Joe Lawyer's Co-Author's Note:
The time has come, your anticipation fulfilled, the new and improved Flighty Temptress is here! Or is it? Keep reading and leave a review damn it! :-)
For those of you like me, who enjoy having a picture available to match with the words, there are a few sources I'd recommend you check out in order to visualize the new FT. First, do a google image search for USS Dauntless and USS Dauntless Blueprints for multiple images of the ship from different perspectives. Then I'd suggest you check out a YouTube channel/author/whatever called "Trekyards" and watch episodes 310 and 76, both of which focus on the Dauntless. Episode 310 even compares the ship's size to recognizable ships like Voyager and the Defiant, which I thought was really useful. The only major difference between the canon Dauntless that appeared in Voyager and our FT, is a much larger trailing shaft to accommodate a shuttle bay and doors and two cargo bays with each possessing a hidden bay door leading to space. A ship built for combat needs shuttles and cargo bays for emergency supplies! Now enjoy the chapter!
Augment Gothic
Part 28
Bridge, Flighty Temptress. Hanger Bay. Gothic's Palace Fortress. Bajor.
"So, in short, this ship isn't going anywhere," I summarized, with a frown on my face.
My Chief Engineer, B'Elanna Torres, had just spent the last half an hour providing me an in-depth explanation as to why the new and improved Flighty Temptress, whose construction had been completed exactly on-time, just didn't work as it was supposed to, well, at least with regard to the quantum slipstream drive. I really shouldn't have been surprised. Looking back, perhaps I'd gone a tiny bit overboard during the design phase.
It wasn't even an energy generation issue, the main power core and the secondary power systems produced a truly ridiculous amount of power that I could never hope to overtax, even with all weapons firing simultaneously for an hour. It wasn't even that that the different technologies, a mix of Federation, Collector, and Husnock, were incompatible either. Mainly it was that the computer system simply couldn't supply the sheer amount of processing power required to fly the ship at slipstream speeds.
"Oh, it will fly, don't misunderstand me; you could fly circles and barrel roll and flip side-to-side around any ship in the quadrant, especially with the ridiculous number of inertial dampers and compensators you included! You did an amazing job designing this ship and meshing together some incredibly advanced technologies," Torres corrected quickly, praising my work. "It will fight like a monster too, it will even go to a ridiculous warp factor of 9.95 easily and stay there practically indefinitely with your power systems, but there's no computer in the entire Federation that can handle this ship if you want to use its slipstream drive. There are just too many real-time calculations for any computer to keep up with. Even with these new gel packs, which are simply amazing by the way-" she gushed.
"Explain that," I interrupted, obviously still not fully understanding the problem.
"From what I've learned from the materials you've given me and what I've been able to figure out on my own, the slipstream drive essentially routes energy through the main deflector, which focuses a quantum field like a sharp knife, allowing the ship to penetrate the quantum barrier from real space. Once you're in the slipstream, though, the phase variance of the quantum field needs to be constantly adjusted or the slipstream will collapse violently. The faster you go, the faster the calculations need to be made," she explained, a half smile on her face and a thoughtful look in her eyes as the engineering nerd in her was still in awe of this technology. "The funny thing about this technology is that the speed you achieve in the slipstream isn't really so much about throwing power at it-though that's partly true, the more power available to the thrusters and deflector the faster you'll go in the slipstream-but with that increased speed comes the need to make those phase variance calculations that much quicker, or you die, which requires a ridiculous amount of processing power."
So the computer was too dumb for the ship's slipstream drive… but how was that possible? I took the drive and the advanced computer design from a real Husnock vessel. After a minute or two of thought, I realized my error and it was a big one. The Husnock ship I grabbed those designs from had been a vessel 10x larger than the Enterprise, which similarly had a computer core commensurate with its size. When I had scaled down the computer to fit my much smaller starship, but not the slipstream drive, since it was a rather small system compared to the rest of the ship, I had not taken into account that a computer core that large had been needed not just to run a ship that large, but to complete the incredibly processor intensive calculations necessary for slipstream travel at this drive's top speed. I had scaled the computer core down to a laptop, because of size limitations on a small ship, but I needed a fully tricked out gaming desktop or even mainframe.
The question is, how did Voyager even manage to maintain its brief flights at slipstream speeds if their computer was so inferior to my own? It couldn't just be plot armor, could it? I suppose I'd never know for sure, but if I had to guess, I would guess that Arturis' people, a species biologically gifted with language, including computational languages, had developed some method or formula of far more efficiently calculating the phase variance of the slipstream tunnel and Voyager had benefited from that innovation without even realizing it, thus their inferior computer was powerful enough to handle it. The Husnock likely never came up with that more efficient method of calculating the phase variance and simply threw more power and a bigger computer with greater processing power to resolve the issue. Since I was using their designs, I had the same problem to overcome now.
"We need a better computer then," I spoke out loud. "Something more advanced."
It wouldn't be that simple if her shaking head and sigh were anything to go by.
"It's not so much that we need a computer core more advanced. I've studied this computer core closely; its alien architecture is 50 years or more more advanced than anything the Federation has or even conceived of, it just needs to be bigger, in order to handle the intensive processing needed for this ship's speeds at slipstream. Starfleet uses the most advanced computers that credits can buy and this ship's computer core makes them all look like antiquated trash, it's just that it has a bigger job to do, in a shorter span of time, than its computational power can handle at slipstream speeds," the half Klingon explained. Her defending the capabilities and good reputation of my ship made me a laugh a little on the inside; she obviously considered the ship her baby now, and like a proud mama bear no one was going to cast aspersions on her baby, not even me, her owner, designer, and captain.
"The problem is we can't scale the computer core up. The ship is only so big, even with the extra space you wisely incorporated for future upgrades or new systems. Sure, there are older races out there, with better technology in smaller sizes, but they wouldn't sell or trade with us any more than we would with a race centuries behind us in development. Even in those rare cases where they don't have something like the Prime Directive, we just don't have anything that they would want in trade."
The Dominion might, and there were ultra advanced races like the Voth in the Delta Quadrant, but they were far away and were unlikely to hand over their tech no matter what I could give them in return. Besides why poke those sleeping dragons? Best to remain unknown to them altogether lest you be eaten.
"The bottom line is that while we could probably build a larger, more powerful computer with your replication and construction technology to handle the slipstream calculations, it just wouldn't fit inside the ship."
When I had built the ship, I had used the design philosophy the U.S. Navy from my time period used with their aircraft carriers, huge and incredibly expensive ships meant to be in service for decades, meaning adding about 50% extra space in key areas to allow for future upgrades or new systems. I had never anticipated needing to scale up the computer core this much, though, but perhaps there was a simpler solution to this problem.
"We might not be able to scale up the main computer core enough to do the job and still fit it inside, but I did build in extra space throughout the ship for upgrades. What about a series of smaller computers, distributed throughout the ship, that can take the processing burden from specific systems away from the main computer core when traveling at slipstream and thus free up that processing power for phase variance calculations?" I suggested to the engineer. "You know, like a computer meant for the shields, for the weapons, for the holodecks, for life support, and so on."
B'Elanna gave it some thought, looking intrigued at the unconventional idea.
"We already have a secondary computer to handle communications, life support and a few other minor but vital systems, in an emergency backup capacity only," she explained softly, deep in thought. "But what you're talking about is taking that a step further and having computers built for specialized roles. Since the main computer core only needs the extra processing power at slipstream speeds, we could network the main computer core and secondary computer cores together to buttress each other. That might result in a significant increase in capacity when not in slipstream…" she said, trailing off, obviously thinking about what simulations she'd need to run to see if that were true. "It's an intriguing idea and might just work, but we still can't just replicate these secondary computer cores even with your advanced replication technology. There are several rare and exotic materials involved in their construction that still can't be replicated and I'm pretty sure we exhausted the entire supply you had on-hand here building the main computer core and other ship systems."
Having one big computer core to handle everything always seemed like a huge weakness to me, even if there were some secondary cores to handle some vital systems. Life support being handled by a secondary computer was always smart and something the Federation already did; meaning if the main computer went down for whatever reason, or was stolen like that one Voyager episode, you wouldn't suffocate or freeze to death before you could repair the main computer.
"Your plan could be a solution, though I'll have to run some simulations to confirm," she said after a while. "Assuming it checks out, I could beam them into place, install them and network them together without having that strange construction yard of yours take the ship apart again, but I can't see it being cheap. You will need a lot of rare and exotic materials to build them even with your replication technology."
That could be a problem and would likely take a good bit of time to source all the needed materials. Building the new Flighty Temptress had exhausted my supply of many non-replicable materials and these weren't materials all that easy to acquire in the first place, especially as they needed an extremely high degree of purity and refinement and thus were highly restricted. The Collector attacks had also affected the supply in the alpha quadrant as every power and independent planet reacted to the incursions.
"What if I bought these secondary computer cores from the Federation instead of just procuring the non-replicable materials? Could they then be upgraded using the alien computer technology?" I asked. That might save me quite a bit of time and money, especially since I already had a lot of Federation credits. The Federation's inexplicable sluggishness to prepare for war, for once, was something I could take advantage of.
"I should be able to upgrade them using the main computer core as a guide, but we'd need at least five top of the line computers, as in the best the Federation can supply for a ship maybe a class or two below yours in size since these won't be the main computer core for your ship. Five computer cores ordered from Mars would take a lot of credits even if we can deal with the shipping."
Most heavy industry was done on Mars these days, which was why Starfleet kept its premier shipyard there. You could buy restricted technology from Mars, like advanced computer cores, assuming you had a lot of credits, but you had to be at least allied with the Federation like Bajor was, otherwise the selection was limited to obsolete technology. And they would never sell weapons to a non-member world, no matter how much you paid. Sure, the Federation liked to think it was above such base commerce with aliens, but in reality they indulged in vigorous trade just like anyone else and needed to in order to acquire the many things it needed.
"We'll have to make the purchase part of a much larger order for the Bajoran militia," I mused. "Maybe get some stuff for the station and the long anticipated upgrade of Bajor's Cardassian freighter defense force, which we've needed to do for a while now. Hopefully it will look like it's all part of my day job and in direct response to the recent Collector attack on the station; the timing will help there. With the Collector attack fresh in everyone's mind I should be able to justify it, though I'll have to loan Bajor the money for now."
That was how militaries hid their secret procurement in my day, or so I assumed; you hid what you didn't want anyone to see tucked in with a bunch of other stuff that could be important but otherwise looked ordinary and routine.
"That would have to be a relatively large order," Ro Laren said from over on the other side of the bridge. "Can you afford it?"
I brought up my VIs Emma and Scarlett in order to find out, slutty Emma in her Hogwarts outfit and Emma in her Black Widow leather cat suit holographically appeared in the middle of the bridge.
"We're not business oriented VIs," Scarlett pointed out. "It's not as easy as seeing if the account balance is high enough. You have dozens of daily and highly variable influxes and outfluxes of money due to several different ventures and complex investments, most notably with the omnitool manufacture and distribution ramp up. I was created to be the avatar for the original Flighty Temptress and Emma runs the Palace Fortress on Bajor, and while we do have limited learning abilities this is beyond us."
Slutty Emma nodded in agreement.
"I'm more concerned with our lack of long range sensor data," Scarlett said. As the VI of my warship she was far more militaristic than my other VIs. "We need to be worrying about the Hur'q attacks; we need to find the source of them and shut them down before they can attack us or Bajor."
A valid concern, however without a proper working starship available to me I couldn't go anywhere fast, so it was all moot, which I explained to the VI while reminding myself that while they seemed very life-like, they were in fact simply a more interactive means of interfacing with the computer systems at the Fortress and on this ship with a greater ability to carry out ongoing tasks I assigned without constant direction and input. Scarlett was part of both the primary and secondary computer systems on this ship so her efforts were already divided. As for Emma, she was busy running the fortress and its many recently upgraded systems, especially the long-range Husnock style sensors as well as collecting and collating data from many different sources so that she could update my galaxy map. So far she had been doing an excellent job of it, better than I could have hoped for, though that might be because of the huge computer core available to her on the island. There had been no lack of space there so I had gone a bit overboard when I got the Husnock computer designs.
That reminded me, if I was not going to make the time to hire real people to maintain my palace fortress and grounds, which was a huge security risk if I ever heard one, then I needed to install some emitters in the palace and on the grounds and create some holo-servants and gardeners and shit to take care of the place. The holo-engineer designs were robust enough to be copied and retasked with a job as simple as gardening and cleaning of the palace. A holo-chef to make meals sounded like a worthwhile project too as a matter of fact. Once the holo-emitters were in place, I could even use them for security.
My mind was all over the place these days coming up with new projects!
"While it would be good to know where the Hur'q are, I am not here to defend the galaxy from them," I reminded everyone. "I'm having a hard enough time looking after just Bajor, DS9, and myself."
I spent a moment thinking about my options. I was going to need more money and soon, even with my supply of credits, which meant selling more of my inventions to the quadrant, possibly through Grand Nagus Zek again. While on that subject…
"Laren come here," I ordered, after using my armor systems to replicate a device I'd been working on for a while now.
She did as ordered and didn't even move when I jabbed her with a baton, the thin fabric of her uniform offering no protection from the device. The energy release lit up her skin and clothes, but only made her smile lustfully, giggle, and moan in response.
"That looks like a Klingon Pain Stick!" B'Elanna half yelled in alarm, jumping away from me and looking slightly confused after she witnessed Laren's reaction.
Well, that's because it was, in a sense.
"I modified the design," I told the two ladies with a laugh. "Shortened it and made the energy discharge glow blue, rather than red. Unlike the original pain stick, which stimulates the nerve endings to produce agonizing pain, it actually does the opposite and produces pleasure of varying intensity."
Basically, it was a high-tech 24th century sex toy now, or massage tool, depending on how you used it. I had a feeling the Risians would be my biggest customers.
"It does need some extensive testing though..." I started to say with a shit eating grin, looking pointedly at B'Elanna who was blushing bright red and looking away.
"I volunteer!" Ro offered quickly.
No surprise there. And it wasn't just an excuse for me to make an innuendo. It really did need someone willing to test it in order to spot problems and recommend improvements. Before it could be sold widely it would need careful calibration in order to work safely on the members of different races, and not just women either. Bajoran females were just the start. It could easily damage nerve endings if misused, though, so it needed to include some internal sensors to detect the species it was being used on (or the user had to identify their species somehow), a method to adjust the intensity, an ultimate limiter, and an auto-off function if misused. One version of the device was preferable, compared to multiple versions meant for different species.
I'd already tasked the Fortress' three EMH programs to start studying the device and running simulations on its safe usage for most of the known species of the alpha quadrant. Watching three bald Dr. Lewis Zimmerman look-a-likes working on it prompted me to finally make the time to change their physical parameters and personalities, so now both my home and ship had three EMH programs onboard modeled after a young Tricia Helfer from her days on Battlestar Galactica, Margot Robbie from Wolf of Wall Street, and Gal Gadot from Wonder Woman. Of course that series and movies had never been made in this dimension, but Earth's cultural archives did have examples of them in various forms. They were quite easy on the eyes now and had amazing bedside manner after I'd worked my magic. The stink eyes my girls gave me once they'd seen them just made me laugh.
"Anyway, B'Elanna, I'll place the order for the computer cores soon," I said. "In the meantime, start coming up with a plan to efficiently upgrade and connect the new computer cores with the rest of the ship and then prepare the installation locations to save time. Then I want you to start preparing a list of everything you think a well prepared ship that is likely to see combat should have on-hand in terms of spare parts and equipment and emergency supplies. Be paranoid and don't worry about the expense. If it can be replicated, go ahead and replicate it; if there are things that can't be replicated, order them and have them delivered or we can pick it up on Earth. Once everything is ready, feel free to use a Federation style inventory and storage system and store them in the cargo bays. After that, feel free to take some time off. The Fortress has its own full sized holodeck and the island has lovely walking trails, several gorgeous clothing optional beaches, hot springs, and beautiful waterfalls hidden everywhere. Go and enjoy yourself. And if lying on a beach won't hold you for long, ask Emma for access to my preliminary designs entitled 'Delta Flyer Shuttle' and see what you can come up with. I'd like the Temptress to eventually have at least 3 shuttles available at some point, well armed and capable of filling multiple mission roles."
Hearing that made her both smile and look intrigued. Even though she wasn't one of my girls…yet…I knew how to excite her. She had been working incredibly hard to familiarize herself with the ship and prepare it for a shakedown cruise and had been worth every credit I'd paid her. Hiring her had been a fantastic decision.
"Why do I get the feeling that you only want me on that beach so that you can see me in a bikini?" she asked, a smile in her voice.
Actually, I had my mind on other matters, though I was happy to see that she was getting comfortable enough with me to make a joke like that. She'd be gracing my bed in no time!
"If I wanted you, I'd have you," I assured her. "In fact, I could drive you to distraction with just two words."
Her look challenged me to prove it.
"Banana pancakes," I said.
It took her a moment to hear and process this apparent non sequitur, but she got there.
"My grandmother used to make them for me. They always made me happy and smile," she confessed. "How could you possibly know about that?!"
I smiled.
"See, I've driven you to distraction," I told her smugly. "Now you'll be spending all your time trying to figure out how I already know you so well, and before long I'll be all you can think about."
Ro put a comforting hand on the hybrid's shoulder.
"He does stuff like this sometimes," she said. "He knew stuff about me from the moment we met. He's a lot smarter than we are. Just accept it, and if you make him happy you'll get a lot out of it too."
I couldn't help smiling after hearing that. It was nice to have accomplices when it came to screwing with people. Ro Laren's obvious admiration also made me very happy. I'd always take care of my girls.
Within moments people got back to work, or went to take breaks and I was left alone on the bridge of my new ship, my luxurious warship.
It felt pretty fucking luxurious as I lay reclined in my leather Captain's chair, feet up, sitting in the dead center of this large space. While I had been inspired by other Federation bridge designs from the shows, especially Voyager which I pretty much wholesale copied in terms of layout, there were many unique design ideas in this space to make it both beautiful and functional.
My captain's chair, for instance, like every other chair on the ship, was brimming with technology and could be retracted fully into the floor when not in use. It was an extremely comfortable and ergonomic chair, made with a self-molding gel padding system used by the Risians to conform to the user's body for maximum comfort. It was further equipped with a couple of built in displays in each arm rest, a shield generator in the base capable of projecting a small shield bubble around the user, an inertial damper to prevent the user from being tossed around during battle, and a small drink/snack replicator. Each chair on the bridge had the same design actually. An advanced five point harness seat belt system would also automatically deploy and retract during combat or any emergency situation. There were also two chairs on the left and right of the captain's chair that could be deployed assuming I got more crew and needed a position for first officer or a Counselor Troi equivalent, or had guests onboard I suppose.
Like any Star Trek fan, I was quite tired of the old exploding console on the bridge or being thrown around in combat routine, so I had taken several steps to prevent that from ever happening on my ship. The first step was to remove the physical consoles altogether. The bridge was practically a mini-holodeck with the number of hardened holo-emitters buried in the floors, ceilings and walls, practically interference proof using the particle synthesis based holography I'd gotten from the Husnock. Every station, from Conn to Ops, could have a full suite of standard control consoles holographically projected within easy reach and could be customized according to the preferences of the user. Like any full fledged hologram it was as solid as the real thing and would directly control the ship's functions. The second step was to remove the bridge from the ship's main power grid altogether, although obviously the connection to the ship's data network remained in order to allow the consoles to both receive information and direct the ship. Each control position and the emitter system itself was powered by several small Collector power cells I'd taken off the ship I'd stolen. There would be no power feedback and exploding consoles here since the bridge had a completely independent power system and was disconnected from the rest of the ship, even life support and environmental controls were separate and independent.
The layout of the bridge was quite similar to Voyager, with the captain's position in the center, every secondary position oriented around the captain, and the bridge itself and all positions oriented toward the bow (or front) of the ship and the bridge's viewscreen. The pilot's position was solitary and directly in front of and closest to the "viewscreen" facing the bow of the ship, though calling it a viewscreen was doing it a disservice. A large space at the front of the bridge had been set aside for a fully three dimensional holo-projection of whatever the 'holo-viewscreen,' as I was calling it in the privacy of my thoughts, was providing an image of, via the ship's suite of sensors.
My viewscreen was much, much larger than normal, and could be changed to multiple modes, including a tactical view with the Flighty Temptress projected to provide some visual indicator of where the ship was in comparison to whatever else was in the nearby space. If a hail came in from another ship, it'd render the video image 2-dimensionally. There was even an "immersion" mode in which the entire bridge could be plunged into what looked like the depths of space. It would look like there were no walls, or ceiling or floor, but the holographic view would be whatever the ship's sensors saw. I had tried it once and it was disorienting as hell for a group, but pretty damn cool if you were by yourself and very useful in large fleet engagements. Maybe with more exposure it'd be easier to deal with.
On a raised section behind the Captain's position, again exactly like Voyager, on the left and right was an Ops and Tactical control station, where Ensign Kim and Lt. Tuvok on Voyager would work respectively. And on the back wall was an entire bank of control interfaces and monitors. Just like every chair on the bridge they could be put in many different configurations, from standard, to reclining, to a small stool or the user could even stand at their position, or they could be retracted into the floor.
In fact, the chairs were the only "real" elements on the bridge itself. With the chairs retracted and all the consoles deactivated, the entire bridge would appear to be one large empty room. If I was ever boarded I imagine that this would seriously confuse some folks. For added security the chairs and consoles would only deploy for authorized DNA and lifesign readings. Anybody else would find they couldn't deploy the control consoles at all. For convenience though, as the captain, with a command, either verbally or through my synaptic transceiver, I could fully deploy all stations. And in the unlikely event the emitter system was damaged, which would be a hundred times more difficult than destroying a traditional console given the number of emitters, I could still control the entire ship via my synaptic transceiver's connection to the ship's neural interface.
This ship was designed for battle, so the bridge and captain's ready room was on deck 4, at the very center of the ship. It was protected by an incredibly strong independent force field and was fully encased in 3 feet of ablative armor and was the safest place on the ship during combat. Given the strength of my potential enemies, the Collectors and the Dominion, I could only hope it would be enough.
Deciding I'd had enough of those depressing thoughts, I had Emma play some soft Spanish guitar music and set my captain's chair to full recline, and turned on the Risian designed massage function of my chair. Activating the neural interface I immersed myself in the ship's powerful sensors, looking in on what Neela and B'Elanna were up to before examining my island before shooting my presence into orbit and enjoying the beautiful sight of Bajor and its many moons.
Given how many hours Picard must sit in his Captain's chair aboard the Enterprise I had a rather funny idea of inviting him to try out my chair at full recline, while being massaged, and viewing the galaxy through the ship's sensors. A few minutes on the neural interface shouldn't be too painful. It might expose a bit too much of my capabilities, but the look of envy on Picard's face would be priceless!
It was time to get back to work.
"Emma, are you recording all news programs on Bajor?" I asked from the comfortable high tech recliner on my bridge.
I'd created her to gather intel from a variety of sources quadrant-wide, but even I couldn't remember all of what she did. If I could have I wouldn't have needed to create her in the first place.
"Of course," she said.
Good, good.
"Let's go over the news for the past couple of weeks. Assemble all news stories with any official Bajoran government records and reports describing the same incidents, both public and classified sources," I decided. Being a general in the Bajoran Militia had its many perks, like official access into the most secret of databases the planet offered, but my advanced computer core would have had no problem hacking in even if I didn't. Rather ironic considering its other problems.
I was then turning to the replicator at my side.
"Tea, earl grey, hot, with a touch of honey," I ordered, again getting a kick out of the idea of ordering Picard's favorite drink with my own twist.
I'd gotten the great idea of having a small replicator for drinks and snacks right next to my captain's chair from Shinzon (though I think Ops on DS9 had one as well). Transmitting holograms on to other people's ships without having an emitter on that ship was proving to be more problematic, though. I still had no idea how a group of what were basically 23rd century coal miners had managed that technological feat, but chalked it up to some unknown Romulan technology. But compared to the fact that they'd been able to build a super weapon, perhaps it wouldn't have been that difficult.
There was nothing too worrying going on in the news as far as I could see, but once I started digging a little deeper, especially when comparing the news reports to the official government reports, I could tell that the Circle was somewhat active already, working behind the scenes to stir up trouble and somehow redirecting the official government response to allow greater success for their group. I'd have to speak with my counterpart in the planet-side militia, Li Nalas, and see what he knew or had come to suspect. Having a war hero in charge of each half of the militia would hopefully prevent a proper civil war from starting up with the military's help, but the Circle didn't need the militia really, they just needed to foment enough unrest, with the help of their smuggled weapons, that the government fell and the Federation would be forced to pull out.
What definitely caught my eye was a news report that had just been released talking about Vedek Winn going on a tour of Bajor's many temples, including the one on DS9. Now that I would have to prepare for and deal with. Anything involving Winn had long been automatically red flagged by Emma for my attention.
(Line Break)
Promenade. Deep Space Nine.
I smiled with satisfaction. It was amazing what you could do with Trek technology if you were just a little creative about it and were willing to set aside preconceptions. An AI like Data was far too complex even for me to create, but my VI could be just as useful and far less dangerous in the long run. And thanks to my most recent charitable donation of new computers for the station's classroom, which I'd replicated and built on my island on Bajor before having them transported to the station, I now had a spy directly inside the school reporting on everything of note.
As a backup, I was also paying Nog a small sum weekly to report on what happened in the school and around the station, just in case my VI, which didn't have an imagination or intuition, missed something an organic being like Nog would pick up on. Besides, I'd been meaning to expand my spy network for a while now and Nog was well placed to be an agent for me as he had access to the school, was best friends with the station commander's son, and was Quark's nephew who spent a lot of time in the bar and with those ears heard many interesting things.
"Milla," I called aloud, "remember to keep an eye on the school, and do your best to keep tabs on Vedek Winn's movements throughout the station. Record any and all interactions."
Winn was here and had just stepped off the transport from Bajor according to the notification on my omnitool. My new personal VI, who lived, for a lack of a better term, in my modified omni-tool, and was based in appearance on the actress Milla Jovovich, was my most advanced VI to date. She was tasked with monitoring the output of the many sensor arrays I had access to, at the moment that was the station's, but her purview included my island and ship's sensor arrays as well. I had Milla wearing the sexy strap dress the actress wore in the movie Fifth Element. Milla was designed to be a jack of all trades master of none, but her focus would be on systems access and information collection and analysis.
"I will inform you immediately should anything odd take place or of any clandestine meetings, but there are many gaps in the station's sensors," she replied.
She didn't have much of a personality yet, but in time she'd learn to handle the information I needed dealing with in order to run my operations. This would also allow Emma and Scarlett to focus more on their work running the systems on the island and on the ship. Ro handled a lot, but she was only human... well, only Bajoran, and had to sleep sometime.
(Line Break)
Sisko's Office. Deep Space Nine.
"Who died," I asked upon entering the office, as a joke.
The Commander had asked me to come to his office, and as soon as I entered I could tell that something was wrong. Maybe my joke hit a little too close to home?
"Ensign Aquino, actually, one of our engineers," Sisko told me as he handed over a PADD that contained the results of Odo's investigation into the death thus far. "He had a very promising career ahead of him."
Using my augment gifts, I read Odo's report in seconds, which indicated it had all started early in the morning when Chief O'Brien had discovered an interlock tool missing from his personal kit, and later on when Aquino had been registered by the computer as not being onboard the station, yet clearly hadn't left through any conventional means.
Scanning for the tool with the internal sensors (as it used quite a few unique alloys, including tritanium in its construction) had revealed its location within one of the plasma conduits on level twelve.
The molten remains of the tool had been found and mixed in with organic residue. Subsequent DNA analysis had shown it was all that remained of Ensign Aquino. It would've been ruled an accident, however the computer had red flagged plasma disruption in his cellular membranes, indicating that he had been exposed to a directed energy phaser discharge set to kill before he was placed in the conduit.
After reading all this I put the PADD down with a sigh. I'd forgotten about this killing. I simply couldn't keep track of everything, but at least I knew Neela couldn't have done it this time because she hadn't left my island for more than a week now and hadn't used my transporter to return either according to Emma. She was still working on the Temptress with B'Elanna, checking it over for any other problems or mistakes, like the one I'd made with the main computer. Even with the Husnock halo-engineers and maintenance machines helping, it was a long detailed process and the two of them were quickly on their way to becoming best friends, it seems. Given the sheer amount of time they'd spent together and their prodigious engineering skills and love for the work, maybe it was inevitable. I was doing everything I could to encourage it. Neela would undoubtedly boast about my prowess in the bedroom, just like Nerys and Laren had done with her, and that should help quite a bit in my seduction of the beautiful hybrid.
"Any ideas about a motive for this murder?" I asked as more people joined us. "Any current suspects?"
Again, I found myself wondering why exactly I had been called in to participate in this investigation, especially since it wasn't a Bajoran officer killed, but I guess I must have proven myself useful enough in the past that the commander now recognized the value in getting my input. As for my questions, it made sense to get to them later, once everyone was caught up.
"All right, let's start from the beginning. Ensign Aquino goes to repair a power conduit-" Sisko began by saying.
Odo interrupted. "One moment, Commander. I'm not convinced of that."
"But the logs say he went down there," Kira pointed out.
"The logs could have been altered by our killer to cover his tracks," Odo explained. "I've checked the turbolift records the night of the murder. Aquino did take a turbolift to level three, but not to the power conduit where he was found."
"Where did he go then?" Jadzia wondered.
Odo's answer was succinct, "Runabout Pad C," he answered.
"A runabout?" O'Brien asked in astonishment. "What was he doing at a runabout at four in the morning?"
"Apparently, he was getting murdered," Odo replied dryly.
"So we have a missing interlock tool which could grant access to just about every secure system on this station, including a runabout, and a murdered engineer," I murmured. "Well, we don't need Sherlock Homes for this one. At least not yet."
Odo glanced at me.
"Are you suggesting that someone wanted to steal a runabout and Aquino was killed to prevent anyone from learning about it? Perhaps the killer was preparing a means of escape?" he asked.
I grunted.
"Maybe, but wouldn't a Starfleet engineer immediately call security if someone unauthorized was messing about with a runabout?" I asked. "Aren't those things alarmed in case any unauthorized personnel mess with them?"
Sisko sighed.
"He should have called security, yes," the commander answered. "And there are alarms, but they can be bypassed, especially by someone in possession of an interlock tool. Which suggests someone with engineering expertise is behind this. Aquino might have even been helping someone, who then turned on him. We can't rule anything out at this point."
Clearly, he didn't like thinking about that possibility.
"Chief, I want you to go over every square centimeter of that ship," Sisko ordered.
"Bad idea, especially since we're looking for someone with access to engineering and engineering tools, strong engineering skills, as well as detailed knowledge of the layout and function of the station's energy systems," I pointed out. "Or at least it's a bad idea to let the Chief do this unsupervised. Have security supervise the investigation so that no one can accuse the Chief or his people of evidence tampering."
Sisko thought about my suggestion for a moment.
"Agreed. See to it, Constable," Sisko ordered. "As for the rest of you I want eyes and ears open. Find out who did this."
He couldn't actually boss me around, but given that a man under his command had been murdered this wasn't the time to remind him of rank or the chain of command on this station. Besides, I had better things to do then engage in a pointless dick measuring contest.
(Line Break)
School. DS9.
While an adaptive camouflage system alone built into your armor couldn't make you fully invisible, it was pretty good at letting you blend into the background as long as you didn't move about or make any noise, this was even more effective in low light levels. Thankfully, I had something even better, as the phase cloaking technology I'd copied from the Husnock database meant that I was fully invisible and barely tangible. With such a capability, it was beyond easy to surprise the bomber before he could plant the bomb in the school. I was so looking forward to sneaking up on a Jem'Hadar soldier and cutting their head off for the first time. They weren't going to be the only invisible predators around anymore! I obviously hadn't had an opportunity to test it, but my fervent hope was that the advanced Husnock sensor technology I'd built into my armor would be able to detect a Jem'Hadar soldier even while shrouded.
"You know, it took me all of half an hour to figure out who was working for Winn," I told the bomber, after deactivating my phase cloak, but still keeping my personal shield set to maximum and headpiece fully deployed in case this guy decided to go full on suicide bomber and set off his bomb early hoping to take me with him. The two crimson glowing eyes set in fluidic silver, with no other features, must have been unnerving because the guy looked terrified even beyond what you'd expect from getting caught. An armored giant leaning casually against the wall, arms crossed, was probably a scary sight too.
"I just looked at all the personnel files for people in Engineering and found the one person who could be persuaded by Winn into this cowardly action. You are Hotlz Taraf, assuming I'm saying that right, former Bajoran resistance fighter. We've actually met. You were at the rebel camp when I first met Winn during the Occupation. Your family is not a part of her congregation or what anyone would call Orthodox, which is why Odo must not have singled you out for questioning. I suspect you met Winn when she visited your camp and she somehow, someway, won your loyalty, though I suppose it doesn't matter how or why now."
The Bajoran man tried to speak.
"Don't bother denying it," I said casually. "You're holding a bomb in your hand, after all."
His face transformed from panic and astonishment to anger and hate in the span of a heartbeat.
"The Prophets spoke to me! I answered their call to drive you all away from holy Bajor!" he shouted, the fanaticism now clear in his eyes.
The perfect clarity and recall afforded to me by my augment memory remembered seeing him briefly all those years ago in the village. We had never exchanged even a single a word between then and now, but his files had let me figure the rest out. Back then I'd been far more concerned with preventing Neela from falling under Winn's sway to worry about the camp she had been visiting for Prophets' know how long. Looking back now, it was clear that she'd been radicalizing them, gathering sycophantic supporters and followers even then.
"The Prophets wouldn't need the likes of you to plant a bomb to drive us away from Bajor. If they truly wanted us gone, we'd be gone. I've seen what Gods like them can do when they want to," I said as I shook my head, remembering how they had made thousands of Dominion warships just disappear into the ether like it was nothing. "You're just a tool for The Circle, and its true masters. Winn is only part of a much larger group of fools so desperate for power that they don't recognize the familiar monsters pulling their strings from the shadows."
He smirked at me.
"You think you've foiled me?!" he yelled. "You might have stopped me from burning your blasphemous little school into ash, but...
Quicker than the idiot could even seen, I pulled my pistol from my right hip and shot the idiot center mass on heavy stun before putting cuffs on and securing the bomb, rather than listen any further to his fanatical ravings. Odo would have no trouble getting a confession out of this guy, especially with the complete holo-recording my armor had taken from start to finish, but I had a feeling, just like with Neela in the show, that this guy wouldn't turn on Winn. Even with Neela out of Winn's hands the Prophets must want the broad strokes of this to play out like it did in canon, because here we were with just another idiot stepping into the role. There were some pretty significant differences, though, since Kai Opaka was still alive and Vedek Bareil would likely not be coming to the station now.
(Line Break)
Quark's Bar. Deep Space Nine.
Everything had gone as I had hoped. Lacking a convenient idiot to do her dirty work for her then conveniently die, Winn had soon quickly left the station. Which meant no bombing of the school. That clearly must have been part of a larger scheme to get Kai Opaka to come to the station since she was the one Commander Sisko would naturally turn to in order to help calm things down. And if Kai Opaka didn't leave Bajor to reestablish peace on the station, then Vedek Bareil, who Kira likes in the show, would likely have come. So, either way, Winn would have removed a significant rival.
Hotlz Taraf had admitted everything, including the murder of the Starfleet Ensign, and while he had the technical skills to pull off the bombing and to possibly steal a runabout, no one really believed he was the true mastermind behind all of this, but he'd confessed to the crimes and refused to say more. Just like in the show Sisko already suspected Winn of being behind it all, but couldn't prove it.
Why this had all happened was that Kai Opaka was technically a collaborator, at least to some. She'd worked with the Cardassians. She'd done it in order to save lives, of course, but she'd still worked with them, and Winn's rather small but fanatically devoted following was using that to attack her in an attempt to get her out of office as it were and to prop up Winn as the next best choice to replace her.
Still, Kai Opaka was well loved and was largely responsible for holding together the Bajoran people with sheer grit after the Occupation had ended. She was unlikely to be removed conventionally, so Winn had decided to have her killed. She must have been visiting the temples in order to find some issue worth kicking up a fuss over, to draw Opaka away from the planet to a place where she would be more vulnerable. Pretty crude plan overall, but it might have worked if Winn hadn't made the classic villain mistake of assuming that she was smarter than everyone else.
As for the school, I had made a suggestion which left everyone scratching their heads wondering why they'd never thought of it. Apparently, no one had thought of opening a Sunday school, which would allow Bajoran children to get both points of view about the wormhole, secular and religious, without too much hassle. It wasn't exactly a novel idea; it had been used on Earth for a long, long time as a compromise that mostly worked. Hopefully it would work here too. Sisko was again impressed, so I'd likely find myself invited to yet more briefings when difficult situations inevitably popped up.
As for me, I was continuing to work on my 'pleasure stick,' as I was currently calling it until I came up with something better. Someone had rightly pointed out that it might be seen by the Klingons as a rather serious insult to their cultural traditions, which it totally was, so I was going to redesign it so that it didn't so closely resemble the instrument of barbaric torture I had been inspired by, or had a name quite so similar to the original tool. Was 'Bliss Baton' too weird? It had a nice bit of alliteration to it. Pleasure Rod?
I already had ideas about that. I'd shorten them into batons, make them white in color, with a soft, rubberized, low friction bulbous tip so that it could be comfortably placed on the skin and moved without discomfort. The energy discharge would be blue on the skin as well. And it'd be lighter for ease of use. My intent was to sell them both singly and in pairs so that couples could use them as toys for foreplay or as massage tools depending on the settings. It should be simple enough for my EMHs to modify them for a number of species now that I had a few baseline readings from several Bajoran women to work with, which should be good for most humanoid races. The rest of the testing could be done with medical grade simulations by the EMHs. I'll say it again, those programs were horribly underutilized, but I saw how valuable they were. I owned six beautiful doctors who represented the pinnacle of holo-engineering and had the combined medical knowledge of 150 worlds. And they worked for free!
Oh man, I just realized something. This was a sex toy, and it was shaped like a baton, which was pretty phallic like. People inevitably liked to penetrate themselves or others with sex toys, either vaginally or anally, for both men and women. This might require a slight redesign for safety. Ah well, my EMH girls should be able to come up with something.
Once testing (and possible redesign) was complete, my plan was to sell it to someone Quark knew in the porn and sex industry to manufacture and distribute. He was bound to know a few people who could market this product for me. An introduction like that came with a fee, of course, but it'd be well worth it. And on the subject of Quark, he was coming over to my table.
"Hi Quark, what can I help you with?" I asked kindly, but not overly friendly.
While we had business dealings he and I were not strictly friends.
"General," the ferengi answered.
He was looking around nervously now, like he was afraid of being overheard.
"Can I join you for a drink?" he asked.
I looked carefully at the ferengi's eyes and then gestured my acceptance to the empty chair at my table.
"What is it, Quark?" I asked. "I'm a busy man, trying to make us both some profit."
The fact that the mention of mutual profit didn't get his attention was really worrying.
"Uh, I just came to give you a heads up, given what could have happened here recently..." Ah, so he'd already heard about the murder and bombing attempt. Not much happened on this station without Quark learning about it in short order.
Quark bit his lip, and given his sharp teeth that must have been painful.
"Do you know about a group called the Circle?" he whispered.
I nodded slowly.
"Of course you do... uh... well, I happen to have come into some information that they recently acquired a lot of weapons and explosives from off-world," he told me.
On the inside I was swearing, on the outside I appeared calm.
"Oh," I said. "And did you acquire this information from your not so savory business contacts in the criminal underworld?"
He didn't bother to deny it; this was me he was talking to. The criminal contacts he had was the source of most of the information he regularly gave me, for a fee, of course.
"Yes, word is is that they're going to smuggle it onto Bajor by way of the Kressari," he whispered.
I had to check my omni-tool for more information on that race.
"The Kressari are botanical DNA traders," I muttered. "But, as you and I both know, there are always those who break the species mold."
I used my omnitool again and began consulting the station's schedule for upcoming ship arrivals, manipulating the halo-screen projected from my omnitool and flicking through the various lists of information. If the job wasn't too big, you could review the information on the attached screen or holo-project the screen in midair for more space to work with, even then it was mostly preference though. The Starfleet folks had long been used to using that tiny screen on their tricorders so the larger built-in screen on the omnitool was plenty for them.
"And what do you know, there's a Kressari freighter due to arrive on the station in just six hours," I said.
Quark was smiling.
"Those things are going to make us both-"
"Focus Quark," I said as I snapped my fingers in his face as his eyes glazed over at the thought of profit and the half percent commission coming his way. "Do you know where these weapons and explosives are being smuggled to on Bajor?"
"No, not exactly," he admitted.
Of course not. That would be too easy. Thankfully, after selling information to me for a while now, Quark was well aware I wanted to know what information was relatively certain, what was rumor and conjecture, and most importantly, when he just didn't know. All of it could be valuable under different circumstances.
"Find out what you can," I ordered.
Quark cringed.
"Listen, these are dangerous people and I'm not liked much by the Bajorans as it is," he said.
His concern was valid, and he does get attacked in the show if I recalled correctly, but Quark was like a cat and had nine lives.
"Do this for me and I'll give you twice your normal commission on a new product I'm planning on selling soon," I offered.
With a smile on his face now, Quark set aside his fears and bolted from the table to consult his sources. That certainly did the trick. Ferengi could be great business partners; you just needed to know how to motivate them properly.
(Line Break)
Gothic's Palace Fortress. Bajor.
The great thing about having long range transporters that was beyond the capabilities of everyone else was that I could beat any ship going from the station to Bajor by several hours. And since I was officially in-charge of all off-world operations and commanded the Bajoran Defense Fleet, such as it was, I had the unfettered power to have ships searched in Bajoran space with little to no justification at all, like a certain Kressari freighter. Sometimes being a high ranking military officer with next to no oversight and extremely vague limitations was so much fun!
I didn't even need a reason to search the freighter, as the Federation had absolutely no say in this, but I'd come with up with one that involved a tip from a concerned Bajoran citizen worried about tainted crop samples. My thinking and hope was that the Circle would assume I'd been tipped off by someone on Bajor, one of their own, rather than an outsider. That should make them suitably paranoid about traitors in their midst and hopefully that'd limit their operations while they tried to figure out who'd talked. If they turned on each other violently, unfounded accusations thrown all around, even better for me.
Unfortunately, I didn't have high expectations that a search would reveal much. If these aliens were smuggling weapons on this particular run then they wouldn't have docked at DS9 and let their cargo be inspected. But it hardly mattered in the end, the real point of this search was to get a Section 31 tracking and surveillance device onboard the ship, and then let them discover what was going on using one of their cloaked ships, which I was sure they already had in-system monitoring the border given the Cardassians recent attempt to unleash a bio-weapon on Bajor.
"Emma, I want you to scan as much of the planet as you can using the Palace's sensors," I ordered. "Look for explosives and weapons' caches."
"We're going to get a lot of hits with those search parameters," she told me. "The city has large sections still undergoing demolition and rebuilding, which includes the demolishing of unsound structures with explosives and the removal of Cardassian buildings as soon as they can be replaced."
While this was going on I made a mental note to work with my personal VI, modeled after Milla Jovovich, to create a program that monitored my behavior. I wanted to know if I slipped too far into evil overlord territory. Signs to look out for would include the building of super weapons, maniacal laughter and trapdoors appearing in my fortress. Since the Flighty Temptress was kind of like a super weapon, I was not off to a great start. And I arguably had a hidden subterranean lair under my house.
"I'm more interested in explosives and weapons where they aren't supposed to be, like near government buildings, temples and so on," I said. "So do a full scan of the whole planet, with a focus on key government structures and temples. Use the long range sensors on the moon bases for additional telemetry, and don't give me any lip about how we need more, or how good an idea it'd be to build a satellite surveillance and defense net around the planet. I'm working on getting bases in the outer system first."
Even I could only do so much and the amount of money I'd now loaned to the Bajoran government was getting ridiculous. They were good for it, and would even pay it back with interest I was sure, but it'd likely be a decade or more before I saw it paid in full. I consoled myself with the knowledge that without my donations in terms of money and material from my industrial replicator, Bajor would be nowhere near as far in its recovery.
"No unexpected results," Emma told me after a minute of intense planetary scans.
Well, shit. She was right. Oh, there were plenty of readings in unusual places, but I knew these sites and thus so did she. Many of them were hidden stockpiles from the time of the occupation. They were supposed to be there, and were full of weapons and explosives the Resistance had captured during the occupation. They were kept hidden, though, even to this day, in case the spoon heads ever came back. For better or worse, paranoia was now hardcoded into the Bajoran soul by 50 years of violence and brutality and I didn't see that changing anytime soon.
"Okay, what would Picard do," I muttered to myself.
I then supplied myself with an answer.
"He'd scan for something that was unique to Cardassian technology, in case the weapons and explosives were being disguised or hidden as something innocuous."
Then I remembered, beritium, which was a valuable metallic alloy used in the construction of Cardassian skimmers. Nerys' earring was made of diamide-laced beritium, from the wreckage of a skimmer she destroyed in her first battle with the Cardassians. I remembered her telling me that story back when we'd first joined forces.
"Please scan for any beritium signatures," I ordered.
This time there were actually a lot of results.
"Well, well, well, the Bajorans are using a lot of salvaged beritium," I muttered. "Or maybe we're detecting the heavy weapons those skimmers are armed with."
The spoon heads, for all their many faults, did at least know that a properly armed military force needed ground support, which included armored and weaponized vehicles of many kinds. The weapons skimmers could be armed with heavy weapons ranging from modern versions of mortars to rocket launchers. Just the kind of stuff you'd give to a people you wanted to kill each other with. The fact that they were Cardassian weapons wouldn't even raise eyebrows since so much Cardassian weaponry had been stolen during the Occupation and used by the resistance.
By the looks of things The Circle had been quite busy arming themselves with weapons provided secretly by the Cardassians. They had weapon stockpiles in all the major cities, and a big one near the main temple where Opaka herself lived. So, Winn must have a backup plan in place should her planned assassination of Opaka fail, which it did, thanks to yours truly. The Circle would likely kill or arrest the Kai for collaboration, further destabilizing the shaky peace and stability the Bajorans had scraped together after the Cardassians left. Winn would likely whip the terrorists into a religious frenzy with talk of all this being 'the will of the Prophets.'
The worst part of all this was the lack of anything I could ultimately do at this point, other than warn Commander Sisko and Li Nalas and share information between us. I'd sworn to protect Bajor and I couldn't do that in a way that led to me killing Bajorans. I'd have to gather proof that the Cardassians were involved, though hopefully Odo would again do his part to prove Cardassian involvement conclusively.
At the very least I could bring Kai Opaka to my island for safekeeping. That was something. Good luck to any fools trying to get to her there. I could only hope, though, that it wasn't already too late to help her stop the civil war. If anyone could calm things down it would be her.