canopy of trees faded away in a blink and from a corner of his eye he caught sight of the giant planet hanging in the sky. His left leg touched the ground first. Pebbles and leaves of carefully maintained grass sprayed backwards. He pushed forward as fast as he can, to propel forward and to not fall.
Quick, rapid thuds sprayed more grass in his wake as he barreled towards the puppeted Tseskiya. The thermo-optic camouflage still held. The ground became a blur to him, the surface so close one misstep could yank whatever semblance of control over his form he still has away.
Tiirid angled himself with the last step, muscle memory ingrained in his old Sky Shrike training helping him maintain his form as he body-checked his target.
His tentacle-appendages grabbed tightly, securing the other Tseskiya as he rolled for leverage. They were roughly the same height and weight. But one was thinking for themselves, military-trained, aimed, and full of kinetic energy.
Two bodies were shoved off the captain, who started coughing and gasping for air.
Tiirid half-consciously angled himself to take the brunt of the ground impact and shield the civilian in his grasp under hostile control. Starfleet instincts, this time.
The ground welcomed them with the softness of tightly packed soil and roots peeking through the grass. With a grunt Tiirid let the air escape his lungs. As they rolled to a stop the dark-feathered Tseskiya woman in his grasp remained silent and unnaturally stiff. Her eyes darted over the cloaked form of the soldier tackling her to the ground.
They both rolled in a graceless tumble on the grass, and came to a stop next to Rurliss's headphones, knocked away when Krobik and Ceri turned on her, playing some insipid, incongruous tune. The camouflage cloak, unable to compensate for the kinetic interference, stopped functioning at this moment. The Tseskiya on top of Tiirid tilted her head, the clothes donned to protect her feathers from paint splashing on them now stained green and brown. She tried to disengage from the grapple, but was only partially successful, Tiirid's grasp on her midsection holding true.
But, now visible, he had become the primary target. Without warning the manipulator harness on Ceri's chest came alive and metallic talons slashed towards the Fiiral's head. Slashes aimed towards his eyes and snout. Short, without space to properly start or aim, but still dangerous.
The synthetic arm turned. Limitations of flesh not present, she stabbed in a backhand motion.
He quickly disengaged, his motion fluidly becoming a roll backwards. The synthetic arm sliced the air with an audible pitch, just where his eye was moments ago. A dull thud was barely audible as it dug into the soil.
On instinct he rolled backwards as a stab from the now-free second arm tried to skewer him. He dodged, and small pebbles and grass sprayed on impact. Ceri rose now to her full height, towering over Tiirid on the ground.
"You just had to come here and ruin my perfectly fine little art colony," she -- no, Tallael, through her -- shouted. "Fuck off. Go home. Stop interfering!"
Tiirid ignored her words. Even as he pushed nimbly against the grass, part of him wondered why it was taking so long for the jammer to come online. Still rolling, he only narrowly dodged the stomp that came next in his direction. An almost soulless gaze tracked his movement as he continued dodging and rolling on the ground -- each step, kick and slash aimed at him executed with precision and fluidity.
He rolled again, a decorative stone bench growing larger in his sight with each dodge. An opportunity. With his tentacles uncoiling he pushed against the ground, in one fluid motion letting the momentum carry him upwards. His arm snapped downwards and grabbed the stone. The structure, dug deep into the ground, held as he twisted his legs midair. His leg fully stretched out in a kick, and then he lashed out with his talons.
His claw struck the incoming manipulator arm and the civilian-grade material gave in first. Two of the four pseudo-fingers snapped off at their base joint with a loud crack. A servo died with an audible whine and a whiff of smoke rose from the mangled mechanical limb.
The puppeted Tseskiya was breathing hard, her body not as used to the stress put upon it by her uncaring controller. As Tiirid landed on his legs, half-rolling to bleed out momentum, his breathing was even, controlled. In a smooth motion he drew his phaser from his chest holster and aimed it at the puppeted person.
Ceri's still-working manipulator arm reached into her canvas bag, grasping for anything that might be of use. A split spike of metal with some carving tool mounted in a swappable nook came out. Tiirid assumed a more classical shooting position and tilted his head questioningly.
"Bringing a chisel to a gunfight, eh, Tallael?" he said.
Ceri glowered, defiant... and then suddenly looked confused. Tiirid looked past her, and saw Rurliss wrestling with Krobik, the old Tseskiya moving like a much younger man, deftly avoiding her efforts to pin him... and then not so deftly.
Arozirzzi's voice became audible from out of Rurliss's dropped headphones: "We're at full saturation of the network, ma'am."
***
Jenavol transmitted out of the closed meeting, a heavily encrypted affair held on Sanctuary with Meravik and several of his other protégés and colleagues. A waste of time really.
She resisted the urge to check on Unwerta. No need to get suspicious now. She checked archived messages from the other Singers as she settled into her usual control node at her personal assembly line. She flashed over them in a second.
She paused all operations in shock. A message from Keppan. Bubbly in tone. The Singer committee for Precinct 8 had decided to change her patrol route. She was now far ahead of her previously scheduled arrival time at Unwerta.
Like a good little Singer, she overrode her surprise and had the local comm array send the ship's travel logs to Unwerta.
***
It was strange, seeing the reactions of the staff of the Unwerta comm center as they learned the truth behind the Harmony, Chief Hazzixzen thought. There were a few who tried to deny it, who tried to explain it away -- "This is just a stress-induced hallucination, isn't it?" one muttered to herself. The rest were initially just ... stunned, somehow unable to process the fact that their entire lives had been outside their control. A few reacted like Rence had back in the Enterprise mess, engaging in petty and semi-destructive acts to test the limits of their newfound free will. It was tolerable for now when it was just a smashed computer console, but that compulsion was something Hazzixzen knew would have to be dealt with before it curdled into something else.
Objectively, Hazzixzen knew that most sentient species weren't eusocial, didn't have queens to help guide them through life, but the amount of pain the truth about the Singers seemed to bring them seemed just a little hard to understand. Didn't they realize no one really controlled their lives? Even the most evenhanded Queen imparted her values and preferences to her daughters. If they were machines it would be rightly called programming. But somehow it was different for Apiata.
To be fair, the Singers hid themselves and pretended they didn't exist, which seemed to defeat the whole purpose of being a queen.
Unwerta's pain turned to anger, quickly -- a few people were mad at her, at this 'Abeshta' who'd delivered the message, at Starfleet in general. But most instead were angry at the Singers. Conveniently, one of those had the password for the main computer that the engineering team was struggling to hack. Inconveniently, the local Singer had changed it in the time between Starfleet's assault and the jammer going fully active.
Still, the tech knew Harmony computing systems better than the engineers, and the local Singer had so much on her plate she hadn't deleted all his accesses. Soon enough, Chief Hazzixzen was reviewing message traffic to and from the base.
At first, nothing interesting stood out to her. Travel logs for ships coming to Unwerta: HPSDV Deejay still on schedule as of 6, 19, 46 and 71 hours ago, and the cargo ship HMADV Klaho had stopped by 100 hours ago. Some oddball messages -- for instance, some poetry sent from the Deejay 23 hours ago, along with an attachment of some sort that wouldn't open properly. Virus, perhaps? But did the Harmony even have computer viruses? Otherwise, though, largely routine messages for an art colony.
The helpful technician pointed out something else odd, though -- the reported position of the Deejay 23 hours ago didn't fit with its reported position 19 hours ago. Hazzixzen opened the travel log from 19 hours back, expecting a 25-hour ETA -- instead, ETA was ... a bit over 20 hours from then. Or an hour and change from now.
Oh. Oh no.
***
Krobik snapped back into control. He felt as if he'd gone very deep into the ocean of his mind and suddenly broke the surface. Things before had been languid, detached. Now things seemed too loud and too fast.
Ceri and the Fiiral were yelling at each other.
"Drop the weapon!" the Fiiral shouted, pointing a phaser at his daughter. With his raven feathering and vaguely avian shape, he almost could have been a Tseskiya with a fluffier, more prehensile tail. It added to the unreality of the scene.
Ceri waved the tool clenched in her remaining manipulator arm. "It's a chisel and you drop your shit first! My life might be a lie but that doesn't mean I'm gonna let you push me around!"
"You choked out the Captain!"
"One, that wasn't me; two, I wouldn't have had to if she wasn't suspicious as hell!"
"Tiirid," croaked the Amarki woman. Iliae Rurliss. He realized that was some of the last information downloaded into his skull. Singers worked fast.
"Ma'am?"
"Put down the phaser." Her voice sounded hoarse and weak, and she stood unsteadily. But Krobik saw a steely determination to her. He was unsurprised to see the Fiiral holster his weapon without another word.
Ceri tossed her chisel aside, "Alright." She rolled her head, and turned it slightly to the side, looking the Fiiral -- Tiirid -- up and down with one dark eye. "We cool?"
Tiirid guffawed, "If the captain says so."
"You're really good at beating up artsy girls and old men by the way. Is that a specialized course or does it come naturally?"
"Please forgive my daughter," Krobik interjected, "I'm sure you can understand, we are processing a lot." He looked at Rurliss, "I'm sorry for what we did. Obviously not our fault. No reason to blame you for the injuries we suffered. I'm sure you were trying not to hurt us." He turned his head, "Right Ceri?"
"Yeah," Ceri said, "I know it's messed up but I don't like losing."
"You two are remarkably calm," Rurliss said, "I didn't know what to expect, but probably more yelling."
"You did that hike," said Krobik, "Between that and our fight I have no energy for yelling." He sat down, wincing as he carefully tucked his legs under him, "So, Captain, what now? What's the next step?"
"This was a test run," said Rurliss, "We're only one ship. We can't protect this colony. Our plan is to get everyone off this rock and put you somewhere safe."
"Somewhere in the Federation?"
"Something like that."
Ceri had wandered over to Rurliss' dropped sketchbook and started flipping through it with her feet. Krobik noted that Tiirid had positioned himself to keep an eye on both of them.
Krobik nodded his head, "You're not telling us in case we are recaptured." He pulled out his tablet, "Fortunately for you, Captain, I am something of a local notable — I'll be able to get an evacuation post on the colony message board right away. Unless you were planning to beam us up without asking?"
The Fiiral waved his tail in annoyance, "Don't play that. There's operational need."
"Just saying." Krobik was typing on his tablet, "Not to jump the line, but if you could, Captain, I'd like to beam up with you. I'm a journalist by trade and I suspect there's a story here."
Rurliss' commbadge chirped. "Ma'am, situation developing. We need you back on Enterprise."
"Understood." She nodded at Krobik, "Prepare four to beam up. Two are Tseskiya."
"Energizing." Krobik saw Ceri grabbing the sketchbook with a foot. Then he was in the transporter room of a Federation vessel. It wasn't too different from the transporter room of a Renaissance. A bit sleeker, maybe.
Ceri bounced forward awkwardly, sketchbook outstretched, but before she could get Rurliss' attention a Vulcan woman had started talking.
"ETA on the Deejay is now 80 minutes, not twelve hours."
Rurliss stepped off the pad with an unconcerned but urgent bounce. "How long til we finish the evacuation?"
"155 minutes, ma'am," T'Kel reported.
"Damn." Rurliss sighed. They stepped out of the transporter room and into the hall.
Up until now, this plan really looked like it was going to succeed. But the Deejay arriving early would ruin it. She may only be a Choreographer-class tender, but she still had perfectly functional subspace comms.
"Options?" she asked Tiirid and T'Kel, knowing there were only two. They crammed into the turbolift. "Bridge," she said, then belatedly noted that the journalist had also squeezed in.
"We could fight it out," Tiirid said. "Deejay's a Public Safety Choreographer; we know those run Dancers and Alerts, and don't have the best sensors to begin with anyway. I'm fairly confident we can defeat her. Do it right, keep her comms jammed throughout, and all they'll know is that a tender went missing in this system. Then we could finish the evacuation at our leisure."
"We'd have to be perfect, though," Rurliss noted. "There's no repair facilities of any size in this system, let alone anything big enough for Enterprise; if we take damage to our warp drive beyond what we can repair ourselves, we're trapped here."
"If our jamming isn't completely airtight, the Harmony will know immediately anyway, and will be rushing whatever they can to intercept us," T'Kel pointed out. The door whooshed open and they stepped onto the bridge. She looked around for her staff. There was Abeshta's holobot to the left of her chair, Deva leaning over the Ops console with Cindre. Arozirzzi was busy at her console built into the right wall coordinating with the away teams shepherding the colony's people to convenient transporter locations and the local government. Roxun was on the large bank of consoles at the rear of the bridge, flicking through specs with an intelligence officer. And Melzirinti was at the helm.
"Cindre," said Rurliss, "How many ships are nearby?"
"Reviewing Jenavol's projections for Harmony fleet movements from last week and allowing for variation since then, I count at least three ships within two days' range of here at max warp -- enough time to track us and start to run us down," Cindre said.
Kol turned to face Rurliss. "We could evacuate as many as we can in the time we have, and escape the system ahead of her before her arrival. Needs of the many."
"From what I can tell we'd certainly be able to outrun the Deejay," Roxun added, squinting at a chart.
"There would be no way to prevent the Harmony from knowing most of what happened here, then, simply by reading the thoughts of anyone left behind," Tiirid said.
"We do need to avoid making too big a wake in subspace, or we'll be detected anyway," Melzirinti added.
"I don't like the idea of leaving people behind. People who now know they were slaves, people we've promised freedom to," Rurliss said. "But at the same time, we can't simply assume we'll get that airtight victory we'd need against the Deejay. If we aren't perfect, they'll know we're here and hunt us down anyway. And it isn't good to underestimate our enemy."
A difficult decision either way.
[ ][WERTA] Fight the Deejay, then finish evacuating Unwerta if possible
[ ][WERTA] End the evacuation of Unwerta early and avoid a fight with the --
Krobik interrupted: "Captain. We've held a vote, and come to a decision: we want you to stay and fight. We're committed to doing everything we can to help you out if you do stay."
"I'm sorry, you held a vote?" Rurliss asked, mildly shocked.
"Yes?" Krobik looked a little surprised at her reaction.
"Can confirm, ma'am," Arozirzzi said, "We just got a call from the local canton council saying the same thing."
Krobik nodded "It was organized the moment we learned the Deejay was inbound early. It was pretty overwhelming -- I can show you the results on my tablet."
"No, that's alright. That makes life... complicated, but I'll just have to be better than Deejay's captain, that's all."
"Her TC -- Tender Commander. Twera nas Linnais. I actually know her fairly well. I used her as a source for a while, and we became friends. I don't know how much that'd help, but at the least, maybe I can distract her, which may make it harder for however many 'Singers' there are aboard that ship?"
"It's just one Singer, actually..." Abeshta's hologram said quietly.
"Oh? Do you know them?" Rurliss asked.
"Yes," Abeshta acknowledged. "Her name is Keppan, and she's a friend... but before you ask, she's not a revolutionary. She has qualms with the system, but thinks it's a generational issue to be solved."
"Still. Only one Singer, and you know her well," Rurliss mused. "Yes, they have a military-grade computer network, but without a Singer watching, if we could beam a team over, could we deploy another chip network jammer? Grab ourselves an entire tender?"
"You're getting greedy, ma'am," Tiirid said. "I think I like it." Rurliss smiled at that.
"I'll check with Engineering, but I'm pretty sure we can have another jammer ready in an hour," Deva reported.
"Good. Let's get to work."
[X][WERTA] Distract Deejay's Singer, then board her and deploy a chip network jammer.
"Good morning, ma'am, it's time to get up," a voice sang out. It took Rurliss a moment to place it: Lieutenant Arozirzzi, who had served on her first command, and now on Enterprise. What was she doing in her quarters?
"Is something wrong?" Rurliss mumbled, and opened her eyes. Sure enough, Arozirzzi was standing beside her bed, wearing the ship's standard athleticwear (black shirt with "1701" in white lettering and a commbadge pinned on, black sweatpants, and grey-and-gold gym shoes). Next to her was Chief Piliazzi, Rurliss's yeoman, accompanied by three other Apiata crewers, all dressed similarly. Ah.
"No, ma'am, but you did want to get in more exercise, correct, ma'am?" Piliazzi asked. "It is time for your morning exercise!"
Ah. Right. She'd mentioned that to Piliazzi in passing yesterday evening. Apparently, the Apiata took that sort of thing very seriously. "Ugh. What time is it?"
"0445," Arozirzzi buzzed out, faintly annoyed.
"Fine." Rurliss sighed, but got up out of bed anyway. She knew Apiata, and when they had their minds set on something, it was incredibly hard to get them to stop. And it would be good to get in some exercise this morning. "Very well."
"We recognize that this is a bit of an early hour, ma'am, so I took the liberty of brewing you this." Piliazzi said, then handed her a mug of keikatta.
She took a sip. It was the perfect blend -- sweet and bitter, all at once, with that exotic hint of savoriness she'd come to enjoy from Sydraxian cuisine. Reminded her of ... "Wait, how did you know I like this?"
"It is my job to know your tastes, ma'am," Piliazzi said. There was more to it than that, though, Rurliss presumed.
"Anything happen while I was asleep?"
"It's in the report, ma'am, but you need to get dressed first."
One mug of keikatta, one quick skim of the overnight shift report, and one change of clothes later, Rurliss and the five Apiata were jogging through the corridors of the Enterprise. Piliazzi was setting a fairly quick pace -- not as bad as T'Kel used to set, back in the day, but still faster than she would've liked at this hour.
At first, they jogged in silence. She wasn't sure if the Apiata were cowed by her rank, or just preferred it that way, but if this was going to be a thing, she knew she wouldn't be willing to put up with it for long if nobody spoke. So, a bit awkwardly, she asked, "So, are you all morning people? Is that just a thing with Apiata?"
"Not really, myself, ma'am, but, well, the rest of the Enterprise hive is, so I kinda have to be," Arozirzzi said.
The other Apiata laughed. The lieutenant from Engineering with red hair and a really long name that had slipped out of Rurliss's memory the moment she'd introduced herself said, "You do just fine once we get some rakta in you, 'Zir!"
"You'd never want to sleep in just a bit more? I've got Beta shift anyway!" Arozirzzi protested.
"Miss Ex-Goodwill Ambassador needs her beauty sleep, does she?" Piliazzi teased.
"Wait, you never told us about that!" Chief Hazzixen, from Security, exclaimed.
"Yeah, our 'Zir and her band went on a tour of Sydraxian space way back around Stardate 27140. She's been holding out on us," Piliazzi said. "Only found out through the -- uh, through you, ma'am." It took Rurliss a bit to remember when her yeoman had heard about Arozirzzi's trip to Dar Nakar.
"You're in a band?" the red-haired engineer asked.
"I was," Arozirzzi admitted. "It was years ago, and it just never came up in the time I've been here."
"Wait, 'Lia, when were you gonna tell us?" Hazzixen asked.
Piliazzi sighed. "'Zir's right, it just never came up."
"Wait, Stardate 27140? Is that why you didn't hear about --" Lieutenant (j.g.) Melzirinti, the conn officer, started to say.
"Melz, shh!" Hazzixen buzzed, then whispered, "Not in front of the captain."
Unfortunately for Hazzixen, her voice wasn't as soft as she thought it was. Rurliss was rather curious. What did they want to hide from her? "What were you going to say, Lieutenant?" she asked Melzirinti.
"Well, ma'am, uh, the incident with Palarach," Melzirinti said.
Oh! That explained things. "Oh, you mean the worst meet cute ever?" Rurliss asked, smiling. Once, she would've been embarrassed about how she and Nalaxie had met. But in the last year, she'd come to have a sense of humor about it.
"Ah, yes, ma'am," Piliazzi said. "I know I shouldn't have disclosed it --"
"Why not? It's not like it matters much if you know," Rurliss said, letting some of her old accent slip through. She may be captain, but if this was going to be a regular thing, (and it should, she could already tell she'll need more exercise), she wanted to make sure her crewmates were comfortable with her.
"Well... you're our Captain. Our queen, in a way," Piliazzi said. "And I made you look bad to my work-sisters."
"I don't think it makes the Captain look bad," Arozirzzi said. "I'd say it was clever. You defused a crisis with nothing but your charm, didn't you?"
Sucking up to the boss, are we, Arozirzzi? Rurliss thought, then remembered that if she'd failed back then, if the Sydraxians had resumed being hostile with the Federation, Arozirzzi and her bandmates would've directly been at risk, so. "Yeah, pretty much," she said.
"So, what's she like, this Nalaxie?" the redheaded engineer asked. "Is she right for you?" Hazzixen gave her a look. "Look, in my hive, we workers always got involved in helping our queens pick who they'd mate with."
"Have to say, I'm glad my family isn't involved in picking my partner," Rurliss noted.
"Well, think of it this way, ma'am: we were helping shape the next generation of our family. And from their perspective, well... my mom and my aunts, they basically got to have a whole hive of ... what was that Human word, 'wingman'? Yes, that. A whole hive wingmanning for them."
"Fair enough, I suppose. But she's definitely right for me. She's whip-smart, she's creative, she's funny, she's got a beautiful voice ... and we just get each other. We connected, right from the start, in a way that I've never connected with anyone else." Rurliss glowed.
"Aww!" the Apiata all said.
"Well, I'm glad that my long-running relationship has your approval," Rurliss teased.
"You're our queen. We want you to be happy," Piliazzi said.
"Honestly... what do you really think of me, that aside? What does the crew in general think of me?" Rurliss asked.
"I'm glad to have you aboard," Arozirzzi said. Rurliss gave her a look. "No, really. You were a good captain on Emancipation."
"Well... I haven't really seen you before," the red-haired engineer -- Grizzi-something, she remembered -- said. "But I appreciate that you're willing to put up with this. With my queen back home on Apinae, we had so much difficulty getting her to stay fit..."
"Same," Hazzixen said. "We went to, I want to say, four different hives before we found workers who could make Mom listen."
"I'm on the bridge for Alpha Shift, and from that, I'd say you're a damn good captain," Melzirinti said. "Not least because we'd all be dead otherwise."
"You want me to be honest? Completely honest?" Piliazzi asked. Rurliss nodded. Then she started running ahead of the little group, and gestured for Rurliss to follow alone. When they'd put some distance from the others, her yeoman said, quietly, "To be honest, you've seemed ... sad, a lot. Like you've been bottling up all the stress, all the worries you've had -- and it's unhealthy, ma'am."
"Well, I've got a lot to be stressed about these days... but yeah, you're right," Rurliss acknowledged, just as quietly. "It's just ... I don't want people to see me worried. To see their captain worried -- not now, not while we're operating entirely on our own."
"Look, I'm your yeoman, not your counselor," Piliazzi whispered. "Talk to Roxun."
Rurliss nodded. "I have been, and I will. I promise. Anything else you need to say privately?" she asked quietly.
"No, ma'am." Piliazzi said. She shouted back to the other Apiata: "We're picking up the pace, ladies!" Then she sped up.
***
Two days later, Enterprise dropped out of warp on the edge of the Werta system. Not much of a system -- just a relatively thin Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, and two gas giants, each with a few moons, only one habitable. Its remoteness was part of why Tallael picked it for her little art colony... and why Jenavol and Abeshta had suggested it as their target.
Passive scans had reported, as expected, a single subspace relay and nothing more dangerous than the normal Harmony traffic sensor array. Still, it didn't hurt to be prudent, and so Enterprise made her approach to Unwerta with caution. She built up momentum on her thrusters, but then cut them and coasted in. Eighteen hours later, she took up orbit of Werta II-d, keeping the gas giant between her and Unwerta's sensor arrays.
Runabout Decker and shuttles Sterett, Davis, and Haise left the shuttlebay and began their final approach. They were going in low and stealthy, but still at relatively high speed, looking to pass through the sensor array's detection cone as rapidly as they could, right through a shift change.
Aboard the Decker, Iliae Rurliss, wearing fake Tauni smartglasses, a headscarf covering her ears, and relatively comfortable Horizonian hiking clothes, was sitting in the back with Arozirzzi, Tiirid, Neroth, and a couple other Security and Engineering crewers, along with the chip network jammer and a set of stealth cloaks. The captain was quietly singing to herself. It took Tiirid a moment to make out what she was singing -- a lullaby in the dominant Cardassian language, that roughly translated to this:
"Hush little baby, your sound's undue
Now's not the time, we've work to do
Hush little baby, mom says so
Not one word, it's time to go
Sleep little child, don't you cry
Now's the time to shut your eye
Sleep little child, I'm by your side
They won't find us while we hide"
Tiirid tapped Rurliss on the shoulder. "Where the hell did you pick up that song, and why are you singing it?" he asked.
"It's attributed to a Cardassian dissident about 30 years from now, in another universe. Long story," Rurliss said. "It just kinda felt a bit appropriate to the moment, sneaking in and all?" She paused, then seemed to realize just what she was saying. "... Okay, maybe it's a little grim. But it is a nice tune."
"A little." Tiirid scoffed.
"It's actually not near as bad as you might think -- the dissident it's attributed to actually survived through to the Fourth Republic, and sang it before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission," Rurliss said.
"In that other universe."
"Yes. I'd like to think we could see a similar future in this universe, without anywhere near as much bloodshed as that one's Cardassia inflicted, and had to face," Rurliss said. She smiled.
Tiirid laughed. "One rival at a time, Captain. Don't get ahead of yourself."
"Fair enough." Rurliss grinned.
"That's cool and all, but you're out of character, 'Elais'," Arozirzzi said, handing her a set of retro-looking headphones built by Engineering to mimic a popular design from Sanctuary. "Here. I've downloaded copies of the latest top-40 hits in the Harmony, as picked up and reprocessed by the Comms Department."
"That seems overly thorough," Tiirid said. "And really? Top-40? I'd think you'd be into something classier. Or at least more bluesy."
"You mean 'Greysong', right?" Rurliss said in a passable Sanctuary accent, donning the headphones. Shifting back to her normal voice, she said, "Top-40 is fine, you're just being snooty."
"Well, ours is. To be honest, Harmony Top-40 is kinda weird, since, well, Singers," Arozirzzi said. "You've gotta wonder how real it is."
"I mean, no offense to either of you, but Apiata and Amarki pop are strange to my ears," Tiirid said.
"Maybe, but at least we know it's honest," Arozirzzi said. "No mind-controlling uploads controlling chart numbers on our side of the border."
"We do have algorithms and focus groups influencing the charts on our side," Tiirid said. "And not to be speciesist, but, uh, you do have queens --"
"Doesn't work that way," Arozirzzi snapped. "More to the point, sure, people tailor music based on what tests well -- if they want to. And nobody's got their thumb on the scale. It's just what everyone likes, ultimately, for better or worse."
"You really think they'd do that?" one of the engineers asked. "Be that petty -- manipulate what music's popular?"
"They're Singers. They wouldn't see that as petty," Tiirid pointed out.
***
It was a crisp morning on Unwerta and Krobik felt the cool mountain air ruffle his feathers. He was high up a mountain covered in closely spaced trees that hid rocky boulders. He was on a dirt trail that barely deserved the name. Behind him it snaked down a horn of the mountain, steep, in some places a staircase of rock or dirt held in place by roots. It came out onto a road running parallel to the Tallael river, and a few kilometres up that river and past several mountains was a valley, and there was the town of Umwerta colony. It was a picturesque valley town spread on both banks of the river. Countless artists of every type made it their home. They came to paint the slopes in winter, all angles and shadow and soft cold pastels, or the vibrant plant and wildlife in the summer; or they came to make music, inspired by neighbours or animals; or they came to walk the paths and let their mind wander. All came for inspiration and a place away from distractions.
Krobik wasn't finding much inspiration. Maybe in suffering. He had gotten to the point in the hike where he started to think about when it would end. One foot in front of the other. The path was so steep in this section it felt like he could lay his belly against it with minimal effort. Not that it had been easy before. The earlier flat sections punctuated by slopes had almost been worse, those short breaks just there to remind you of the misery that awaited. His legs didn't hurt — yet — but he could feel the strain his body was under, as he forced it to keep going on.
As Krobik puffed along behind his much fitter daughter, he wondered why he and Ceri were climbing the mountain.
"Why are we climbing this mountain?" he said, as he leaned against a tree and stopped to rest. Again. "It feels like I'm back on patrol with War Hive Altreizz."
"We are on patrol!" Ceri said brightly, "on the lookout for the most beautiful scenery!"
She jiggled the bag full of art supplies on her back. She was weighed down by that, in addition to a pair of binoculars hanging from her neck, a utility vest whose pockets were stuffed with snacks and outdoor supplies, an integrated water pack with a drinking tube, and her manipulator arm set. Compared to her, Krobik had just his manipulators, plus a backpack with some water bottles and a few protein bars. And he was still struggling.
He stalled for time. "This does... look like somewhere... we'd let you kids play around," he said, taking deep breaths between words, "You know. Run around playing Deadly Islanders or whatever."
"Still could!" Ceri said. She snatched a vaguely rifle-shaped stick off the ground with her foot, "Pew, pew! Defend yourself, Horizonian scum!" She tossed the stick in the air, grabbed it with her manipulator arms, and dashed up the hill, a few paint brushes spilling out of her pack. She took cover behind a tree with surprisingly convincing skill and shouted, "Pew pew!"
Krobik looked up at her and blinked, "I'm a pacifist. You just committed a war crime." He walked up the trail and started stopping to pick up the paintbrushes.
"There are no laws in the Islands!" Ceri said, laughing. She tossed the stick aside, and stepped carefully down the slope back to him, also collecting her spilled supplies. "Anyways, no rush. At least we got here early so no one's passing us. I got beat up here by a Lintrid grandma once."
"I see," he said, nodding. Then, when she was close enough, he jabbed her with one of the brushes. "Haha! I used your implicit racism to disguise the fact I was an Amarki swordsman!"
"Gasp! Damn!" She collapsed on her side against the slope, "Foiled again!" She kicked her feet dramatically, an imitation of dying that was very unconvincing to Krobik (and Tallael).
"Ha ha," he said, grabbing the back of her pack with his beak and helping her to her feet, "Come on, we need to see this natural beauty. Feel the breeze that will bring fresh words to me, before it goes stale with long hours in the sun."
Ceri rolled her eyes, "I'm not too worried about the book. Are you?"
Was he? His book. A memoir. He hated that word. You only wrote a memoir at the start of your career or the end. He was the latter. A reflection on all the things he had done, how he'd done it. A chance to think and recollect, order, organize. But implicit in all that was that he didn't have anything else important to add to the record. Writing the book had been hard going. He struggled with the idea he should have started at all.
"I'm finishing the book," he said, "A man keeps his promise. This is a good remedy for writer's block."
She shrugged and kept going up the path. Krobik kept pestering her to slow down so he could brush off the trail dirt that dusted her wings during her imitation of a Moy's final moments. The view through the trees was getting better as they twisted to the other side of the horn and the land dropped away and the trees thinned. They could see glimpses of the terrain below, the sparkling river cutting through the green. And now, on this part of the slope, the occasional glimpse of a white communications dish.
"I can't believe you're going to paint with that ugly thing in the background," Krobik said, as they stopped for a break and a final attempt to remove Ceri's impromptu dust bath.
Ceri shrugged, "It's good practice to paint and try to mentally edit it out. Imagine it's not there. Or even make a painting and cover it up! So mysterious."
They both started as they heard rocks clinking down the trail, and then saw her. A Horizonian hiker coming down the trail, opaque smartglasses covering her eyes, headphones over her headscarf. Odd, Krobik thought the ranger had said that he and Ceri were the first ones here today. "Hey there," she said, in an imitation of a Dalear accent. From an outlying colony, perhaps? "Heading up this trail?"
"Yes. The view's amazing, isn't it?" he said, coming to a stop and setting down his pack.
"We're not there to admire the view, we're there to paint it!" Ceri said.
"Just you." Krobik said, "Unless you'd like to see me try?"
Ceri giggled at that.
"Honestly, the view was pretty terrible. Lots of fog," the Horizonian said. She looked a little nervous; her hands were fidgeting.
"Well, I think you went at the wrong time," Krobik said, good-naturedly. "Why don't you come along with us?"
"I'm telling you. I was literally just up there. Way too foggy to paint anything interesting." Something felt off about her tone, her demeanor. She'd stopped fidgeting, and seemed to be consciously trying to look like she wasn't nervous. Was she hiding something?
"Maybe you didn't go far enough up?" Krobik suggested.
"Maybe. I couldn't get all the way up the trail. Found this big rotten tree blocking the path." Huh. Krobik would've thought the ranger would've mentioned it if this trail was blocked.
Ceri shrugged. "I could paint the rotten tree? I've been meaning to do more nature painting..."
"That sounds terribly dull. I was thinking of taking the Meadow Hill trail; maybe you could join me? Good views on that one..."
This lady clearly didn't know what she was talking about. He and Ceri had hiked that trail before, and the views were alright, but nothing special. "I'll pass, thanks."
"C'mon, Dad, let's get going," Ceri said, and started up the trail again. Krobik sighed, and hefted his pack ... only for the Horizonian to gesture for them to stop. Ceri didn't, so he didn't.
"Seriously, I really wouldn't recommend you go any further up this trail," she said, following them.
"And why not?" Ceri asked, annoyed. Krobik was unsure himself, and was feeling a bit uneasy.
"I'm telling you, it'd be a waste of time." She kept following them up the trail anyway. The three soon came upon a clearing -- and upon a breathtaking view: the blue-grey gas giant Werta II, coming up over the horizon. Even the Horizonian looked impressed.
About the only thing marring the scene, to Krobik's eye, still was the comms dish, visible on a nearby hill situated in a dull tan square of clear cut forest.
"You were saying, Miss?" Ceri asked. "You know, I think I'm going to paint this." She and Krobik started to set up.
The Horizonian shrugged, and pulled out a sketchbook of her own ... and a pencil. "Wait, you're doing pencil sketches? Not using a sketchpadd?" Ceri asked. There was a dull roar in the distance.
"Sure, why not?" The roaring got louder.
"Doesn't that seem a little ... outdated?"
The Horizonian smiled. "I suppose, but I like it anyway. It's calm--" She was cut off, as a shuttlecraft went screaming past. It looked very odd. Almost like a Starfleet shuttle…
Type-5 shuttlecraft, his mind whispered for him, Common to Explorer Corps. Fitted for ground strike. For a moment it felt like he could see the actual plans for the craft.
As it flew by, it shot a plasma — a phaser — burst at the dish, destroying it. Behind it two more shuttlecraft screamed in -- Type-6, enlongated 'b' variant. Fitted for away team insertion in tactical environments with nose phaser emitter and graviton harnesses. But why?
"Who are you, really?" Krobik snapped off without thinking.
"I'm Elais. I'm new here."
"No you're not!" Ceri shouted, far more angry than Krobik had ever seen her get. The Horizonian dropped her sketchbook and started to reach into her pocket, and then --
And then he seemed to be watching himself from a distance. There was Krobik and there was his body. He was in his body but he also wasn't.
He watched as he sprang forward, faster than he ever knew he could move. Did something twinge in the leg? Maybe. No matter. His body knocked away the clever blue woman's phaser and slammed her into the ground. Minor head trauma likely. Ceri's body joined his, grabbing her throat and squeezing as his body pinned her down. He felt sick and alive as he watched her eyes bulge.
"This isn't going in the memoirs," he said mildly.
***
In the trees, hidden beneath a stealth cloak, Tiirid sighed. Typical captain behavior, thinking she could talk her way out of trouble, waiting until it was too late to try to draw on them. Look where that's getting her now -- tackled to the ground, the younger Tseskiya's talons wrapped tight around her neck, the other helping pin her down. Clearly, the Decker must've missed a local transmitter on its scans.
Well, time to save the day.
Without hesitation he pushed his legs against the tree, the energy giving his jump-slide the needed velocity and strength. The tree in front of him quickly grew bigger and bigger in his sight. At the last second he adjusted his trajectory with his wing and kicked off the trunk, gaining more momentum. And again. He bounced between the trees, swallowing distance with each leap. And again. Bark splintered under his leg and he almost missed the next trunk in his way -- but it was just within his reach. Talons scraped against wood. He regained just enough velocity to carry on. One more push and the clearing came into view.
The canopy of trees faded away in a blink and from a corner of his eye he caught sight of the giant planet hanging in the sky. His left leg touched the ground first. Pebbles and leaves of carefully maintained grass sprayed backwards. He pushed forward as fast as he can, to propel forward and to not fall.
Quick, rapid thuds sprayed more grass in his wake as he barreled towards the puppeted Tseskiya. The thermo-optic camouflage still held. The ground became a blur to him, the surface so close one misstep could yank whatever semblance of control over his form he still has away.
Tiirid angled himself with the last step, muscle memory ingrained in his old Sky Shrike training helping him maintain his form as he body-checked his target.
His tentacle-appendages grabbed tightly, securing the other Tseskiya as he rolled for leverage. They were roughly the same height and weight. But one was thinking for themselves, military-trained, aimed, and full of kinetic energy.
Two bodies were shoved off the captain, who started coughing and gasping for air.
Tiirid half-consciously angled himself to take the brunt of the ground impact and shield the civilian in his grasp under hostile control. Starfleet instincts, this time.
The ground welcomed them with the softness of tightly packed soil and roots peeking through the grass. With a grunt Tiirid let the air escape his lungs. As they rolled to a stop the dark-feathered Tseskiya woman in his grasp remained silent and unnaturally stiff. Her eyes darted over the cloaked form of the soldier tackling her to the ground.
They both rolled in a graceless tumble on the grass, and came to a stop next to Rurliss's headphones, knocked away when Krobik and Ceri turned on her, playing some insipid, incongruous tune. The camouflage cloak, unable to compensate for the kinetic interference, stopped functioning at this moment. The Tseskiya on top of Tiirid tilted her head, the clothes donned to protect her feathers from paint splashing on them now stained green and brown. She tried to disengage from the grapple, but was only partially successful, Tiirid's grasp on her midsection holding true.
But, now visible, he had become the primary target. Without warning the manipulator harness on Ceri's chest came alive and metallic talons slashed towards the Fiiral's head. Slashes aimed towards his eyes and snout. Short, without space to properly start or aim, but still dangerous.
The synthetic arm turned. Limitations of flesh not present, she stabbed in a backhand motion.
He quickly disengaged, his motion fluidly becoming a roll backwards. The synthetic arm sliced the air with an audible pitch, just where his eye was moments ago. A dull thud was barely audible as it dug into the soil.
On instinct he rolled backwards as a stab from the now-free second arm tried to skewer him. He dodged, and small pebbles and grass sprayed on impact. Ceri rose now to her full height, towering over Tiirid on the ground.
"You just had to come here and ruin my perfectly fine little art colony," she -- no, Tallael, through her -- shouted. "Fuck off. Go home. Stop interfering!"
Tiirid ignored her words. Even as he pushed nimbly against the grass, part of him wondered why it was taking so long for the jammer to come online. Still rolling, he only narrowly dodged the stomp that came next in his direction. An almost soulless gaze tracked his movement as he continued dodging and rolling on the ground -- each step, kick and slash aimed at him executed with precision and fluidity.
He rolled again, a decorative stone bench growing larger in his sight with each dodge. An opportunity. With his tentacles uncoiling he pushed against the ground, in one fluid motion letting the momentum carry him upwards. His arm snapped downwards and grabbed the stone. The structure, dug deep into the ground, held as he twisted his legs midair. His leg fully stretched out in a kick, and then he lashed out with his talons.
His claw struck the incoming manipulator arm and the civilian-grade material gave in first. Two of the four pseudo-fingers snapped off at their base joint with a loud crack. A servo died with an audible whine and a whiff of smoke rose from the mangled mechanical limb.
The puppeted Tseskiya was breathing hard, her body not as used to the stress put upon it by her uncaring controller. As Tiirid landed on his legs, half-rolling to bleed out momentum, his breathing was even, controlled. In a smooth motion he drew his phaser from his chest holster and aimed it at the puppeted person.
Ceri's still-working manipulator arm reached into her canvas bag, grasping for anything that might be of use. A split spike of metal with some carving tool mounted in a swappable nook came out. Tiirid assumed a more classical shooting position and tilted his head questioningly.
"Bringing a chisel to a gunfight, eh, Tallael?" he said.
Ceri glowered, defiant... and then suddenly looked confused. Tiirid looked past her, and saw Rurliss wrestling with Krobik, the old Tseskiya moving like a much younger man, deftly avoiding her efforts to pin him... and then not so deftly.
Arozirzzi's voice became audible from out of Rurliss's dropped headphones: "We're at full saturation of the network, ma'am."
***
Jenavol transmitted out of the closed meeting, a heavily encrypted affair held on Sanctuary with Meravik and several of his other protégés and colleagues. A waste of time really.
She resisted the urge to check on Unwerta. No need to get suspicious now. She checked archived messages from the other Singers as she settled into her usual control node at her personal assembly line. She flashed over them in a second.
She paused all operations in shock. A message from Keppan. Bubbly in tone. The Singer committee for Precinct 8 had decided to change her patrol route. She was now far ahead of her previously scheduled arrival time at Unwerta.
Like a good little Singer, she overrode her surprise and had the local comm array send the ship's travel logs to Unwerta.
***
It was strange, seeing the reactions of the staff of the Unwerta comm center as they learned the truth behind the Harmony, Chief Hazzixzen thought. There were a few who tried to deny it, who tried to explain it away -- "This is just a stress-induced hallucination, isn't it?" one muttered to herself. The rest were initially just ... stunned, somehow unable to process the fact that their entire lives had been outside their control. A few reacted like Rence had back in the Enterprise mess, engaging in petty and semi-destructive acts to test the limits of their newfound free will. It was tolerable for now when it was just a smashed computer console, but that compulsion was something Hazzixzen knew would have to be dealt with before it curdled into something else.
Objectively, Hazzixzen knew that most sentient species weren't eusocial, didn't have queens to help guide them through life, but the amount of pain the truth about the Singers seemed to bring them seemed just a little hard to understand. Didn't they realize no one really controlled their lives? Even the most evenhanded Queen imparted her values and preferences to her daughters. If they were machines it would be rightly called programming. But somehow it was different for Apiata.
To be fair, the Singers hid themselves and pretended they didn't exist, which seemed to defeat the whole purpose of being a queen.
Unwerta's pain turned to anger, quickly -- a few people were mad at her, at this 'Abeshta' who'd delivered the message, at Starfleet in general. But most instead were angry at the Singers. Conveniently, one of those had the password for the main computer that the engineering team was struggling to hack. Inconveniently, the local Singer had changed it in the time between Starfleet's assault and the jammer going fully active.
Still, the tech knew Harmony computing systems better than the engineers, and the local Singer had so much on her plate she hadn't deleted all his accesses. Soon enough, Chief Hazzixzen was reviewing message traffic to and from the base.
At first, nothing interesting stood out to her. Travel logs for ships coming to Unwerta: HPSDV Deejay still on schedule as of 6, 19, 46 and 71 hours ago, and the cargo ship HMADV Klaho had stopped by 100 hours ago. Some oddball messages -- for instance, some poetry sent from the Deejay 23 hours ago, along with an attachment of some sort that wouldn't open properly. Virus, perhaps? But did the Harmony even have computer viruses? Otherwise, though, largely routine messages for an art colony.
The helpful technician pointed out something else odd, though -- the reported position of the Deejay 23 hours ago didn't fit with its reported position 19 hours ago. Hazzixzen opened the travel log from 19 hours back, expecting a 25-hour ETA -- instead, ETA was ... a bit over 20 hours from then. Or an hour and change from now.
Oh. Oh no.
***
Krobik snapped back into control. He felt as if he'd gone very deep into the ocean of his mind and suddenly broke the surface. Things before had been languid, detached. Now things seemed too loud and too fast.
Ceri and the Fiiral were yelling at each other.
"Drop the weapon!" the Fiiral shouted, pointing a phaser at his daughter. With his raven feathering and vaguely avian shape, he almost could have been a Tseskiya with a fluffier, more prehensile tail. It added to the unreality of the scene.
Ceri waved the tool clenched in her remaining manipulator arm. "It's a chisel and you drop your shit first! My life might be a lie but that doesn't mean I'm gonna let you push me around!"
"You choked out the Captain!"
"One, that wasn't me; two, I wouldn't have had to if she wasn't suspicious as hell!"
"Tiirid," croaked the Amarki woman. Iliae Rurliss. He realized that was some of the last information downloaded into his skull. Singers worked fast.
"Ma'am?"
"Put down the phaser." Her voice sounded hoarse and weak, and she stood unsteadily. But Krobik saw a steely determination to her. He was unsurprised to see the Fiiral holster his weapon without another word.
Ceri tossed her chisel aside, "Alright." She rolled her head, and turned it slightly to the side, looking the Fiiral -- Tiirid -- up and down with one dark eye. "We cool?"
Tiirid guffawed, "If the captain says so."
"You're really good at beating up artsy girls and old men by the way. Is that a specialized course or does it come naturally?"
"Please forgive my daughter," Krobik interjected, "I'm sure you can understand, we are processing a lot." He looked at Rurliss, "I'm sorry for what we did. Obviously not our fault. No reason to blame you for the injuries we suffered. I'm sure you were trying not to hurt us." He turned his head, "Right Ceri?"
"Yeah," Ceri said, "I know it's messed up but I don't like losing."
"You two are remarkably calm," Rurliss said, "I didn't know what to expect, but probably more yelling."
"You did that hike," said Krobik, "Between that and our fight I have no energy for yelling." He sat down, wincing as he carefully tucked his legs under him, "So, Captain, what now? What's the next step?"
"This was a test run," said Rurliss, "We're only one ship. We can't protect this colony. Our plan is to get everyone off this rock and put you somewhere safe."
"Somewhere in the Federation?"
"Something like that."
Ceri had wandered over to Rurliss' dropped sketchbook and started flipping through it with her feet. Krobik noted that Tiirid had positioned himself to keep an eye on both of them.
Krobik nodded his head, "You're not telling us in case we are recaptured." He pulled out his tablet, "Fortunately for you, Captain, I am something of a local notable — I'll be able to get an evacuation post on the colony message board right away. Unless you were planning to beam us up without asking?"
The Fiiral waved his tail in annoyance, "Don't play that. There's operational need."
"Just saying." Krobik was typing on his tablet, "Not to jump the line, but if you could, Captain, I'd like to beam up with you. I'm a journalist by trade and I suspect there's a story here."
Rurliss' commbadge chirped. "Ma'am, situation developing. We need you back on Enterprise."
"Understood." She nodded at Krobik, "Prepare four to beam up. Two are Tseskiya."
"Energizing." Krobik saw Ceri grabbing the sketchbook with a foot. Then he was in the transporter room of a Federation vessel. It wasn't too different from the transporter room of a Renaissance. A bit sleeker, maybe.
Ceri bounced forward awkwardly, sketchbook outstretched, but before she could get Rurliss' attention a Vulcan woman had started talking.
"ETA on the Deejay is now 80 minutes, not twelve hours."
Rurliss stepped off the pad with an unconcerned but urgent bounce. "How long til we finish the evacuation?"
"155 minutes, ma'am," T'Kel reported.
"Damn." Rurliss sighed. They stepped out of the transporter room and into the hall.
Up until now, this plan really looked like it was going to succeed. But the Deejay arriving early would ruin it. She may only be a Choreographer-class tender, but she still had perfectly functional subspace comms.
"Options?" she asked Tiirid and T'Kel, knowing there were only two. They crammed into the turbolift. "Bridge," she said, then belatedly noted that the journalist had also squeezed in.
"We could fight it out," Tiirid said. "Deejay's a Public Safety Choreographer; we know those run Dancers and Alerts, and don't have the best sensors to begin with anyway. I'm fairly confident we can defeat her. Do it right, keep her comms jammed throughout, and all they'll know is that a tender went missing in this system. Then we could finish the evacuation at our leisure."
"We'd have to be perfect, though," Rurliss noted. "There's no repair facilities of any size in this system, let alone anything big enough for Enterprise; if we take damage to our warp drive beyond what we can repair ourselves, we're trapped here."
"If our jamming isn't completely airtight, the Harmony will know immediately anyway, and will be rushing whatever they can to intercept us," T'Kel pointed out. The door whooshed open and they stepped onto the bridge. She looked around for her staff. There was Abeshta's holobot to the left of her chair, Deva leaning over the Ops console with Cindre. Arozirzzi was busy at her console built into the right wall coordinating with the away teams shepherding the colony's people to convenient transporter locations and the local government. Roxun was on the large bank of consoles at the rear of the bridge, flicking through specs with an intelligence officer. And Melzirinti was at the helm.
"Cindre," said Rurliss, "How many ships are nearby?"
"Reviewing Jenavol's projections for Harmony fleet movements from last week and allowing for variation since then, I count at least three ships within two days' range of here at max warp -- enough time to track us and start to run us down," Cindre said.
Kol turned to face Rurliss. "We could evacuate as many as we can in the time we have, and escape the system ahead of her before her arrival. Needs of the many."
"From what I can tell we'd certainly be able to outrun the Deejay," Roxun added, squinting at a chart.
"There would be no way to prevent the Harmony from knowing most of what happened here, then, simply by reading the thoughts of anyone left behind," Tiirid said.
"We do need to avoid making too big a wake in subspace, or we'll be detected anyway," Melzirinti added.
"I don't like the idea of leaving people behind. People who now know they were slaves, people we've promised freedom to," Rurliss said. "But at the same time, we can't simply assume we'll get that airtight victory we'd need against the Deejay. If we aren't perfect, they'll know we're here and hunt us down anyway. And it isn't good to underestimate our enemy."
A difficult decision either way.
[ ][WERTA] Fight the Deejay, then finish evacuating Unwerta if possible
[ ][WERTA] End the evacuation of Unwerta early and avoid a fight with the --
Krobik interrupted: "Captain. We've held a vote, and come to a decision: we want you to stay and fight. We're committed to doing everything we can to help you out if you do stay."
"I'm sorry, you held a vote?" Rurliss asked, mildly shocked.
"Yes?" Krobik looked a little surprised at her reaction.
"Can confirm, ma'am," Arozirzzi said, "We just got a call from the local canton council saying the same thing."
Krobik nodded "It was organized the moment we learned the Deejay was inbound early. It was pretty overwhelming -- I can show you the results on my tablet."
"No, that's alright. That makes life... complicated, but I'll just have to be better than Deejay's captain, that's all."
"Her TC -- Tender Commander. Twera nas Linnais. I actually know her fairly well. I used her as a source for a while, and we became friends. I don't know how much that'd help, but at the least, maybe I can distract her, which may make it harder for however many 'Singers' there are aboard that ship?"
"It's just one Singer, actually..." Abeshta's hologram said quietly.
"Oh? Do you know them?" Rurliss asked.
"Yes," Abeshta acknowledged. "Her name is Keppan, and she's a friend... but before you ask, she's not a revolutionary. She has qualms with the system, but thinks it's a generational issue to be solved."
"Still. Only one Singer, and you know her well," Rurliss mused. "Yes, they have a military-grade computer network, but without a Singer watching, if we could beam a team over, could we deploy another chip network jammer? Grab ourselves an entire tender?"
"You're getting greedy, ma'am," Tiirid said. "I think I like it." Rurliss smiled at that.
"I'll check with Engineering, but I'm pretty sure we can have another jammer ready in an hour," Deva reported.
"Good. Let's get to work."
[X][WERTA] Distract Deejay's Singer, then board her and deploy a chip network jammer.
Part 1 of 2 for this episode, because it was getting far too long as it was. No vote at this point, but there will be a vote at the end of part 2, so you can look forward to that!
Credit is shared with my coauthors @IofTheBunny and @Iron Wolf .
Credit is shared with my coauthors @IofTheBunny and @Iron Wolf .
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