Author Note
I know some people having been waiting eagerly for this chapter and I hope it was worth the wait. As ever all praises be to Joe Lawyer for his work on our story.
Hopefully you won't have to wait as long for the next chapter as I'm already working on and its going well.
Augment Gothic
Section 31 Ship. Name Classified. Bajoran Space.
I quickly entered Sloan's office aboard the Section 31 ship and I was completely unsurprised by how neat it was. I also was not at all shocked by the lack of any personal touches even though I knew for a fact from the show that the man had a wife and children somewhere. There were no decorations, no pictures of family or friends, nothing to indicate a hobby, and of course no fish tank with a lionfish languidly floating around. Not a hint could be found anywhere in the room as to who this man was beyond his job. I had to wonder if Sloan even had a personality of his own, or if he considered even the hint of one as a possible vector for subversion and attack and thus not allowed.
Rather than wait to be invited to sit I simply sat down on the guest chair facing Sloan and patiently waited for him to start talking. Even his chairs were boring; if there was a Federation standard for boring office chairs, this would be it.
"I have a mission for you," Sloan told me. "One suited to your unique interests and talents."
The Section 31 agent picked up a standard Federation datapadd from his desk and passed it to me. I quickly scanned the mission details. A Cardassian military base not far from Bajor had recently taken delivery of containers filled with an engineered bio-weapon. That was bad enough, but the virus that made up this weapon was very familiar to me.
It was the same sickness which the Cardassians had used on the Bajorans in the ghetto during the Occupation. The spoon-heads had unleashed that virus as a test upon certain parts of the planet and then had offered a cure to any Bajoran willing to enter an off-world work program. It was made to appear like a natural illness, but it was anything but. Had the Occupation gone on longer, I suppose it would have been deployed more widely but they just hadn't had the time.
Of course the Bajorans hadn't known that the virus wasn't natural, and the Cardassians hadn't tried that trick too often during the testing phase as they had cheaper and more proven methods of acquiring slave labor. The virus being more deadly than projected or somehow mutating to become infectious to Cardassians themselves was a very real concern at that point. Maybe they were comfortable now with the data they had collected? Or had somehow worked out the kinks?
"We believe that the Cardassian military intends to infect Bajor with this disease," Sloan informed me. "While it has been designed to appear natural in its origins, and thus is not a highly lethal disease like a nerve agent for instance, if it is deployed planet-wide then a lot of Bajorans will die. The ensuing chaos and instability a pandemic like this would cause might even collapse what government they now have. Federation resources will be taxed to the limit trying to combat what seems to be a natural plague."
I actually had a cure for this virus, having acquired it during the Occupation, so assuming that the virus hadn't been heavily modified or improved since or a different strain used, it should be simple for someone like Doctor Bashir to come up with a treatment. That was a big assumption though, the Cardassians may have a completely different version of the bioweapon at this point and the cure I had may only be marginally effective now. Regardless, even distributing the cure to an entire planetary population would be a massive undertaking, and would require a huge number of people, time and resources. And that was assuming the virus didn't mutate into something more deadly as time went on, which was always a concern for something like this.
Perhaps the Cardassians were planning on something and needed a distraction, or they intended to offer a cure to Bajor in their time of need, something they miraculously had from the medical knowledge they'd accumulated during the Occupation, or this could be plain and simple revenge. It didn't matter to me. I couldn't let this disease strike Bajor; it would ruin all of my hard work to rebuild the place. Bajor was my home now.
Section 31's interest was obvious. Yes, Federation resources would be strained to the limit providing humanitarian aid, but the true threat to Federation interests was in Bajor's government collapsing, the planet falling into total chaos, thus preventing them from Federation membership. The Federation could easily lose their claim to the wormhole if some puppet government the Cardassians propped up in the aftermath told them to leave, possibly letting the Cardassians return to regain control of Bajor and thus the wormhole. The Cardassians in control of Bajor and more importantly, the wormhole, would be a direct threat to the Federation and its interests. I guarantee you that that motivated Section 31 far more than any other stated reason.
"So do you want to me take my ship and destroy this military base?" I asked dubiously.
Even for an augment of my skill with the technology I had to call upon, that would be a tall order. It might have been possible if I had a large Collector style power cell onboard my ship to power a large anti-proton weapon to orbitally bombard the base, but I still hadn't sourced the material required to create the red matter. If I ever encountered a Collector ship in the future, I was already planning on stealing any power cells they had lying around, including any red matter onboard, now that I knew what to look for. My armor's utility belt had a micro replicator installed that could produce transporter tags whenever I wanted now.
"No," said Sloan with a shake of his head. "I already have a special operations team and a ship standing by. I want you go with them. My primary purpose for offering you this mission is to give you a chance to observe a Section 31 special operations team in action, to familiarize yourself with the personnel, especially their weapons and tactics and overall methodology. A team like this is exactly who will be called upon to face the Collector threat in the future. Your extensive experience fighting the Cardassians will be invaluable on this mission in particular and I think you'll work well with the team I'm sending."
This sounded very interesting, like I was mostly to be an observer on this mission. Section 31 were the ruthless killers carrying the dripping daggers in the shadows, the one that kept this Federation utopia from being destroyed by the harsh realities of the galaxy. I could only wonder what kind of tamed monsters Section 31 had in their ranks to qualify as a 'Special Operations Team?'
(Line Break)
Section 31 Ship. Name Classified. Bajoran Space.
While some people might know about the existence of Section 31, I doubted that many understood just how much in the way of resources they personally commanded. They had far more than a few agents spread across the galaxy, they had their own capital ships, which had cloaking devices, some sort of long range stealth transporters based on unknown technology, and as I was now learning now, their own commando teams.
As the turbolift took Sloan and I to the shuttlebay he explained a little about the elite special operations team known as 'The Cleaners.' To my ears they sounded like Section 31's versions of a black ops team, the kind of people who specialized in doing the dirty deeds a government often requires, like torture and assassination. The kind of teams that no government would ever admit to having, but all needed at various points.
Their name was good because it seemed to me as if they did clean up a lot of messes across the galaxy. Of course I'd have to meet them for myself before making any real judgments.
As for why I was meeting them, that was because Sloan wanted me to go on a mission with them. I was to observe them at work and familiarize myself with their weapons and tactics and may be called upon in the future to work with them on various missions. In this case, they were to deal with a direct threat to Bajor and long-term Federation interests.
When the door to the turbolift opened I saw what I guessed to be a modified runabout-class ship. I wasn't sure exactly what was different about this ship compared to the ones used back on DS9, since visually it appeared the same as the ones I was used to, but somehow it seemed more sinister.
At least it did at the front. As I moved towards the side of the craft I couldn't help but notice that someone with decent artistic skill had painted a naked woman on the hull. Now that was very unStarfleet.
"Gothic, this is Yates," Sloan introduced. "He leads the Cleaners."
There were no formal ranks within Section 31. On paper we answered to a few Starfleet Admirals in the know, in practice, we didn't really have an overall leader. As such I had no idea where I ranked when compared to this Yates.
Yates was a large human, well built and rather plain looking with short dark hair and brown eyes. Unlike any other human I'd seen in this future time, he actually wore armor, but of a like I'd never seen before.
"Hello," I said while giving Yates my hand to shake.
Yates gripped it tightly and began to shake it slowly, his cold eyes locked with mine with laser-like focus, searching for something. A lesser man would have looked away from those eyes, instincts honed over millions of years instantly recognizing a predator, a natural born killer, even if they wouldn't necessarily consciously realize that. I let my eyes change from the mask I usually wore in polite society, to the face I wore every day during the Occupation, when I was often bathing in the fountain-like spray of arterial blood after I had beheaded a Cardassian soldier. He must have seen the change in my eyes because he squeezed my hand so hard that I wondered if he was trying to break a few fingers. Not that he could as I was far more durable than he was.
After a few more tense moments, his eyes softened with the recognition of a fellow apex predator and his grip became more lax.
"Oh, you'll do just fine here in the Cleaners, Gothic," Yates said as he let go of my hand, a large smile on his face now. "I just wanted to make sure you were up to the job at hand, not that I doubted it. In prepping for the mission the team reviewed some Cardassian surveillance footage from one of your raids during the Occupation, to get a sense of your tactics and style. Your sword work beheading those Cardassians was a thing of beauty, the look of terror on the faces of their squad mates, priceless! It took the fight right out of them."
Sloan was already heading back to the turbolift. It seemed like someone appreciated my unique style.
"I'll leave this in your hands gentlemen," he said placidly before going out of sight, as if we weren't just talking about brutally beheading Cardassian soldiers. What a strange man.
Once Sloan was gone I turned back to face Yates.
"Come with me," he instructed. "It's time to outfit you with your weapons and armor."
There was no need.
"I have all the weapons I'll ever need on my ship," I told Yates. "And as for armor, this is all I need. Both weapons and armor are my personal designs," I offered proudly. Given how unusual they were, there really was no point in hiding that fact. I had made both impervious to sensor scans and any attempt at reverse engineering either my weapons or armor would result in them either exploding or vaporizing critical components.
With that I mentally ordered my armor's systems to discontinue making it appear as if I was in my standard Bajoran Militia uniform so that Yates could see me in my armor's natural state, the surface looking like a slowly moving silvery fluidic alloy. My girls had told me a few times it was near hypnotic to stare at. The vambraces and omnitool on my left arm were modular and could be removed, but were still covered by my armor's imaging systems.
The armor was close to form fitting, showing my well defined musculature to perfection, except for a cod piece looking shell over my junk. It wasn't as bulky as what he was wearing, but it was clear that I was well protected from head to toe. In a battle I would mentally deploy the head piece to protect my head. It had multiple configurations, including one with glowing red eyes to look extra sinister. The face had slots for eyes and nose, but the eyes were actually optical sensors that had different sensory modes, including one that allowed me to look through walls, and the nose itself had an advanced filtration system to take in air from my environment. In the event of being spaced or a deadly airborne toxin or poison being detected, the air filtration would shut off entirely and internal oxygen would only be used. An air scrubber and recycler meant I would never run out. At one point I had considered exclusively using my own air during combat, but cutting off one of my sense entirely always seemed like a very bad idea.
"Damn…you designed this yourself?" Yates asked in awe.
"Hold on a sec," Yates instructed, tearing his eyes away after a few moments of watching the fluidic alloy languidly move about.
When he returned he was holding a rifle.
"Have you got one of these?" he asked me, a smile in his voice.
The man was holding an honest to God TR-116 Projectile Rifle, only it looked as if it had been modified to be a proper sniper rifle, with all its formerly shiny parts matted to prevent it from being easily spotted. This rifle had a long electronic scope and Yates show me how it came with a collapsible stand which allowed the shooter to steady the weapon for truly long-range shots.
"Now where did you get that?" I asked in surprise, not thinking anyone in the Federation really used or saw the value in projectile weapons any longer. These guys definitely didn't think like the rest.
Rather than answer Yates suddenly threw the rifle at me; I caught it in mid-air. Then I quickly field-stripped the unloaded weapon checking for cracks or defects and other modifications made to its design. Finding none, I reassembled the weapon in seconds. This made Yates snort in amusement. I knew all about the TR-116 Projectile Rifle and could put it together in my sleep after holographically assembling and disassembling many times over when I had integrated a stripped down version of it into the Gothic type anti-profile rifle I had stowed back in my ship. It seemed they hadn't yet come up with the idea of adding a micro transporter, replicator, or orthographic targeting sensor into the rifle's design. I certainly wasn't going to clue them in.
"Okay, get a load of this," he said.
Yates led me to a wall and after pressing a button I got to see where these Cleaners kept most of their duty weapons.
"Now this is a blast from the past…actually, from your past!" Yates joked.
He then presented me with what seemed to be a minigun. The kind used in a few action movies I'd seen back in my time. Like Predator and Terminator 2. Yates soon began to feed me info on the weapon, but something quickly got my attention. There was no large external ammo belt around to feed this beast. Which was something I quickly enquired about.
"No need for one," he replied with a big shit eating grin. "To keep the minigun loaded with ammo, I hooked it up to a micro-replicator system," I was told. "There's an autoloader and an advanced cooling system so you don't need to lug around a lot of 30mm rounds for the gun."
So they had figured out the micro-replicator trick. Maybe the space savings on the TR-116 wasn't considered significant enough? Given I had integrated the rifle into an already large weapon system, every little bit of space savings was needed. The Cleaners (and ostensibly Section 31) must have access to alien power sources far smaller and more powerful than what could be produced by the Federation because there was no way Federation tech could supply the power needs of this beast. I used Collector tech to power my armor's systems and weapons, so it made sense that other groups might have had the same idea. I wondered what sort of alien tech these guys used or how Section 31 had gotten their hands on it.
"Why use such an outdated weapon?" I wondered, though I had my suspicions. "I mean with the amount of energy you'd use keeping that gun supplied with newly replicated ammo you could just go around vaporizing people."
There was no reason, beyond the extreme power demands, that you couldn't have a six barreled cycling phaser rifle. A weapon like that, if handled correctly, could destroy entire crowds of people. My own rifle had a full auto mode when set to pulse discharge, instead of continuous beam, but even then it wouldn't have a discharge rate comparable to that badass looking minigun.
"Most people in this day and age can understand and intellectually accept the idea of being vaporized; it's very clean and it's very quick, leaving nothing behind to agonize over or inspire fear. That's something they can accept on some level. They'd have a much harder time accepting the sight of someone being ripped apart into bloody chunks of unrecognizable dead meat on the floor, something that is very messy, very loud, and something that leaves behind quite a sight," Yates replied with a bloodthirsty grin. "Even the hardest and most bloodthirsty Klingon warrior will pause when they see their friends getting mowed down by this baby."
Ah, just as I suspected. This weapon was meant to be a weapon of terror, of psychological warfare, as much as it was a weapon to kill your enemy. I could absolutely respect that; beheading Cardassians wasn't just for fun, it was to inspire crippling fear in my enemies. Maybe I should look into creating my own version? I bet I could do it better. As Yates placed the gun down and tapped his chest I had to wonder if he knew that first hand. Had he mowed down a lot of Klingons?
"This suit of armor has several features you should know about," he was now saying. "Now it doesn't do fancy imaging and textures like yours, but it does have some tricks."
By pressing a button on this wrist band he made the suit he wore change color.
"Black is the default," he explained. "The others are preselected camouflage schemes selected for their versatility in most planetary or artificial environments."
The normal black color disappeared, to be replaced by a mottled woodland camouflage scheme. Seconds later, the armor changed color once again, this time to a sort of desert tan.
He then turned invisible, well, sort of. I was reminded of the Predator movie once again. And I had to wonder if these guys got some of their ideas from old movies, like I did. My invisibility was far superior. It had undergone an upgrade with the principles I had learned from my recently acquired Klingon cloaking device. Firing my rifle and handgun in anti-proton mode disrupted it, obviously, as the discharge visibly left the cloaking field, but a fired and transported tritanium round would allow me to remain cloaked though the rate of fire was very slow compared to the other mode.
"The suit scans the environment, then changes the patterns and colors on the armor to match its surroundings," Yates said as he reappeared, "but its effectiveness is degraded when you're in bright light or moving rapidly. There's a sort of shimmer effect. It also has a retractable head piece with built in communications over a tight subspace channel so the team can communicate during missions. I'll share the frequency we'll be using for this mission on route to the planet."
While I'd be wearing my own armor on this mission, as I'd worked too hard on it not to, it was important for me to know the capabilities of the people I'd be fighting alongside.
Perhaps we would have discussed things further, but this was when more people arrived.
The Cleaners turned out to be a four man squad. I suspected they'd once been five but had lost someone recently and that I'd been brought in as a convenient replacement.
Before me now stood the single largest example of an Andorian I had ever seen. A Vulcan with a downright scary expression on his face. A Tellarite who I guessed to be some sort of tech expert judging by all the advanced tools he carried. Last of all there was a human woman who just screamed dangerous to me.
They were all wearing bulky armor that made them seem more like Old Republic Clone Troopers than citizens of the Federation. They also carried an odd collection of weapons, obviously chosen by each person's unique preferences. Much like how I did. The one weapon fits all philosophy Starfleet used always seemed idiotic in the extreme to me, though I understood it from a procurement, maintenance, and repair perspective. Seemed as if Section 31 drew in oddballs such as myself.
"Cleaners, this is Gothic," Yates introduced. "He'll be coming with us on the next mission to observe and familiarize himself with our methods and tactics. You'll be further briefed on route, now get in the ship."
Guess these guys didn't screw around.
(Line Break)
Landing Zone. Cardassian Planet.
"GO, GO, GO, GO, GO!" Shouted Yates as he slapped the ramp release button once the cloaked runabout had touched down on the planet. In the airtight confines of the ship it didn't matter how loud he was, once we were on the planet we would need to be quiet and stealthy.
With smooth motions obviously borne of countless practice and experience, the Cleaners unbuckled their harnesses and advanced down the still-lowering ramp in a staggered formation, their weapons at the ready. I was impressed, these guys acted like something close to a proper military force, which in this galaxy was a rare sight indeed.
I followed the group, and did so more causally since I didn't want to make an ass of myself by acting as they did. Not because they looked stupid, but because I didn't have any proper military training and didn't really know what to do, though I would take note of it and not get in their way.
My lack of formal training was normally fine as no one else I'd ever been on a mission with knew what they were doing either.
"Clear." "Clear." Said two Cleaners as they spread out from the landing site.
"Clear." Said yet another Cleaner.
"Clear." Growled the Vulcan.
That Vulcan guy was downright worrying. He seemed to be angry at everyone and everything. Maybe he was one of those ultra rare Vulcans whose emotional suppression systems had never taken. Section 31 must be giving him an outlet for some truly epic homicidal urges and rage. He had stared at me unblinkingly during the entire trip here, which had taken hours. It was pretty disturbing and had kept my hand on my sidearm the entire time.
"All right. Break out the netting," Yates ordered.
The Cleaners nodded at the order and jogged over to the shuttle. Opening the special compartments in the wings, they took out rolls of some sort of netting. Within minutes, the shuttle was completely covered in it. My guess was that the stuff would hide the ship from sensors as well as visual identification from a distance. We'd been cloaked on the way here, but perhaps the system was too power hungry to be used when the ship was landed or was imperfect when deployed in a planet's atmosphere. A ship in space was probably much easier to cloak then here on a planet with tons of local variables to account for. I was getting quite an education during this mission, including sensor scans from my omnitool and armor systems.
Normally I'd ask about such things, but the Cleaners unnerved me and they seemed to be maintaining mission silence unless it was mission critical information that needed to be disseminated through our active team comlink. Yates seemed decent enough, he even smiled, but his team wasn't the chatty type, even during the transit here. Aside from the scary Vulcan, the Andorian body builder seemed to be mute, and the Tellarite was twitchy as all hell. I wondered if he was on some kind of drugs. As for the human woman, she just sent alarm bells ringing through my head. She had to be incredibly high up on the hot/crazy scale.
A person is allowed to be crazy, as long as they are equally hot. Ideally, you want a woman to be above the diagonal line, indicating that they are hotter than they are crazy. However, this woman, while undeniably hot, had the scary crazy eyes, so she definitely was on the wrong side of the line. A little crazy and hot and you had a great time coming your way, but this kind of crazy…well, you didn't fuck with or stick your dick in that kind of crazy, lest it get chopped off in your sleep.
I had a feeling that I'd soon find out how high up on crazy scale they all were and this was coming from a guy who used to behead Cardassians to inspire fear.
(Line Break)
Wilderness. Cardassian Planet.
We hadn't landed too close to the spoon head military base. In fact, so far we'd quick marched in total silence about 3 miles while going around a mountain and we still weren't even halfway there. However, we had run into a Cardassian patrol. Which I'd seen get butchered in a well executed ambush by the Cleaners. Only one of them fell to my rifle.
While they weren't anywhere near as fast as an augment like me, or as smart, or as handsome, or as strong, they certainly were lethal motherfuckers who didn't show a moment of hesitation in efficiently wiping out that patrol. It was all ice cold efficiency, as if killing these soldiers was as emotionally significant as placing a replicator order. I was left wondering if their fighting style reminded me of my own so much simply because it was so brutal and matter of fact. If so, no wonder people freaked out after seeing me in battle.
The Cleaners hadn't killed all the spoon heads, though. They'd left one alive to interrogate. I had been under the impression that Cardassians had training to resist things like the Vulcan mind meld. Either this wasn't always the case with run of the mill soldiers versus someone like an Obsidian Order operative or Gull, or the scary Vulcan was just a lot more powerful and ruthless than the others of his kind. I suspected it was a combination of all three. He broke the Cardassian in short order into a whimpering sobbing baby.
"How many troops are stationed at the base? Who is the commanding officer? How many vehicles are there?" Yates questioned.
There was no delay before the answer came.
"There are two thousand troops stationed there. Our Commanding officer is Gul Mantrid. We have a few light vehicles in the Motor Pool."
Well, that did not sound good. The Cardassians were the only race I'd encountered so far that had a reasonable idea of what made up a proper military. They actually had armored weaponized support for their troops and weren't too worried about overall losses in order to achieve objectives. They'd send out two thousand men with armored support if it meant victory over us.
"What kind of vehicles?" Yates asked briskly.
Again there was no delay.
"Two light scout transports. One armored troop transport," we were told.
Hmmm, I'd seen such vehicles before. While there were certainly plenty of men stationed here, maybe they were still trying to hide the base's true purpose by not giving them better heavy equipment and weapons. The scout transports would be like the ones Gul Dukat had used as part of an important convoy. They weren't very impressive. I'd seen enough of them destroyed during the Occupation to know that they were semi-fragile targets and not nearly as fast as they needed to be. Maybe the base's purpose was so narrow they weren't really expecting many from the garrison to leave the base's perimeter?
As for the armored troop transport, the armor would be light compared to what the armies of my time used, and not itself armed, but still any armored support was worth worrying over given our small numbers.
"Do you have any prisoners?" Yates asked next.
"No, we do not have any prisoners."
I had no idea why Yates even cared. We couldn't take any prisoners with us and he hardly seemed the type to worry about civilian losses. Section 31 was very much an 'ends justify the means' type of organization. Perhaps he was worried about the Cardassians using living shields. They weren't above such things. Or maybe they were worried prisoners meant they were doing some on-site testing of the bio-weapon and thus the potential for accidental release was there.
"What kind of defenses does the base have? Defenses for space and ground based assaults," Yates was now asking.
"To protect against an orbital strike there are four heavy disruptor batteries arranged in a rough circle around the Main HQ, with 100 meters of space between the HQ and each battery. To supplement our disruptors, we have two heavy torpedo launchers per battery," we were informed.
I had to swear at that. That was some serious firepower. I'd seen Starfleet bases defended by only a single phaser bank. The Cardassian Central Command had cheaped out on the heavy vehicles for their men but had obviously felt it a worthwhile expense to protect the base from space-borne threats. It made a certain sense, few powers would choose a ground based assault over a clean and efficient strike from space these days.
"Against a ground assault, we have four watch-towers each armed with a heavy disruptor canon," was what the broken and now sobbing Cardassian said next. "Each tower is located approximately 200 meters from the Main HQ. There is a force field around the base."
This base design was pretty standard Cardassian military doctrine, but usually the watch towers just had soldiers with rifles in them. A heavy disrupter canon was very unusual.
"Anything else?" Yates demanded to know.
I couldn't see how things could get any worse.
"Yes, the entire base is protected by a minefield that remains dormant when we Cardassians move about," the spoon head told us. "But if they detect any other form of life they detonate."
So, an advanced minefield keyed to only detonate when it detected non-Cardassian DNA. Apparently I'd been wrong. Things could actually get worse.
(Line Break)
Base. Cardassian Planet.
The Gul known as Mantrid was walking beside his second in command, Gil Lian, who was currently giving his superior the base's daily status report, when a lightning bolt streaked out of the pitch black sky. Mantrid ignored this, but Lian couldn't help feeling as if something was wrong. He'd had a bad feeling for hours now and couldn't shake it.
"Gul Mantrid, Gul Dams wishes to speak to you," a lower ranking officer informed them.
After a barely perceptible nod to the soldier Mantrid strode down the corridors of the HQ, passing by many armed guards along the way to the communications room. Given the top secret nature of their mission, this was the only communication terminal on the base capable of communicating off-world.
Security had been beefed up considerably in the last few weeks in anticipation of the arrival of the first batches of the new bio-weapon. No chances were being taken and no expense was spared to protect it. Those filthy Bajorans would pay dearly for what they had done to the Union, but not for too long, perhaps just long enough to plunge the entire planet into chaos and destabilize this new 'Provisional Government.' A few hundred thousand slow deaths should do it. Then the Cardassian people would benevolently and generously offer a potential cure to what everyone would think was simply a natural illness that had plagued Bajor for decades, one that the Cardassian people had supposedly found a cure for during the time of the Occupation. If things went according to plan, the Cardassian military might soon have the foothold it desperately wanted near the wormhole.
The moment the doors hissed shut behind him the Gul moved to the door's keypad. His fingers were a blur as he keyed in his own personal command code with an ease only practice could bring. Now the door would only open again if he entered the proper code. Any attempt at entering an incorrect code would raise an alarm that would bring the attention of Mantrid's most loyal guards to the door, one of which was always nearby. They would shoot anyone trying to get in, no matter who they were.
Satisfied that no one could now penetrate his private sanctum, the Gul turned to face the viewscreen embedded in the wall. The viewscreen flickered to life even as built-in sensors scanned him. If his DNA and bio-readout didn't match the profile already stored in the system, the alarm would sound and the room would be filled with a rather deadly gas. Not a normal Cardassian security protocol, but being a Gul with command of his own base came with certain benefits and Mantrid was paranoid to a fault.
Now that all the requisite protocols had been followed, the computer finally released the lockout on the viewscreen. Static flickered across it momentarily as the connection was stabilized over dozens of light years thanks to the many subspace booster stations and relays scattered throughout Cardassian space.
The face of another Gul appeared. The face of Gul Dams.
"How go the preparations for the mission?" Dams wished to know.
Mantrid smiled.
"They are going exceedingly well. The containers arrived just a day ago on a special transport, while under heavy guard by an escort of three Galor-class warships."
Perhaps that had drawn some attention from the many powers that routinely monitored fleet movements, but the overall purpose of such a movement should still be secret. The deployment of the plague had to go perfectly. It was a required component of many larger plans already in play; if this failed many other plans would have to be scrapped as a result.
"Was there any trouble?" the Gul on the screen asked.
"No, Dams," Mantrid replied. "There was no accidental release on route. All 12 of the weapon containers arrived with their seals perfectly intact and their locks have not been touched. They will not open until I personally unseal and set the timers for deployment."
The plague had not been designed to effect Cardassians and controlled testing had proven that, but it wasn't easy to create perfectly controllable bio-weapons as history had shown time and again. Viruses had a nasty habit of mutating, especially when large enough numbers were exposed to it. With the number of accidental Bajoran/Cardassian offspring that had been created during the Occupation, only a fool would not acknowledge that the two species' physiologies were close enough to merit extreme caution.
"Excellent. I also trust that there will be no accidents with the weapon as you are preparing it for loading into the torpedo casings. The deployment must go exactly as planned or the virus might spread too quickly and too many Bajorans will die."
Mantrid was confused.
"Dams, are you feeling concerned for the Bajorans?" questioned the Gul with a sneer in his voice.
"Fool!" The Gul on screen yelled. "If too many Bajorans die too quickly it will draw more attention to that Sector than we wish. Starfleet might deploy an entire fleet in an attempt to quarantine the planet and the artificial nature of this disease could be exposed. It needs to appear entirely natural! We only want to make the Bajorans desperate enough to take our aid, regardless of our price. Once we are back on Bajor they will never be rid of us again and we will have access to that wormhole and eventually will control it all."
There were plans a plenty being formulated by the High Command to get back to Bajor and its stable wormhole. This was just one of them, but they were all meant to increase the power of the Union. Things had to go well. The wormhole was the most valuable strategic asset in all the quadrant. They would have never left the planet if they'd known it was there.
"Now do your damn job!" Dams commanded, despite not having a higher rank required to issue orders to Mantrid. "The stolen ship meant to deploy the weapon will arrive in a matter of hours; everything must go perfectly. The Central Command will tolerate no mistakes."
Dams wondered if it would have been wiser to send the ship directly from Cardassia Prime to Bajor, but with an escort of other stolen ships to further hide Cardassian involvement. Unfortunately there was a lot of movement on the border at the moment. Many eyes would be watching that direction; hiding Cardassian involvement would be near impossible then.
Mantrid was in no mood to be insulted further so he closed the channel and quickly left the room, hoping that a walk around the base would soothe his nerves.
The Gul walked to the turbolift that would take him to the base's Command Center. With a low hum the turbolift rose and within seconds he was within the Command Center.
After stepping out of the lift Mantrid looked around the room, which was lit up by the numerous touch panels and a few other minor light sources.
The base's Command Center was laid out much as a starship's bridge would be, with one major difference. Instead of a single viewscreen set into the wall at the front of the bridge, commonly denoting the front of the ship in most designs, the Command Center instead had a bank of angled windows running the entire circumference of the center, allowing visuals of the entire surrounding base. In overall effect, the Command Center most resembled an old-fashioned Air Traffic Control Tower from Earth's late 20th century.
A suddenly intense light blinded the Gul for a moment before crashing thunder filled the air.
"What was that?" he asked nervously.
For a moment he'd feared they were under attack from orbit. That simply wouldn't do, like Gul Dams had said, everything had to go perfectly.
"Oh, nothing more than some thunder and lightning," Gil Lian answered.
Due to the night's pitch blackness and the driving rain that washed down the surrounding windows in sheets, visibility was practically non-existent, despite the base's lighting.
"I can't see a thing out these windows. I doubt the guard towers are faring any better," the Gul complained. "Are our sensors taking up the slack?"
"We are having some intermittent problems with the sensor output," replied the Cardassian who was working the base's main sensor board. "We suspect it's due to the ionizing interference caused by the lightning storm; the weather on this planet can be very intense after all."
Upon hearing this, the Gul tensed up, Dams' words ringing in his ear. If this mission failed for any reason he knew he would be better off eating his own disrupter rather than be tortured to death by the Obsidian Order.
"This would be an excellent time to attack us, when we are at our most vulnerable," he reasoned aloud. "I want more guards placed around the base. Raise the alert level."
His order was soon followed.
(Line Break)
Wilderness. Cardassian Planet.
"Got it," the Tellarite tech declared as a graphical representation of the base appeared on his small computer. "I now have control of the all the base's defenses."
Wait, what?
"Wait a minute, how the hell did you get into that?" I asked in an incredulous voice, though I doubted I'd get an answer.
I imagine this was the result of specialized equipment and some seriously hardcore hacking, assuming Section 31 simply hadn't stolen the codes from somewhere ahead of time. I so had to learn to hack. Although I imagined that I'd have to learn how to crack many different systems given how many races used different kinds of computers. Maybe there was a holo program that could help me train?
"Looks like they decided to foolishly integrate the codes for the entire defensive network together to make it easier to control from one central program," I was told. "But this doesn't take care of the guards in the watchtowers or the troops in the garrison."
Cardassians never were very bright. They let their evil shithead arrogance often blind them.
"Fix the minefields so that they only detonate upon detecting Cardassians, turn on the heavy disruptors auto fire mode and set them to fire on them as well, then shut down their comms," Yates ordered. "After that you can take out their main power."
This didn't take long.
"Done," the tech reported.
I had a thought.
"The base must a have a main reactor," I reasoned. "Why not simply overload it if you have control of their systems?"
Those things were always overloading in the show.
"We will level the place later to hide our involvement, making it look like a reactor overload, but we can't yet because we need to capture their new bio-weapon," Yates told me.
Wait, what? That didn't sound good. Why wasn't I told this shit earlier? Section 31 and their need to know bullshit.
After some quick thought I realized that there was no reason to be all that concerned about them wanting to capture this new weapon. Sure, 31 might want it to for themselves to possibly use against the Bajorans, but it could also be required for further study, in order to develop a perfect antidote or inoculation in case the Cardassians decided to use it again in the future. Just because this particular plan failed didn't mean it couldn't be used in the future, just with a different deployment.
Besides Section 31 were still projecting that the Bajorans would join the Federation in less than 10 years after all. Even my future knowledge said that was true if things proceeded like in the show. So it wouldn't make sense for them to destabilize Bajor and lose the Federation's control over the only known stable wormhole in the quadrant. This would only hinder Starfleet's efforts and the Federation might even withdraw from Bajor leaving it open for the spoon heads to come back, or the Federation might end up spending massive amount of resources trying to aid Bajor leaving other worlds more vulnerable.
Also, while I still had a cure, the cure I had was from the time of the Occupation, when they were presumably still testing it, so who knows how it might have been changed or been improved since then. The cure I had might not even work now, therefore it might be a good idea for me to enter the base and grab any information I could on the disease and anything else that caught my eye. If I could find out how it had been changed, assuming it had, then I could ensure that a new cure was made. Given my rank and influence it would be a simple matter for me to find a Bajoran doctor to do the work for me separate from Section 31.
(Line Break)
Base. Cardassian Held Planet.
Mantrid had only himself to blame, but instead of actually accepting fault and dealing with the situation, he decided to blame his second officer and shoot the Gil in the head for treason, hoping such an execution would restore some order. Not that this effective demonstration of his resolve and power had been actually noticed. This base was going to 'hell in a hand basket' as the humans would say.
It had all started when main power failed without any warning. It was still pitch black outside on the planet so everyone had become blind. However, without power Mantrid could do little once he realized that they were under attack.
He had many men under his command, though, and might still have some left, so he'd simply sent a messenger to the barracks with orders to send all the troops out to meet whatever kind of attack this was. It didn't matter if they were prepared or even dressed as long as they could fire a weapon. The weapons had been ordered to be set on stun since the Gul wanted captives for a private interrogation session or two.
With a two thousand man garrison, the attackers should have been totally overwhelmed. Only someone had screwed up, badly. The minefield had malfunctioned, resulting in several dozen loyal Cardassian soldiers being torn apart by anti-personnel mines. While Cardassian soldiers were of course the bravest in the galaxy, they weren't so brave/stupid that they would charge across minefields, at least not without orders to.
While the mines did surround the entire base and would limit his men's movement, this still wouldn't have been much of an issue since the watchtowers had spotlights with independent power supplies. Once the attackers were spotted the heavy disrupters would destroy them. However, the Gil had proven his foolishness as well and the heavy disruptors, which ran off an independent power source, began massacring their own troops.
Not wanting to get killed in clumped groups the men had tried to spread out, only to then start setting off the mines again, and to make matters worse, the attackers had started firing on the troops as well. The mines not going off for them.
Mandrid couldn't see the guns used, but he could hear them. From the incredibly loud reports, it sounded as if someone was using old fashioned projectile weapons, but with a truly insane rate of fire. No civilized government still used such barbaric weapons.
The Gul lifted his pistol and started moving slowly across the command centre. By now the fighting was starting to die down, either his men had rallied and had defeated the attackers or they were all dead.
If they were all dead, then it was up to him to save the day. Gul Mandrid would defend this base, he would defeat the invaders and ensure that the weapon was deployed as planned! Doing so would make him a hero of the Cardassian people, more so than he already imagined he already was. Women would adore him and many more sons of Cardassia would wish to follow him into battle...
SNAP.
Mandrid's last thoughts were of glory and heroism, but his last action in life was to die cowering in the dark while his men died by the hundreds. His neck having been unceremoniously snapped by a human with ridiculously abnormal strength. Given all that was going on, no one even noticed him die. No one really cared since practically everyone was already dead or in the process of dying.
(Line Break)
Base. Cardassian Held Planet.
I stepped over the body of the spoon head officer I had just killed, a Gul if I wasn't mistaken, and entered the command centre as the lights came back on and the computers booted up.
My job now was to download as much information about the bio-weapon and its planned usage as possible, using a small computer I'd gotten from the Tellarite tech guy. I had to move quickly as the Section 31 special ops team planned to blow this entire place up and go home.
The computer simply needed to be hooked up to the spoon head machines. I didn't understand why this was needed since they'd been able to take control of the base's defenses from a distance. I suppose it didn't matter at this point, although I'd think about it more later. Maybe the control systems and database where two different systems?
What was on my enhanced mind while the information was downloading was that about two thousand Cardassian soldiers had just died in a very short amount of time at the hands of essentially five people. Sure, a lot of that had only been possible because they'd suborned the minefield and the auto targeting disrupters canons, but I'd now seen what Trek tech could do when put into the hands of ruthless dangerous people who were unstable and cold blooded killers even by the standards of my time.
Some of the things they'd come with...fuck me…and I thought I was a ruthless cold blooded killer. Like that grenade launcher I saw being used, but which hadn't been part of the weapons demonstration at all. I was pretty damn sure that the gas grenades they'd fired all over and into practically every building, which had dispersed a low hanging fog-like gas, had been filled with some sort of nerve agent only lethal to Cardassians. We all had walked through it with no issue, but there was certainly nothing natural about Cardassian corpses with blood having oozed out from their eyes, noses, ears, and mouths. It had been like a WW1 battlefield out there with men being gunned down by rapid firing weapons as they ran across active minefields that only targeted Cardassians. Add in some barbed wire and rat infested trenches and the image would have been complete.
I'd fought during the bloodiest battles of the Occupation. I'd liberated work camps, blown up warehouses, killed many enemy soldiers and I'd played pirate. I was a boogeyman to many of my enemies. But I'd never seen death like this. The Cardassians hadn't died cleanly via phaser fire; we'd gunned them down brutally or let their own defenses slaughter them to the last man. They'd screamed, they'd cried, they'd begged, and they'd exploded, leaving body parts everywhere. Some had even trampled each other to death in an attempt to escape the slaughter; some had even put their weapons in their own mouths to escape the chaos on their own terms.
If not for my augmented mind, which increased my aggression among other things, I figured that I'd be curled up into a ball right now while sobbing and near catatonic.
On the plus side this had given me a great chance to live fire my new weapons, both my anti-proton rifle and handgun. They worked better than I could have ever hoped for and frankly I think my killing them was a mercy compared to being mowed down by a mini-gun or dying from nerve agent. I'd tried both discharge settings, pulse and continuous beam, making short- to mid- to long-range shots, used the various sensor modes on my rudimentary HUD (that I still needed to talk to Data about), shot through walls with my orthographic targeting sensor, and even made some truly epic long-range kills by beaming fired tritanium bullets inches from the foreheads of hiding Cardassians. The anti-proton beam cut through everyone and everything and left perfectly cauterized holes in bodies no matter what they were wearing, even some forms of armor.
With all the rapid fire from the mini-gun I'd been inspired to go full auto with my rifle and handgun; it made little difference. Both weapons fired like a dream and the custom grips felt perfect in my hands no matter how much it fired. Even after a full minute of auto fire on my rifle, probably 300 pulse discharges, the weapon's Collector power cell only showed the capacitors were half discharged and pretty much remained steady there with the cell's recharge rate. It was beyond my wildest expectations and my armor's sensor suite recorded everything for later review and analysis.
I'd even tested my new 'power sword' which I'd managed to design to hold a continuous anti-proton edge. It didn't matter what the material was, heads, limbs, vehicles, reinforced doors, it cut through them all with minimal resistance. It wasn't a light saber, but it was pretty fucking close. I relished the next opportunity to go blade to blade with a Klingon wielding a bat'leth. Wouldn't they be in for a huge fucking surprise when I cut through their blade and cut them in two perfectly sliced and cauterized pieces?
A beep let me know that the download was complete, and I took a moment to transfer all information they had on the bio-weapon to my own version of the omni-tool, which was a much more advanced design I'd improved upon since making the original prototype available to buy. No doubt I'd be raking in the profits from the sales, and that would make Quark happy since he was serving as my agent for a percentage of the deal. I had an upcoming meeting with the Grand Nagus himself who would be negotiating the manufacturing and distribution deal for my new technology on behalf of a large manufacturing concern in his portfolio.
While I had full access to this extensive database I took the opportunity to download the design schematics and any associated replicator patterns for the base's disrupter batteries, the heavy torpedoes and launchers, the disrupter canons, and the base's shield generators. Since this base had all of these weapons and they needed to be maintained and serviced here, the designs were in this database. The real gem were the abbreviated design schematics for the Galor-class warships that were involved in the transport of the bio-weapon, especially its shield frequencies and configuration. In the event it had been accidentally released and the infected crew didn't scuttle their ships on command, the local based needed the designs for the ship and shield weaknesses if necessary to destroy them. It was evil and wonky Cardassian logic, but I'd take it. Having these design schematics would make destroying that ship type in the future much easier since I'd know all of their weaknesses and just where to target them.
I turned to leave when three Cardassians, who looked like they'd had a really bad night, came charging and yelling into the command centre of the base from different entry points their rifles being brought to bear on me. I spun on the spot and gunned them down with both arms outstretched, one hand firing my handgun the other firing a new weapon I'd recently designed and built. I'd been inspired to design it by the wrist mounted plasma repeater of the Kull Warriors in the Stargate franchise, which was on my list to make into a halonovel, and the wrist mounted blaster of the B2 Super Battle Droid of Star Wars. My left vambrace now sported three hidden discharge ports to rapid fire small, but deadly disrupter bolts at high speeds. My initial thought had been to use anti-proton beams once again, but I figured mixing up the energy would be smart. The bolts were small, but many, and though it had a limited effective range of 15 meters, were exceedingly deadly at its high rate of fire. This weapon could only be fired through mental trigger and by clenching my fist in a specific way. It had the benefit of being always there on my wrist and not immediately recognized as a weapon at all.
All three Cardassians dropped dead moments later, two with holes in their chest from my anti-proton pistol and one smoking and partially ripped apart by the dozens of disrupter bolts he'd taken. My first live combat test fire of my wrist blasters, as I was calling it these days, was a big success.
Then I left. It was definitely time to go home. I actually missed the calm predictability of the standard Starfleet types, and that was really saying something.
I had initially wondered why the Cleaners were so insistent on blowing this base up and after seeing the tactics and weapons they'd used, I no longer wondered. If anyone saw what happened here today, what we'd done and how we'd done it, there'd be widespread panic. The Federation itself would never tolerate what we'd done today, much less the other powers. The use of nerve agent alone would see us locked up for life.
The sheep would sleep much better tonight not knowing the tamed monsters that kept them safe from the cold, harsh realities of this galaxy. Even a boogeyman like me was having a hard time believing it.