Augment Gothic
Part 34
The Flighty Temptress. Alternate Universe.
At this point it was pretty clear to all of us that we were not back where we were supposed to be, or even when we should be, and it was also pretty clear me that we really didn't understand the intricacies of the dimensional rift technology that we'd acquired from the Forge. Of course I'd known that there would be problems, especially since T'Maz and B'Elanna had had precious little time to study such an advanced piece of technology, something that was so far beyond alpha quadrant science that it wasn't even funny.
Sticking around for too long in that place to patiently study things, unfortunately, wasn't really an option either. That station was chock full of enemy soldiers in stasis and otherwise, and who knew if killing that supervillain had activated some kind of dead man contingency that would either see us killed or the galaxy overrun, or both.
I should have realized that the dimensional rifts could send us to alternate universes; hadn't I seen a Terran Empire vessel within the Forge's dampening field? I'd just assumed that it had been there for decades as part of that floating junk heap and/or that had been the universe the Vorsoth had originally come from, I'd not considered that maybe the Forge was taking ships across both time and space and dimension.
Not that any of that mattered right now. What did matter was getting back to our home universe as I had a pretty sweet life to return to back there. Having access to other universes was very cool, the potential for adventure and profit extreme, but without the means to deftly navigate them and return home when we wanted to, the technology was just too fucking dangerous. Every use of the thing and our survival would be at extreme risk. And that was ignoring, of course, the potential for misuse. If anyone back home knew we had this capability they'd hunt us to the ends of the galaxy. In fact this was exactly the kind of technology that I felt was too dangerous for even Section 31 to have possession of and lo and behold this tech fell right into my lap while I had a Section 31 operative on my bridge who now had to learn everything she could about how this tech worked in order to get us home! I could only hope she'd realize sharing this information with Sloane would be a huge mistake. If she didn't I'm not sure I had the heart to kill her.
Fuck my life sometimes. This was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to avoid and yet look where I ended up. Maybe my patron or Q was fucking with me and they wanted me to go to other universes to up their entertainment value.
"T'Maz, we need to figure out how to use the rifts to get home," I offered rather obviously to my fellow Section 31 agent. "Any ideas how to do that yet?"
The Vulcan spent a few moments going over all the information she had available. There was quite a lot of technical data on the rifts we'd been able to download from the Forge's database once the leader of that strange space station had been killed. Once again my 'overkill' style of design meant that I had put in a truly ridiculous amount of memory storage for just this kind of situation.
"None at this time," she admitted. "There is still a lot of data to analyze before I can determine what error I may have made in my calculations. Every simulation indicated that we should have been returned to the exact space/time location where we initially encountered the probe sent by the Forge."
Well, we weren't there, or even then for that matter.
"Something wrong with your math?" B'Elanna asked, a touch aggressively. This situation was not exactly something she was used to and the thought of never being able to return home was obviously stressing her out a great deal.
While her snarky tone of voice wasn't going to help matters or crew morale, I was impressed by how well the hybrid woman was holding herself together, with only her Academy training to fall back on. We'd been through some strange crap over the last few days and unlike the other women in my life she wasn't used to this level of weird, having reminded myself once again that I had employed her before she had joined the maquis and most definitely before she had come into her own onboard Voyager.
"Not as such," T'Maz answered, with not a single iota of irritation in her voice. "My mistake was in the application of the technology, not in understanding the underlying mathematical theory. I believe that I can correct this flaw, but it will take several hours of work with the main deflector array. I cannot give a more precise estimate at this time, Captain."
To be fair she was dealing with a totally alien technology, which utilized science well beyond that of the Federation's; even with the data we'd gathered from the Forge it wasn't that surprising that she'd gotten it wrong the first time. Experimenting with new technology almost always involved quite a lot of danger and even more failure.
"Take as much time as you need to do this safely, T'Maz," I told the spy. "While you work we'll take a look around, to see what is going on around here."
It was quite possible that we'd be stuck here for a while. Getting a lay of the land was a necessity.
"I'll be down in engineering," B'Elanna said. "I still have some repair work to complete."
"Focus on only those repairs that require your direct oversight. Direct the holo-engineers to complete the simpler, more time consuming repairs, B'Elanna," I ordered. "After that's done, start replicating any spare parts and emergency supplies we've used up recently. I don't want to be caught with our ready supplies depleted if we need them again and the replicators are non-functional again," I ordered.
"Understood, Captain. The ship will be ready for combat soon," B'Elanna answered, before getting in the turbolift and returning to engineering.
Neela went with her to assist in the more involved and complex repairs, leaving me alone with Ro Laren, since T'Maz was in her own world right now.
"Gothic, that Klingon ship is now in range," Laren reported.
I'd not forgotten about the cloaked Klingon vessel that we'd so easily detected. Clearly it was an older model given how it wasn't actually hiding the Klingon ship from my vessel's sensors. Once we got back to our universe and time, I'd have to see if these advanced Husnock designed sensors could penetrate the modern Klingon cloaking device. The chances were pretty good that they would be able to.
The vessel was significantly larger than a Bird of Prey and was covered with thousands of hollow, ornamental metallic pods that were tightly interlocked to form a rather silly form of armor. These caskets contained the remains of warriors, dating back as far as thousands of years, if scans were to be trusted.
While we couldn't get all the details due to the cloaking device, our scans showed that this spacecraft was armed with directed energy weapons and torpedoes, and possessed enough firepower to threaten even my ship, at least in our currently weakened state.
"Klingons don't normally care what happens to their dead," Ro stated, taking in the sensor readings on the thousands of coffins adorning the hull of the ship.
One of the few cultural things that was widely known about the crinkly forehead savages was that they were very practical when it came to funeral rights. To them a Klingon corpse was only a shell, worthless, as the spirit had already moved on to the afterlife. The method of disposing of the body at that point was simply whatever was most practical and efficient at the time.
Yet these Klingons seemed to be treating their dead as if the bodies could somehow offer them mystical protection of some sort, which meant that the crew of this strange ship was like no other Klingons we'd dealt with before.
That wasn't totally unexpected, as I'd long since learned that unlike in the television show you don't get entire races following one set of ironclad principles, laws, and cultural precepts. There are always oddballs and such who go against the norm, that no race was truly monolithic.
Then again, we were in another universe, so perhaps the race was simply different here. Anything and everything was possible when you started joy riding across the multi-verse. Bottom line, I needed to know more before I made any sort of judgments or assumptions. Sensor readings indicated that the ship was extremely old, ancient even, so perhaps the Klingons had once cared more about the bodies of their honored dead.
"Any idea where they are going?" I asked my bridge crew.
My Bajoran babe checked the sensors, and as she did I took the time to check her out. Despite being overworked and in near constant danger recently, she was still very easy on my eyes. If we were able to return to our universe safely my plan was to give my crew at least a week on my island to relax, be pampered, and decompress before getting back to work once again. They'd all also be getting a big bonus from whatever profit I made on this mission, which should make them feel good too.
"Can't be sure, but my best guess is the Pahvo system, which according to the database contains an m-class planet discovered by the Vulcans in the 21st century. It has two moons, but we don't know much more about it."
Hardly surprising given that the galaxy had about a 100 billion stars, and many of those stars had planets that surrounded them.
"Let's follow these Klingons at a safe distance and see what they are up to," I decided, before turning to T'Maz. "We should look over your data in my ready room."
I knew that Laren or the ship's VI would let me know if anything important happened. And as interesting as this new universe was I should first focus on getting us home safely. Hopefully I wouldn't get distracted.
(Line Break)
The Flighty Temptress. Alternate Universe
T'Maz not been able to meditate in some time, and while she could normally control the intense emotions that all Vulcans needed to suppress throughout their lives, she was failing to do so around the Khan-era Augment known as Gothic. He had ways of testing her self control that defied logic. He also had ways of getting in extremely improbable, if not near impossible, situations that defied any semblance of logic. How could one many get into this much trouble, or be in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the humans saying went, so often?
They'd been attempting to work together to resolve the issues they were having with the rift technology, and thus their ability to return to their dimension and time, however this has been temporarily set aside due to their mutual attraction. While T'Maz never minded helping Gothic with that biological need of his, there were far more important things to focus on right now.
Unfortunately, the desire was not one sided. She also hadn't truly been able to stay focused due her own desire for sexual intercourse, a feeling she often had when around her fellow Section 31 agent. His augmented abilities, physical and mental, his resourcefulness and creativity, his utter ruthlessness in dispatching his enemies and protecting his crew and the people he cared for, and to a lesser extent his looks, made T'Maz feel extremely attracted to him.
"Fuck yes!" Gothic cried out while pulling off his advanced armor.
T'Maz, on her knees before her captain, had just greedily took hold of his long, hard shaft with one of her hands before opening her mouth wide and engulfing over half of it in a single movement. She was well practiced with this act having performed it a number of times and knew exactly what her captain liked best.
"It's been too long!' the human said.
Gothic was clearly enjoying the sensation of having the Vulcan spy suck his cock again. T'Maz didn't even respond; she was far too interested and occupied with bobbing her head back and forth, easily deep-throating him with each thrust.
After only a few minutes of having his cock sucked by what seemed to be an extremely horny T'Maz, the Captain of the Flighty Temptress decided it was time to move on to the main event as it were.
"Go bend over my desk," Gothic ordered gruffly.
T'Maz complied without hesitation, and soon she was bent over the table, sticking her ass out as far as possible, her hot Vulcan cunt already dripping, ready for the augmented human to do anything he wanted to her.
Gothic grabbed her ass and squeezed her butt cheeks hard, before sliding his hand down to her pussy and rubbing it a few times. While her outfit didn't show off any skin below the neck, it was extremely tight fitting, and the material wasn't thick, so it did little to desensitize her to the stimulation Gothic was providing with his deft fingers.
Before long the General was ripping her outfit apart, easily destroying the outfit, which was actually quite sturdy despite its thinness, yet it was no match for the sheer strength a horny superhuman augment could bring to bear when intent on thrusting his cock into her hot Vulcan cunt.
Soon Gothic was guiding his cock towards T'Maz's eagerly awaiting pussy.
"Ahhhhh!" T'Maz moaned in pleasure and pain.
The augment had slammed his cock into her as hard as he could, letting her pussy envelop nearly the whole thing with the first thrust, a thrust hard enough that it would have broken a human woman's pelvis. It didn't take the 21st century man long before he was thrusting his manhood into T'Maz's very accepting cunt, causing her to moan even louder.
T'Maz used every iota of her remaining self-control, which she was rapidly losing, to stop herself from cumming right away, as Gothic continued to pummel her tight pussy, varying his speed and angle of penetration, rolling his hips, rubbing her clit, slapping her ass every few seconds to further stimulate her. The man was an extremely adept lover and was making it very hard for her to stay somewhat in control. She desired to orgasm as her lover did, not before.
"Please hurry up and cum!" she requested in a yell, turning around a bit to look at him fiercely.
Rather than do as she wished Gothic gave a mocking grin and then slapped her ass hard one more time, causing her to again cry out in pleasure, before flipping her over so that her back was on her Captain's desk. She knew he could see that her breasts were big, firm, and perfectly shaped, and her public hair had been carefully removed as she knew he liked it.
Now Gothic was grabbing her hips tightly as he began to resume his torrid pace, fucking the beautiful Vulcan as hard as he could, her breasts bouncing vigorously. The strain on T'Maz was epic; she did not want to orgasm before she wished to.
However, she didn't need to worry it seems, as Gothic had begun to slam his hips into T'Maz's with increasing rapidity. According to her observations and past experience this was a sure sign that he was going to climax soon.
"Cum inside me, Gothic! Fill my Vulcan pussy full of your hot augment seed!' yelled T'Maz in pleasure.
She was urging the human male to cum as soon as possible, so she could let go and cum as well. She'd noticed that 'dirty talk,' as humans called it, could speed things along and enhance the sexual experience if used correctly and was surprisingly pleasing to her as well when Gothic was in the mood to speak dirty to her too. It was effective this time as well, and soon Gothic was cumming inside her.
"Yep, I definitely needed that!" the augment stated, once he was done. "You should clean up before you leave!"
Some of his cum-of which there was always a much larger volume than was normal for human males, she had discovered through research-had poured out of T'Maz's pussy. As she had nothing to clean the fluid up with she did her best with her fingers and mouth. Once she was done Gothic gave her a swift slap on the ass and told her to get on with her work.
This might seem rather cold, but her work was important and neither of them should have allowed their sexual desires to interfere with the completion of this important task. On the other hand, relieving her Captain's stress was also vitally important to the survival of the ship and crew. The fact that it allowed her to express and purge the building emotions her lack of meditation had allowed was merely a side benefit.
Fortunately, T'Maz had no problem with walking the corridors of the warship while completely naked, cum visible on her thighs, cunt and stomach, and a slight smile on her lips. The carpet was plush and felt quite agreeable on her bare feet.
(Line Break)
The Flighty Temptress. Alternate Universe.
Having proven that I would be of no aid to T'Maz in her attempt to understand previously theoretical or completely unknown science, I returned to the bridge and began gathering information on this universe while my fellow Section 31 agent worked on getting us out of this place.
That study would be somewhat delayed by my actions, as she needed to get her feelings back under control, and possibly need to sleep, but in the end I think she'd come at this problem fresh, relieved of stress, and centered once again. Thankfully, the 'rift technology,' as I was going to call it, allowed movement through both time and into other dimensions, therefore we could theoretically arrive right back at the same time that we left. I would need to suppress all knowledge of these capabilities and hope T'Maz agreed with me and didn't report back to Section 31 with this information, but that was a problem for a different day.
With no need to rush, I'd decided we would need to wait for the repairs to be completely finished before risking the use of another rift. We'd taken some minor damage the last time traveling that way, so we might as well take the time to finish repairs as well as take a proper look around to see if the locals had anything worth taking back with us.
I'd also given orders to B'Elanna to completely insulate our power systems with isodesium and to take her time to precision replicate all the needed casings, ripping out any that we'd made on the fly while dealing with the Forge. According to her simulations, this would both protect us from the Vorsoth dampening field technology, but also make the ship either immune, or, at the very least, far more resistant, to other varieties of dampening field technology in the future. That was a capability well worth any delay.
"So the Federation and the Klingons are at war in this reality," I said to Laren, but was mostly thinking aloud. "And have been since something called the Battle at the Binary Stars? That's very interesting."
Since there was a war going on most of the subspace communications we could pick up were heavily encrypted, however my ship's VI was having little trouble with decryption as we had much more advanced computers in terms of both hardware and software. It also didn't help that those encryption schemes, used by both the Federation and the Klingons in the past, were centuries old by our time and fairly well known.
"Gothic, I've found what seems to be an abandoned Starfleet ship only a few light years from here," Laren reported while continuing to study what the ship's sensors were telling her. "We could check it out and still make it to the Pahvo system long before the Klingons do."
I really loved my new ship (even if it kept getting damaged by circumstances well outside my control or ability to predict), since we didn't even need to use the slipstream drive in order to beat other vessels there. Thankfully I was a big fan of redundancy and overkill, so my ship had a second FTL propulsion system in the form of a conventional warp drive, something that I had reused and upgraded from my old ship. The Temptress had a top cruising speed of warp 9.95, so we'd be much faster than anything this time period had available, which was good because the slipstream drive was currently out of order. Well, not out of order, per se, but with all the repairs we'd had to do on the fly and the lack of time to closely study our quick slipstream jaunt before this current adventure, it just wasn't a great idea, even if the chances were good that everything would be ok. It just wasn't worth the risk.
"Set a course, maximum warp," I ordered. "I want to see the local tech up close. Maybe grab a copy of their database."
"Aye, captain. Course set, maximum warp ready," Ro Laren dutifully responded to my order from the ship's conn.
"Engage!" I said with a smile, channeling my inner nerd as my command came out like Captain Picard would have.
We should have a good bit of time for me to beam over and poke around a little.
(Line Break)
Starfleet Ship. Alternate Universe.
The small Starfleet vessel was of a class that I'd never seen before, but that wasn't surprising to me; the Federation had been around for a long time and by the time of TNG/DS9/Voyager there must have been many designs that had come and gone over the many years.
Nor was I shocked to find the corpses of Starfleet officers who had seemingly valiantly died trying to defend their ship, after I beamed over by myself with my armor fully deployed. The crew complement was mostly human or at least human-looking, but with more aliens than I'd been expecting considering that you didn't see all that many on Kirk's ship. That, of course, might have had more to do with the budget limitations of a television show than anything else. Since I'd come to this universe, there had been many instances, I'd realized, where the demands of a network television show, either because of monetary considerations or content limits, glossed over certain things or completely left them out.
I had beamed onto a lower deck to get a lay of the land, as it were, planning to eventually make my way to the bridge of the ship. T'Maz questioned why I didn't just beam to the bridge in the first place since the ship was empty. It was that lack of caution, even from a hardcore Section 31 agent in this case, that confirmed even T'Maz was infected with Federation/Starfleet stupidity at times, though much less seriously then most. That kind of thinking was exactly what got so many Starfleet away teams in trouble on the show. I was trying to live my life with all that in mind as serious bullshit to avoid. Those repeated mistakes and acts of stupidity, in my opinion, weren't going to be my mistakes too.
Riding up in the still functional turbolift to the bridge, my caution and the many hard and bloody lessons I'd learned during the Occupation paid off once again when my armor's head's up display lit up in red with numerous high priority alerts indicating my armor's sensors had detected a large number of life signs-on the supposedly empty bridge-suddenly showing up.
As I'd lamented many times before in this new life, there were a fuck ton of different ways to hide your life signs from sensors at a distance. Thankfully, probably because of the close proximity, my armor's sensors had pierced whatever they were using to hide their presence and had detected them. Mr. Data's programming of my HUD was proving its value yet again, when it quite helpfully even provided a countdown to the turbolift I was riding reaching the bridge level and its doors opening, along with a schematic of the bridge and the life signs' probable locations also showing up. That guy was getting a present! I'm not sure what an android with everything wants, but he was getting it!
Stepping quickly to the side, and thus out of view of the doors, I waited for the turbolift to reach its destination and for the doors to open. In seconds the turbolift slowed and the doors opened. Unsurprisingly, dozens of neon green disrupter bolts flew into the space my body had been only moments before.
With the cacophony of weapons' fire going on, I mentally commanded my armor's micro-replicator to produce three flash bangs. The power demands of a portable replicator capable of producing something like a flash bang was beyond Federation science, but with the Collector power cell with a micro-singularity at its heart, it was nothing. Normally I'd already have a selection on hand and ready when facing combat, but I hadn't exactly been expecting combat.
These flash bangs were fundamentally the same in function as the ones from my time, but they had been improved with 24th century science. In fact, I had made this design with Data's help back in my first month in this universe onboard the Enterprise and had used them to great effect many times during the Occupation. These flash bangs were smaller, each a cylinder that fit well in the palm of the hand for easy throwing, about an inch and a half in diameter. They were still chemical and mechanical in nature, and thus much harder to detect and often overlooked by modern sensors, but would produce a far louder sound and flash of light because of the more advanced chemistry involved.
At the first sign of the weapon's fire slowing, I triggered all three flash bangs in my left hand, waited an additional 1.5 seconds to burn some of the timer on the fuse, and then quickly spun in a circle from cover on one side of the turbolift to the other, throwing all three devices in an arc to cover the entire bridge, my brain and HUD automatically recording the positions of the ten Klingons on the bridge likely waiting to ambush any Starfleet officers attempting to salvage the vessel or render aid to the ship, just like the so called honorable warriors they claimed to be.
I waited with my anti-proton pistol in hand a heartbeat for the deafening explosion of sound and blinding light, before tactical rolling onto the bridge and then to my feet, my HUD auto dampening the sound and light from effecting me. An augment's hand eye coordination and ability to do two complex tasks by splitting focus is a fearsome thing, with my HUD providing me information, it was almost too easy for the pistol in my right hand to sweep the right side of the room, barking bright bolts of blue anti-protons into stunned and disoriented Klingon heads, while the disrupter blaster on my left wrist sent dozens of deadly green disrupter bolts into bodies on the left side of the bridge, tearing them apart.
When my right wrist and left wrist met while aiming in the center of the bridge, all ten Klingons were dead or dying according to my sensors. Never one to take a risk with such a thing, I quickly shot each body in the chest and head to make entirely sure the job was done.
Looking over my bloody work not 30 seconds after exiting the turbolift, I confirmed these were Klingons, but they were just wrong. They just didn't look right. They were larger and more alien-looking than the ones I was used to, and they should be looking more like humans in this period of history, as their cranial ridges should be missing.
In the year 2154, the Klingons gained access to the genetic material of Khan-era human augments who had easily killed the crew of a Klingon bird of prey and taken over the ship. Intrigued by the physical prowess of these human augments they had tried to adapt this DNA to improve Klingons, however it all went wrong. The volunteer test subjects gained increased strength and intelligence for a time, but soon their neural pathways started to degrade and they died in agony. Messing with your DNA to that extent was an extremely risky business. Even minor improvements in the 24th century carried the risk for serious unintended consequences.
One of the subjects suffered from the Levodian flu, which was modified by the Augment DNA to become a fatal, airborne, mutagenic plague that spread rampantly through the Empire, from world to world.
In the first stage of this plague Klingons lost the cranial ridges on their foreheads and began to look more Human. With the help of a Klingon scientist named Antaak and Dr. Phlox of the Earth starship Enterprise, these two were able to use the DNA of Captain Archer to formulate a cure that halted the genetic effects of the virus in the first stage.
This meant the changes in appearance were permanent, along with some minor neural re-ordering. The neural ordering caused changes in the emotional make-up of the Klingons. For example, the infected started to feel fear, which the crinkle heads didn't normally have to worry about.
Even though the infected did not develop any stage-two characteristics – such as enhanced strength, speed, or endurance – they did not die from it. This left millions upon millions of Klingons physically changed. These alterations were even passed on to their children.
By the TNG era the Klingons had regressed to their older state or had found some minor genetic modification to regain their ridges and old neural patterns, and had returned to their warrior ways. Actually it must have happened before that since the Klingons had had the head ridges in the TOS era movies.
As for these strange Klingons, that wasn't the only thing that was different about these so called warriors. The armor was more garish and as for their weapons, well, they were using Bat'leths, but these versions of the iconic sword looked even less practical then the ones I was used to.
Still, I took one of the weapons anyway so that I could compare them to the Klingon Bat'leths back home. The ones here might be made using a different forging process or from different metals. I'd like to know.
"How are things over there?" Laren asked me through the comm unit built into my helmet.
I didn't reply right away. Instead I activated a subspace link between my armor/omnitool's VI, Mila, and the one on the ship, Scarlett, so that information could be freely shared between them. This would allow my Bajoran Babe to see what I was seeing via my armor's sensors. No doubt T'Maz would have found this all interesting to look at, but she would either still be resting or working on the rift technology.
"See for yourself," I said.
I heard Ro gasp and swear, and I couldn't blame her for the emotional outburst. There were corpses all over the bridge, the bridge crew of this ship and lots of dead Klingons, including the ten fresh Klingons I'd just killed. Just by looking them I was able to get a good idea of what had happened here.
By the looks of things the security officers had done their very best to defend the ship, however they had been overwhelmed, and the Klingons had killed anything moving. The uniforms were unfamiliar to me, but it wasn't hard to guess which of these Starfleet officers had been unarmed science types and which had been capable of fighting back.
Clearly the Klingons hadn't cared which they were; they simply cut everyone down, sometimes stabbing people in the back as they obviously tried to run. How anyone could consider the Klingons to be honorable was still a mystery to me, in this dimension or my home one.
Sure, I'd killed plenty of people, mostly during the Occupation, and I'd not exactly been honorable back then in the way I fought, but I'd never pretended to be an honorable warrior, although I had considered myself to be a freedom fighter, rather than a terrorist.
Pushing those thoughts aside I put my sticker transporter tags on several Klingon and Starfleet energy weapons so that I could also compare them to the weapons technology back home. It was unlikely that the study of them would advance my technology even a little bit, but they weren't exactly heavy and I had plenty of room on my island home or on my ship for souvenirs from my many travels. They could also make interesting display pieces.
So far none of the local tech, other than some weapons and a few tricorders, had caught my eye as being worthy of looting. All of it seemed obsolete by the standards of the time I was used to, but there could be some innovations only a close scan would reveal so I was crossing my fingers there.
As for why I was here on the bridge at all, rather than doing this from the comfort of my ship, while my computer technology was centuries more advanced than what was here, my VI couldn't simply hack into Starfleet computers and download everything remotely. A direct link would be required between my omni-tool and the ship's computer.
Of course even my enhanced omnitool could not hold all the data a starship like this would have, but it could transfer all the information in segments back to the Flighty Temptress. This would take a few moments at most. Opening up an ODN access port on one of the command consoles, I linked my omnitool to the ship's systems.
"Mila, initiate linkup. Download the entire database and transmit concurrently to the Temptress. Scarlett, prepare to receive data and begin decryption immediately," I ordered my personal VI and the VI in control of my ship.
With those orders the database download was begun. Of course there were a myriad number of computer safeguards to prevent someone from doing exactly what I was doing, but nothing my far more advanced tech couldn't override or bypass.
"We'll need to get moving soon if we want to beat the Klingons to that planet that's putting out the strange signal," Ro reminded me over the comm.
Yes, my time in this strange reality would be limited, but it was important to gather what information, technology, and valuable material I could before moving on.
While the download was ongoing I looked around some more. By the looks of things these Starfleet officers had died at their posts, some of them clearly working to the very last moment, while others thought to either buy time or just to resist something that they couldn't prevent. I wondered if that was brave or foolish. Maybe it was both, but that courage, that conviction in their duty, even if futile, was something to be respected and admired.
The Captain, who was a Bolian judging by the crease down his face and his blue skin, had died in his chair. I didn't think that he put up a fight, but he hadn't run either; he'd died at his post. There was some honor in that.
I next moved over to the tactical station to see what it could tell me about this battle. It seems that the weapons had been firing while the intruder alarms had started going off, meaning that the Klingons had begun a boarding operation while still under fire themselves. That was bold of them. It could have turned out to be a suicide mission if their ship lost.
"Local download is complete. Transfer of all data to the Temptress will be complete in 27 seconds," Mila reported.
While I certainly wanted to look around some more, I knew that it was time to get going. There was a lot of this strange galaxy left to see before we left it, and maybe even some opportunities for profit. Those Federation hippies might call me a Ferengi for thinking like that, but most of them didn't have a harem of beautiful women, or own their own private, good sized, semi-tropical island with a luxurious palace fortress on it, or owned their own warship giving them the freedom to roam the galaxy at will, probably the most advanced known warship in the alpha quadrant. Soon enough I may even be able to traverse time or the freakin' multi-verse if I felt like it.
So they could just suck it.
(Line Break)
The Flighty Temptress. Alternate Reality.
Interestingly, this reality was very similar to the one I now called home, only it had a slightly different history. To start with there were a few minor, but notable differences, mostly involving the Klingons. There had been some terror attacks made by the Klingons that hadn't happened in my universe's timeline.
Those attacks were bad enough to put the Federation and the fractured and factionlized Klingons in a state of cold war, but the outbreak of the war was marked by the Battle of the Binary Stars on stardate 1207.3. This battle was provoked by T'Kuvma, a Klingon from the House of T'Kuvma, who wished to rally the Empire to unite against a common threat, to this end he portrayed the Federation as an existential threat, whose ever growing claimed space had encroached unacceptably close upon that of the Klingons.
There was no mention of this T'Kuvma in the history of our universe's timeline, yet in this reality he was considered to almost be Kahless Reborn and had died a martyr, his followers now fighting in his name.
In the first six months of the war the Federation had lost 8,186 officers. While bad, it really wasn't as bad it could have been given that the crinkle headed fuckers had no problems wiping out the populations of entire planets and even killing those who couldn't truly fight back.
After hacking into the classified files of the ship I'd just boarded, ones meant for the command officers only regarding the state of the war, I discovered that a Captain Gabriel Lorca of the USS Discovery had been given the freedom to do whatever it took to win the war, even if it meant breaking the rules of Starfleet and the laws of the Federation.
That, again, struck me as rather odd, as there was a Captain Gabriel Lorca in my timeline, only he commanded a different ship, and had died when that ship had been destroyed in an ion storm.
As part of this effort to win the war at any cost, even if it required them to do bad things, Starfleet co-opted some very important research that was being led by Paul Stamets into an experimental 'spore drive.' An experimental device which would somehow allow them to access the 'Mycelial Network:' a subspace organic web that permeates the universe. There was no mention of this in my ship's databanks, not even a disproved or crazy theory suggesting it as a possibility.
So apparently they had a super fast engine that was powered by mushrooms. That had to be one of the stupidest sounding things that I had ever heard, though given how often crazy was true I also wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if it worked beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Maybe it was unique to this universe only? I was starting to wonder if this universe existed because of some idiot who'd written some bad fanfiction. Not that I would know anything about that.
Also, the Klingons were still wrong even after I looked them up on the new database I'd acquired.
For some reason the whole damn species had changed; it wasn't just a group. Gone were their signature long manes, dramatic eyebrows, and sinister goatees; they actually had no body hair at all, and their leather uniforms and sashes had been replaced by elaborate tunics of some sort that were adorned with spiky bits of metal.
Six months into the war, I had learned, the Discovery managed to practically implement the drive and went on to achieve a string of victories. This was made possible by capturing an alien they called a Tardigrade.
My databanks told me that Tardigrades are a phylum of water-dwelling, eight-legged, segmented micro-animals. They were first described by the German zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773, who gave them the name of "little water bears." The name Tardigrada was given three years later by the Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani.
So I was meant to believe that the Starfleet of this timeline had an engine, on a single ship, that was powered by magic mushrooms and navigated by microscopic creatures that lived in water. This had to be disinformation of some kind.
Reading some more of this craziness I discovered that in November of 2256, a Klingon force managed to slip past the blockade defending Corvan II, a major resource hub, whose mines produced forty percent of the dilithium supplies in the Federation.
I knew that Corvan II was an inhabited planetoid in the Corvan system, near the Aneto system. Rainforests on the planetoid were home to the Corvan gilvo, which were threatened by industrial pollutants during the 24th century. Normally the Federation was more careful about pollution and such so I'd not realized that it was a Federation world. Upon further research I discovered that while it supplied dilithium to Starfleet back in my new home dimension, it was not actually a Federation Planet.
In this reality it was a Federation world, and without the planetoid's resources, a sizeable part of Starfleet would be grounded here. By the time the colony managed to get a distress call out the planetary defense shields had only another six hours before it would fall under the continued Klingon bombardment. With the closest ship much further away, the Discovery quickly responded, outmaneuvered, and destroyed the attacking Klingon vessels using its experimental spore drive.
After their first success with the spore drive, Discovery quickly became the most important weapon in the Federation arsenal, causing the tide to turn and the Federation to start winning the war. In the three weeks following the relief of Corvan II, Discovery further used its drive to break the Klingon supply line at Benzar and rout an attack through the Ophiucus system. Starfleet then started building spore drive units in a secret facility on Earth, while directing every ship, colony, and starbase to search for more tardigrades.
This made no sense to me, as they should be able to find tardigrades on Earth, and for some reason Starfleet didn't bring in this super ship of theirs to Earth so that it could be protected at all costs. They let it go on missions were the one-of-a-kind vessel could be destroyed. If this one super ship was that vital to the war effort that it couldn't be pulled away to be better studied and reproduced, then these guys were idiots.
Clearly this was some sort of trick they were trying to play on the Klingons. Only those morons would be dumb enough to think that there was a super ship flying around that was powered by mushrooms and microscopic organisms. Or maybe this universe was so damn different in makeup that this was somehow possible.
On the subject of the Klingons, a man called General Kol had established a new ruling council. Starfleet believed that he had ousted the House of D'Ghor and the House of Mo'Kai, who secretly approached Vulcan to discuss a potential alliance. However, this was in fact a ruse by Kol to capture a high-ranking Vulcan.
The plan worked better than expected when, due to unforeseen circumstances, Admiral Katrina Cornwell arrived in the place of Sarek. After Cornwell's capture, Kol welcomed Dennas' and Ujilli's Houses into his empire and promised them cloaking technology.
As more houses joined General Kol, the number of ships utilizing cloaking technology increased, and Klingon activity had become more aggressive. Which also didn't make any sense to me as I knew that the Klingons actually got cloaking tech from the Romulans, they didn't invent it themselves, yet that seemed to be the case in this reality.
"This timeline is nuts, but it makes for some fun reading," I said to the bridge crew. "Mushroom powered starships and a war that never happened."
By now T'Maz had recovered from our recent ordeals and her work had substantially improved after our fuck session, no matter how much she likely thought it wasn't needed. I certainly felt better. Our mission to take down the Forge had been more high pressure and stressful than I'd realized. Once we got to Earth everyone was going to need some vacation time on my island, despite us having left Bajor only days ago.
On a whim I did a search for Section 31 and to my surprise I found classified documents on the organization. They weren't public, but the spy group seemed to be known to many in Starfleet, which was super strange.
Next I checked out the status of the Enterprise. In my universe Captain April had commanded the Enterprise at this point in time, only here Captain Pike was in charge, for some reason.
"We're entering the Pahvo system," Ro reported.
"We are picking up some sort of signal," T'Maz reported to me. "Some kind of music, which is being broadcast into space by a massive crystal transmitter."
Well, that sounded cool, so I ordered that a copy of the music be made for my listening pleasure.
"This is not a known feature of this planet in our universe," the Vulcan reported. "I can also detect a signal coming from this world on a subspace band we don't normally monitor."
That must be what had lured the Klingons here, and a Starfleet ship as well, one that looked somewhat like a pizza cutter of all things.
"Make sure that you record that music," I ordered T'Maz. "I'm sure the Klingons will do something to bring it to an end."
The Klingon ship was now decloaking, so I figured that the shooting was about to begin.
"Back us off to avoid any stray weapon's fire," I ordered, even though we were under cloak. "If there's going to be a battle here we don't want to get involved, even accidentally."
While the vessels of this time would normally be no match for mine, my ship still wasn't in full working order, and I really didn't want to undo all of B'Elanna and Neela's recent hard work by getting shot at. They'd only blame me.
"What the hell!" I suddenly called out.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The Starfleet ship was appearing and disappearing, all over the place.
"This has got to be part of the disinformation that Starfleet is using on the Klingons," I said to the bridge crew. "No ship can move like that."
T'Maz was frantically pressing buttons at this point; no doubt she was running many different kinds of scans at the exact same time.
"I have no explanation," she offered quietly. "It is not a hologram. That really is a starship."
Okay, so either this universe's underlying laws of reality were so crazy that you could power a super ship with magic mushrooms or the Starfleet vessel was using some technobabble mind trick to fool people. The latter was far more likely.
"Are we going to stay?" Ro asked me.
T'Maz was done with her work for the most part; there were just some modification to the deflector left to do.
"Yes, for now," I said. "But we'll leave soon. This reality is messed up."
The pizza cutter ship was still leaping around. I could see no reason for it, and watching was making me dizzy.
"I would like to run some more scans before we leave," T'Maz requested. "And to recover the music you requested."
Well, given how rough I'd been when fucking her earlier I figured that I owed her a small favor.
"Very well," I said.
Hopefully all this jumping about would be over soon. I really wanted to get to the Earth of my home Star Trek reality. Heck I actually missed it. Still, how many people could say they had a ship that could traverse whole realities?
So far it'd been interesting, and with the possibility of returning home looking more and more likely, being here wasn't quite as scary anymore. But what did I have to show for it? Interesting didn't pay the bills or improve my life or increase my chances for survival with war with both the Collectors and the Dominion on the horizon. How could I take advantage of this opportunity to better his position?
With that thought, a few things that hadn't quite made sense to me before suddenly took on a new meaning and the potential for profit was in the air. According to the data I'd recovered, Corvan II was supplying 40% of the dilithium needs of the Federation in this reality.
That was a huge amount and simply did not track with what I knew about the Federation's history from his home reality. I knew from my studies that the Federation had another resource rich planet at this point in the timeline, something that they had fortified to the gills during their own conflict with the Klingons and was still producing valuable materials to this day.
A quick check with Mila gave me the information he needed. Janus 6 a planet discovered in the early to mid 23rd century and had been claimed by the Federation due its large amounts of highly valuable substances that an advanced space faring civilization needed in abundance.
If the Federation in this reality was relying so heavily on Corvan II, then I had a sneaking suspicion that, for whatever reason, the Federation had yet to discover Janus 6. If so, then all those resources were just waiting for someone to reach out and take them!
"Laren, set course for Janus 6, maximum warp," I ordered my helmswoman.
"Gothic, what? Why would we be going there?" she asked.
"Because it's time to make some money, my dear," I answered with a smile.
(Line Break)
The Flighty Temptress. In orbit of Janus 6. Alternate Reality.
It had taken over a week at a maximum warp of 9.95 to get here, but so far everything was looking good once we'd made orbit around the planet, still cloaked.
"Laren, scan for any ships in the sector. Scan the planet as well for any evidence of mining operations, past or present," I ordered Laren.
T'Maz was still off the bridge studying the rift technology to get us home. We probably could have gone home a few days ago, but my little side trip was giving her even more time to study the technology and the underlying science.
After a minute of intense scans, Ro Laren gave her report.
"No ships in range. There also doesn't appear to be any mining operations present at all," she said in awe and a bit of excitement.
During the week long trip to this planet I'd explained why we were coming to this planet, rather than returning to our home dimension at the first opportunity. Now that all the repairs to the Temptress were complete, B'Elanna was excited at the chance to oversee a mining operation using the Husnock technology to make the job even easier.
She'd already gleefully started making all the preparations to begin the transport, refinement, and storage of the material we'd soon hopefully be mining. I knew she'd do a fine job of it, having seen her do this exact same thing during her time on Voyager in the show, though this time it'd be even easier with the advanced technology we had onboard.
The Husnock routinely sent their warships on scouting missions spanning decades, so being able to mine vital materials to keep their ship running far from their home was not only useful, it was a necessity.
To that end they'd come up with transporter technology and protocols that could literally beam the materials out of a planetary body and refine them during the materialization process. For anything that couldn't be refined in that manner, because of a unique quality of the material or what not, or would be damaged or made useless by the transporter, they had nanites and advanced holography for traditional mining.
"Scan the surface for dilithium, latinum, and pergium deposits," I then ordered, a huge smile on my face.
Turning around with a smile, she responded, "I'm detecting huge veins of those substances and more very near the surface, Gothic. The conditions on the planet's surface are obviously inhospitable to humanoid life, but it should still be very easy to mine."
"Ha!" I exclaimed while standing up and pumping my fist in the air.
This had all been a bit of a gamble, but it had paid off in spades. I had been worried another race had set up shop here and would defend this place to the death or even worse, the planet could be different in this reality and not have any valuable resources at all.
"Laren, begin making preparations to land the ship on the surface near the best ore veins. See if historical records on past mining on this planet in our dimension tracks with what you're seeing on scans and if so, use that information to select the best site," I ordered getting a nervous nod from my pilot.
I had a feeling she'd be doing a few runs in the holodeck in preparation to ensure we got down safely.
As soon as we landed I was going to stuff this ship to the fucking gills with every valuable substance this planet had to offer. My plan was to stuff all three of my shuttlebays to overflowing from floor to ceiling. Then when that was full I was going to fill every unoccupied stateroom onboard, then the holodeck, then the corridors themselves, then I'd fill up any unused space in the other rooms. I wanted the ship so heavy with riches that when we left this planet the floors would groan from the thrust needed to reach orbit. Thank the Prophets I'd built this ship so damn overpowered and my storage vaults on my island so ridiculously overlarge. My overkill philosophy was once again kicking ass and taking names.
I wonder what the girls would say when they realized their cut of the booty was 5% of the profit because of the combat we'd experienced. They'd probably feint when they realized just how rich they would now be. T'Maz would likely refuse her cut as she was here on assignment for Section 31 and not entitled to receive payment in her mind, but I figured I'd make a large donation to some Vulcan and Bajoran charities in her name. Not anywhere near the 5% she would have gotten, of course, but still quite large.
This little adventure was finally paying off! Call me a Ferengi if you want, but having a lot of money gave me a lot more options and made things easier. If it ensured my girls and I had even a slightly better chance of surviving the wars to come, then even better.