Joe Lawyer's Co-Author's Note
In the last quarter of this chapter, you'll see several topics being discussed followed by something like this, (See "Dominion"). That means if you'd like to read more about where in canon Star Trek I'm drawing facts or inspiration from, consult the Memory Alpha wikia article with that topic.
STNGDS9Fan – I'm glad you're looking forward to the redesign of the Flighty Temptress. I'm looking forward to writing it too! I sent GothicJedi a long list of stuff that could go into the new design and we're going to make it epic. There are plenty of hints in the last quarter of the chapter as to what it'll include, but not everything. We want Gothic's ship to be as badass as he is, but not so badass he can destroy 50 Dominion warships by himself, if you know what I mean. If all goes well in the next chapter or two we'll describe what the end result will be. Keep reviewing; it keeps us motivated!
Augment Gothic
Island Fortress. Bajor
It had begun, the war with the Hur'q. For some reason I thought we'd have more time.
I'd often complained in the past that the Federation needed a kick in the proverbial balls, like the Borg had been, to get their heads in the right place in order to survive the Dominion, but the Hur'q might be an even greater threat in the long-run. Thankfully, though, the Hur'q were a lot more straightforward in their plans for domination and seemed to attack everyone indiscriminately. It had united even the most diehard enemies together to fight off the collective threat to our survival. Reports the Collectors were seen eating their captured enemies whole probably helped quite a bit in that regard.
The aliens had been making small attacks all over the alpha quadrant for a while now, but those had been mere skirmishes in comparison to what was going on now.
Hur'q hive ships were now spotted moving through space controlled by the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians and the Federation, even a few of the minor powers were reporting sightings.
When I got news of a sighting I used that information to update my 'galaxy map,' another great idea I'd shamelessly stolen from the Mass Effect videogame, or universe, assuming it was real. Considering I was in a supposedly fictional universe right now, there was little reason to think it wasn't real. I was using the map in an attempt to track the Hur'q's movements and to ultimately see if there were any patterns to be found in their attacks.
The galaxy map had been an idea inspired mostly by Mass Effect, but also the amazing astrometrics lab of Star Trek Voyager fame. If my ship redesign of the Flighty Temptress ever came to fruition, I had every intention of building a galaxy map/Astrometrics lab in my new ship; the alien database the Collectors had long ago stolen had contained detailed designs that were much more advanced than anything the Alpha quadrant had for mapping the galaxy. In fact, it had only recently occurred to me that the same database I had used to help me design my weapons and redesign my power cells might have a lot more technology that could be useful to me. Fully reviewing that database had jumped to the top of my to-do list the next opportunity I had.
The galaxy map was now sitting in a large unused room near my design lab under my palace fortress and man did I really need to give this place a name. When I had designed my home and the extensive subterranean levels built into the large hill the house sat upon, my girls had questioned why I was building so many extra unfurnished rooms with no discernible purpose. This was why. New ideas required space and I had plenty to spare.
The galaxy map was fundamentally a large three dimensional holographic projection of the entire Milky Way galaxy, which could be manipulated by voice command, tactilely, or through the console in the corner. The map was so large it took up most of the space in this rather large room. At the moment, I had it zoomed in on the part of space which contained star systems under the control of the Romulans, the Klingons, the Federation, the Cardassians as well as other multi-planet races like the Tholians, the Breen, and the Ferengi.
In many places it was a very general map, since there were no detailed star charts for me to acquire of parts of the galaxy the alpha quadrant species had yet to explore and chart by ship. That meant most of the details, beyond star locations, of the Delta Quadrant and most of the Beta Quadrant were entirely unknown, and only a handful of star systems around the mouth of the wormhole within the Gamma Quadrant had yet been fully mapped. Even the map of the Alpha Quadrant itself, which I had zoomed in on, had rather large gaps in it. Of course current 24th century technology allowed most of the stars in the larger galaxy to be seen and catalogued, but all the details were absent because we'd simply never been able to reach that far with current warp technology.
Still, setting this room up had been a vast undertaking. I didn't just have a few holoprojectors in here projecting a static image of the galaxy as we knew it; I had an entire subspace communications suite, which monitored transmissions on the subspace communications network. The computer in here contained all the star charts I'd gathered and would automatically update the map when new systems were discovered or mapped. The computer even kept track, as best it could, of all the ships it could detect, as well as the general state of inhabited words and any news or other pertinent information coming from them.
Starfleet was always exploring new systems, after all, and there were ways to track ships, as such the map was always updating even while it was not in use. The sheer amount of information being handled and stored by the computer was staggering, and I was glad that I'd spent the time upgrading my systems and spending so much money expanding my systems' capacity for information storage.
Sure, this project had taken me away from the lab where I was happily working on the design for my version of an Iron Man suit, but with the Hur'q attacks it just wasn't the time for such pleasant diversions or daydreaming about flying through the clouds in my armor or through the depths of space.
"Emma, show me the current location of the Enterprise," I ordered aloud, the galaxy map already working to comply.
One of my many, many, many to-do list projects had been to create the equivalent of a Mass Effect VI (Virtual Intelligence), so that people could more easily interact with the main computer of a starship or space station.
At the moment this project was still in its early stages and still undergoing testing. I had considered it both wise and prudent to take my time on this and to be as slow and methodical as possible, as I couldn't be sure that I wouldn't create a rogue AI in my haste. They might not all be as friendly as Data, considering Lore, who was essentially identical to Data in design, was both hostile and maybe even evil and had killed his creator. Again, if all those fictional universes were real, there were plenty of horror stories when it came to AI, so it was wise to be exceedingly careful and paranoid with anything that even came close to resembling true AI.
Onboard my ship, the computer's voice and personality, if it could be called that, sounded like Scarlett Johansson, who in my time was well known for playing the role of Black Widow in the Avenger Movies. Here the computer sounded like Emma Watson, Miss Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, and the computer's holographic avatar looked exactly like her. Thankfully she had been an actress in this universe as well and her picture and voice samples were found in Earth's historical archives.
I'd gotten the idea for the computer's holographic avatar from an old Earth science fiction show called Earth: Final Conflict. In that show a brilliant hacker, whose name I'd forgotten, had created an interface for his computer that took the form of a beautiful human woman in holographic form.
This holographic Emma Watson currently served as the computer's avatar and the holographic interface. She was limited to this room, for the moment, since I couldn't be sure she wouldn't become an AI and go all Skynet on me. I'd reevaluate that restriction once the testing period was over and I had time to thoroughly review her programming and logs. If all went well, I might expand her reach and domain to cover my entire island's systems and do something similar for the Flighty Temptress. Scarlett, as the Black Widow, seemed a good choice for the avatar of a warship after all. A holographic avatar of the computer could be an amazing assistant for me to interact with and give work to in the future.
In a fit of perverted teenage whimsy, I had dressed Emma the hologram in a rather slutty version of a Hogwarts' student uniform, complete with Gryffindor red short skirt, thigh high white stockings, and white blouse tied in a knot under her good sized breasts to expose her toned stomach. She even had a magic wand in hand, which she waved for effect when she changed the galaxy map at my command to show the Enterprise. I had even given her a sexy and posh British accent!
After her wand wave, a bright red Starfleet chevron appeared on the map before it started to quickly zoom in close, showing me an uninhabited star system that I knew to be along the new Cardassian/Federation border that the recent treaty had created.
Tracking the flagship of Starfleet was shockingly easy when you had the resources I did, but even I didn't know exactly what was going on in that system. I would have known more if we had any sensors in the area, but I hadn't gotten to the point where the Bajoran off world militia had listening posts and long-term spy probes along the Cardassian border, nor were we allowed access to the Federation's sensor data yet, even as an ally. That would change soon hopefully; these Hur'q attacks gave me all the justification needed to ask for more access.
"The Enterprise has just sent a subspace message to Deep Space Nine on an unsecure channel," Emma reported in that breathy and sexy British accented voice.
An unsecured message meant it was most likely a distress call or something along those lines.
"The Enterprise along with a Klingon Bird of Prey are engaged in battle with three ships of Hur'q design," Emma reported. "I'll supply you with more details as soon as I have the data."
I could only hope that the Enterprise wasn't tangling with one of those gigantic Hur'q hive ships the size of a moon or planet, as even their plot armor might not be enough to protect them from being destroyed…or eaten.
(Line Break)
Bridge. U.S.S. Enterprise.
The starship captain turned his head to face the officer at tactical, which was of course Mr. Worf.
"Anything?" Picard asked.
"Long-range sensors read negative, sir," the Klingon reported in frustration.
"Damn," cursed the Captain.
He peered back at the main viewscreen at the front of the bridge. Presently, it was showing empty starscape, but not that long ago it had shown three Hur'q ships which had attacked a Federation base near the Cardassian border. Unfortunately, by the time the Enterprise had arrived in-system the raiders had already vanished somehow, from both visual and long-range sensors.
Picard had orders to stop the Hur'q ships before they could do any more damage. The Captain would have preferred a more peaceful settling to these affairs, but that would only be possible if the Hur'q answered his hails. So far, no one had reported ever having communication with the Hur'q, just weapons fire.
"General Martok of the Ki'tang is signaling his combat readiness," Riker reported.
Martok was a Klingon officer who'd quickly risen through the ranks to become a general during the recent Klingon Civil war. They were quite some distance from the empire's borders here, and what Martok had been doing all the way out here was a question that needed answering. Though the treaty between the Federation and the Empire allowed free travel through each others' space, it was still very unusual and some notice was normally given when far from the border. Nonetheless, it reassured Picard to have some of the galaxy's best warriors at his side if the Hur'q showed back up.
The Hur'q possibly had cloaking devices, so Picard was also very glad that Martok was keeping his ship cloaked and only risking communications through secure means. Martok was limiting himself to simple text messages in order to lower the chance of detection. The texts were capable of being sent in microsecond data bursts and were unlikely to be detected.
Picard glanced to his left side where Deanna Troi was still standing, staring blindly at the main viewscreen, as if waiting for something to happen, but the Captain knew from past experience that she was actually concentrating on her empathic gifts in an attempt to sense if the Hur'q were still nearby.
As it turned out, they hadn't been nearby, but they were now. The Collectors, as they were sometimes interchangeably called given how different they were from the Hur'q of old, had somehow jumped into this system without any warning from sensors, making use of some kind of subspace corridor.
"Captain, this type of propulsion system is not unlike what the Xindi races used in the Delphic Conflict in the years before the Federation was formed," Data reported from his station, having quickly reviewed the sensor readings of the Hur'q's arrival and comparing them to Starfleet's historical archives. "The hulls of these vessels are made partly of a bio-engineered organic material, much like the armor of the Hur'q themselves that has been observed."
A subspace vortex (also called an energy portal) was an extremely fast method of propulsion utilized by the Xindi. Capable of transporting a vessel at a rate of about six light years per two minutes, the vortices were opened through the generation of a phase deflector pulse, using on-board generators, and were sustainable for hours at a time.
However the portals required an incredible amount of energy to open, and the larger the portal was the more unstable it could be, and unstable portals could destroy a ship rather than transport them. A ship the size of the Enterprise would never be able to create a stable portal given its size even if it had the power to make one, and it was uncertain whether the ship could produce enough.
Smaller craft could make use of the portals, however Starfleet had never made much use of the technology as even the Xindi had never fully understood the underlying science behind the portals. It had come from the Sphere Builders, a very advanced and very strange extra-dimensional race, a race that had been changing space to allow them to survive in our universe, but which would ultimately kill everyone else.
Somehow, the Hur'q had found a way around these limitations. They had the enormous amount of raw power required according to the scans, but there was no sign of how they'd been able to stabilize such large subspace portals.
More ships were now coming out of subspace. A swarm of fourteen ships. Then four larger ships, made an appearance. Those ships were larger than an Excelsior-class starship. And according to the readout on his chair the power output of these ships surpassed that of the Enterprise many times over.
"On screen," Picard ordered grimly.
The largest Collector vessels were not a seamless fusion of organic and machine like the smaller ones were, rather Picard was reminded of a termite mound, only in this case the termites had used some kind of metal to build parts of their large nest.
"Each of the smaller ships is armed only with a single anti-proton weapon," Worf informed the bridge. "They also possess torpedoes of some unknown type."
This was good news, while anti-proton weapon could defeat any kind of armor, they were of limited use against a starship's shields. The Hur'q didn't use shields, though, their ships had thick armor which was strong and had limited self repair capabilities, which meant anti-proton weapons would be effective against them, hence why they likely chose that weapon type for their own ships. Phasers and photon torpedoes would be less effective against robust armor, but hardly useless.
"The four larger ships are armed with phasers," Worf reported as he continued to take in the sensor output. "A crude design by our standards, but powerful by fact of so much energy being fed to them. They also possess small laser cannons as well, again not very powerful. Perhaps they are used to shoot down incoming torpedoes or as an anti-fighter weapon?"
Picard had read a lot about the Hur'q, files both public and highly classified, so he knew that the Collectors were not an imaginative race. They had no art or music of their own, or any other trappings of culture, and they were not supposed to be inventive either in the traditional sense, but they were allegedly highly skilled at stealing and adapting the technology of others for their own purposes. The fact that they now had shields, phasers, and torpedoes, when previous reports said they used none of those things, indicated that they had stolen and adapted technology from the races they'd met here, like the Romulans and Cardassians. That was very troubling given how little time had passed since their return to this dimension. What would they be like in a year's time?
"Captain, they're hailing us," Data reported to his superior officer.
Now that was a surprise. There was no record of any Hur'q ever speaking to anyone.
"Open a channel," Picard commanded.
Every member of the bridge crew, other than the android who lacked emotions, found themselves taking a short, ragged breath as the view of space changed to that of a truly alien alien. Few humans had ever seen a Collector and lived to tell the tale, and their insectoid appearance was unsettling even to those who were used to dealing with many strange life forms.
This Hur'q was a large example of the species from reports. It was covered in bio-engineered armor and had four glowing eyes, which was unsettling to look at.
The alien chittered for a while, yet there was no translation offered by the computer. Then the transmission simply ended. Their language must be so alien to the universal translator, so unlike the language of any other alpha quadrant race, that a new translation matrix would have to be created specifically for the species. The Klingons might have some surviving records which could help in the translation, but it would likely take a great deal of time and effort to succeed. Starfleet Intelligence would likely be taking on that project.
"They cut the link," Riker said. "Captain, General Martok is hailing us."
Picard ordered a channel to be opened.
"They are the Hur'q," Martok stated with hatred and loathing in his eyes. "They must pay for what they did to my home world, to my people. Join us in battle Enterprise, songs shall be sung of this day. Qapla!"
The viewscreen once more returned to the view of the approaching alien fleet.
"Red Alert!" Picard ordered tersely.
The Collector fleet opened fire first and on the bridge of the Enterprise the lights flickered ominously, verging on total failure, the crew being shaken about. A few standing crewmen failed to grab hold of their consoles in time before falling down to the deck. Deanna was gripping the arms of her seat tightly for stability as the starship shook around her. She winced as she shut down her empathic abilities against the unending aggression of the Hur'q. Their anger was not like the bloodlust of the Klingons, it was more... evil, more indifferent. That was the only way she could explain it. Complete indifference to another life could oftentimes be the worst form of evil.
"Status report!" shouted Picard.
The bridge lights returned to normal illumination.
"Partial failure of the aft shields. Few minor injuries reported. No other damage," Worf reported. "The anti-proton weapons of the Hur'q are proving to be less than effective at penetrating our shields, though the number of ships firing on us is making up the difference. The crude phasers of the larger vessels are more effective, but they are dividing their fire between us and General Martok's ship."
Picard was pleased to hear this, but he also knew that if the shields failed the hull of the Enterprise would provide no protection at all for the crew and the families onboard. Starfleet hadn't used armored hulls since the very early days of the Federation, when shield technology either wasn't available or prevalent yet.
"Return fire, target engines and weapons where possible," the captain ordered.
Worf's fingers seemed to dance over his tactical console and moments later the Enterprise spat phaser fire and photon torpedoes at the Collectors.
When it was over the Klingon fumed. Only three of the Collector ships had been taken out of the fight with disabled weapons.
"Target torpedoes on their engines!" Picard ordered. "Disable those ships!"
Worf shook his head.
"Sir, sensors cannot detect what constitutes their engines. They have an unknown means of propulsion."
Picard could see the Ki'tang stabilizing itself on the main viewscreen after taking several hits. It was now firing disruptors and torpedoes at the three vessels they had disabled. It seems like the Klingons weren't going to spare any disabled ships so Picard saw no reason to continue holding back, but given the chance he would still try to end things peacefully.
"Hail them," Picard ordered.
The Collectors kept firing, refusing to talk.
"Captain, the Ki'tang's shields will soon fail," Data reported.
"Very well," Picard said as the ship shook again. "Mr. Worf, fire at will, and bring us closer to the Ki'tang. Lock onto the ship with a tractor beam and extend our shields around her."
(Line Break)
The bridge was falling apart around General Martok, his second in command was dead and the Ki'tang's shields were down to sixteen percent. At this point they'd already lost their engines and the ship was moving on thrusters only.
"The Hur'q fight well," Martok complimented with a growl.
He'd not meant to be heard, but he had been.
"The Hur'q still die like dogs when facing true Klingon warriors. Like they did on Qo'noS a thousand years ago," the gunner said. "Now we will join those same noble warriors who freed us so long ago in the afterlife. It will be glorious!"
It did look as if they were going to die soon and go on to join the honored dead in Sto-vo-kor. The two larger Hur'q ships were now focusing their fire on the smaller Bird of Prey. Once the shields came down, which would happen very soon, the smaller ships would rip the Klingon vessel apart with their anti-proton cannons. Even Klingon ships didn't possess armor strong enough to stop such a weapon.
As those thoughts went through the General's mind, the Enterprise locked the Ki'tang in a tractor beam to keep the ship still and extended its mighty shields around the Klingon Bird of Prey.
"General, the Enterprise has finally unleashed its full firepower upon the enemy," the Klingon at the scanner station reported. "The Hur'q vessels are being destroyed. Perhaps today is not a good day to die."
The general grinned at the little quip and considered that perhaps the Federation could be honorable allies for the Klingon Empire after all. It took them a while to realize that this enemy needed to be utterly destroyed, but they got there in the end.
(Line Break)
Bridge. Enterprise.
"Captain, I have scanned the Hur'q torpedoes," Data attempted to report to a distracted Picard.
Currently the Frenchmen was quite intently looking over the tactical sensor readouts that were displayed on the small screen on the arm of his chair to give the android his full attention, though he had heard the report. The Hur'q ships now had shields, which they hadn't had or used before now for some reason. While these barriers were basic in comparison to their own, they did offer the Collectors some small protection, especially since they had so much power to throw at the system. If this was the Hur'q's development curve, the alpha quadrant was in serious trouble.
"The torpedoes contain Hur'q life signs," Data reported. "I believe they are devices meant for boarding ships."
This got Picard's attention, who put living people inside torpedoes and sent so many with so few actually reaching their targets?
"The Hur'q ships are firing torpedoes," Worf grimly reported.
(Line Break)
Ops. Deep Space Nine.
Commander Sisko watched the viewscreen in Ops as the station's three runabouts moved to engage the Hur'q ships. The fleet of vessels had suddenly jumped into the Bajoran star system with no warning, having fled an earlier battle with the flagship of Starfleet, but they hadn't attacked right away and this had given the crew of DS9 time to mobilize their limited forces.
Sisko looked over at Dax, hoping that she had some good news for him. The lieutenant was still tinkering with the sensor controls, but before long she looked up from her console.
"Commander, we've got ships entering the system. One is the Enterprise, the other is a Klingon Bird of Prey," Dax let Sisko know.
The Starfleet officer was glad that the flagship had remained in the area due to some recent trouble with the Cardassians along the borders. Starfleet might not be willing to fortify Deep Space Nine by stationing a starship here permanently, but at least they were keeping an eye on the border.
"Are we clear of ship traffic?" Sisko asked.
If the Hur'q attacked the station he didn't want any civilian ships in the middle of a potential battle.
"Yes, sir," Dax replied a moment later, after consulting her monitor.
This was good news.
"Hail the Enterprise," Sisko ordered.
The main viewscreen soon showed the bridge of the approaching starship. Sisko could see that a few computer consoles were dark, hinting at possible battle damage, and the crew looked tired and haggard.
"Captain Picard, glad to see you," Sisko said by way of greeting.
Picard smiled mirthlessly.
"Have the Hur'q made any move yet to attack Deep Space Nine or Bajor?" the captain asked.
Sisko shook his head.
"No. By the look of things these Hur'q are committing only half their fleet to keeping us on alert, the other half seem to be searching intently for something," Sisko said in answer to Picard's question. "Their smaller ships are spread out all over the sector, but I can't send my runabouts after them in case the bulk of their fleet targets them. A runabout is not a ship designed for real combat."
That was when a Bajoran officer reported that the Collectors were moving in for an attack. The reduced Hur'q fleet was no match for the station's firepower, but not so long ago the Enterprise itself had been boarded even with its shields up, so the same could easily happen to the station. The Hur'q who'd boarded the Enterprise had quickly been dealt with, but they'd killed quite a few security officers and done significant damage before being taken down. DS9 had the Bajoran militia to defend it, a rather well trained and armed force after General Gothic's training, but the station was a very big place and it had a lot more resident civilians for the Collectors to target. The disrupter weapons the General had insisted on for his forces should also be much more effective on the Hur'q's personal armor.
"Sir!" shouted Lieutenant Dax. "The Enterprise and the Ki'tang are coming in fast and hard!"
The station shook as the Collectors opened fire on the station.
"Visual!" Sisko ordered.
The Federation starship and the Klingon bird-of-prey came out of warp right on top of the raiders, firing all their weapons, strafing as many ships as possible. A few of the alien ships exploded.
"All right, people, fire at will. Fire all the torpedoes and phasers we have at them!" Sisko ordered.
Victory would be theirs this day, of that the Commander was certain.
(Line Break)
Flighty Temptress. Gamma Quadrant.
While it was impossible for sound to be transmitted through the airless vacuum of space, I still attempted to keep the noise to a minimum whenever I used my cloaking device. A foolish habit maybe, but it certainly seemed appropriate for sneaking around.
Currently I was tailing a Hur'q vessel, one that was larger than many Starfleet ships, and it somehow looked a lot like the Collector cruiser from the Mass Effect game, but perhaps that was just how my human mind made sense of what was very much an alien craft. And it was alien; as far as I could tell the advanced bio-engineered armor that the Hur'q used in this day and age had been grown around a massive metal frame. I wonder what that meant. Did this make their ship construction much faster?
While I was limited to passive scans, as an active scan would greatly increase the chance I'd be discovered, I could still detect that the Hur'q ship had a massive power source, some crude first generation version of phasers, boarding torpedoes, laser cannons for point defense and rather primitive shields.
While the shields and phasers were primitive, they were throwing a lot of power at those systems and that had a distinct way of making up for any lack of overall sophistication. These ships were nowhere near the size of the gigantic ones I'd previously observed, but they were still pretty damn large. On further thought, it was possible, maybe even likely, that those much larger ships I'd seen before were ones meant to cross the dimensional divide on their own, whereas these ships were meant to be in the hanger bays of the moon/planet sized hive ships.
These changes in their ships were very worrying. The Collectors weren't suppose to have any of this stuff, yet after only a short time back in this dimension they'd obviously already gotten their hands on new tech, reverse engineered it, and quickly adapted it for their use. Until now these modified Hur'q had used fighters when on the offensive, now they were building warships. Ineffective ones, admittedly, when compared to the powerful ships of the Federation, Klingons, or Romulans, but it showed that they were capable of quickly adapting their tactics, which meant that they weren't as limited or slow to change as I'd once thought they were.
If they kept adapting and improving, especially with their ability to generate vast amounts of power, they could become a deadly serious threat to the entire Alpha Quadrant, more so than they already were. With their artificial singularity power cores they could supply the power needs of any ridiculously massive ship they wanted, no matter how bristling with weapons. And if they kept collecting and reverse engineering new technology, than they'd keep advancing and would be much harder to defeat.
The Hur'q were pretty much 'ferocious bugs with advanced technology.' They could breed fast and we still had no idea where their industrial base was or how they were even entering this reality, which meant that they could just keep coming at us until any resistance was worn away through sheer numbers. I imagine many much more advanced and powerful races were defeated by that fact alone.
For now, at least, the Federation held the advantage. The Hur'q had inferior weapons and shields, and while they had boarding torpedoes, which were somehow able to bypass shields altogether, the Collectors were easily trapped by internal force fields. Hopefully, I'd get a chance to study one of these torpedoes. A quantum torpedo that could bypass shields would be an excellent weapon for me to use against my enemies.
While all this was rather worrying in the mid- to long-term, I'd have to concern myself with such thoughts later as right now I had to focus on the ship I was following. I might need to find a way to quickly destroy it, or warn some unlucky race that they were about to receive some unwelcome guests.
(Line Break)
Vault. Hur'q Outpost.
Following the Collector Cruiser had led to me an uninhabited world that contained a vast network of caves and tunnels under the surface. The Collectors had sent down landing craft to recover something and I'd followed them, making use of my transporter to beat them down here.
Using my phaser minigun, or phaser Gatling gun, I still hadn't decided on a name, I'd ambushed and killed the team of Collector soldiers. While phasers were rather weak when pitted against the Hur'q's bio-armor, the sheer amount of firepower at my command had ensured that this wouldn't be an issue. Quantity had a quality all its own.
With the help of my omnitool and a halo map my sensors had produced and displayed for me of the cave network, I'd soon found the room they'd been heading towards. Then I saw it on the stand, the most important sword in the galaxy, assuming Excalibur wasn't real, a priceless cultural treasure of the ancient Klingon people.
The Sword of Kahless was the first bat'leth ever forged. It was designed and created by Kahless the Unforgettable and was dated to the 9th century AD. According to Klingon mythology, Kahless created the sword by dropping a lock of his hair into a river of lava from Kri'stak's summit, and then cooling the burning lock in the Lake of Lusor and forging it into a blade.
Brandishing his newly-forged Sword, Kahless slew the hated tyrant Molor, conquered the Fek'Ihri, and created the first Empire. Kahless later used the Sword to skin the serpent of Xol, to harvest his father's field, and to carve a statue of his beloved, the Lady Lukara.
After Kahless' death, the Sword became a revered object among the Klingon people. The Sword was wrapped in a special cloth, the Shroud of the Sword, that was also a revered object. However, both the Sword and the Shroud were stolen about five hundred years later by the Hur'q, during their invasion and plundering of Qo'noS.
I scanned the weapon before picking it up as it might be booby trapped, or alarmed, but it wasn't. I considered the possibility that the sword might hold some sort of mystical power over those who touched it, as the existence of creatures like the Pah'Wraiths suggested that some supernatural power could exist in this universe and be imbued in objects, but I had no idea how I'd test for that and the sword's effects on Kor and Wolf had been psychological, not metaphysical, so I decided not to worry about it.
"Guess I could sell it on E-Bay," I joked to myself.
Well, they didn't have E-Bay anymore, but I could auction it. The Klingons might take great offense to that, though, so maybe I could just put it up on display in my office? Unfortunately, if anyone realized what it actually was someone would steal it, or the Klingons would demand it.
I quickly decided to just hold on to it and store it securely back at my island fortress. One day it could come in handy, perhaps by using it to support a Klingon leader whom I approved of. Maybe I would give it Worf just to see what he did with it. Nah. That guy didn't even say thank you to me after doing him a favor.
For a moment I wondered what the Hur'q actually wanted with this sword. Had they intended to use it to insult the Klingons, or to anger them, or to use it as bait in a trap? Who could guess? The Collectors were really odd. Maybe it was simply to destabilize and demoralize the Empire, which I think was the feared outcome in the episode in which Worf found the sword and later got rid of it. That was not one of my favorite episodes so my memory of it was shoddy at best.
Unfortunately, I couldn't even be sure that this thing was what they wanted when they came here. Who knows, maybe they wanted one of the other Klingon relics here? There were plenty of bits and pieces of pottery and statues scattered around. Hell, they might even have been looking in the wrong place! Or there could be some secret stash of technology in a secret room.
Perhaps why they came really didn't matter, but the Collector Cruiser had come here for a reason, and if the Hur'q possibly wanted this sword that badly they'd send more troops to look for it. Which meant that I should get back to my ship as soon as possible and take this sword far away, and all this other junk too. Thankfully I'd upped my looting game and had dozens of small stick on transporter tags, which were essentially stickers with a unique isotopic signature that the transporter could lock onto easily.
In reality I cared far more for the weapons and internal power cells of the Collector soldiers I'd just killed than all this other junk. They, at least, had some practical and immediate use to me.
As soon as I got back to the island I'd make the standard set of improvements to them and I'd have plenty of spare power cells for my backup weapons and armor. With all these extra power cells in my possession now I think I was going to treat myself and swap out the Federation power cells on my phaser minigun. With a Collector style power source to supply the energy needed, I'd be able to go full on movie Terminator and spray deadly bolts of energy to my heart's content!
(Line Break)
Hur'q Vessel. Uninhabited System.
"You know, there was nothing actually stopping you from just beaming over," Neela pointed out incredulously over the comm, a bit of humor in her voice.
I wasn't actually onboard the smallish Collector ship that I'd found floating dead in space, at least not in the traditional sense. I was standing on its hull, in the vacuum of space, my boots magnetically locked to the surface. The 'Superman' fists on hips look I was rocking as I giddily looked around the ship and into the void of space wasn't strictly necessary, but it was a proud moment for me. I was testing out my Iron Man suit at the moment and loving it! My version of Tony Stark's most famous creation was more sleek and cool than any space suit, and much better protected.
It was also stuffed to the gills with high tech stuff like the retractable helmet with built in HUD, omni-tool, magnetic boots with impulse thrusters, wrist mounted disrupter weaponry, anti-matter tipped mini-missiles in the shoulders (remember that from the movie?), a suite of built in sensors, personal shield, micro-replicator, and the armor could mimic clothing and change color to help me blend into the background or go full on invisible like a Jem'hadar soldier while shrouding. Future models would no doubt contain more fun toys, or improved tech as I got a hold of more stuff and reverse engineered it, but I'd rushed the construction of this prototype since I would soon have other things I would need to work on, like the redesign of the Flighty Temptress if today's work bore fruit.
"Yeah, I know," I replied, chuckling a bit. "But I wanted to test the new armor as soon as possible and this seemed like the ideal time. As an engineer yourself you know what it's like. That burning desire to see if it all works just like you planned is hard to ignore, especially with something as cool as this. Do you see me right now? I'm freaking standing on the hull of ship in the dark of space! This is badass! I'm a badass!" Cue evil megalomaniacal laughter.
"You're such an adorable child sometimes, you know that Gothic?" Neela snarked right back at me, a smile in her voice.
I moved across the hull until I found a damaged weapon turret. It was a ship mounted anti-proton weapon. These could already be built by the local races (though powering it economically was another story), so I paid it no mind and moved on.
There was already a decent sized hole in the side of the hull, the Enterprise's work I assumed, but part of the reason why I was here involved testing how I'd board ships without using the transporter, so I didn't use the pre-made hole to enter the vessel.
"So why did we need to rush out here so quickly? That attack caused some damage to the station," Neela asked.
I'd grabbed her and brought her out here because she was an engineer, and therefore qualified to aid me if anything went wrong. Having someone at the controls of the Temptress, especially while I was out in space, seemed like a very prudent decision. An alternative to a live person at the controls in the future might be a VI, if that project continued successfully, or a hologram with something like the Voyager EMH's level of sophistication. I could simply give them orders and instructions to move the ship on this course, or transport me, or fire weapons on this target, etc.
"I saw a report on this battle earlier," I responded to one of my Bajoran babes as I cut through the hull of the Collector starship with my anti-proton blade. Even with all its armor it provided little resistance to my badass blade. "These ships have the means to open what are called subspace vortices, which is kind of like hyper-warp to put it in terms you'd understand."
I'd never heard that term before, but I think it conveyed essentially what I was talking about.
"What matters is that these vortices allow a ship to travel about six light years in two minutes were as the max speed of a warp drive is 0.73 light years per hour. So, to do the math, about 180 lightyears per hour, though sustaining that for any length of time is difficult supposedly," I explained to Neela as I entered the Collector ship through the hole I'd just cut in the hull. "This is a fast, but an extremely power intensive method of propulsion, so if I can grab both the drive and the power core off this ship and install them into the Temptress during its refit, we could end up with a ship faster than anything in Starfleet."
The temptress was small enough to use a stable vortex and powerful enough with the Collector power core I was currently stealing, to sustain a vortex. In simple terms I'd have a hyper drive while everyone else was at warp. While that was certainly appealing to me, I would really have preferred to expand the size of the Temptress a great deal more to allow space for more weaponry and other amenities, so in one sense this FTL type was limiting.
At the moment the Temptress could manage 1.796 light years in a day, which was why it took weeks to get anywhere. In the show this hardly mattered as they had plot speed, but being stuck on a ship for weeks at a time is ridiculously boring. With a vortex generator, or a faster version of FTL than standard warp drive, I could make week long trips in less than an hour. I could visit Risa whenever I wanted!
This really was a great opportunity for me. For so long I had had such grand plans, but hadn't had the ability to make them a reality because of a lack of power. For a while I was looking into the possibility of creating my own red matter in order to make the two Collector-style power cells I needed to move forward with my bigger plans, one for the Island and one for the redesigned Flighty Temptress. Now, I was spoiled for choice! Eighteen Collector wrecks, fourteen smaller ships and four large ships, were right in front of me just waiting to be salvaged, though only a handful were in decent shape or still had active power cores.
Unfortunately, as much as I wanted the surviving power cores from the large Collector ships, and though my personal mantra was 'there is no kill quite like overkill,' the Flighty Temptress was just not strong enough to grab those yet. After the redesign, it would be, but not yet. I'd have to get creative to successfully grab at least the two power cores from two of the smaller ships today. Thankfully my scans showed the power cores from even the smaller ships were many times more than I needed for my plans to succeed. My best guess was that the Collectors greatly overpowered these ships in order to ensure the vortex drive actually worked, probably by using a much larger power core than a ship this small would normally get. That was definitely to my benefit and quite a stroke of luck.
"Gothic…how exactly do you plan on getting these pretty large power cores off these ships?" Neela asked, her engineering mindset trying to attack the problem. "We can't exactly beam them out. And even if we can get them out, they're never going to fit in this ship!"
I'd already considered this.
"Don't worry, my dear, I have a plan," I assured my Bajoran babe. "The ship I'm on right now is one of the most intact wrecks out here. As soon as I'm sure this ship is devoid of any surviving Collectors, we're going to tractor it back to Deep Space Nine, though I'm also going to grab another power core from one of the more gutted wrecks of the same size and attach it to this ship's hull for easy towing. Thankfully, the Collectors, just like with their weapons, made the power core modular, so it can be easily removed from another wreck out here."
My plan was met with total silence.
"By the Prophets, are you serious, Gothic? Don't you think you're being a bit too greedy?" Neela asked. "Is the tractor beam even strong enough to tow a ship this size?! And let's assume it works, what is going to happen when we arrive at Bajor with a freaking Collector warship in tow? Do you think that's going to have no consequences? The Federation and the Klingons are not going to like that we stole from their battlefield and they're definitely not going to like you or Bajor having such advanced technology."
"Trust me, Neela. I've already run the calculations on my omni-tool. The tractor beam is military grade; it can handle the strain as long as we don't go over warp 5. The cloaking device is also military grade and actually meant for a much larger ship. With a few modifications and maybe adding some additional power to the emitters, I can extend the cloak over both ships. Then we just need to get it safely into one of the hanger bays on my island."
"I'll believe it when I see it, Gothic."
"Oh ye of little faith! You wound me, my dear!" I joked, though part of me was slightly worried now that maybe I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Ah well, fortune favors the bold.
With Neela pacified for the moment, I moved deeper into the ship I had cut a small hole in. It was about the length of the Enterprise's saucer section, though more of an oval in shape, so therefore not as wide. My omni-tool's sensors quickly located the ship's power core and a floating map with labeled waypoint, including direction and distance to target, was sent to my HUD for me to visually follow. Following the yellow line leading to the waypoint superimposed on my vision, I was directed deeper and deeper into the ship. On my way there, I stepped over dozens of cold Collector corpses with the same level of concern most people would give to stepping over a piece of trash on the pavement. These were the enemies of the alpha quadrant and I wouldn't shed a tear at the death of their entire race. To my great luck, the ship's power core was intact and still producing a truly ridiculous amount of power if my sensors were accurate.
That was one ship down, now I needed to select the smaller ship I only needed the power core from. There were several gutted wrecks out there just floating idly that still had an active power signature. The huge holes in their hulls would make removing the power cores that much easier.
Three hours later I was sitting in the cockpit of the Flighty Temptress traveling under cloak at Warp 5 with a Collector warship and second power core successfully in tow. The words 'I told you so' were on my lips, but I made do with just sending smug looks to my left which Neela was steadfastly ignoring, her engineer's pride slightly bruised perhaps.
I couldn't help feeling giddy at what I'd accomplished today. Not only did I have a ton of Collector tech and dozens of small Collector power cells from the hand weapons that I'd found on both ships I'd boarded, I had two Collector SHIP-class power cores with large artificial singularities at their hearts producing ridiculous amounts of power. This opened up so many options for me; so many impractical or impossible projects I'd cooked up were suddenly possible.
One of those power cores would feed the power needs of the entire island, including its thirsty industrial replicator; the other would go in the Flighty Temptress to power the new design. The cherry on the proverbial sundae were the boarding torpedoes onboard the intact ship I had in tow, torpedoes that I would love to take apart and study. Torpedoes that could bypass shields sounded mighty handy to have around for the conflicts to come, though boarding was the last thing on my mind. A quantum torpedo that bypassed shields would make destroying Collector or Dominion ships so much easier.
Now I just needed to sneak by the station and the ships there and get my salvage/pirate booty onto the island and into one of my hanger bays. My girls had questioned 'why on Bajor' I wanted to build two huge hanger bays under my palace, bays that were a 100x bigger than what I needed for a ship the size of the Flighty Temptress.
Maybe I should start practicing my smuggest 'I told you so face' right now?
(Line Break)
Holographic Design and Fabrication Lab. Gothic's Palace Fortress. Bajor.
I'd done it! The Collector warship and the second power core I'd stolen were safely in my hanger bay and as far as I could tell no one had detected us.
When we'd entered the Bajoran system we'd slowed to quarter impulse and practically crawled the rest of the way to Bajor over the course of many hours. With the cloak extended so much further than normal to cover both ships, there were concerns we might be detected at a higher speed. Luckily, there had been no indications we'd been detected in the form of ships suddenly changing course or changing the intensity of their sensor sweeps. With my command codes I'd even hooked into the sensor output from the station and they'd detected nothing out of the ordinary either. Thankfully, the Enterprise hadn't been in system at the time, otherwise I had a feeling that they, of all people, might have realized something was up.
I leaned back in my comfortable chair and couldn't help the smile that bloomed on my face. What should I do now? Well, what should I do first? I couldn't even ask for Neela's opinion since she was busy making the same modifications to that loose ship power core that I'd made to the Collector power cells in their hand weapons. Once she was done, she was planning on swapping out the Federation reactor that powered these underground levels with the new power core. Again, the Collectors had cut corners on materials and the overall quality of the construction. With better materials, stricter build tolerances, and a more efficient design I'd found a while back in that database the Collectors had stolen from that advanced race, simulations indicated that that already overpowered ship power core would see a 50% increase in standard output. Put another way, I could power a dozen Enterprises with this power core alone. Now that was power. Once I had my designs for the new Flighty Temptress ready, my industrial replicator was going to be running 26 hours a day to produce materials. The whole idea kind of reminded me of that one episode in Voyager where the Delta Flyer was designed and built.
Actually, thinking of that power core design I'd found in that database the Collectors had stolen from that advanced race made me wonder yet again. At the time, I had been ultra focused first on searching for hints of red matter and then how to create an artificial singularity, but that database had a very advanced race's complete database. What other advanced technologies might it have? And could it be used in the Temptress' new design?
"Scarlett, please load that database the Collector's stole, the one that I found the power cell design in. Display the file directory holographically with brief summaries of the contents," I ordered aloud.
"Please stand by. Loading complete," Scarlett's sexy voice informed me, moments before the directory was displayed in front of me.
With a few hand gestures in mid-air, I started looking through the files, hoping to find a technical database for any of this race's more advanced ships, which should contain a large collection of technologies all in one place. Opening up one file, I saw an untranslated word I immediately recognized, one that made my mouth dry and my eyes open wide. The word was the name of the race that this database belonged to, "Husnock."
That was a raced mentioned only in only episode from one of my favorite TNG episodes, featuring a destroyed colony and only two survivors. Picard eventually learned the truth, that a violent race had come and destroyed the colony and in the process had killed the human wife of a Douwd, an immortal being with vast cosmic-level powers. Holding her broken body, and in a moment of insanity that ultra powerful being had not only wiped out the invaders, but the entire Husnock race, everywhere, throughout the galaxy. Fifty billion of that race died instantly with just a thought. As this was one of my favorite episodes, I remembered the words this being used to described the Husnock, saying that they were "beings of hideous intelligence, knowing only aggression and destruction." (See 'The Survivors')
This database came from the Husnock, but from a dimension probably further along in the timeline than this one, where a God-like being hadn't wiped them out. While I certainly wouldn't want to meet them in person, this was a complete database from an ultra war-like race and war had a way of spurring crazy innovation. Since my plan was to turn the Flighty Temptress into a warship capable of surviving against the Collectors and the Dominion, having a database from such a race was akin to winning the lottery jackpot.
With a much greater context with which to understand this database, I instructed Scarlett to search through the database for this race's most advanced warship and to find any and all corresponding technologies involved in its design. An hour later, she found it.
"Scarlett, display an image of this warship, put the Enterprise D side-by-side for scale. Include by its side a list of all included systems and a brief description of their functionality and capabilities."
With that command a truly monstrous ship appeared next to the Enterprise D, at least 10x larger than that of the galaxy class ship. I turned to the list of systems in this warship and read the brief descriptions in shock. Yep, there was the power core design I'd taken inspiration from, just scaled up massively for this huge ship, but that wasn't the only advanced system that had me quivering in excitement.
If I hadn't watched all five series of Star Trek, where the Enterprise and Voyager had encountered more advanced races and technology, none of this would likely have made any sense, but I had. On the list of systems was an ingenious design for shields set up to emit in a reinforced lattice structure, almost like a crystal, whereas modern shields were essentially just a rather simple bubble of energy. These shields were shaped with intent, like the overlapping armored scales of a serpent, but made with energy.
This ship also had a thick layer of ablative armor should the shields be penetrated, but nothing like any alpha quadrant race possessed. Somehow it could refract and dissipate directed energy. A torpedo would still do damage, but phasers or disrupters or any directed energy weapon type would be much less effective. As sensors were essentially directed energy of a type, even with shields down the armor had the side benefit of making internal scans impossible.
The computer architecture was also advanced, but actually not as much as you'd think. Yes, it was more advanced than the Federation, but not as much as those systems more directly related to waging war. It even used bio-neural circuitry, which Voyager also had, but this seemed like a much more mature version of that same technology. It'd still be useful to upgrade my systems.
This ship had much more advanced transporters and sensors too. The transporters were somewhat similar to the principles I'd already learned about, each race adding their own slight twist onto this frequently invented technology, but these transporters were far more sophisticated in that they could beam through much more interference and at far longer ranges. If memory served, the Dominion had transporters that could work over 3 light years with a transponder. (See 'Dominion') This transporter system could reach 5 light years and cut through weaker shields altogether. With this transporter system I could beam from DS9 to my home on Bajor instantly. No longer would I need to travel for five hours at impulse to get from the station to Bajor. It also allowed much larger things to be transported. This certainly wouldn't let me transport a ship the size of Voyager like the Voth race did in that episode of Voyager, but a runabout sized vessel was doable with enough power.
Their sensors were much more sensitive and had a very long range. If I was reading this description right, the long-range sensors could reach over 100 light years, though the Husnock favored a network of cloaked sensor buoys which could communicate through some kind of quantum-entanglement based communication network. If I understood this correctly, with this communication system you could be three galaxies over and it would still work instantly. Distance didn't matter. That was crazy.
Like another race of conquerors, the Klingons, the Husnock used cloaking technology too, though theirs operated on a slightly different principle. Like the Voth race as seen in Voyager, their cloaking tech pushed their ships slightly out of phase. It wouldn't allow the ship to pass through matter like that one episode in TNG, but it would make the ship very, very hard to detect. The cloaking device on my ship wasn't compatible with this tech, but I'm sure I could find another use for it elsewhere, maybe on the Island somewhere.
Their weapons were many; which was expected for such a war-like race. Unlike the Federation and other races of the Alpha quadrant who only used two primary weapon systems, like phasers and torpedoes, the Husnock obviously believed in having a bit more variety. Their primary weapon was a directed energy weapon, which still used the underlying principles that the warship in that TNG episode did. That ship used jacketed streams of positrons and antiprotons as an energy weapon. That made no sense to me, since everyone knew that anti-protons were much less effective on shields than armor, but somehow it worked. That episode proved it when they took down the Enterprise's shields with one shot, though part of that might have been the God-like entity's work.
I suspected the mix of positrons and anti-protons somehow had an effect on shields, perhaps by attacking more of the shield bubble at once, rather than only one specific point, which would result in the shields being drained much quicker. Imagine a very thick pane of glass as a shield. Striking a single big hammer against that glass was like a single phaser strike. It'd take many hits in the same place to break through, and if the pane of glass is moving erratically, like a ship in combat, it's going to be near impossible to strike that same spot and do it close enough in time to the first strike to make the damage cumulative. If my guess was right, this weapon worked like you were striking the glass pane with that same big hammer, but the impact spread, simulating hundreds of hammer strikes along the entire pane of glass, weakening it as a whole. Like throwing a rock in a still pond and the ripples spread. Even unshielded ships would be devastated by this weapon since the anti-protons were present. It was an intriguing idea and I couldn't wait to test out how effective it'd be in simulations.
The other weapons were a bit more understandable and actually reminiscent of other weapons I'd seen before.
The first were this ship's torpedoes. These weapons seemed to be quite similar to what I knew of Federation quantum torpedoes. They flew faster, further, and had a bit more of an explosive yield, but they were very similar. If I could add this Collector anti-shield tech, they'd be even more deadly.
The next weapon was possibly meant exclusively for point defense against incoming torpedoes or as an anti-fighter weapon. It actually reminded me of a Star Wars blaster weapon, though in this case it was a powerful phaser weapon capable of reaching a decent distance around the ship. On the Husnock warship there were dozens of these turrets with auto targeting capabilities and a fire rate of 1500 phaser pulses per minute. With that many discreet shots, an incoming torpedo or fighter would be hard pressed to reach the ship intact or without damage.
The final weapon was again similar to another weapon system I was familiar with. In an episode of Voyager, the crew encountered a Cardassian self-guided missile that Torres had had a big hand in reprogramming after it failed to destroy a Maquis base (see 'Cardassian ATR-4107'). That weapon had something called a 'Thoron shock emitter' which released some kind of omni-directional plasma wave that could vaporize small ships and fighters and torpedoes in its blast range. This Husnock warship had something similar, but more powerful and with a larger range. They'd obviously encountered some race that used thousands of small ships to do combat, like that race that appeared in Voyager and nearly destroyed the ship.
I wanted all of these systems on the new Flighty Temptress. The final two systems on this ship were the real treasures though, particle synthesis based replication/holography and a quantum slipstream drive. Again, if I hadn't watched the Voyager series, I would have no context to understand what these things actually were. In an episode of Voyager (see 'Hope and Fear') Janeway and her crew had encountered an alien who tried to deceive them by sending them a supposedly Federation designed ship which used a quantum slipstream drive. This alien, Arturis, was of a race with an instinctive ability to understand languages and this race had been resisting the Borg for centuries. Desiring revenge for Voyager assisting the Borg to win their war with Species 8472, he had come up with this elaborate deception hoping the Voyager crew would abandon their ship. He used particle synthesis to make his ship look like a Federation designed ship called the USS Dauntless.
The coincidences kept piling up here because the Dauntless was one of the coolest looking ships to ever appear in any of the shows, in my opinion, looking organic and sleek and like it was moving at warp even when standing completely still. Arturis had done an amazing job designing that ship and had obviously helped inspire the Federation in the future because it even appeared in the 26th century at the Battle of Procyon V, where the Federation defeated the Sphere-Builders, which Captain Archer got to witness in the show Enterprise. The Dauntless had been able to travel 300 light years per hour and the Husnock ship was comparable. Husnock, like Arturis' race, had long ago figured out how to deal with the complexities of that kind of travel, including determining the phase variance of the subspace tunnel which allowed that kind of speed. An inability to determine the phase variance quick enough had led to the destruction of Voyager in an alternate timeline. With a quantum slipstream drive of this design I didn't have to worry about keeping the size of the ship down.
Particle synthesis was another answer to a problem I didn't even know I had. The way it had been explained in the shows and various novels was that it worked by exploiting, and altering, virtual particles on a quantum level. As the basis for a replicator, that meant a much wider range of materials could be replicated, materials which would be impossible for traditional replication to make. In combination with holography, particle synthesis meant the creation of 'real' elements that could be disposed of quickly, in conjunction with the illusions of traditional holography. This made the illusion much, much harder to detect since 'real' elements were mixed with the illusions.
The best part was that modern replication technology wasn't so terribly different from particle synthesis technology. The underlying software was included in this database and could be easily adapted. With a software upgrade and several new parts, my industrial replicator could be modified to use those new principles.
For a while now I'd wondered how I was going to redesign and actually build the new Flighty Temptress. I already had an industrial replicator to produce a lot of the materials I'd need, though I lacked the necessary power to supply it. I even had all the money I needed to buy those materials that I couldn't replicate before. Unfortunately, I didn't have the capacity or manpower to do it on my own, as much as I wanted to. I'd have to hire a shipyard to build it, somewhere outside the Federation preferably. Building a large advanced warship with a lot of advanced technology the alpha quadrant didn't have would be a disaster waiting to happen, on multiple levels, assuming it was even possible with the threat of the Collectors on everyone's mind, and I wasn't going to be giving away any of my secrets. Having someone else build my ship meant those plans could be gotten, systems sabotaged, or counter measures developed, etc.
Now though, I had two powerful Collector power cores and the ability to use particle synthesis based replication. An idle idea I'd had back in my old life watching the shows might be the answer to my ship problem. Again, I can't tell you just how valuable it was that I'd seen all of the Star Trek series as a fan. As a fan, having seen all of the series and thinking deeply on what it could mean, I had a rich tapestry to study and be inspired by, from many different time periods. Taken as a whole I could make connections others couldn't and get ideas from that rich tapestry to help me, even beyond just having knowledge of future events. Sometimes the knowledge of past events in the Star Trek universe could be just as valuable, like an episode of Enterprise in which Captain Jonathon Archer and crew, confronted with the need for extensive repairs they couldn't do away from Earth, encountered an automated repair station (See "Automated Repair Station"). That station was a marvel of design and engineering and had completed the repairs on the Enterprise in 34 hours when it would have taken 3 or more months back on Earth. Of course it had also stolen a crew member to add to its processing power, but it was still impressive.
The two repair births could each be collapsed into a small cylinder, but could also expand to encompass and surround a starship the size of the Enterprise. Using multiple 'arms' equipped with advanced in-built replication technology, the ship was repaired quickly and to even better standards than Starfleet itself could after the station had used the ship's design specs to direct the work. Luckily for me, the Enterprise had taken many deep scans of the station, both by the ship and internally as the episode progressed.
"Scarlett, interface with Earth and Starfleet's historical archives. Retrieve any and all information, including logs and scans of the original Enterprise, registry NX-01, captained by Jonathon Archer. Use my clearance level as an allied general if any files are classified, especially any records pertaining to the automated repair station that was used to repair the Enterprise's saucer section. Also purchase the holonovel based on that Enterprise's mission and charge to my personal account using Federation credits," I ordered aloud.
"Understood. Information downloaded. Holonovel purchased," Scarlett offered in response. Subspace communications interlinks were incredibly fast for communications.
"Display the holoimage of the repair station from the holonovel alongside design schematics derived from all sensor readings taken during the mission."
"Extrapolation complete. Image is displayed," she answered after a few minutes. The holoimage of the station was now rotating in mid-air above my console and was exactly as I remembered it.
Wow, whoever wrote that holonovel must have used the sensor reading from the Enterprise because it was exactly like I saw in the show. In the day and a half of repair T'Pol had taken many intensive scans of the station and I had everything I needed. That station was the key to building the new Flighty Temptress. Sure, this thing could repair a ship, but I could see it being so much more, like building a ship from scratch. Two hundred years ago the technology of this station was so far beyond Earth and the Enterprise it wasn't even funny. Now, though, computer architecture had come a long way and replication was a well known technology.
With one of my new power cores feeding the Fortress' power grid and with my industrial replicator using particle synthesis technology, I could easily build one of these berths in my lower hanger. If I included an anti-gravity structure in the berth's ribs, it could float anything inside the field for easier construction, like a ship. If I equipped the arms with the new replicators whole sections could be replicated once I input the new design of the Temptress. The best part was that it was all automated! Once I input the full design I could set it to run and let it start the construction process. Any issues or problems that arose could hopefully be worked out over subspace with remote commands sent from DS9 to the Island, though if I installed a Husnock transporter system, I could simply beam back to handle the issue.
I still needed to finalize the ship design I'd been working off and on for months now, which was going to be an undertaking, otherwise the ship couldn't be built. The new capabilities the Husnock database offered needed to be integrated into that design as well and that would take time and effort. It'd be a labor of love, though.
My mind made up, I asked Neela to come to the lab. My list of priorities was clear. First, modify the two power cores I'd stolen to the more efficient and better constructed Husnock design. Second, modify the island's industrial replicator to allow for particle synthesis based replication. Third, build one of the automated repair station berths that the original Enterprise had encountered, which I was going to rename to the 'auto repair and construction yard.' Fourth, finalize the new design for the Flighty Temptress and begin construction. Fifth, install a Husnock style transporter on the island.
There was a lot of work to be done, so I was going to need all my girls with me to help. As soon as I spoke with Neela, I was going to comm Sisko and ask for Ro Laren, Nerys, Neela and even Dax to be assigned to me for a week or two to help me on the Island. Since Dax was a member of Starfleet and therefore not under my official command, I might need to offer Sisko a favor to get her assigned to me, but it would be worth it. With the war with the Collectors heating up, this wasn't just a vanity project, the additional firepower and capabilities this ship would give Bajor could mean the difference between life and death.
It was also incredibly exciting and cool and would make me even more of a badass, but I'd leave that out when talking to Sisko.