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Yinko
Just to be clear, Jadzia has all of Curzon's memories due to having the Dax symbiont inside her.
Perhaps I should have phrased that line better. Hopefully everyone understood what I meant.
Augment Gothic 6
The Flighty Temptress. Deep Space.
While I looked relaxed, I was in fact carefully contemplating the three-dimensional chess board in front of me. I had one arm casually draped over the back of my chair and with the other I stroked my chin, considering many possible moves and counter moves to use against the agent that Section 31 had sent with me on my mission. T'Maz, a beautiful Vulcan female who wore a skin tight black body suit that covered a lot while really hiding next to nothing, was proving to be quite the formidable opponent. She sat across from me on the other side of my ship's cockpit with a totally neutral expression on her face, which meant I had no idea if she was confident of her victory or concerned about possible defeat.
"It is your move, Agent Gothic," T'Maz said.
Despite her pointy ears and raised eyebrows, the Vulcan female was very human looking, at least until you looked closer and noticed the slight greenish tinge to her skin. However, she had very nice curves and an ample bosom, so I found her very attractive.
"I'm aware of that, Agent T'Maz," was my snarky reply.
Section 31, at least as far as I knew, had no formal ranks or strict command hierarchy. We were all agents in the service of the Federation, but in no way part of Starfleet. However, some agents were superior to others, so T'Maz was in charge of this operation even if she had no real authority over me. Even less than normal, considering I was a free-lance operative as well.
"I had thought that an infamous augmented human would provide me with a challenge," remarked the Vulcan. "It appears that I was mistaken".
It seems that even Vulcans could engage in trash talk, or some version of it, color me surprised. My response was to raise a hand tentatively and let it hover over the game board, as I tried to figure what would happen if I moved my remaining bishop. Everything looked good, so I moved my bishop up onto the third level.
"Check!" I declared, quite proud of myself.
Before I could take another moment to appreciate my genius, the Vulcan instantly leaned forward and took my bishop with one of her knights. Meaning she was no longer in check. I stared for a split second in utter disbelief, before I realized my mistake. I should have seen an attack from a lower level coming, and had it been a proper chess board, meaning flat with only one god forsaken level, I was sure that I would have. This multi-level, 3-dimensional bullshit was throwing me off.
"Your move was logical," said T'Maz, "but also highly predictable".
Her words caught me by surprise as much as her move had.
"I don't think I've ever been called predictable before," I commented. "At least not for a long while".
Several hundred years at least.
"I find you very predictable," T'Maz replied. "At least when we are playing chess. You focus almost entirely on offense and neglect defense. Only your king is well protected. Were that piece not so well defended this game would have ended three moves ago".
After thinking about it more, I found that I couldn't help but agreed with her. Had I spent more time planning to protect myself, rather than on just attacking, I would have had a piece in place ready to avenge my bishop and take her queen. Maybe that was a lesson for life in this time and dimension? Kind of ironic I was being told I should be protecting myself more in this game considering I was spending so much time, energy, and resources designing an advanced personal armor system for myself.
Now I had no pieces for a renewed offensive, which meant that soon enough I would be totally focused on defense and that would certainly cost me the game. I could prevent her from winning for a little while, however victory was now beyond me. It was better to concede defeat now, graciously, rather than let the game pointlessly drag on. With that in mind I tipped my king on its side.
"You are improving," T'Maz then said, "quite rapidly. Perhaps if we played again you will be able to adapt your tactics".
Three dimensional chess really wasn't my game. I was too used to thinking of a battlefield as being flat. When I played chess I saw two medieval armies. In this century, in a time where battles were fought in space between starships, you had to understand that an attack could come from above as well as below and every which way. Now that I had my own ship, I had better get my act together and start changing the way I thought.
"This isn't what I imagined I'd be doing as a spy," I told the Vulcan. "I guess all those James Bond films I watched while growing up coloured my opinion of the profession".
T'Maz gave me a look that on a human I would have called one of curiosity. While Vulcans did have feelings, they went to great efforts not to express them, so I couldn't assume that she was actually curious.
"Who is this James Bond?" she asked.
While I didn't know if the movies had ever existed in this reality, or survived the wars of that time (due to so much being lost or purposefully destroyed because of Khan and his kin), the writer Ian Flemming had still been published in this dimension. I knew this from my time in the library in San Francisco. If we were on a Starfleet ship, I could have simply told her to look him up, but I didn't have many works of fiction taking up computer memory. I should, now that I thought about it; on long trips at warp in the future it might be a good idea to have reading material available to pass the time.
"He was a fictional character in a series of books and movies from my time. James Bond was a spy who worked for an organization called MI6, an intelligence outfit of the United Kingdom, an Earth nation state, during the second half of the 20th century," I explained. "His missions often involved preventing outlandish schemes for world domination, or stopping terrorists from causing massive amounts of death and destruction. He was always paired with a beautiful woman he ended up having a sexual relationship with by the end of the film".
T'Maz didn't reply right away, so I assumed that she was thinking about what I had just spoken about. She was probably even making a note to look up the source material to read later on.
"Unfortunately, I think you will experience disappointment during our time together," she told me. "As a Section 31 agent I have never prevented any world from being dominated, nor have I ever had to stop anyone from causing massive amounts of death and destruction".
Our current mission was to go and check up on a civilian run research outpost that was part of the Vulcan Science Institute (which wasn't the same thing as the Vulcan Science Academy). The geeks at the outpost were studying a binary star system. A Section 31 agent was part of the research staff and he had stopped reporting in recently, as had the entire outpost. This could just be an equipment failure or some kind of astrological phenomenon, but it was also possible that the agent had died somehow, or that the outpost had been taken over by hostile beings. For some reason Section 31 seemed to think the latter was likely.
T'Maz was a part of the Vulcan Science Institute, as well as an agent, so it wouldn't be seen as overly odd if she turned up unexpectedly to find out why the outpost had stopped transmitting data. My cover was that of a private ship owner who T'Maz had hired to transport her to the base. Which wasn't that far from the truth really.
For this first job I had chosen to be paid in Federation Credits, which had no material value per se, but they could be used to get things from the Federation that required large amounts of energy. This could come in handy if I ever wanted something that couldn't be replicated by a normal replicator, or that would require a great deal of time and energy to produce, like say a mounted photon torpedo launcher for my ship. Getting that from the Federation meant I'd be getting brand new goods, exactly as specified, and also meant installation by a team of experienced engineers. Sure, I could buy this equipment elsewhere with latinum, but there was value in knowing your weapons were going to work when you needed them to. In a case like this, I would pay for the launcher, a small inventory of photon torpedoes, and its installation with Federation credits.
If we bumped into any Starfleet ships on our journey we shouldn't have any trouble as we weren't doing anything illegal. My ship was registered with the Federation, my pilot's license was in good order, and I had all the permits required to travel anywhere within Federation Space with third party cargo or paying passengers onboard. I could even venture to neutral systems if I wished to, but that could be risky. Outside the Federation and away from their protection and influence, my ship could be a tempting target. It was rather small and under-armed, at least when compared to larger vessels.
"However, I am willing to engage in sexual intercourse with you," T'Maz then said out of the blue, interrupting my mental daydream. "I believe it will increase your morale".
Had I been drinking anything at this point I would have done a classic spit take and sprayed it all over my brand new 3D chess board.
"What?" I asked before formulating a better question. "I thought Vulcans only had sex during their Pon farr?"
Surprisingly, T'Maz didn't seem at all troubled by discussing her people's mating rituals, unlike what I had expected and seen in the shows, but normally Vulcans didn't lie either and she had to all the time in order to be an agent for Section 31. So I supposed it made perfect sense that she wouldn't act like a typical member of her species.
"It is a common misconception that Vulcans only have sex once every seven years," my boss for this mission informed me. "During the Pon Farr adult Vulcans undergo a neurochemical imbalance, which causes a form of madness. A Vulcan can even die within a matter of days if the Pon Farr is not satiated. A successful Pon Farr requires creating an empathic bond with our mate and that includes sex. However, since there is no guarantee that a child will be born from a single mating, if we were to only engage in sex once every seven years we would have very few children and a much smaller population, even with our long life spans. Also, we do sometimes marry outside our species and those races would not be willing to only have sex once every seven years. Another fact that you should be aware of is that we cannot reproduce with humans without medical aid".
She was right, seven years without sex was something few humans would/could put up with. I wasn't even sure if I could go seven days without sex, especially since spending time on Risa and honing my sexual game to a fine point. Plus it was kind of weird to think Sarek, who'd I'd recently met, must have long ago gone to a fertility clinic in order to father Spock, but since Spock existed Sarek must have.
"So, in other words, every seven years you have to mate, the rest of the time it's just optional," I said. "And if you don't mate during the Pon Farr you can fight instead and that would also satisfy the urges".
T'Maz nodded, perhaps a bit surprised at my knowledge.
"The ritual combat is also an option, though extremely rare in this age," she went on say. "Most Vulcans will simply mate with their husband or wife, so the ritual is rarely performed any more".
Well, fucking was usually a better option than fighting to the death, though I had to wonder if T'Maz had a mate somewhere. What did she do during her Pon Farrs? Did they have an open relationship? Or did Vulcan relationships work differently than human ones? Perhaps they could have temporary Pon Farr partners? I probably shouldn't ask…
"I personally do not engage in sexual intercourse very often, as I do not feel the need like humans do," she then told me. "But, as I mentioned before, I believe that your disappointment in our mission would be lessened by the activity and that in turn should increase your morale".
That was logical.
"Shall we begin now?" T'Maz asked as she stood up. "It will require you to increase the air temperature".
Had I not been to Risa immediately before embarking on this mission I probably would have found this very strange, maybe even off-putting enough to stop it before it happened. After that hedonistic paradise, though, this situation was actually pretty tame in comparison. Even when she began to shamelessly undress right in front of me I found that it didn't make me feel awkward at all.
I was even able to adjust the environmental controls without being too distracted, and by the time I was done I was looking at a very naked Vulcan female, one who could put most human pinup models to shame. It was something I could definitely get used to.
When I stood up she was standing with her back to me, so that she could place her clothes on her chair. I took a minute to enjoy the sight of her shapely bottom.
"Please stay where you are and disrobe," she instructed me calmly.
She was now neatly and meticulously folding her clothes. I took the time to begin to strip, which was not something I could do all that quickly. While I wore 20th century clothing, which was fairly easy to take off compared to this century's fashions, I was also wearing my body armour under my clothes perfectly molded to fit skin tight to my torso. It wasn't that heavy, since it relied on materials that weren't strictly metal, but taking it off involved undoing quite a few buckles and straps. It was meant to stay on during even the most rigorous and chaotic movements of combat; it was not designed to come off easily or quickly.
"Done," I reported.
At that moment T'Maz turned around and I didn't even try to hide the fact that I was shamelessly checking her out. I lost most of my shame and hangups about nudity back on Risa.
"I take it that you view my decision to remove my pubic hair positively?" she asked
With some effort I was able to translate that to: 'does being hairless down there makes you think I'm sexy?'
"Yes," I answered honestly.
I walked up to her and without much preamble, kissed her deeply. She didn't react at first, but she soon became much more active. Despite her seeming to want to continue to make out it was she who broke the kiss.
"Gothic, I am well versed in human mating, and not just intercourse. I am familiar with both foreplay and oral sex," she told me. "Until now I have never had the chance to engage in oral sex. Please sit down, I wish to give you a 'blow job'".
Oddly, I found myself questioning her actions, rather than just going along with things.
"If you wanted to give me a blowjob then why did we get naked?" I wondered.
A person didn't need to get fully naked in order to perform oral. I didn't mind being nude, though, as after Risa I knew I had nothing to hide in terms of my body; it had just struck me as odd.
"Human males are aroused by unclothed females," T'Maz answered as she got to her knees. "Also, so we do not stain our clothes. I have never performed this act before and while I will endeavor to swallow your semen I did not wish to have to change my clothing should I fail".
Again, it seemed this was all very logical.
"Vulcan penises are smaller than human ones, on average," she went on to say as she gently touched my cock. "I may require time to get used to the size".
She then looked down at my prick rather intently (another aspect of my body that had obviously been improved genetically), opened her mouth and put the head of my penis in her mouth. Her mouth was wonderful. It was warm and her saliva lubricated my dick well. Her hands moved so that one was at the base of my dick, and the other was cupping my balls. Clearly she had read up on human sexual practices. Maybe I should do the same for my alien lovers.
She took her mouth off my dick and began slowly licking down my cock. When she reached my balls, she took them in her mouth before she started to lick back up my cock, until she was back at the top. It felt good, and I couldn't help noticing that her every movement was steady. She didn't seem aroused, but neither was she reluctant, she was just performing a task. Somehow that didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the situation.
She began to suck on my dick's head again. Then slowly she moved her head down and down so that soon enough my dick was in the back of her throat. She began to gag at that point and so she stopped.
"This 'deep throating' is quite uncomfortable," she stated. "However, it is illogical to stop; we must continue".
Her next attempt to orally please me was far more productive, and there was no gagging this time so I just closed my eyes and let her get on with her task. Which she did so well that before long I was close to a climax.
"I'm… gonna….. cum!" I moaned loudly. It was generally polite, after all, to let your lover know that.
I felt my large load shoot deep into T'Maz's mouth and throat, and her swallowing of my cum was very well done. In fact, she didn't spill a drop.
"This session seems to have served its purpose," she said, once my dick had gone soft in her mouth. "Your work should now be more efficient".
I found myself rather disappointed at this, as it didn't sound like an encore was in the cards. So I got dressed. Thankfully, my hopes weren't dashed for long.
"In order to keep efficiency levels high, I believe we should have these sessions at least once a day," she suggested, "perhaps twice if we are not busy with other work".
That was just fine with me. Hopefully it also meant that I would soon be able to take Vulcans off the list of species I wanted to fuck a female member of.
(Line Break)
The Flighty Temptress. Deep Space.
I had to admit, my ship was pretty damn cool. I'd named it The Flighty Temptress after a particularly poignant passage I remembered from one of the Harry Potter books, sadly only one of which had been published in this universe for whatever reason. Dumbledore had said it and it just fit in my mind. I couldn't even remember what the circumstances were exactly, probably getting the fake locket horcrux from the underwater cave, but right before they left Dumbledore turned to Harry and said, 'Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.' Personally, I thought it was a fabulous name for the ship of an adventurer in the perpetual 'night' of space, and that was pretty much what I was. For some reason the idea of naming my ship from a famous book that never actually existed in this dimension also felt like an homage, an inside joke maybe, like I was personally connecting to my former dimension and time.
For the tenth time this hour I checked the navigational computer for our ETA and found that we still wouldn't reach the binary star system for more than a day and a half. My ship was fast for its size, but it was pretty much a runabout, albeit a bit bigger and with more power. In fact my ship and the Danube-class Runabout of DS9 fame shared the same top speed of Warp 5. My ship had the power and speed for long trips, but it wasn't exactly built for incredible comfort or to entertain its passengers. I was getting bored, so I started thinking up ways to improve the ship overall and especially in ways to make these long trips at warp more comfortable and tolerable! Having knowledge of various runabouts in both TNG and DS9 actually helped those ideas along.
When even this failed to keep boredom away for long, I decided to go back to my studies of modern science and to start tinkering with tech. I could have talked to T'Maz more, but she was very distracting at the moment, since she had decided to remain naked until we reached the binary star system.
She pointed out that there was no logical reason for her to get dressed now that I had made the inside of the ship much warmer. While hot naked women were nice to look at, she was making me horny. Unless sex was back on the table, it was better not to look since I didn't want to be pushy about sex; so I had to keep my mind off her. Had she been human I would assume she was trying to purposely arouse me and that she was signaling her willingness to have sex several times a day with me, but she was Vulcan. Those kinds of assumptions didn't always track.
"What is that device?" T'Maz questioned, as she re-entered the cockpit and sat down in one of the four available chairs. "Is it a weapon?"
"This device uses holograms and force fields to make any kind of melee weapon or simple tool that I want," I explained.
I pressed a button and verbally asked for a broadsword. A holographic blade appeared in the requested style, but that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous. When building this device I had set out to make a lightsaber, being in this technologically advanced future and all you really couldn't blame me. The problem with that was that even though a modified force field could contain the plasma energy, the field was what would actually interact with anything solid, so I ended up with a high tech stick/club as the energy weapon was trapped inside the field. I might as well have just replicated a baseball bat. The Star Wars universe must use some kind of permeable magnetic containment field, something that kept the energy contained and shaped, but still allowed it to cut as the Jedi/Sith swung it around. I was still looking into my options.
What did work well, however, was shaping the force field so that it worked like any edged weapon, only better, as the field could be angled in such a way that it was razor sharp. Unlike a true metal blade, it would also never dull.
"The hilt contains the small emitter for the hologram," I explained. "Normally this would be harmless, the emitter being very similar to the one you'd see in a holo-portrait. The difference is that my device also emits the requisite shaped force fields to make the blade itself solid, operating on the same principles as a full function holodeck, just much, much smaller".
In essence, it was somewhat like the Doctor in Star Trek Voyager's mobile emitter, only much, much less complex. Actually, I was drawing inspiration from multiple Star Trek shows, including Voyager, TNG and Enterprise. A TNG episode featuring sentient machines, called an exocomp, had had a holo-tool equivalent built into its design. An Enterprise episode had an entire repair facility which used advanced holography/replicators to repair the ship. Of course it was found to be stealing people to add to its processing power, but the idea was sound.
"Works for a knife too, or a hammer, or a wrench, or any simple tool really," I was now saying. "Wouldn't work for a gun, of course, because the fired bullet would vanish once it's out of the limited range of the small emitter. This is a very early prototype, though, I'm hoping to include simple engineering tools in future versions, like a hyperspanner, or phase compensator".
Sadly, the design had a flaw.
"It doesn't work for very long," I continued, as I switched the device off. "The power cell drains pretty quickly".
And the device was heavy too, only that wasn't really an issue for me considering my baseline strength.
"I'm also working on a device that will fit on the forearm, which will be a combination of a tricorder and a comm device along with a holographic emitter for the display. If it works you could...".
That was when she stopped me from talking further.
"Actually, I was asking about this device in particular," she corrected, while holding up an egg shaped device. "Is it a weapon? You seem to like weapons".
I wasn't quite sure how she came to that conclusion, but it was probably the sword I wore at all times. I was also most likely the only human she'd ever met who carried one. I liked my sword, it was made from metals that no one on my world had ever even heard about.
"That is a flash bang grenade," I informed the naked alien. "It's a small incendiary device that when triggered emits an extremely bright flash of light and a very loud bang that temporarily blinds and deafens people, hence the name. You throw this into a room, prior to a breach, and a couple of seconds later no one will be able to fight back as they'll be too disoriented. This is one I designed with the help of Commander Data on the Enterprise. It uses different chemicals and compounds than the flash-bangs they had back in my day and is calibrated to temporarily disorient a wide variety of species without doing any long term harm".
T'Maz looked interested.
"Why not simply use a phaser set on wide beam?" she asked.
I had an answer ready.
"Because to do that you have to be in the room, or temporarily exposed to the room with hostiles in it. With a grenade, of any type, you can stay out of the line of fire entirely; your enemies never potentially even seeing you," I explained. "You see the canister is designed to be very sturdy and to resist premature detonation. So if you're strong and good at judging the angles, like I am, you can throw this little baby into a room by bouncing it off a wall or two, or around a corner. Not something Starfleet would ever use, but we spies have to be more clever than most".
T'Maz nodded her head in what I guessed was approval.
"Starfleet personnel do seem to lack common sense," she commented. "They often devise overly complex and unique solutions to problems and then rather than reuse those solutions in similar situations in the future, they will invent new methods. There is a reason why people such as you and I are the real defenders of the Federation".
Starfleet types could be a bunch of smug cunts at times, but they, like anyone, were the products of their time and culture. True, they could do things in needlessly complex ways, but they always came up with solutions when it mattered, and they were willing to die to protect the Federation. That was to be admired. So I figured T'Maz was judging them a bit too harshly, and that was coming from me, and I was frequently a critic of Starfleet's methods.
"As for the other device you mentioned, I believe that I have a solution to your power problem," the Vulcan told me. "I assume you are using a power cell common to civilian applications, if so then replacing it with a power cell designed for a standard hand phaser should provide plentiful energy for your needs. It will simply require a few modifications".
I handed over the machine I was currently calling a 'holotool', as I sucked at naming things, and then watched T'Maz walk away.
"That ass…" I muttered.
T'Maz obviously heard me and turned around. Yep, forgot that their hearing was much better than human norms.
"Does my nudity bother you?" She wished to know. "If so, I will dress".
That would be a bad thing.
"No, I like you being naked," I told her. "It's just that I don't want to bother you with my sexual urges".
She understood what I meant.
"If you desire more sex then simply make a request," she said. "I have no important or pressing tasks to complete after modifying your device and I do wish to learn more about human sexual practices. Reading written material on the subject is useful for such research, but it does not compare to gaining real experience, empirically".
She was so logical about it and yet so sexy at the same time.
"All right," I said, before getting up and following her to the store room were I kept my tools and spare parts. "You modify while I fuck you".
It was a win-win situation for me.
(Line Break)
The Flighty Temptress. Binary Star System.
"A fucking anomaly. This just keeps getting better," I moaned. "We need to avoid anomalies!"
I'd watched enough Star Trek to know that an anomaly was just another word for extreme danger that was almost certainly going to fuck you when you least expected it. We could end up trapped in a time loop, or be sucked into some kind of black hole, or even become the play things of a god. All of which would be very, very bad.
T'Maz wearing clothes in the ship again was another thing that was bad, or at least not as nice as before. Now that we had actual work to do she didn't want me distracted, and that was perfectly understandable and reasonable so I didn't grumble about it…much.
"It is highly unusual," the superior agent commented while studying my ship's sensors. "I believe it's some kind of rip in the fabric of space time. The sensors are even detecting a different region of space beyond the rip".
Now I was starting to get an idea of what this anomaly was.
"Like a wormhole?" I asked.
T'Maz shook her head.
"Not in the sense that it is a shortcut through space between two disparate points," she explained. "It's more akin to a wound in reality. The space beyond the rip is not of our universe, of that I am sure".
Oh my, that didn't sound good at all.
"Where does it lead?" I wondered.
Knowing my sci-fi I knew it wouldn't be anywhere good. It could be an entry way to something like Thirdspace, or the Warp of Warhammer 40k, or wherever it was that the Event Horizon went on its maiden voyage.
"There is no way to know for sure," T'Maz replied. "But it does lead somewhere and if this ship's basic sensors are correct, a ship has already entered the rip from our universe".
This was not a Starfleet ship, so I didn't have top of the line sensors. The standard sensors on this ship actually had pretty decent range, but not a lot of detail was provided. I could upgrade them, even with restricted military-grade stuff because of my deal with 31, but that would require a minor refit, which would take time and money, and there was a chance I'd then have those stupid exploding consoles like on the Enterprise.
"I am reading one Klingon Bird of Prey re-entering our reality," T'Maz was now saying. "There are faint life sign readings, the same for the planet below. The outpost is also active; try to contact them".
Since she didn't say who I should contact I just put out a general hail on all frequencies.
"No reply," I informed the Section 31 agent, "and in case you were wondering I'm picking up no other ships in the area and no distress signals. Which begs the questions: Why are the Klingons here?"
Apparently Vulcans didn't care much for speculation either, as T'Maz focused on what we did know, rather than make wild guesses.
"My scans indicate that the rift is contracting," the spy told me calmly as her fingers raced across the control panels that were very much like those on the runabouts I saw on the show. "At the current rate of contraction it will be gone in less than 12 hours".
Well, that was news, maybe not good news, though, as a hell of a lot could happen in half a day.
"Good," I muttered. "The fewer 'anomalies' we have to deal with, the better".
In my view, space should be almost empty with just some stars and things orbiting around those stars. There should not be 'holes' in the fabric of the universe leading to places no human should go to.
What was making me rather afraid was the absence of anything on subspace. The comms on the planet and the Bird of Prey were all dead, all channels and frequencies.
Despite my well founded misgivings, I knew that we had no choice but to investigate. It was obvious something had gone very wrong here. The Vulcans down on the planet would need our help.
"So, do we check out the Bird of Prey?" I asked the superior agent. She was in charge of this mission, so she'd decide our next step. "Or do we go straight to the planet?"
She answered right away.
"If the Klingons recover their ship and find any evidence that a human and a Vulcan were on board, they may blame the Federation for any damage," T'Maz replied. "And our primary mission is to find out why our agent at the outpost is no longer sending us information, not to investigate that ship. We can only find that out by entering the outpost".
That made sense to me.
"If we're going down there," I said, "then I need to land the ship. Now put your seatbelt on". When you didn't have a transporter on your ship, you had to do it the old fashioned way. The seat belt was my attempt to avoid the constant flailing around that happened in the show whenever the ship was attacked or hit some anomaly, etc. They always ended up dying or getting hurt that way and I sure as hell wasn't going to do the same.
T'Maz took a few moments to figure out how to work the harness style seatbelt, which amused me greatly, I had to admit.
"Had we access to a transporter we could simply transport down to the planet," the Vulcan pointed out. "Then the ship would be in orbit ready for us should we have need to escape quickly".
She was as logical as ever, but this time I did not agree.
"Leaving the ship in orbit would be unwise, especially with all the unknowns in this situation," I argued. "That Bird of Prey likely isn't lifeless; someone onboard could easily steal my ship, or some aliens from the other side of the rift could drag it into their universe. If either of those things happened then we'd be stranded here".
T'Maz took a moment to consider my words.
"Your reasoning does have merit," she allowed, after a moment's thought, "and it is your ship ultimately".
I landed the ship quickly thanks to using the ship's neural interface. Through that interface I could feel everything it did through its sensors and control the vessel with my mind alone, thousands of minor course changes on the flight down being literally made at the speed of thought. The flight down and landing was also made easier as my ship was designed to enter an atmosphere. Its wings were both functional and cool at the moment.
Once we were safely on the surface I headed to the rear of my ship and removed two wall panels.
To both my left and my right were racks of deadly looking advanced weapons, all of which Section 31 had supplied to me. Thankfully they had also included a device that hid the weapons from even the most intense scans and a recharging station for all the power cells.
"I've got standard issue Starfleet phasers, including a few variants, both hand held and rifle. Klingon disruptor pistols, which I like to use, and this is something called a plasma rifle," I told T'Maz while showing her my guns.
After my 'field test' on Risa, I had taken the time to familiarize myself with all of these weapons and a few other of the more common energy weapons floating around in common usage. I could field strip them, clean them, repair them and fire them with ease now.
The plasma rifle was about two and a half feet long from end-to-end, sleek, and primarily white with some grey on the side. It was very 'un-Starfleet' in the fact that it had no stun setting; it only killed people, and it did that very well indeed.
"A Starfleet issue handheld phaser will do, Agent Gothic," the Vulcan said.
I ended up going with a wide barreled, pistol-like phaser. It looked not unlike the phase pistols used in the show 'Enterprise', only it had been made entirely with 24th century tech, so it was far more deadly. The pistol grip and longer barrel gave me a better and more comfortable grip for taking multiple quick shots and the ability to shoot at targets at longer ranges.
It had a number of fire settings, ranging from light stun to vaporize small buildings. I had added a small scope, with infrared lens to the pistol, simply because I figured it would look cool. I didn't really need help aiming, though, as I was a masterful shot. Being a Khan-era Augment meant I had near supernatural eyesight and hand/eye coordination, but the long-range ability to distinguish heat signatures could be useful for a truly long range shot.
I would have taken a rifle as well, only carrying one of those along with my sword, my holotool, a pistol, and several grenades would have been burdensome, at least along with my body armour. Mobility was extremely important in combat.
Besides, I might be required to carry something heavy or there could even be tech worth taking/stealing, so it was best not to overburden myself. Random looting of valuable shit was pretty important when you were trying to build a sweet life for yourself in a new dimension and you had a ship to kit out.
"Ready to go?" I asked.
T'Maz nodded her head, and I opened the ramp.
"Ladies first," I offered gallantly, ready to begin a new adventure.
Thankfully I wasn't wearing a red shirt today.