Augment Gothic - The Forge
Part 2
The Flighty Temptress. Outside of Normal Space. Exact Location Unknown.
"The isodesium is working; environmental controls and most critical systems will be back online soon, but, again, I don't know if we'll get full power back," B'Elanna reported to me over the comm., sounding harried and overworked, but excited about the challenge of getting this great ship back up and running, like a passionate Chief Engineer should.
Finally, a bit of good news. The isodesium had been a lot of trouble to acquire, requiring hours and hours crawling around a mess of starships populated by different aliens races, some I recognized, others I had no clue about. Somehow, though, they had all found a way to work together, shared adversity and the demands of survival being a very strong motivator for cooperation.
The mission had been long and dull actually, when I had expected to be forced to pull some kind of stealthy, video game style assassinations in badass silence. The reality had been far less exciting and I'd pretty much just crept around in a dirty, smelly, and disorganized space junkyard. It hadn't been memorable or cool and due to the need for stealth I hadn't been able to loot anything other than the isodesium we needed. Not that I truly wanted to loot all that much, as the stuff I'd seen over in the junkyard had been decades out of date. I'm sure if I had had time to really look around and conduct active scans I could have probably found some choice stuff, like more of the advanced Vidiian technology we'd already encountered, but scans of that intensity would have almost certainly been detected.
"How long before we have warp drive back?" I asked. "I want to get as far away from this deathtrap as possible."
The dampening field had a ridiculously large area of effect, something far beyond the capabilities of alpha quadrant technology, but it was not endless. If we could escape its range we might find ourselves somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy. If we were still in our galaxy, and dimension, for that matter, we could use the slipstream drive to get home, even if we had to spend weeks doing fifty light year jumps till we fully sorted out how to best use the slipstream drive. While that would certainly be dull, and probably pretty dangerous, it would be better than staying here.
"I might be able to get it up and running again, but I can't guarantee its stability with the constant power problems caused by the Forge's dampening field," she answered. "The isodesium is helping, but it's still going to take several more hours to finish the repairs and line all the power systems and conduits with a layer of isodesium."
This was bad news, while the ship now had some systems working we were still vulnerable to attack, and a short time ago we'd witnessed just what the Forge did when it wanted more raw materials. The Forge had sent out what I was calling 'Harvesters' to gather the desired raw materials from the ships in this place, tearing them apart in the process. I didn't think that my ship was in any state to withstand such an assault.
"T'Maz, what about sensors can we..." I started to say.
"Wait, aren't we-" Neela interrupted to ask.
When I turned my gaze upon her she stopped talking pretty fast. Neela hadn't spoken at all since this most recent adventure started, but I hadn't had time until now to check up on her and see what was going on in her head.
"Go ahead, Neela, what's on your mind?" I asked.
"Well, aren't we going to attack the Forge?" she asked.
Maybe, if we had weapons and the rest of the ship was working as I'd designed it, but we barely had life support at the moment.
"The ship is a wreck; we would struggle to defend ourselves against a concerted attack by the ships also stranded here, much less the Forge itself," I pointed out. "We need to get out of here."
I wasn't the only one with something to say on that particular topic.
"How would we mount such an attack without fully functioning engines and weapons?" T'Maz enquired of the young Bajoran woman. "My simulations suggest a less than 5% chance of success and survival under current conditions. The Forge's defenses will destroy us if we venture too close."
It would be nice if we could just blow up the bad guy base with our uber powerful weapons from a great distance, but it would be a suicide mission to do this the conventional way.
"Even if we didn't attack, they could send another of those Harvester ships," Laren said in concern.
"All the more reason to continue focusing on repairs," T'Maz responded calmly.
I brought up a hologram of this area of space, my powerful mind already running through our best options for survival and/or escape.
"We could use a Trojan Horse," I whispered. "The Harvester ship itself is our best chance to get in."
Everyone looked at me.
"Even if B'Elanna can repair the warp drive itself, and we're not certain that she can, the dampening field's effect might prevent us from going to warp altogether, and leaving here on impulse might take months or years for all we know. That's also assuming we're in our home dimension and galaxy," I reasoned. "However, if we can shut down the dampening field at the source, we should be able to escape easily enough."
Sure, our weapons were offline, but we still had long range transporters, so the ship wouldn't need to get too close in order for me to be beamed out, and I might even find a way to open up a dimensional rift, which I could use to send us all home. I'd considered this plan before, but only now was it coming together in such a way that it didn't look like a suicide mission.
"Gothic, with sensor resolution and range so low, we really don't know what kind of internal defenses that thing might have," Laren warned. "And we don't even know how to fly one of those Harvester ships."
I doubted we would need to pilot those vessels at all, as they seemed to be fully automated and would return automatically to the Forge when its tasks were complete. The real issue was getting onboard without triggering any alarms or internal defenses. Thankfully we had the means to hide life signs and the Harvester ship that was currently eating that Breen ship didn't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere.
"Laren: you, T'Maz and I will go on this mission," I decided. "Suit up and grab what you need."
It was a sign of their respect for me that no one protested my decision and instead went to retrieve their gear and weapons.
Despite how quick my decision seemed, I'd chosen who would be going on this mission with great care. I would need T'Maz's expertise in science matters and Laren had some tactical training as well as combat experience. Plus given my habit of looting alien tech I would need someone to carry an empty backpack. Normally I'd use transporter tags for all my looting needs, but with the need to avoid detection there was a danger of transporting anything back mid-mission. Better to stick anything I absolutely wanted in a backpack. I'd still put tags on, but if they weren't retrievable at the end of the mission, assuming we survived, it wouldn't be an issue.
(Line Break)
The Forge.
I nodded as the rest of the team fanned out along the metal walkway, finally now aboard the Forge. Unfortunately, whatever hopes we had for stealth were dashed immediately as several Harvesters saw us and we began using our rifles to destroy the few that were in sight. They were crab-like robots that were obviously part of how the harvester ships did the work of taking apart the alien vessels.
My guess was that these robotic drones did the work of maintaining the systems of this space station. As far as we could tell, they didn't seem to be under any intelligent control, but once we entered the station proper they finally seemed to notice us, when before they had seemingly ignored us. Strangely, there were still no audible alarms, so I wondered if this Forge was uninhabited and simply running on automatic, maybe even some vestige of a long dead civilization just doing what it was programmed to do before its creators all died.
Putting my curiosity aside for the time being I led my three person assault team in formation down a long corridor. This place was poorly lit and there was no air here, but we were all equipped to deal with that. I, of course, was using my personal armor based on the Iron Man armor system, something I'd purposefully designed to work even in the vacuum of space, while my team was wearing space suits that were vastly superior to what Starfleet officers would have in this situation, more durable too and designed for combat.
The suits were based on a Husnock design and used their more advanced technology, but I had redesigned them to better fit standard humanoid physiology and changed the style to more like that seen on the television show, Stargate Destiny. The underlying tech having been designed by a war-like race of conquerors, they not only offered a lot of protection from weapons' fire, they also didn't limit movement, at least not in a way that mattered much, and of course the suits had many other useful features.
"Looks like a dead end," one of my Bajoran babes offered quietly over our linked communication systems, eyes intently scanning for targets.
T'Maz did her science thing, examining what looked like an open shaft lit up by glowing particles of light.
"This is some kind of anti-gravity beam, likely used to transport large volumes of material for processing," she said while pointing to what looked like a hole in the ground. "We can ride this down."
"Are you sure?" Ro asked.
I moved over to the circular opening in the floor.
"Only one way to find out!" I said, before jumping in.
Knowing that I had the best chance of surviving a fall from this height with my armor's propulsion systems, and that there might not be another way deeper into the station, I took a big risk and jumped into the void. As it turned out T'Maz was correct and while I fell, it was a slow, controlled fall, through some sort of beam of energy, probably a coherent graviton beam like a ship's tractor beam. As I reached the bottom, I slowed before automatically coming to a gentle stop as I gently touched the surface of a new corridor.
"Gotta get me one of those," I said to myself, finding that to be very cool and kind of reminiscent of the Halo video game.
(Line Break)
We soon entered a new part of the space station. It was still too dark to see much, but when I switched to the different vision modes my armor's sensors could see in and my HUD could display, I realized that there wasn't much to see, and that the dimensions of this place were a little unsettling due to how alien they were.
"There is a breathable atmosphere here," T'Maz informed, analyzing the sensor readings from the omnitool I had gifted her with when she joined my crew. She had taken to its enhanced functions like a fish to water, finding the device far superior to the tricorder used in the Federation. "While I can't be certain, I believe that this is some sort of interface for the station's computers."
She was pointing to a circular platform roughly 30 meters ahead of us. In the center was a rotating full color hologram of the entire Forge. My sensors could also make out symbols of some sort, even at this distance, many of which didn't change, however some did, or they vanished to reappear a moment later, possibly providing a real time status report on various systems. My armor's universal translator was not yet having any success translating the alien writing.
As a group we carefully moved over to the platform and that was when we found out that this station was not as entirely automated as we'd previously suspected. Heading towards us were two tall, bipedal creatures with what appeared to be weapons surgically grafted onto one of their arms. The other ended in just a large set of wicked-looking claws that I suspected could slice right through even my armor, thankfully I had a personal shield system as well as I believed in overkill with regard to me and my crew's survival.
Rather than try to make first contact, as a group of Starfleet officers might have in this situation, resulting in at least one or two of us dying, the three of us immediately fired our weapons, killing three of the aliens in a single volley. Unfortunately, there were more of them and they took cover were they could.
Perhaps they wouldn't have simply killed us, however I'd not been willing to take that chance, and neither had my companions. This entire situation was too fucked up, with everything about the Forge making it clear that the life forms in control of this place had no regard for the lives of sentient beings. Had the creatures been interested in peaceful communication they could have tried speaking to us. Also, given that these creatures had clearly been painfully and permanently modified for heavy combat, I felt justified in opening fire without first trying to speak to them.
After I'd killed a couple of the unknown aliens some of the walls moved to open up new corridors, and out from them several more of the creatures along with a few robotic Harvesters attacked us. I used a few grenades to deal with the creatures behind cover and then a volley of weapons fire dealt with the newcomers before they could really enter the fight.
Once that was done the three of us secured the interface. While T'Maz worked, Laren and I provided her with protection.
"These systems do not have much in the way of security or encryption, but I am still having difficulty translating the language used. I do not think that I will be able to shut down their internal security without raising an alarm," T'Maz reported. "Surprisingly, our presence here has not been widely reported, at least by any electronic means I can detect."
These aliens, like the Collectors for that matter, didn't seem concerned about their systems security and protecting against unauthorized access. Perhaps they'd never had to deal with intruders before? Or perhaps they were so much more advanced than the races they had previously encountered it wasn't a real risk? Of course it didn't help that our life signs were masked, that could be making us much harder to track if they relied entirely on their automated systems to do the work for them on this huge station.
"Based on my limited analysis of their systems and understanding of their language, I believe this may be a shipyard of some kind," the Vulcan reported while pointing at a small section of the Forge on the hologram. "It wouldn't be able to produce large ships, but this could be were the probe we encountered was built as well as the Harvester vessels we've already seen."
That part of the station was so small compared to the rest of the station that it was clear to me that there was a lot more going on here than the building of a few spacecraft.
"I have located the dampening field generator," T'Maz reported, her fingers flying over the interface controls. "It is on the lowest level of the central core of the station."
"Download any information you can, especially any data on the design of the dampening field generator," I ordered. "If you need additional memory storage or processing link to our omnitools and armor systems for the overflow. I want that data."
Stealing alien technical data had been a game changer for me in the past and had been the only thing that had allowed me to eventually build my current armor, weapons, the Flighty Temptress, and the many systems on my island palace home. So I had many excellent reasons to be especially vigilant to recognize and take advantage of opportunities like this to grab more. To that end every omnitool my crew used was the most advanced design I had with a Collector power cell powering them, enhanced memory storage and processing, and a powerful download and upload subspace transceiver, with micro-replicator module included. It blew Federation tricorders completely out of the water in terms of powerful sensors and functionality.
Now that we knew where to go, roughly, it was time to get moving again, but not before we checked out these aliens we'd killed. T'Maz ran her omnitool over one of the corpses while I used my eyes to examine the creature to determine how best to kill more of its kind. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Thankfully, unlike the last time I had boarded an alien ship, our weapons had not required multiple full power shots to overcome their advanced armor and kill these creatures.
"They appear to be some sort of humanoid/insectoid hybrid," T'Maz said. "This creature has elements of DNA from many of the strongest 'warrior' species known to the Federation as well as DNA from life forms for which we have no DNA records."
I noted that these warriors possessed strong legs, which could allow them to leap great distances. They also carry an arm mounted energy weapon. It was a cybernetic enhancement, not unlike those used by the Collectors. In fact, T'Maz soon told me that she had also detected Hur'q DNA in this thing.
"The claw is also not a natural part of this creature's physiology," T'Maz continued. "I believe that it was grown and then surgically grafted onto this life form."
As interesting as this all was we'd have to go over the data in more detail after this mission was over and we were safe. It was time to get moving.
(Line Break)
"Where did all these people come from?" I heard Laren ask quietly over our team link.
I suspected that this forge had been in operation for quite some time, decades at the very least, and in that time many starships must have been brought here from all across the galaxy. Their crews had too, which I was beginning to suspect was the true treasure to whoever had built this place. While I was sure that a lot of ships ended up as space debris after coming through the rifts, others would have survived only to then be harvested and brought here for some sinister purpose.
There were hundreds of people in stasis pods, and every last one of them was brain dead. They'd obviously been lobotomized, and were only technically alive now because the pods were keeping their bodies going. It wasn't a pleasant sight to say the least.
"All over the place, I suspect," I responded to Ro, answering her question.
There was no way to be certain what this was all about without more data, but I had some developing suspicions. These bodies were being kept fresh for some nefarious purpose, and I knew that the reasons behind it wouldn't be good ones.
"We should leave, now," Laren urged.
I agreed, as there was nothing here of value, and while no one here was technically dead, as their bodies were still functioning to some degree, it really was a graveyard or a tomb, or at least it felt as creepy as one could.
(Line Break)
As a team we continued down a hallway, only to encounter more of the strange bipedal creatures around the corner. All of them were quickly killed by a virtual hailstorm of energy blasts before they even they realized that we were here. The next area was physically blocked by a force field, which only turned off to let pieces of metallic debris pass through via gravity beams.
"I'll bet the control for this force field is on the other side," I said to the two women on my team. "Wait here."
A few moments later I approached the force field and waited for a piece of debris to come close enough to deactivate it. Then I took one big, quick step forward and was behind the force field before it reactivated. I hit the console and the force field deactivated allowing the rest of the team to join me.
Of course at this point more Harvesters and the bipedal creatures, who might be the folks who built the harvesters or perhaps were just another creation, came from a hallway near the other end of the room. I turned and quickly tossed a plasma grenade, then put down three Harvesters with rapid energy bursts from my rifle while my team finished off the bipeds.
After that encounter we went down a short hall to another area, this one with a large hole in the floor. T'Maz checked with her omnitool to see if it was another anti-gravity lift thing, and it was, so I once again jumped in. We met at the bottom. But before we could continue more bipeds ambushed us from behind.
After a short, but fierce firefight, we went down an incline and turned right to find an open door. As we went through this door, more of the bipedal creatures dropped from holes in the ceilings. They dropped to the floor and almost as soon as they hit the ground they were gunned down.
Moving on yet again we entered a large area which had coffin-like containers on an elevator. Inside those containers were more of the biped aliens. I was finding this all to be incredibly strange. But it did at least explain the lack of real resistance so far.
These aliens were being kept in some sort of stasis when unneeded, perhaps as a means of saving resources, and this could explain why we'd encountered so few of them, as well as why they were such crappy fighters considering that they had clearly been modified for heavy combat.
My guess was that these life forms were modified drones from an insect race, thus explaining why they had such little concern for their own lives and their lack of fighting skills. They had no experience with combat; they were pretty close to mindless robots at this point, and were likely designed to be used in huge numbers anyways.
Some of them seemed slightly more clever, however, knowing to take cover when available or to use ambush tactics to take on a more skilled opponent. My guess was that they were the ones who'd been around for a while and as such had some idea how to fight more effectively. They used cover because they thought it wise to at least attempt to preserve their own lives when so few in number were currently active.
"Find cover!" shouted Laren.
A large group of the aliens had marched into this room with little in the way of warning. I'd heard them coming, so I was already behind cover and coming up with a plan of action.
"Grenades!" I ordered.
Three hand grenades rolled out towards the hostiles. The creatures, either unfamiliar with the dangers of such devices or for some reason choosing to ignore them, pressed their attack without fear. The grenades exploded, taking many of them out. From that point taking out the rest of them was simple enough. An insect race relied heavily on overwhelming their enemies with numbers, and that just wasn't the case right now.
(Line Break)
As we got closer to our objective we ran into several new aliens. There were again bipedal, but thinner than the ones we'd encountered earlier. They attacked with some sort of telepathic abilities, which I felt as a pressure on my mind. Luckily for me my augmentations made me immune to telepathic attacks of that nature. T'Maz might seem as if she'd be the most vulnerable to that type of attack, at least until you remembered that Vulcans possessed very powerful minds and strong mental discipline achieved through a lifetime of practice and reinforcement. So it was only Laren who was disabled by the assault.
"What were those things?" asked Ro shakily, trying to recover from the unusual attack.
She was able to inquire about this as T'Maz and I had dealt with the aliens while she'd been incapacitated.
"They had telepathic abilities," the Vulcan calmly answered as she reached over to quickly mind meld with the Bajoran woman. "I believe that I can use my own telepathic talents to set up a mental shield in your mind to block more attacks like that while on this mission. It will only be effective for a short time, however I can teach you how to sustain them long-term should you wish. It would prevent mental attacks from working on you in the future."
I was impressed. I didn't think many Vulcans could do something like that. Perhaps she'd picked up some tricks from others of her kind who went against the mainstream idea of what it meant to be a Vulcan, or she was a master of the Vulcan mental disciplines.
Thankfully the mind meld didn't take long so we were able to keep moving, as staying still for too long would surely see us overwhelmed and killed. We next found a room that was full of what looked like stasis containers, only they were of a different design and the aliens stored within them didn't look as horrible as the ones we'd seen so far.
"It's full of those monsters; there must be thousands of them stored here," Laren commented while taking in the number of stasis pods.
T'Maz scanned one of the nearby containers.
"I believe these to be some kind of incubation chambers," she reported.
Vat grown warriors then. It made sense given what we'd seen so far, and judging by the ratio of telepathic aliens to warrior types, the telepaths seemed to be the officer class, meant to lead, coordinate, and direct the less intelligent, but more numerous shock troops. Which might also explain their rather crude fighting skills. None of the ones we'd killed so far had been directed by their officers.
I could only guess that the reason we hadn't encountered any of the telepathic officer-types coordinating the warrior-types, was because we were dealing with this facility's internal security forces and not their military. Given the sheer size of the Forge and their inability to detect our life signs, they most likely were also spread pretty thin.
"Whoever or whatever is behind this seems to be getting ready for some kind of invasion," I speculated to the two women who were with me. "There are enough of them here to take a whole planet, easily."
But only because the people of this galaxy had seemingly forgotten so much of what they had once known about war, and really had no proper dedicated fighting forces when compared to the humans of my time. Oh, they had fleets of powerful starships, crewed by fine officers, and the Cardassians even had armored vehicles, but they'd be no match for an endless horde such as this. Not when these aliens had proper leadership directing them and could gain some actual experience in fighting. Even quantity could get better with experience.
"Haha. Not just a planet, an entire galaxy!" said a loud booming voice that seemed to come from everywhere. "Our 'Reavers' are the ultimate killing machines. We have spent thousands of your years abducting species from all over this galaxy. Our probes have found worlds your puny Federation would never dream existed. We've tested and dissected them all, taking the best traits and abilities you have to offer, combining and manipulating DNA till we designed the ultimate warrior race. You and your galaxy shall fall to the Vorsoth! Like so many others have before you."
That seemed rather silly at first, but once I considered it more seriously, the more I realized that it was definitely possible. Whoever was in charge of this place had a hidden and unknown base of operations that was protected by a massive dampening field which would stymie any fleet of ships sent to destroy it, assuming they could even get here. They could keep churning out troops until every resisting race was simply overwhelmed.
Sure, these Vorsoth didn't appear to have any ships of their own other than probes and harvester vessels, but given their ability to open up dimensional rifts for travel, they might not really need many. Plus given the size of the Forge they could be building warships here for all we knew. Underestimating your enemy was the fastest way to end up dead.
Large multi-planet and multi-race political entities like the Federation, the Klingon and Romulan Empires, and the Dominion, would be much harder to conquer, but if these Vorsoth had access to the Delta Quadrant, and it look like they did if they had captured Vidiians, they could conquer the many disorganized and solitary worlds in that part of the galaxy. That would give them all the resources they would need to take on the major powers. It was funny and maybe ironic that the Borg, who didn't exist in this dimension anymore, would have been perfect enemies for them.
Yes, the pieces of this particular puzzle were finally coming together. The Vorsoth inhabit a space station known as The Forge, located in an area of space which was filled with the debris of starships they'd drawn here. The Forge projects a dampening field that drained or suppresses the energy of nearby ships, and thereby prevented any warp travel or effective offense.
Ships were tricked into entering this death trap by probes that would attack traveling starships. If the starship could not defend itself, the probe would rip the ship apart and simply transport the raw materials back to the Forge. If, instead, the starship destroyed the probe, then the probe's destruction would unleash an energy wave that would transport the victorious ship into the graveyard. I suppose if the alien race was capable of destroying the probe, they were advanced enough to attract the Vorsoth's interest and attention.
These ships, if they survived the entry, were then crippled by the dampening field in the graveyard, thus incapable of resisting an attack from the Vorsoth Harvesters who would kill all the crew and 'harvest' the genetic material for use. This genetic material would then be taken back to the Forge where it was studied, the best traits and abilities taken, and then mixed into creating perfect Vorsoth Warriors to subjugate this galaxy.
I suspected the telepathic Vorsoth we had encountered so far were themselves under the control of more powerful minds, who in turn answered to a single mighty intelligence.
"I recommend we destroy this entire station," said T'Maz urgently, fully in Section 31 mode when it came to such an extreme threat to the Federation.
No doubt she'd been thinking along the same lines I had and had come to the same conclusions regarding our chances of surviving such an enemy.
"Okay, kids," I said, sounding far more cheery than I really felt. "Let's blow this thing up and go home."
If it were only that easy.
(Line Break)
A door opened and six Reavers came out of it. Before they could find any decent cover I threw one of my remaining grenades which took three of them out in a gory explosion. The rest dropped from concentrated weapons' fire. These warriors might contain the best DNA of multiple warrior races from across the galaxy, but they were still mortal creatures, and if it bleeds you can kill it.
The team then moved on through the now undefended door. As we advanced we dropped two more Reavers. There seemed to be a lot of more of them in this part of the Forge, suggesting that we were finally getting close to our objective, which was to bring down the dampening field. Once we did that it would be a hell of a lot easier to destroy this Forge.
There was a generator of sorts here and the space beyond that looked like a large arena. When we entered the arena the door closed behind us and locked, like in a bad movie. It seems we had found the creature that was in control of the station and whom I assumed was telepathically controlling all the other aliens, at least to some extent. It was large, with several red eyes, and six big leg-like things.
"Foolish humans! You cannot hope to stop the Vorsoth!" it cried aloud in true super villain cliché.
Having seen more than enough movies to know a super villain when I saw one I knew that we'd found the boss. I also knew that super villains had massive egos and could never resist talking when asked about stuff, even their super secret plans.
"Who and what are you?" I asked, hoping to both gain information and give me time to better analyze this situation and come up with a plan that saw me and my team making it out of here alive.
Just as expected the Super Villain alien answered me.
"I am the Vorsoth in this galaxy. I was created by the ancient ones! I shall carry out their programming! The seed will be launched to create a new Forge! We can never be stopped!" It answered. "We are engineered for perfection! We are created to conquer!"
While it continued to rant about its superiority and awesomeness I readied myself to act.
"The Seed will be launched! You shall be destroyed!" it yelled.
Again, just as I'd expected, the boss fight began when Reavers, Harvesters, and the telepaths began to 'beam' into the room, but by now we had more than enough experience with their kind to know how to deal with them. I also got another great chance to use my pseudo-lightsaber, by wading into their midst at close range and taking off heads and limbs in wide arcs, which was always nice. My wrist mounted blaster shooting hundreds of deadly bolts of energy per second at more distant enemies in my eyeline.
"NO! The Seed! This cannot be! Impudent wretch! Relish this minor victory! For you may have stopped the Seed, but now I will show you just how insignificant you are!" yelled the Vorsoth leader.
I had no ideas how we'd destroyed the Seed, perhaps we'd damaged something important without even noticing, not that it really mattered as right now I had more important things to worry about, like the boss battle.
The force field around him deactivated and the creature detached himself from his 'throne' and jumped down in front of the two soldiers, causing tremors that shook the floor when it landed, which was an indication of just how big and heavy the boss actually was.
We fired on it, but the attacks didn't seem to do all that much, seeming to just annoy the creature, so I knew I would have to get in close to do any real damage. I wonder what would happen to a heavy bastard like him if I cut off his legs with my sword. The bigger they are, the harder they fall after all.
"Fools…this is just a minor…setback…for the Vorsoth…we shall return," it said as it died the death of all monologueing super villains throughout the multi-verse after I'd cut off its legs with my sword and made it crash to the ground. And people wondered what the utility of a sword was in this day and age. Shows what they know.
"We'll be ready for you," I promised grimly, hopefully looking as badass as I felt.
With that I drove my anti-proton blade deep into the creature's head and out the back, ending its existence.
Then I beheaded it, cut off all its remaining limbs, then went full auto with my rifle into its chest cavity and dropping a grenade in for good measure. Then I vaporized all the leftover bits of blood and gore with a wide beam.
What? This was an ALIEN super villain. You don't take chances when killing those guys, you go for super overkill.
(Line Break)
Bridge. The Flighty Temptress.
Once the boss battle was over it didn't take us long to escape the Forge. With the dampening field down and B'Elanna done with most of the major repair work on the propulsion systems, thanks in no small part to Neela's help, we were able to put our heads together and figure out how to open one of the dimensional rifts so we could return to Federation Space. Before we left, however, we had to deal with this alien installation chock full of millions of enemy soldiers in stasis. Leaving that place intact was a disaster waiting to happen.
So I was once again in a situation where I needed to blow up an extremely dangerous and truly gigantic alien installation. Thankfully, unlike all those Federation fuckers in the shows, I learned from my past mistakes and didn't repeat them over and over again and act surprised when it came up again. Since my mission on the Collector moon-sized vessel, I'd looked into what kind of explosives I could keep on hand for just this situation. Unfortunately, getting a hold of tricobalt explosives was not going to fly, even with my Section 31 connections. It was a heavily monitored substance and I'd set off every alert on every desk of every intelligence organization throughout the alpha quadrant if I tried to get ahold of some, especially since I was a Khan-era augment. I didn't need any more scrutiny; I had plenty enough as it was. So, instead of going modern, I went old school and built myself an H-bomb, or a hydrogen bomb, the atomic bombs more advanced cousin. I named it Shiva, the Destroyer.
Holographic design, a replicator with no substance restrictions (like on Uranium and other radioactive materials), advanced precision replication, and all the bomb design specs from a slew of planet's historical databases meant it took me only a few hours to build something that would explode with incredible force. Thank goodness the people of this time were so lacking in creativity and blind to the effectiveness of old tech and solutions.
I was still leery about having a giant nuclear bomb in my armory capable of killing me if someone got their hands on it and managed to activate it, so I put in a ton of safeguards that meant only I could set it off. If anyone messed with it, it'd vaporize itself before it exploded. You could even fire at it multiple times with a phaser rifle and it wouldn't do anything. You could drop it from space to a planet and it still wouldn't go off. I even installed three different triggering mechanisms, electronic, mechanical, and chemical, so even if the dampening field was in effect, it still would have worked. The thing even had a variable yield setting, so it could go from 1 megaton to 1000 megatons of explosive force.
The Forge went up like a miniature sun with my crew having no idea how I'd done it and I wasn't telling. It was space dust now. With the dampening field down the ships trapped here would find their technology working fully again, so they should be able to make their own way home. Unlike what a Federation ship would have done, I didn't offer anyone help getting home.
I'd not forgotten the Vorsoth leader's last words, but I'd seen no evidence of a further threat at this time. If we took his words at face value, this was a race which planned in the truly long-term, plans spanning millennia, so I suspected if there was still a threat it wouldn't come to fruition till long after I was gone. However, in case I was wrong, I was still going to spread word of this new possible threat to the people of the Federation and anyone else who would listen so they could be prepared. With the Collectors a known threat now I suspected it wouldn't be a hard sell that there was yet another alien race waiting in the wings to kill us all.
Now that we'd gone through the rift we began the work of trying to figure out exactly where we were. We should be close to Earth, but we didn't exactly know much about these dimensional rifts, despite having taken all the information on them we could get from the Forge. We also got a ton of data on their dampening field technology, at my strong request, remembering the Breen weapon used during the Dominion war. The Temptress was not going to be destroyed that easily mother fuckers!
"Sensors confirm that we are in Federation space, however, from the communications we have picked up, we seem to have been displaced in time," T'Maz reported as stoically as she did everything else, besides sex with me.
"Prophets no! Not fucking time travel!" I yelled. I was trapped in an episode right now. You don't narrowly escape from the alien super villain only to find your triumphant return spoiled by unexpected time travel. That was the stupid melodrama of an episodic television show.
I fucking hated time travel, at least the random and unexpected variety. No one else seemed eager to be experiencing it either.
"Any idea what year it is?" I asked after a long drawn out sigh, but only after closing my eyes, putting my feet up in the recliner, and sinking deep into my captain's chair and activating its massage function at max.
"2256 AD, in your old Earth calendar," I was told.
Huh, I was surprised we weren't in the late 20th century like most of the Star Trek shows did to save money. 2256 was before Kirk even became Captain of the Enterprise, if my Trek knowledge was correct.
"I think it's safe to assume that something went wrong with the dimensional rift we created," offered Laren after my silent thinking went on a bit too long.
Yes, well, that was certainly plausible. It was also plausible, maybe even probable, that a God-like being was having some fun with us, or those Temporal Agents from the Federation's 29th century were drafting us to do a mission for them, or the bomb's explosion threw us off course, or a slew of other possibilities. Or, fuck, we could be in an alternate universe altogether and the time streams didn't match up. I'd seen a Terran Empire starship in the Forge's junkyard, so perhaps the rifts were doorways through time as well. This was Star Trek, I wouldn't even be slightly surprised.
"Any ships in the area?" I asked.
If so we needed to avoid them so as to not tamper with the timeline.
"Yes, I am detecting a cloaked Klingon vessel within range," T'Maz reported.
That was surprising.
"We can detect cloaked Klingon ships?" I asked.
Well, obviously we could, I just wanted to know how we did it. I knew these Husnock sensors were more advanced, but we hadn't had the opportunity to really test them against modern cloaking devices.
"It appears we can, at least with regards to older models of Klingon vessels," the Vulcan answered.
Ah, maybe I was more tired than I was willing to admit, if I made such an obvious mistake. Obviously the cloaking device of this time period would be far inferior to the modern version. I rubbed my chin, noting that I was already growing a beard. The Klingons of this time were hostile to humans, and while my ship was vastly superior to anything those crinkle headed fuckers had at this point, the Temptress wasn't in the best of shape at the moment. It would be wise to avoid contact so as to avoid bloodshed and possibly contaminate the timeline. I wouldn't want to kill Worf's grandfather or something.
"Klingons and humans weren't allies at this point so we'd best cloak and hope that they haven't detected the rift or our ship yet," I said to the two women on the bridge. "Assuming we can cloak?" I asked, the question clear to everyone on the bridge as to the status of the cloaking systems.
Even B'Elanna Torres couldn't fix everything in the time she'd had, not with that dampening field keeping the holo-engineers and replicators offline for so long. Thankfully, the Temptress had been built in such a way that every part of the original ship was part of this one, so we had two systems dedicated to cloaking the ship, a conventional cloak I'd earned as payment from the Klingon empire for delivering them the Duras sisters alive, and a phase cloak that I'd recreated from the design schematics in the Husnock database. We had double the chances that at least one of the ship's two cloaking systems was still functional.
"B'Elanna reports that we can cloak," Laren answered me with a smile in her voice, after checking with her console and obviously communicating with B'Elanna in engineering. "Activating cloak now."
We cloaked, but there was no visible sign of it on the bridge, as there was no reason for the lights to dim or change color, or anything like that. Every console on the bridge could tell you we were cloaked.
"Excellent, some good news for once! Now, everyone, let's get to work assisting B'Elanna and her holo-engineers with the last of the repairs. I want to be fully operational in 6 hours. Then we can start working on figuring out the dimensional rift technology we stole and exactly how we ended up in the past," I ordered, everyone jumping to begin needed repairs.
If we could figure it out for ourselves, and thus no longer needed the Forge to open the rifts for us, then we'd actually have a way to reach other realities at will. That would be useful. Scary, fascinating, fun, too, but definitely useful. For now, though, we needed to get this ship fully operational and figure out just what the fuck had gone wrong.
At some point we should also try to get some sleep too. Some sleep would be nice.