Author's Note
I got stuck writing this story so I figured a time skip was in order. I've moved things along to when the Deep Space Nine series started. I figured it would be good to show his life on the station before moving on to anything more thrilling.
Once again I'd like to thank Joe Lawyer, my co-writer and beta reader, he doubled the word count for this chapter and every line he added greatly enhanced what I wrote. He also conviced me to start writing more chapters.
Augment Gothic
Quark's Bar. Deep Space Nine
Life for me was pretty damn good. The Occupation was finally over. Months ago Section 31, the Federation's shadowy intelligence service, had given me what amounted to the blueprints for the entire Occupation. After a lot of study, I saw the Occupation for what it truly was, an economic engine for making profit. Like any complex system, with the right knowledge, you'd be surprised at just how easy it was to make it all quickly fall apart.
The Occupation had profited the Union in a variety of ways, the very least of which were disposable work slaves. The most vulnerable part of this engine and simultaneously the most profitable benefit of occupying Bajor had been the valuable ore and minerals the Spoon-heads had taken by strip mining the planet.
This meant the best way to make the Occupation unprofitable, and therefore not worth the effort to continue when better options were available, was to attack the ore shipments, especially the most valuable ones. Doing so not only cost the Union valuable resources that kept the Occupation in the black, it humiliated them and made them look like fools to the rest of the quadrant's other powers.
With the loss of those highly valuable ships and their contents, coupled with the threat of the Collectors on everyone's minds, one more push from the right direction had been all it took to take down the entire Occupation and force the Cardassians to withdraw. The loss of those ships meant Cardassian warships had to be reallocated to protecting the shipments and thus not available to dominate the skies and space of Bajor. With the Collector threat looming over everyone's heads, no more ships were given. That meant it was the perfect time for the Resistance and yours truly to strike. "Terrorist" activities multiplied fivefold all across Bajor. Blood and weakness was in the water and it was the perfect time to strike.
However, that hadn't really been why the Occupation came to an end. Sure, the Resistance had given the Cardassians a bloody nose and hit them in their wallets for a time, but the real reason for the withdrawal was the Union had gotten better planets from the Federation. And those planets hadn't been inhabited by bitter and desperate Bajoran freedom fighters willing to joyfully lay down their lives to free their home. Of course the Cardassians would have trouble with the eventual rise of the Maquis in the demilitarized zone, but they didn't exist yet.
My pirate attacks had made the Occupation temporarily, but significantly unprofitable for a time, but it had also made me filthy rich, even with the 20% I gave to the Resistance in the form of those freighters. With Section 31's breakdown of the Occupation I knew exactly which shipments had the most valuable contents to target, like those containing starship-grade dilithium and refined liquid latinum. My aid in driving the Cardies off their planet and destabilizing the Occupation in ways they'd never seen before had led to my star rising even further in the hearts and minds of the Bajorans. My fame was worldwide now and my many victories over the Cardassians with the Resistance was talked about with pride. When the Occupation was over they offered me a high-level position on Bajor with the new Provisional government. I was now a General in the Bajoran militia.
I could have gone to Risa with my new wealth and drowned in pussy as a reward for accomplishing my multi-year mission (before accepting a new Section 31 mission), but it was possible to have too much of a good thing, so I was going to wait for a while before returning to that world for a much deserved vacation. This was a critical time to be around given the chaos of this transitional period. Besides, there were plenty of things here to keep me amused, such as scandalous holodeck programs, Dabo girls, and strange aliens to meet and bang female members of. I hadn't forgotten my list, after all.
Amusement aside, my real reason for staying was that the Bajoran Provisional Government had gone well beyond citizenship, which they happily granted just as they'd promised, but how they put me in charge of all of the planet's off-world Militia forces, meaning that any militia soldier or ship that wasn't on Bajor was under my direct command.
That meant that I was in charge of Bajor's space fleet, such as it was, and its few off-world bases. Which, at the moment, were a few captured spoon-head freighters (from the 20% cut of my pirate booty promised to the Resistance), a handful of sublight ships, and DS9 itself. The majority of the freighters were still undergoing a refit in an attempt to turn them into some version of a capable warship. DS9 was the real prize, but even that was being directly administered by Starfleet while the Federation helped Bajor rebuild. This I would have to do something about, though I did know that Starfleet's presence was the only thing keeping the Cardassians from returning now that the wormhole had been discovered. Thankfully I had plenty of time before the Dominion War started.
I was no fool, though. I knew that the Bajoran Provisional Government had given me this job to get me off the planet, and I didn't blame them, just like I hadn't blamed Shakaar when he did something similar during the Occupation. They wanted to secure their own powerbase, which would be easier with someone with my skills and the respect I commanded in the Militia, basically the former members of the Resistance, but they also didn't want an alien running their planet. They'd had decades of that and it hadn't gone well for them.
Not that I minded this move, as it played right into my hand. I was now exactly where I wanted to be. The Bajoran Provisional Government had even posted me to DS9 with permanent offices and staff there, so that I could more easily coordinate with Starfleet and the many men and women of the Bajoran Militia working on the station, all of whom were connected to me in some way and ultimately reported to me, at least on paper.
Ro Laren, who had been given the rank of major, like Kira had been, was my hand-picked adjutant; she handled a lot of the day-to-day tasks for me, and was doing a fabulous job of it, so I had free time for other projects. Kira was the Bajoran liaison officer, as well as second in command of the station, just like on the show. She was completely loyal to me, though, giving me great influence over DS9 even if it was being run by Starfleet.
I imagine Commander Sisko found this to be quite a strange set of circumstances, as unlike in the show, where he was pretty much in charge of everything and everyone, there was another power center on the station separate from him, a General in the Bajoran Militia stationed permanently on his station to whom all the Bajoran Militia members technically reported to as their commanding officer. The Federation and Starfleet were probably none too pleased a human Augment had such a high position, but were likely unwilling to rock the boat considering the level of esteem the Bajorans had for me and Bajor's new strategic importance because of the wormhole.
Neela, a mechanically gifted and sexy young Bajoran woman, who made up the third part of my 'Bajoran Babes,' was also here on the station working as part of the engineering team. She was very devoted and would report anything to me that was worth me knowing about.
"Business is good, Quark," I heard Odo say to the bartender over the noise of the bar. "You're almost making an honest living now."
The Ferengi manager and owner of this establishment rushed off his feet. The station was extremely busy these days, as news of the wormhole had quickly spread all over the Alpha Quadrant.
Ships from worlds both near and ridiculously far were coming to DS9 daily so that they could explore the wonders of the Gamma Quadrant, and that drew in many new customers for people like Quark, and not just explorers, traders too came looking for new markets to exploit. Certain metals were easier to mine than replicate, and the Gamma Quadrant was so far proving quite rich in those resources.
I'd yet to come up with a way of safely getting a piece of that action as investing in such ventures were very risky, especially with so little being known of the Gamma Quadrant. And even with my newfound wealth, which was extreme, the costs for such a venture were also extreme and the risks just as high. I needed more money, especially a continuous income stream, rather than these large one-off paydays, so that a large loss wouldn't cripple all my enterprises. While the shows were great for giving me information on the broad strokes, the big events of the near future, it didn't exactly give me detailed information on the successful mining expeditions in the gamma quadrant.
One of my methods for creating a continuous income stream was in the writing of holo-novels. Back when I'd been playing pirate and preying on Cardassian ore freighters, I'd discovered that being a pirate could actually be rather dull the vast majority of the time. Ambushes had to be set up hours or days in advance, and since I had to be careful to avoid military patrols, I'd needed something do while sitting in the cockpit for hours on end, something that I could stop doing at a moment's notice.
Writing the storyline for holo-novels had been that distraction. I'd not written anything truly original, and not because I lacked the imagination, but because there were hundreds of successful games, movies, and books that had existed in my world/dimension but that had never been made in this universe due to the huge wars at the end of the 20th century, wars that had never happened in my reality of birth. While my memories before waking up in this time as an augment were foggy, I found that if I meditated on it long enough, my enhanced mind was able to 'unlock' much of my memories of those games and movies. When I considered how to better remember all those stories pre-arrival, I remembered reading stories of elderly people in my time, who were suffering Alzheimer's, being able to remember the minutest of details from 50 years in the past. The scientists of my time had postulated that our brains remembered everything we'd ever seen, but our minds were not developed/evolved enough to recall all that information long past short-term memory. I was happy to find that my experiment worked, mostly, though I was still limited by my baseline human senses that I made the memory with. Better than nothing though.
I'd started rather simply, by creating what I knew best, what the Federation types would call 'combat simulations,' that were in fact the plots of first-person shooter games from my time. I'd even tried to recreate Dead Space, but that had been banned everywhere other than the Klingon Empire. Those crinkle headed fuckers found it fun, when it was supposed to be horror, but their money was just as good so it didn't really bother me. Supposedly I had quite a fan following in the Klingon Empire these days, fans who were eagerly looking forward to buying my next work. The Halo and Call of Duty series was particularly popular right now there. Since Call of Duty was more historically based and did have cultural value to Earth, the seat of the Federation government, the Federation couldn't justifiably ban that game.
Right now, I was hard at work bringing the Mass Effect story to this galaxy. I figured it would net me a very tidy profit long into the future. I'd been selling all my works through a very successful and well regarded Ferengi holo-publisher since they used actual money, could sell to anyone since Ferenginar was at war with no one as they loved to say, and they had no restrictions on what kind of work I could publish. I could write the smuttiest porn holo-novel to the most bloody you could think of and they wouldn't care a whit, as long as it sold. Since their business dealt with creative types I even found their usual attempts to cheat me were more perfunctory than real. Just like that Ferengi arms dealer I helped the Resistance buy from so long ago, there were times when it made no sense to engage in shenanigans, especially with a prolific author with great sales who they wanted to maintain a long relationship with. Their commission was actually very reasonable and only slightly higher than what I'd get with Federation holo-publishers, but their distribution network was actually larger as they sold to powers like the Cardassians and the Romulans.
My current project, Mass Effect, meant for a very wide audience, including Federation types, would have to be less action based for a holo-novel, but that was okay, as I planned to add some problem-solving situations and give the player many chances to be diplomatic. Commander Shepard, if played as a paragon of virtue, would fit well with the Federation mindset; he/she encouraged humans to work with aliens for the common good and I knew they'd eat that shit up. The less virtuous player could decide to shoot first and engage in diplomacy never and still have a great time.
"A lot of new faces," was all Quark said in reply, when he had a free moment to talk.
Indeed, there were a lot of new people around, but some regulars as well. Morn, the veritable fixture at Quark's in the show, the bald and yellow skinned alien who no one could shut up once he started talking, hadn't moved from his stool in what seemed to be hours. That would continue for many years to come.
"The wormhole does bring them our way, doesn't it?" Odo commented idly.
Beings from many different worlds were now visiting DS9 daily and a lot of trade was going on these days. Some of it even legal judging by what I could hear with my supernatural senses, which was a windfall for Bajor as the planet needed all the off-world tax revenue and docking fees it could get to help with the rebuilding effort. Smuggling had always been a persistent issue in Bajoran space, in fact it was how I'd made myself an ally to the Resistance before fully joining them. Unfortunately, even with the Occupation over, there was still plenty of smuggling going on. Only now the Bajoran leaders wanted it to stop. Their Cardassian slave masters were no longer being denied more profit, it was the Bajorans themselves that were now getting shafted and they needed the money.
"Everybody wants a piece of the new frontier," Quark commented.
Until the Dominion turned up and ruined everything this would indeed be the new frontier. On the other side of the wormhole were countless alien civilizations to make contact with, unoccupied worlds full of untapped resources with no claim on them, and M-class planets to colonize.
If I was a more moral person I would have tried to blow up the wormhole myself, just so the Jem'hadar would have no one to slaughter when the Dominion eventually decided to kill everyone from the Alpha Quadrant who happened to be on the wrong side of the galaxy. But even if I did care enough to try to save those people, no one would listen to me anyway. I had no proof and while I ranked quite high in the Bajoran militia, if I blew up the home of their gods the entire militia would come after me. The most I was willing to do was to subtly discourage the Bajorans from starting a colony in the Gamma quadrant, which would be one of the first settlements destroyed when the conflict started up. It remained to be seen whether I'd be successful.
"And I'm sure you've already tried to sell it to a few of them," Odo snarked.
Someone yelled so I diverted my attention to the source of the new noise.
"We made the decision together!" a male voice called out.
By now I knew who was having a domestic squabble on the promenade and I smiled as I knew for a fact that it would work out between Chief O'Brien and his wife.
"Not true. That's not true," the woman responded. "You decided first and asked me to agree with it second."
The woman's name was Keiko if I remembered correctly. She had been some sort of botanist on board the Enterprise, and by the sounds of things she was not happy to be here. I didn't quite blame her, going from the flagship of the Federation to a slave built Cardassian designed space station in the middle of nowhere would be jarring.
"Grapevine says Chief O'Brien and the Mrs. are having problems," Quark was telling the shape-shifter.
If I recalled things correctly the issues they were having would blow over once the Chief set up a school for his wife to teach at. Until then their domestic situation was a source of great amusement for many others.
"I'll never understand the humanoid need to couple," the constable commented.
Well, it had its upside. Sex was very nice, if done right. And beds could get mighty cold when you were alone, which I rarely was these days. Odo didn't sleep, though, well not exactly, so maybe that was part of it.
"You've never coupled?" Quark asked, with emphasis clear that he wasn't referring to just a relationship.
Given that shape-shifters didn't sexually reproduce, as far as I knew from the show, then it made sense that he would have little in the way of desire to form a romantic relationship. I felt the same way, but for very different reasons, at least with regard to actually producing a child. Augments weren't trusted much on Earth due to the whole Eugenics thing, as such I didn't want to have children currently, and actually wasn't allowed to within Federation Space if you strictly went by laws that hadn't been truly tested in near a century. Even if that hadn't been the case any kid I did have would find themselves with limited career choices and perhaps even be bullied. I had no desire to subject a child to that, but again, who knew what the future held. What I felt today might not be the same tomorrow.
"I choose not to," Odo was now saying. "Too many compromises. You want to watch the karo-net tournament, she wants to listen to music, so you compromise. You listen to music. You like Earth jazz, she prefers Klingon opera, so you compromise. You listen to Klingon opera. So here you were ready to have a nice night watching the karo-net match, and you wind up spending an agonizing night listening to Klingon opera."
Yeah, that was pretty much how it worked, and without the promise of sex that sort of thing really wasn't worth putting up with. Not that I did anyway, if I wanted to watch the karo-net tournament I would. Not that I knew what 'karo-net' was. My girls knew who the boss was and thankfully they seemed to get off on being the submissive around me these days. It also helped that I rarely felt strongly enough about anything to deny them what they really, really wanted.
"That's exactly what I'm saying!" a now familiar female voice yelled.
Mrs. O'Brien's voice was now drowning everything else out, and to my augment enhanced hearing it was a little painful. Quart similarly reacted due to his sensitive hearing.
"Keiko, sit down, please!" the Chief then shouted.
"Ah domestic bliss," I muttered into my glass of wonderful blue liquid.
Being a super human with an enhanced physiology, including kidney function, it was extremely hard for me to get drunk, but I was giving it the old college try. Besides, Romulan Ale was really damn good and not illegal to sell or drink in Bajoran space, I'd made sure of that. I had quite a few former Resistance friends in the government who remembered that I'd done a lot for their planet, and I knew other people who could be bribed to see things my way.
The government had also followed through on their promise of land once the Occupation was over. Over the course of the Occupation I had been "paid" with a lot of land and it kept getting added onto as I continued to provide for the Resistance's needs. Weapons, replicators, medicine, ships, it all went into the count. By the end of the Occupation I was owed the equivalent of 25 square miles of land or 16,000 acres, a not unsubstantial amount of land, but the Bajorans were an honorable people and had honored their promise.
With Section 31's information in hand, containing over 50 years worth of deep scans and exploration on all the unexploited minerals and ore veins on the planet, I had a lot of information to work with to make an informed choice. Rich people owned islands in my time, so that's what I chose, the fact that it gave me privacy and complete exclusivity also helped. There were many available all over the planet, including quite large ones, that the Cardassians hadn't destroyed with mining for various reasons. And since it was hard or impossible for Bajorans to live on islands too far away from the population centers at this point in the planet's recovery, I had my pick. Once a planetary transporter network was available that wouldn't be the case any longer.
After quite a bit of research my girls and I eventually chose a large 20 square mile island with a 'mountain' at its center, which of course was just a very tall grass and tree covered hill made of solid rock. The island was a semi-tropical paradise with pristine white beaches, a natural harbor, and a thriving ecosystem. Even its soil was good and could be used to grow my own crops if I wanted to.
The panoramic views of the island and surrounding ocean from the summit of the 'mountain' were also amazing. The extra land I was promised was made up in ownership of the surrounding water, which worked just fine for me as that area also included several valuable underwater ore deposits. When my girls and I went to 'island shop' in the Flighty Temptress I had made the mistake of landing on its sandy white beach, gentle, amazingly turquoise, crystal clear waves crashing on the shore. Within minutes my beautiful Bajoran babes had shucked off all their clothing and ran nude into the waves giggling, splashing each other and me, completely carefree. You'd never know that these same women had gone into battle with me multiple times and had taken many Cardassian lives, coming home covered head to foot in their blood. With such an enticing view, I felt it was karma or maybe the Prophets' will and had signed the papers granting me ownership of the island that day.
With my big beautiful island now in my name I had wasted no time at all drafting a wish list with the help of my girls. My goal was to create a defensible high-tech palace fortress that could withstand the troubles to come, including concerted attempts to hack into it or infiltrate it, but also to make it beautiful and functional with the ability to add on if I needed to. With our list of amenities finalized, I contacted the amazing Commander Data once again. That guy was a master of anything he set out to do! And he came through for me, big time. He drew up architectural plans with exacting precision and incorporated all our wants. From the layout of the foundation to the perfect placement of the smallest power and data port, it was all there, including what technology to buy to make this a state of the art home of the 24th century. And did I mention he works fast and for free? He saw this as an interesting intellectual challenge that required research into a myriad number of fields and even agreed to destroy his records beyond retrieval after he was done. I invited the Enterprise's entire senior staff to spend time on my island the next time they're in the system as thanks. Hopefully they'll take me up on it.
With his plans in hand, perfect to the last measurement given the detailed scans of the island I had, after 6 months of hard work, with over a thousand workers working on it simultaneously, the vast majority of which were Bajoran (which the Provisional government was very pleased about as it gave a huge boost to the economy) my palace fortress home was finished, mostly. Shipments of technology, that the Bajorans couldn't produce themselves, from the Federation, paid for with their credits, or from Ferenginar, with latinum, and other providers came for months during the construction.
The house I built was on the summit of my mountain, after I had flattened it a bit, in order to take advantage of those panoramic views. It was an interesting mixture of French chateau and classical Bajoran architecture, with large party spaces for dining and receiving guests from the Provisional government, including many spare bedrooms for overnight stays. The summit of the mountain also provided quite a bit of land to develop so I put in beautiful gardens of all sorts, meditation areas, water features, and walking trails that led to the beaches, etc. My ladies were very happy I thought of them in designing such beautiful spaces to commune with the Prophets. My addition to the outside was the "public" hanger bay for the Temptress, which was artfully hidden underneath the large front lawn. At a signal from my ship a section of lawn would retract in two pieces, an elevator would rise from the hanger on which I would land. Once I was on the platform it would retract and lower my ship into the hanger bay. It was actually similar to some of the smaller hanger bays seen on DS9.
The really fun bits of my place were in the subterranean levels, that weren't actually directly underneath my home. Those levels were located deep in the heart of the mountain connected by an underground elevator shaft or by transporter which only I could activate. Luckily the mountain was already riddled with sensor defeating materials, but I included a sensor dampening field as well to further hide those levels. The vaunted Enterprise herself could be directly over my home and its sensors would still not indicate there was anything else under the house or in the Mountain, Data had assured me. It took an incredible amount of planning, but by strategically dividing the labor, no one group would be able to learn about these levels, especially as most of it had been dug through automated machines.
With my new wealth in hand and knowing how the war to come in a few short years would make procurement of just about everything 10x more difficult and expensive, I went to town. I put in a full design and fabrication suite, an industrial replicator, a holodeck and holo laboratory 4x larger than even the Enterprise's which was incredibly useful for writing and testing my holo-novels, storage bays for food and other critical equipment and a secondary hanger bay for the Flighty Temptress many times larger than what was actually needed. A hidden escape shaft with permanent holographic illusion would let me exit from the hanger bay out the side of the mountain. Any resemblance to Batman's cool exit from the Batcave was entirely intentional. These levels were cool, but also functional, and designed to withstand detection or a lot of punishment. To help keep those levels hidden I had even put in a completely separate and independent computer system, transporters, replicators, and power reactors. Prophets' forbid, but if my home was destroyed by enemy fire, those levels would be fine and since they were self-sustainable I could hunker there for years before needing to leave.
I may have over did it on my wish list for the defenses for the island itself, as even Mr. Data found it strange for a private residence, but he dutifully designed it. The island now boasted a planetary-class shield covering my home, disruptor and torpedo weapons' turrets, both anti-personnel and anti-air, and a sophisticated sensor network covering the entire island. In other words, if a small bird landed on my island I'd know about it, or, alternately, if I wanted to shoot down a mid-sized cruiser in orbit over my house, I'd be able to do that too. There was no kill quite like overkill! Thankfully my reputation, position, and friendships with the who's who in the Provisional government allowed me to get away with having such a fortress with military-grade defenses.
Man…all this yelling really made me want to head back to my island and relax well away from this Cardassian designed monstrosity. My girls were similarly begging me to take some leave so that we could head back and frolic nude on my beach. They had had a great idea to use my industrial replicator to replicate all the outdoor beach furniture, tiki huts and couches, fire pit for ambiance and grilling, etc., that you'd see at a high-end beach resort like on Risa. They could even replicate frozen fruity drinks right there with the mini drink replicator I had had installed. We could go right now as my ship was currently docked here at the station after all. I didn't even have to pay docking fees, even if it was my personal ship and not owned by Bajor, I still used it in the performance of my duties, so I could leave the station whenever I wished.
I imagined that the Bajoran Provisional Government had originally thought that I would use my island palace fortress as my base of operations for all off-world militia forces, a mistaken idea I hadn't disabused them of till it was too late. Not sure why they thought that considering I was spending all my own money, but whatever. It would have suited them for me to lock myself away there while they tried to build a government that was both stable and sustainable, but being on DS9 was even better. Here was where all the action would take place.
Section 31 was very happy with my work these days, especially with how I had taken their intelligence and used it to thoroughly destabilize the Occupation and force a withdrawal. With the wormhole being discovered and Bajor now a planet of incredible strategic importance in the quadrant, they were happy to have one of their agents, even a mostly freelance one, here on DS9 and in such a high-level position in the Bajoran military.
"What could they be going on about like that anyway?" Odo then asked the bartender.
For someone who claimed to have no desire to 'couple,' the shape-shifter seemed overly fascinated by domestic matters, didn't he?
"She doesn't like it here," Quark explained, being able to hear what I did because of his species' much more sensitive hearing.
"Who does?" Was the constables acerbic reply, with a chuckle in his voice.
I, for one, did. This place was awesome, most of the time, at least when I didn't have the strongest urge to sunbathe on my private beach on my private island. There was a lot to like though, as it had so many different kinds of people going about their lives. There was enough drama and intrigue going on around me in just this bar to make a soap opera.
"Don't even think about it," I heard Odo warn Quark.
With my enhanced eyesight, it was easy for me to pick faces out of a crowd, so I saw that Commander Sisko and Jadzia Dax were having dinner together. It looked like a private affair. Quark must have been eying up Dax with interest and Odo had warned him off.
Hopefully Sisko's wife, who hadn't died in this version of Trek due to their being no Battle of Wolf 359, didn't get jealous. On a side note Jennifer Sisko was a very beautiful woman. If it wouldn't potentially ruin my working relationship with Sisko I might have tried to seduce the woman by now. Maybe I should invite Sisko and some of the senior staff to my home on the Island for some team building, making it something like a weekend away? Really should come up with a name for the place…
"I can so think about it," argued the bartender.
Given that the science officer was supposed to marry Worf, assuming the time line hadn't gotten messed up by my being here and having slept with her multiple times, then it was pretty clear that Quark wasn't her type. Really, Bashir had a better chance with her, assuming he matured a little. Hell, I could get her, but I didn't want to commit right now, and neither did she for that matter. I was still screwing my Bajoran babes on the side, but since we now all had full time jobs we spent a lot less time together. Those were the demands of life, I suppose, but we all still cared for each other deeply. Relying on each other to survive in battle after battle meant we'd probably always be close.
"You might as well try to find a drink of water in the Yadozi desert," Odo was now saying. "Besides, I'd say our new Commander is interested in her, which is odd since he's married."
He was interested, all right, but not in the way they were suggesting. I was sure he loved Dax, but that didn't mean he felt that way towards Jadzia. On the other hand, I was attracted to Jadzia, but didn't care much for the slug named Dax in her guts, even though her personality was a blend of both.
"Not at all," the Ferengi manager and owner of this bar said. "I know for a fact, when she was a he, you know, before she got this new body, they were old friends."
Curzon Dax was famous in the Federation. He'd been a very important diplomat, as well as a well-known womanizer. For reasons that made sense only to Klingons he was greatly respected in their empire and was seen as a big part of how the Federation/Klingon alliance had lasted so long.
"Things change," was all Odo had to say about that.
That was when the shape-shifter spotted someone at the Dabo table and his posture changed. He went from being somewhat relaxed to very mad in a matter of seconds.
"How long has he been here?" the security chief asked the bartender.
The guy who now had all of Odo's attention didn't seem to be anyone special. But given how upset the shape-shifter was then clearly the Bajoran was a known criminal of some sort.
"He came in on a transport last night," Quark explained, obviously not recognizing the man beyond that.
By now I knew there was going to be trouble and my super brain was working overtime to try to figure out what was going to happen next. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was the episode when some guy frames Odo for murder by killing his own clone, but I couldn't be certain so I decided to let things play out for the time being. If I was right about what was about to happen then I could prevent the murder.
But then I realized I just really didn't care enough to get involved. No one was paying me and I had no positive feelings towards Odo, and the whole thing would work out when the real crook was eventually found without my help.
Best to focus on my work, since this holo-novel wasn't going to write itself, and I had to come up with seamless ways to keep the player on track in a fully immersive and interactive environment like a holodeck. This meant either predicting everything the players would do, which would be impossible even with my augment mind helping me, or limiting their actions within the holo-novel, which wouldn't be much fun at all. The tricks the Mass Effect designers used in a console gaming environment just wouldn't jive with this new technology.
"I don't want you on this station!" Odo was now telling that guy.
This was entertaining to watch, remember, soap opera, so I stopped typing for a moment.
"Yeah, well that's too bad, because I have every right to be here," the Bajoran man replied.
"I decide who has rights and who doesn't on this Promenade," Odo was now saying, well, more like growling.
That sounded all kinds of wrong and both the Provisional Government and the Federation would take issue with statements like that.
"You'd better ask your Federation superiors about that one," the criminal replied.
I got Quark's attention and reserved a holosuite for the rest of the night. This whole thing was amusing, but frankly I didn't want to see any lynch mobs going after Odo. Not that hanging a guy made of goo would do any harm. but it might be best to go and stop the clone murder if only to spare myself some paperwork later.
(Line Break)
Office. DS9
To many Bajorans I was a famous war hero, a warrior out of recent legend, someone with countless victories to my name and who had single handedly dealt terrible blows to the Cardassians that led directly to the end of the Occupation. I'd even brought one of the holy orbs back to Bajor, and boy had that been an odd day.
To many spoon-heads I was no doubt an infamous war criminal, a vicious insane monster who beheaded Cardassians for fun and wore their neck bones like trophies. With those two images in mind I wondered what they'd think if they saw me on the floor trying and failing to repair the replicator that was supposed to provide me with an ample supply of coffee as I worked. Would they be amused or confused?
The door chimed and banished those random thoughts.
"Come in," I called aloud, the room's mic pickup acknowledging my invitation and allowing the door to open. I had the highest level security clearance on this station and even Sisko wouldn't be able to override my door lock if I wanted it to stay locked.
I'd been expecting this for a while now, for Commander Sisko to sit down and talk with me while he made it clear that he was in command of this station, which in turn put him in charge of the wormhole.
Technically I outranked him, by quite a bit, a Bajoran Militia Major was about equivalent to a Starfleet Commander, a Militia Colonel a Starfleet Captain, so a Militia General would actually be akin to a Starfleet Admiral. All of that was academic as obviously the Bajoran military was probably as powerful as the lowest tier Federation planet, and that was being quite generous. What we lacked in technology and ships, we more than made up for in experience and grit though. Necessity is a harsh taskmaster but she teaches her lessons well. We knew how to fight and kill our enemy. Sisko had nothing to worry about however, the Bajoran Provisional Government had made it clear that Starfleet would be running the station.
It made sense what with the new treaty between the Federation and the Cardassians. Both governments had gained and lost quite a bit, and this was the new frontier for the Federation and DS9 made a good frontier outpost. In return, Bajor got a Starfleet presence which kept the spoon-heads from returning. And they so, so badly wanted Bajor back with the discovery of a stable wormhole.
"Hello, Commander," I greeted, without even bothering to rise. "Can I help you with something?"
I'd thought he would invite me to his office, as a not so subtle power statement, so that people would see me coming to him on his terms. Yet he'd come here, surprisingly; I wondered what that meant. Was it some attempt to give me the illusion of being superior or in control of this situation? Or was he acknowledging my official power on this Bajoran installation? Or was he, in essence, stating that he wasn't going to play that game? Or had he been ordered to play extremely nice by the Federation? This wasn't exactly the Ben Sisko I saw on the television show, since his wife hadn't died in this dimension I doubted he wanted to resign from Starfleet at the first opportunity like before. Regardless, I knew this, Ben Sisko would soon be named the Emissary of the Prophets, granting him enormous influence over Bajor, and had a keen mind and enough balls to punch Q right in the face, I would not be underestimating him. This was a captain who'd one day be regarded with other Federation legends like Archer, Pike, Sulu, Picard and Kirk.
"Nothing too important, General," the Commander said pleasantly, "I just wanted to make sure that we won't be stepping on each other's toes."
I looked at him for a moment. He seemed so young and full of hope at this moment. The weight of being the Prophets' whipping boy/catalyst and the bloody war with the Dominion would change that in short order.
"Starfleet has made it clear that we are only here to administer the station and to help the Bajorans recover from the Occupation, eventually leading to possible Federation membership should Bajor seek it down the road," Sisko explained. "As I understand matters you'll be in charge of the Bajoran militia stationed here, its ships, and any Bajoran installation off the planet which technically includes this station. This does make my job a little harder as this station's commander. I need to know you won't be ordering my Bajoran staff around when they're supposed to be working with Starfleet officers."
That could be a problem. This station was under his command, but I was the commanding officer of all the Bajoran militia forces here on the station, including the station itself. Regardless of how blurry the command structure was on paper, it was an absolute necessity that the Cardassians see Starfleet and their officer, Commander Sisko, as being in full control of this space station. They needed to fear that taking this station back would be tantamount to going to war with Starfleet and the Federation once again.
Fear of the Bajoran militia was not going to keep them from doing anything that they really wanted to do. Even beyond that, chaos would result if I took too direct a role here. If I countermanded his orders the Bajorans would want to obey me, as a hero of the Resistance and their commanding officer, but Sisko would soon be the Emissary of the Prophets. They'd be conflicted and that could be a disaster in the making.
"I have no intention of getting in the way of you running this station," I calmly assured the commander. "My focus will be primarily on building up Bajor's burgeoning space fleet and any off-worlds bases we set up. DS9 is a good platform for me to do that from, but it's yours to run. I'll try not to step on your toes as long you do the same, but there will be times when I need to run battle drills and war games involving this station and its personnel. You, of course, will be involved to minimize disruption."
Anything else was just meaningless small talk and soon the commander was heading out the door.
"I'll have the Chief come down and see to that replicator right away," Sisko promised.
I'd already put in a repair request, but there had been much more important things for him to do around the station; the Cardassians had not been kind to it in their withdrawal and had taken everything of even the remotest value. The commander was no doubt making a goodwill gesture, and I was grateful because somehow, even though this spoon-head designed piece of shit was decades behind Federation replicators, it was somehow even more complex and prone to breaking down. Which really didn't make any sense to me since it didn't have anywhere near the range of a Federation replicator in what it could produce, or its quality. The ultra-high end Federation replicators I had at my home on Bajor put these suckers to shame. If there wasn't a question of compatibility in the power systems, I'd have already installed one in my offices here.
"Thank you, Commander, for your candor," I replied. "Hopefully we can work well together for the peace and prosperity of Bajor in this difficult time of transition. If you ever need an extra ship, especially one that is faster and better armed than your runabouts, I'm always happy to take mine out for a spin."
"Thank you as well, General Gothic, for this candid discussion and for your offer. I will keep it in mind should I find myself in need," Sisko responded in a pleasant tone. His words seemed genuine. The need would be real as the shit hit the fan around here, but my ship better not be destroyed helping. It was a running joke of fans of the show that every Runabout assigned to DS9 would eventually be destroyed somehow.
Going forward, it would be good for me and for Bajor if we could build a good working relationship and get along even on a personal level. If nothing else it would make him more likely to ask for help, and that would give me more chances to drive events in a way that pleased me. The fact he hadn't once mentioned that I was human and/or an augment spoke well for him. Maybe my knowledge from the show about his character would yet come in handy.
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Infirmary. DS9
Recently a mysterious virus had spread across the station, causing speech distortions that could eventually have led the deaths of virtually everyone on the station, if not for the fact that Doctor Bashir had harvested anti-bodies my augment immune system had produced in response to my being exposed and then used them to create synthetic anti-bodies capable of use on most species.
Once he'd done that it had just been a matter of spreading the cure to everyone on board, and then waiting for the virus to die once it lacked anyone new to infect. Compared to the episode on TV it had actually been a rather sedate affair and hadn't involved intentionally infecting someone to get them to cooperate.
Luckily, I was getting quite a bit of the credit for saving the lives of everybody onboard the station, further proving the value of an augment and confirming again how much of a hero I was, but the downside to this was that now Julian Bashir wanted to do an intense study of Khan-era augment physiology, and this was a bit of a pain as I had quite a lot of work to do, but he kept calling me down to the infirmary so that he could take more samples.
I would have declined had it been anyone else, but the doctor was a fellow augment (even if he didn't know I knew that) and therefore the closest thing I had to kin outside of the four lovable nut jobs still living on Earth. Maybe he thought of it that way too. It certainly wouldn't hurt to build a friendship with the man considering how many episodes he played a vital role in. I couldn't wait for the first time he invited me to lunch with Garek there. As an operative of the Obsidian Order during the Occupation the man probably knew exactly who I was and what I had done to his fellow Cardassians. I was actually looking forward to it!
"While I'm here I need my monthly injection," I told Bashir.
He seemed confused at my statement.
"There's nothing in your medical file about needing injections. Is there anything wrong?" he said, now sounding concerned and taking new scans of me.
He was still a bit naive.
"It's my birth control injection," I told the Starfleet officer. "They don't keep records of that in your file since it's not a health concern."
Thankfully, people in this century weren't prudish so I soon got my injection after a chuckle from Bashir about the misunderstanding. I was now free to screw hot alien babes to my heart's content once again.
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Holosuite. DS9.
One of the biggest problems living in a TV show dimension, is that the show you're getting all the future knowledge from didn't ever show the boring bits or the fiddly little details happening in the background of a world but not directly relevant to the plot. It doesn't show you the days when bugger all happens and you end up sitting in your office filling out paperwork.
On the plus side since I could get by on little sleep, could do the work of three men, and had a smoking hot and competent adjutant in Ro Laren who didn't mind it at all if I bent her over my desk for a little 'afternoon delight.' Thankfully this left me with plenty of time to work on my holo-novels.
Which was more important than it might seem as I really did need the money, even with the continuous payments I received from my publishers as people continued to buy my works, both old and new. I was finding out that 'There is no kill quite like overkill' was all fine and dandy as a philosophy right up until you have to pay for all your cool toys like phaser canons, torpedoes, and shields. Even though I had made a shit ton selling that Collector data to Section 31 and a ton more selling all that Cardassian dilithium and ore (although I did keep a portion for myself for future use), building my island palace fortress had been a major drain on my bank account and it was still costing me money since I had upgrades still being installed. Sonic showers, hot tubs, training rooms, a brig and even a state of the art gym to keep in top form. Thankfully those expenses were coming to an end, but I would eventually need to hire a permanent staff to maintain the house and grounds while I was off-world.
Plus the military budget for off-world defense was a joke, so I wasn't personally getting paid a lot, even as a general, and oftentimes had to pay for things directly out of my own pocket. The Provisional government had thanked me many times for contributing in their time of need and assured me that they'd reimburse me in full once they had the funds available. Unlike other governments who might have bullshitted that answer, I had no doubt that they meant what they said and would do it when they could. That had not batted an eye at following through on their promise of citizenship and land, even with the huge amount of it I was owed.
In terms of off world defense, though, we were semi-fucked at the moment. DS9, which was always intended to provide some level of vital protection to the planet once we repaired its defenses a bit, wasn't even in orbit of Bajor anymore! Sure, it made perfect sense to move the station to the mouth of the newly discovered wormhole, but there was next to nothing now to stop a hostile power from simply bombing the planet from orbit or even just landing and kidnapping people into slavery again. A handful of pretty damn far away small runabouts on the station, and the Federation defending Bajor, on paper, was pretty much the planet's only defense at the moment. The nearest Federation starship with any real firepower was days away from Bajor on a good day so not exactly capable of being there on a moment's notice. Nausican raiders or Orion slavers wouldn't much care about the vague threat of the Federation arriving in a few days once they were long gone. Did I mention Bajor's off-world defense was semi-fucked?
I had no doubt the day was quickly coming when I'd have to fly the Flighty Temptress out of the station at full sub light speed to combat some ships over Bajor, hopefully I'd have enough firepower. If the Prophets were really smiling down on us the attacking ships would be in the limited range of my Island's defenses and I could remotely order my weapons' installations to destroy the vessel. It would be nice if I could increase my funding, though, so that I could at least finish the job of better arming those freighters I had killed the crews for, but there was no money available for that at the moment and even I wasn't keen on lending the government that much money, even with them being good for it.
I was strongly considering offering an alternate solution to the Provisional government that would hopefully benefit Bajor and myself. My plan was to offer to buy or lease, at a discounted rate, two of the large Cardassian freighters from the Provisional Government to use as a shipping concern in Federation space. This would give the Bajorans much needed capital to arm their remaining freighters and I could turn around and use those ships to make a profit of my own. If I worked into the deal the ability to leave Bajoran space to handle this shipping business, it also might serve as a good excuse to go on Section 31 missions. There was a glut of skilled Bajoran labor at the moment who I could hire to crew the ships and I had a feeling Starfleet Intelligence and Section 31 would have some work for my ships if they knew I was the one running them and could be trusted to get the job done.
"Computer, begin chapter one," I ordered. "Observation mode with the female Shepard character template."
The empty space around me transformed into the bridge of the SSV Normandy, but with a few notable changes. The workstations were designed to look and function more like those on a standard Federation Starship, thus making it easier for the players to use them, and having Joker too far away from where the captain stood just didn't make much sense so I'd made the bridge more circular, with the holo-galaxy map at the center. The program could be tweaked, at the player's request, to more closely model their government's standard layout. So a Klingon could select a Klingon style control interface, and on and on. If I had any Breen fans, since we really didn't know what their bridges looked like, either they'd tweak it themselves or they were shit out of luck.
Everything looked good at the moment, though, including a very sexy Jane Shepard, who could be replaced by whoever played the holo-novel, looking rather badass in her armor. The player had several choices and could play any of the main Mass Effect characters, including the villains. I had a feeling that Wrex would become a favorite choice for the Klingons. I'd selected the observation mode so that I could see how the holo-novel progressed without being distracted by being directly involved in the events going on around me. Observation mode was actually a player option as well, but why anyone would choose that for too long was beyond me.
The observation mode was useful, though, for the players who didn't actually want to do any fighting. During the combat scenes they could just stand back and watch rather than do the shooting and killing. I had long ago learned my lesson in dealing with my Federation customers in particular and had offered many upfront options for the player to choose before starting, including whether they wanted to engage in combat, either ship-to-ship or hand-to-hand, and the level of bloody reality they'd like to see depicted, the level of sexuality/nudity, among a host of other choices. This led to far more satisfaction and much less banning as a whole now that the player chose the parameters of their experience. The Federation was all about choice, after all.
"Okay, witty banter between Joker and Shepard looks good. Plenty of witty responses for the character personality matrices to create a custom response to the player," I said to myself. "Now the captain summons the commander to his ready room."
Which fit in more with life onboard a Starfleet ship; the captain should have a ready room.
"Crew members interact just fine," I muttered.
I wanted everyone on the Normandy to have a backstory in order to seem like a real person. This would give the player a chance to interact with them and become attached. Which would, in turn, make their deaths at the start of the sequel so much more meaningful. Of course the original game never created such depth for its NPC population, but I was an augment with an enhanced mind and memory perfect for such a level of detail. My ability to create such a complex world was one of the big reasons why my holo-novels had become so popular and so in demand. I took the good 'bones' and general storyline from what I remembered from my time and turned it into a fully interactive and fleshed out world, so quite a lot of my own creativity was in each of my works.
As for the Mass Effect sequel, I'd have to change the Collectors because they were a lot like the modified Hur'q everyone was rightfully worried about these days. I even called them Collectors and somehow that name I had given them had gotten out and been put into use. Still, the sequel could wait, the sexy Commander Shepard needed to deal with the Geth and rogue Spectre agent Saren before I worried about ME2. For maximum profitability, I had to wait anyway. The first part had to have time to build up a critical mass and get popular and only after a sufficient amount of time could the sequel be released for purchase.
The briefing scene also looked good. I'd made sure that the Earth Alliance Defense Force had proper uniforms and I was also making it clear that this wasn't Starfleet or a Starfleet ship, even if it might somewhat look like it due to the current bridge design.
Currently Jane Shepard, the stand-in for the player if they played that character as a woman, was talking to Nihlus about her being considered for a place as a Spectre agent of the Council.
That was when the door chime beeped at me.
"Pause," I ordered, but nothing happened. "I mean computer, halt program." Since the program was still in development mode many of the standard holosuite command phrases wouldn't work yet.
I then turned to the door.
"Come in!" I shouted
Jadzia Dax entered, this was no surprise as I'd asked her to come here when she found some free time off duty.
"Gothic, you wanted to see me," she said.
Jadzia had been recently transferred off the Enterprise and had been promoted to Lt. Commander after being posted on DS9. It was a good career move for her, assuming Dukat, while possessed by a Pah'Wraith, didn't murder her this time around.
"I wanted you to take a look at something for me," I told her while handing over one of my data pads. "I need the science for this story to make some sort of sense. It doesn't need to actually work, of course, but I don't want it to seem 'ridiculous stupid' if you understand my meaning. Absurdity is my enemy, semi-plausible would be the ideal."
Federation citizens were better educated as a norm than the people in my time, and while only the most elite got into Starfleet, most adults still had a firm grasp on the principles upon which Federation technology worked, even if they couldn't produce it themselves. As such the science behind the Mass Effect tech used in my holo-novel had to make some slight sense, otherwise my human audience was going to laugh at it and that would take them out of the story altogether. If your audience felt something was absurd enough, that would remind them that it was all just a work of fiction; suspension of disbelief could be overcome with enough absurdity. I was planning three holo-novels set in this mythology, with great detail and plenty of interaction, so the folks down in the engine room should be able to talk physics with the player when it came to explaining the stealth systems of the Normandy.
"There are only bits and pieces here," Jadzia commented after a few minutes of review. "Might take me a while."
Since I'd not been born an augment I'd not always had the mind and senses that I did now. As such my older memories seemed like old black and white movies when compared to my newer memories, which were more like HDTV with surround sound. My meditation technique helped a lot, but it couldn't make me remember background details on a game that were never there in the first place. Not for the first time I considered scrapping this idea so I could re-do the Star Wars movies. Those holo-novels were going to be my magnum opus. I just didn't feel I had the experience yet to write those tales with the quality that they so truly deserved. That universe was wide and deep and would require all the skill I could muster. Eventually I would have the experience I needed to do it justice and I had a feeling that when that time came it'd be a huge hit across the galaxy.
"It doesn't need to be perfect," I told Jadzia with a smile. "It needs to make only just enough sense for the average Federation citizen to not consider it absurd and ridiculous. I want them to believe all of this could work, maybe, at least in an alternate universe, with vastly different technology, etc."
The Trill smiled at me.
"And what do I get out of this?" she asked in a sly voice.
I thought about that for a moment.
"Well, I'll owe you a favor," I replied. "And a favor from me can be worth quite a lot, as you probably know."
As long as I didn't countermand Sisko's direct orders I could get any member of the Bajoran militia stationed off-world to do whatever I wanted, within reason. It would easy for me to get Jadzia additional support for her work if she needed it. With my ship and its now very advanced sensors, she could even leave the station to conduct research for any of her pet projects or do other things, even if the station's Runabouts were needed elsewhere.
I had a feeling she had something sexy in mind, and that might involve a skimpy Risian bikini and a different locale, like the palace fortress I built on a beautiful tropical island on Bajor. My girls were discreet, but even they couldn't help bragging.
"I'll take the favor," the Trill decided. "And you owe me dinner. I hate working on an empty stomach."
Since I knew what dinner would lead to I didn't really mind this at all.
"Deal, my dear," I agreed.