Joe Lawyer's Co-Author's Note:

Welcome back to another installment of Augment Gothic! Few things.

First, I changed the name of the resource planet that Gothic went to last chapter for fun and profit from Landros 4 to Janus VI. The Original series of Star Trek is actually a bit of a blind spot for me. I grew up on TNG and know every other series pretty much backwards and forwards, but I've never been able to get into TOS and the vast majority of those episodes I frankly haven't seen even once. Color me surprised when I actually did watch an episode of TOS recently and found that there was a canon planet in Janus VI that fit exactly what I was going for in the previous chapter, an incredibly resource rich planet that the Federation mined and exploited to great effect in the home Star Trek dimension, but for some reason in the Discovery dimension it had never been found. Rather than use a made up planet, I changed it to a canon one that did the same thing. Feel free to look it up on the Star Trek wiki. Sorry if this confuses anyone.

Second, this is the first chapter for this story that I've written entirely on my own. Usually GothicJedi writes the first draft, he sends it to me and I punch it up everywhere, fix grammar and other stuff, sometimes writing new scenes as it strikes my fancy and usually doubling the initial word count. This time, since it was my idea for AG to mine this resource planet to get something out of this dimension, I ran with the idea here. I also was a strong proponent for an upgraded Iron Man style armor as seen in Avengers: Infinity Wars, and thus you have me once again writing a design scene. So if that's boring and it sucks, that's all on me. Pretty much all the design scenes are on me, like the ship and the weapons, etc. I'd love to hear what you guys think.

Third, as always, review! I don't care if you want to trash the story, though I'd prefer you be constructive about it, as it'll still increase the word count and let us know you're thinking about the story.

Now onto the chapter!

Main Bridge. The Flighty Temptress. On the surface of Janus VI. Alternate Reality.

There is nothing quite so satisfying as a long shot, random plan coming together. That was the reason behind the soft grin on my face as I lay reclined in my captain's chair (aka recliner), immersed in my ship's sensors, on the bridge of my ultra advanced luxurious warship I had named the Flighty Temptress in a moment of whimsy.

It was a line from a wildly popular book series from my home dimension, one that had always stuck in my mind, something that the Gandalf impersonator, Dumbledore, had once said to Harry Potter, 'Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.' The ironic thing was that even though J.K. Rowling had existed in my new dimension and she had written and published her first Harry Potter novel, it had never gained the level of popularity it did in my old dimension and there had been no other books set in that world, no movies, no fanfiction, nothing. Who knew why really?

Maybe it'd make for a great series of holonovels? Hmmm…would have to think on that more. Would the 24th century have an appetite for magic?

My new life was filled with adventure these days and the latest one had seen my crew and I tossed in yet another dimension, on my new ship's maiden voyage no less, where I was in just the right time and place to stop an alien invasion of my new home's galaxy that had a pretty good chance of succeeding in my opinion. Our victory there saw us thrown into yet another dimension and back in the past, where the Federation existed, but history was doing some weird shit, because none of this rang any bells.

Luckily my ship had two forms of cloaking, neither of which the immediate locals could see through, so thankfully we'd been spared much in the way of conflict while my ship was still undergoing repairs. So, on the one hand it was good that their tech was inferior to ours and thus they weren't as much of a threat even on a couple dozen to one basis, but on the other hand it was bad, because it meant that there was shit all in terms of looting potential. Of course that didn't stop me from taking the entire database of that half destroyed Federation ship we'd stumbled upon, but a long shot idea to profit from this little joy ride through the multi-verse had paid off with Janus VI.

The discovery of Janus VI in the early 23rd century had been an incredible boon to the fledgling Federation of the time. It was an incredibly resource rich planet with ample supplies of gold, pergium, platinum, cerium, uranium and dilithium. Gold was worthless now when modern replicators could produce the stuff, but the other materials couldn't be replicated and there was enough on this planet to supply the needs of a thousand spare faring planets for centuries. The Federation began mining it in 2217 and mining continued to the modern day. It was also the home planet of the Horta race, but that was irrelevant for the moment since none of our sensors could detect any of them on the planet, which was mighty strange.

The Federation of this dimension had seemingly never discovered this planet, based on the lack of any mining here. I could only assume that not having this planet to draw upon was one of the big big reasons behind the current state of the Federation and probably accounted for many of the changes I'd seen so far and read about in that stolen database.

While that sucked for the Federation of this dimension, it was an incredible opportunity for me to profit from this forced joyride through the multi-verse. I had all of Janus VI in an unexploited pristine state to mine, a literal buffet of riches. Suddenly I wished I had designed a bigger ship!

Our powerful sensors had detected rich veins of starship-grade dilithium and pergium practically sitting on the planet's surface ready to be picked up by hand. There were huge chunks of platinum too just sitting there, which was literallymoney in the Star Trek dimension as it could be refined and liquefied to be placed into gold pressed latinum to be used as currency and used in a slew of different technologies that required the stuff, including replicators. You know the funny thing about that? Probably 90% of what we took from the planet would be the other materials. It was simply a matter of value and the fact that we had limited space. A cubic foot of starship-grade dilithium was worth many, many times the value of a cubic foot of latinum (after we'd refined it). We'd still be taking plenty of latinum, for immediate liquidity sake, but the other materials were just worth more when you remembered the limited space we had onboard the Temptress.

Immersing myself once again in the ship's sensors over the course of the week we'd been here, I watched as only the highest grade material was being carefully selected by B'Elanna with Scarlett's help and tagged for either transport, if the material allowed it, or by traditional mining by holo engineers through the use of holo-emitters deployed near the deposit.

It was a heady feeling to see the galaxy through the 'eyes' of a powerful starship's sensors. Every time I did it it felt like I was blind before, but now I could see. In fact the first time I'd felt like that was when I woke up in the Enterprise'ssick bay and I experienced my augment-senses for the first time. The sounds and smells and sights were overwhelming, but now I couldn't imagine being so blind again. This new body and life truly was a miracle and a gift. Without my enhanced mind and physiology this deep dive into my ship's sensors via the neural interface probably would have killed me by now, or driven me insane. The progress I had made recreating the Iron Man armor from Avengers Infinity War certainly wouldn't have been possible without the neural interface, but more on that later.

Getting up out of my seat on the bridge, I let a chuckle out at being the only flesh and blood person actually there. At the Conn, Ops, Tactical and Science were the non-descript holo-officers working the controls. Since we were essentially 'parked' on the surface of this world, I had felt my living crew was best utilized elsewhere. In fact, I should do a bit of a captain's walkabout and see how things were going.

I called aloud, "Scarlett, I'll be taking a brief tour of the ship. You have the bridge."

"Aye captain," Scarlett responded in that super sexy, smoky voice, after holographically appearing on the bridge in response to my command. Her leather Black Widow outfit from the movies looked fucking amazing.

Of course it wasn't strictly necessary for her to 'show up' as it were, or to direct the holo-officers in physical form, but it was a nice touch and set my mind at ease a bit.

With that, I stepped into the bridge turbolift.

"Main shuttle bay."

Since my ship only had 7 decks, the bridge being on deck 4 in the center of the ship, it was only 10 or 15 seconds later that the turbolift doors opened to the corridor to the rather imposing site of a 9 foot tall Space Marine decked out in full armor, but currently without his full load of weapons beyond a pistol and a power sword, waiting to get in the turbolift.

Even though I had designed these combat holograms for shipboard security should we ever be boarded, along with some heavy automated weapons to vaporize intruders, they were plenty smart enough to be drafted as porters in a pinch. These guys had been a pretty startling site for my crew when we first start transporting and mining the valuable resources from the planet, but after 7 days of this now it was old hat to just about everyone to pretty much ignore the silent hulking giants. This guy, designated Marine 3 I saw, probably by B'Elanna for practicality sake, was pushing an anti-grav sled full of starship grade dilithium crystals sitting in a standard container recognized the quadrant over as ideal for the protection, storage, and transport of the incredibly valuable crystals during interstellar flight. From watching TNG I knew the amount on the sled here could be used in half a dozen galaxy class warp engines.

Since we'd already filled up both cargo bays 1 and 2 to the ceilings, using a really creative honey comb storage mesh system that B'Elanna had designed, this container of dilithium was probably destined to be stored in one of the many spare guest suites I'd designed for the ship. With a living crew of only 5 people at the moment, me included, the vast majority of these guest rooms sat empty. The furniture in all of these rooms had already been recycled back into the replicator to free up all the space we could. A bunch of couches, tables, beds, and assorted décor, that I could easily replicate again in the future, no matter how nice, just wasn't worth the space that dilithium or pergium could rest in. Neela, Ro Laren, T'Maz and I, had even moved in together temporarily to free up three additional spacious cabins for storage use. B'Elanna drew the line at giving up her quarters and I didn't make it an order considering how awesome a job she'd been doing.

B'Elanna had come through in a really big way this past week, first, coming up with a sound strategy to extract what we could safely and economically via the transporter, versus mining, with help from T'Maz and Neela, second, tweaking the holo-engineers to do the mining on materials we couldn't use the transporter for, third, designing a refinery setup in the main shuttle bay, and fourth, working with Scarlett to design a storage system that most efficiently used all the available space available on the ship. Her ability to set up an improvised refinery on the fly for the various materials was a godsend as it allowed us to maximize the value of the materials in the smallest space possible. If we weren't refining the material as we went, we probably could have filled the ship up by day 2 on this planet. I had sincere doubts that a by-the-book Starfleet engineer would have been able to do as well in so short a time. Of course I saw her do it on Voyager when lost and alone in the delta quadrant with even more limited resources, albeit with more help, so my confidence in her was high.

Once we got back to my palace fortress on Bajor, we'd have our work cut out for us unloading everything into my secure storage vaults I'd built in the many subterranean levels and outfitted with the best security technology I had available. My girls had questioned me back then why I needed such a thing, and as I always said back then, 'I'd rather have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.'

I'd keep a percentage of the total materials for any future needs of mine, but would slowly release them for sale to the market. With the Collector attacks, the prices were only going up.

Stepping politely to the side after exiting the turbolift, the Space Marine silently pushed his anti-grav sled into the turbolift and proceeded to his destination. After it was gone, I did the same and leisurely continued my walk down the corridor to the main shuttle bay.

Main Shuttle Bay. The Flighty Temptress. On the surface of Janus VI. Alternate Reality.

The shuttle bay doors opening revealed just what kind of work we'd been doing over the course of 7 days of hard work. I didn't recognize a lot of the equipment currently whirring and beeping and making quite a racket, but I could see material going in one end of an elaborate process and coming out at the other end, refined. In the case of the platinum we'd transported from the surface, the solid material was being cleansed of impurities and liquefied. Liquid platinum was how it was present in the currency form of gold pressed latinum, but it was also the preferred state for the material prior to being used in various vital technologies the quadrant relied on, like replicators, which was why the material was valuable enough to be used like a universal currency among advanced races.

I had long seen the need for the Flighty Temptress to have at least one heavy/large shuttle onboard, similar to the runabout-class or the Delta Flyer from Voyager fame, hence why I'd gone far beyond the Dauntless design seen on Voyager to expand the main shuttle bay. Too many episodes from multiple Star Trek series had shown time and time again just how incredibly useful it could be to have a self-contained and independent ship within a larger ship. I had plans for such a ship and now I had all the non-replicable materials I'd need to build it when we got home, but at the moment it was lucky that I had not yet gotten around to it. The huge shuttle bay being entirely empty made this refinery operation possible onboard. Sure, we probably could have built something on the surface, but that would have been a much more complex undertaking, would have left larger traces of us being here, and would have been a security risk if we had to leave quickly to fight anyone.

Turning my attention back to the people in the room, I tried to remain unseen while B'Elanna and Neela worked with their holo-engineers, barking out orders as the refining process continued.

"Red, Delta, watch the throughput on the pergium line! The graviton filter needs time to work on the material properly; slow down input of new material for now. Good, keep it there for now. Blue Epsilon, adjust the phase variance on the dilithium line, I'm not liking the readings I'm getting!" B'Elanna shouted to her underlings, her eyes never leaving her console as she watched the various lines work simultaneously.

B'Elanna had been a skeptic for a while when it came to using holo-engineers and relying on them so much to handle the significant maintenance and repair needs of this ship, rightly not being a believer that they could be as good as a flesh and blood engineering crew. She was both right and wrong about that. Yes, the holo-engineers would never be capable of true improvisation or bursts of creativity to come up with MacGyver-like solutions, but that was what she was there for, and she was damn good at that! No, what they were good at was taking orders and possessing an extremely high level of competence at completing extremely complex, but routine engineering tasks and repairs. The bread and butter stuff when operating a highly sophisticated and complex machine like a starship.

Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of the engineering staff, even onboard a Starfleet vessel, were not engineering geniuses the like of Geordi LaForge or Reginald Barclay or Chief O'Brien, or B'Elanna Torres. The vast majority were just competent people that followed orders and did routine maintenance and repair, swapping out broken or malfunctioning parts as they happened with little in the need for improvisation or incredible creativity. You didn't need to be an engineering genius or an electrical engineer to recognize when a light bulb had burned out and then how to replace it. Of course the repair of combat damage, especially during combat, introduced a new layer of complexity, but the holo-engineers could still replace and repair to what their database said the ship's systems should look like and could prioritize properly as well. They could also take on incredibly risky tasks and complete them much faster because as they weren't living beings, less safety measures were required.

B'Elanna was a believer in them now. They worked 26 hours day, 7 days a week, maintaining the ship's systems with little direction from her beyond the initial orders and the maintenance and replacement schedule for the ship's components. They didn't sleep, they didn't need time off, they didn't get sick, they didn't question her orders, they always did what they were supposed to, when they were supposed to, and they did it with an extremely high level of competence and precision, every, single, time. She had confided in me that she loved the fact that she knew with certainty that everything would be done as ordered, when she ordered it, and would be done right. She also knew that if there were anomalies or issues the holo-engineers detected and couldn't deal with on their own, that they'd immediately report the issue to her with all the information needed for her to step in or give new orders.

Again, they weren't great for bouncing ideas off of, or offer suggestions and possible solutions, in the same way you couldn't just query the computer to give you the solution on the shows, but Neela could help with that. She often served as a sounding board for B'Elanna on complex problems and together they'd come up with some amazing fixes. Neela was having a ball learning from such a skilled engineer and B'Elanna recognized another person with the same passion for engineering she had and who had done amazing things herself during the occupation with very little to work with.

I had to laugh at the names she used for the holo-engineers helping her. They were pretty much non-descript human figures that all looked the same and had no personalities to distinguish them from each other. That was a deliberate choice on my part. Too many times in the shows holograms could take on a life of their own, so I'd made sure to put limits on their holo-matrices. They could learn new skills and adapt to work better with their living engineering managers, but there was not going to be any personality there. My crew would not be making friends with them or anthropomorphizing them. There would be no discussions on the nature of humanity.

B'Elanna had come up with a rather interesting way of differentiating them when she needed to address them, by splitting up the engineers into five teams of five. There were red, yellow, blue, green, and black teams. She had even amended their visual parameters file to put them in a corresponding all red, yellow, blue, etc., uniform for easy visual identification. Each team one was further broken down by the greek letter written on the front and back of the middle of their shirts, identifying them as alpha, beta, gamma, delta, or epsilon, hence why she called out 'Red Delta' and 'Blue Epsilon.' She might have assigned each team to work solely on specific systems, like Red Team for the weapons, but I really wasn't sure and didn't really care to ask.

"Yellow team, start replicating the next batch of storage containers for when this run is completed and beam them here for use. I want the pergium and latinum packed and stored in guest quarters 14 on deck 6," she ordered. "Call for a Space Marine or Predator alien to put them in place."

Hmm…speaking of pergium and latinum, I made a mental note to ask B'Elanna to build 5-10 new personal shield devices. These were incredibly expensive devices to build, hence why Starfleet didn't issue them to all their personnel, despite how many lives it would save, but we had an abundance of materials right now. My crew was going to see combat working for me, and they deserved the best chance to survive it.

Well, it looked like things were well in hand here, so I better get back to work on my new Iron Man armor.

Flashback to Day 1. Holodeck. The Flighty Temptress. On the surface of Janus VI. Alternate Reality.

I couldn't replicate anything permanent here in this facsimile of my island's design lab, but that wasn't important as I was still firmly in the design phase. Sure, I could have been helping my crew, but frankly I'd probably just get in the way. A good captain knows when to let his crew do their jobs without his interference.

No, while I was excited about the wealth that would be coming from our time spent on Janus VI, conservatively in the range of 7-10 million bricks of latinum, my passion at the moment was in redesigning my armor with the scenes from a movie that I know I had never seen in my native dimension. For whatever reason, my patron or Q or some other god-like entity had shared those scenes with me. Who knows why they did it. It could be something as silly as an errant thought from me and their whimsy or maybe a desire for more entertainment or something more important and ominous, like if I didn't take the hint and improve my armor, I was going to die.

That last idea certainly gave me pause, but you didn't need to twist my arm much to get me to redesign my armor with new ideas as I'd done it many times over the years I'd been in this new dimension.

I've said it many times before, Tony Stark was a genius among geniuses, the kind of creative mind that came around once a millennia. This new armor was revolutionary and from his dialog I was allowed to hear, and my own observations, was based on nanotechnology and thus was always with him, ready to be deployed, could adapt to the situation with new capabilities, and most importantly, could self-repair. Not having it when he desperately needed it was one of the things that I knew he was deathly afraid of in the other movies and had come up with several solutions over the years to lessen that fear.

I had access to all of the technology of the 24th century in the freaking Star Trek dimension. I had access to the combined knowledge and technology of hundreds of advanced species. I had ultra advanced alien technology from the Collectors and the Husnock that the rest of the alpha quadrant didn't have. Even with all my advantages, this would be a hell of a difficult job. Tony Stark, on the other hand, was on 21st century Earth and from everything I've seen in the movies, didn't really use alien technology to make his inventions work. Genius among fucking geniuses.

Nanotechnology was not exactly new technology. In my dimension the seeds for the technology were born as early as 1959 on Earth, though the term 'nanotechnology' didn't come into existence until 1974. Bottom line, it wasn't new, and had in fact been around a long, long time. The practical side of it, rather than merely theoretical, started showing up in the early 21st century. Just like many other races had come up with their own versions of energy weapons, many, many other races had come up with versions of nanotechnology.

It seemed I was psyching myself out here. Why not just start with the three big players and their version of nanotech.

"Scarlett, display an example of Federation, Collector, and Husnock nanotechnology," I ordered.

Immediately, three obviously magnified nanites were displayed in mid air along with corresponding technical information.

After studying the schematics and technical descriptions closely, I realized that each version, while similar, did something better than the others, or each race had different purposes for them when they were originally designed. The Federation version was much more medically oriented, meant to heal injuries and fight disease from the inside of the body, but it could interact with technology as I'd seen on that one episode of TNG where the Enterprise was nearly destroyed.

The Collector version had been designed to re-write DNA and assist in the creation of their cybernetic upgrades in their overly specialized soldiers, scientists, leaders, etc. As they saw all their people as expendable these nanites weren't really designed to keep the body alive or heal injuries.

The Husnock version was mostly a way to repair their ships and technology, and had the best chance of mimicking complex technology.

Of course I wanted all of these capabilities and would need all of them in order to reproduce what that crazy genius Stark had accomplished. His suit had an insane fluidity to it and I had seen many different configurations during his fight with Thanos. His suit could form a physical shield capable of stopping a powerful energy blast from his enemy, his arms could turn into energy canons and rifles, and at one point four floating arc-things detached from his suit and produced a huge energy beam weapon. Wow. He also used some kind of power assist punch for hand-to-hand combat, enlarged and combined his feet thrusters for greater speed, independent mini-missiles from his back, a halo-style energy sword, sprayed a substance capable of sealing a starship hull breach, and his armor had an insane self-repair capability to deal with any damage it took.

Was a single upgraded arc reactor in his chest powering all of this shit? Man, I was feeling an inferiority complex forming. If I managed to actually recreate this thing, would I be too OP for this dimension? Was there such a thing? Nah. Fuck that. Overkill was my life philosophy and nothing was going to stop me from living that way. I'd rather be considered OP then be dead.

'Calm down, Gothic,' I thought to myself. Unlike Tony I was not practically inventing the entire field of nanotechnology on the freaking fly. I had the collective work and knowledge of hundreds of species and the Collector and Husnock versions which were more advanced than the Federation version of that technology.

In that one scene where he first deployed the suit, the nano-armor just spreads out to completely encase his body from the area of his arc reactor by his heart. Where were all those nanites coming from?! Were they self-replicating on the fly? His suit was completely deployed in probably a second, forming directly over his real clothes almost like nanotechnology 3d printing. Is it building itself on the fly every time? Or does he have some kind of spatial storage technology? When he dismisses the suit, what happens to all that nano-printed material? Does it self-destruct? Does it get sucked into some kind of storage or some kind of compacted state? He had his AI helping to run his armor, would my VI be able to do the same?

I had a lot of work ahead of me. Even if I could get the nanites to have these capabilities, I'd need to load the design templates for my version of repulsors, the energy weapons, the personal shield technology, sensors, the micro-replicator, everything. In other words I needed to give my nanites the templates of the common forms they'd assume ahead of the time, which wouldn't be terribly hard since I had the technical schematics for all kinds of 24th century tech. But could Tony create new forms on the fly with help from his AI? Bottom line was that in addition to all the shit I saw in the movies, I wanted my current capabilities to transfer over to my new nano-armor, without the need to have separate physical devices. The armor needed to do it all, like self-shielding, and the camouflage and cloaking tech I'd already worked into my armor. So many issues to overcome.

One way I wanted to go beyond even what I saw in the movie was the medical applications of nanites. The Borg had inspired that idea of all people. As far as I could tell, other than his arc reactor being inside his body, all his armor's functionality worked on the outside of his body. The Federation designed medical nanites, though, were meant to work inside the body, to heal it. That opened up a whole new world of capabilities if I had trillions of nanites in my blood, muscles, and bones. They could assist in the repair and enhancement of my already impressive physiology in real time. If a muscle was torn or a bone was broken, they could repair it from the inside out, instantly. If I was stabbed, they could knit the skin back together and apply the equivalent of a dermal regenerator from the inside out. If I was poisoned or exposed to a deadly toxin or disease, the nanites in my body could actively seek it out and destroy it, repairing as it did, like a hunter seeker weapon. They could even enhance my brain function, improving my memory, speed of thought, creativity...

Damn, could I pull a 7 of 9 and change my body's energy field to walk through force fields like 7 did with her Borg nanoprobes in Voyager?!

Well, that gave me chills as I thought of all the possibilities. People were already terrified of me for being an augment and five times faster and stronger than a baseline human, what could a nanite enhanced augment do? Man oh man, I'd have to build something in to hide the existence of the nanotechnology in my body from scans or from someone trying to hack them to control me. Maybe even build in some kind of self-destruct if outside my body for more than a second to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands?

Present Day. Holodeck. The Flighty Temptress. On the surface of Janus VI. Alternate Reality.

Over the last 7 days, I'd probably spent 20 hours a day on my ship's holodeck in a recreation of my design lab from the island. It'd been a productive week, at least once I got over the daunting and, at times, demoralizing task that I had set for myself in recreating Tony Stark's most advanced version of his Iron Man armor. There were a lot of failures before I came up with something that actually worked.

"Scarlett, display the mark 37 nanite and internal power core/replicator unit. Ready simulations to show deployment and real time reconfigurations," I ordered aloud to the ship's computer and VI.

Mark 37 was not an homage to the Iron Man comics, this version of the nanite was literally the 37th version I'd created over the past week. The previous versions all had some fatal issue I'd detected, being good at one thing, but not at another. As I'd proven time and time again since coming to this dimension, my augment mind was capable of amazing things if only I kept working at it. My knowledge from all the Star Trek series coupled with the endless creativity found in 21th century Earth movies, TV, games, and comics was another potent source of inspiration for 24th century problems.

The Mark 37 nanite was the template for every nanite that would eventually go into my body and comprise my armor. They were an amalgamation of all the nanotechnology known to the Federation, Collectors, and the Husnock. Each had done something better than the others, the hardest trick of all had been to combine them together.

A single nanite alone was actually a very, very dumb microscopic machine, but when networked and linked to each other, working together in the trillions upon trillions towards a unified purpose, that's when miracles could happen and the truly impressive shit was possible. Nanotechnology was a big reason why the Borg had been able to conquer such a large swath of the galaxy.

Like all things high technology, power generation was an issue I'd had to overcome. I had zero idea how to recreate Tony Stark's arc reactor and also had zero desire to try to recreate that technology from scratch. Nor did I want such a large and detectable piece of technology in my chest that I'd have to physically tap to deploy. Hiding my capabilities was the name of the game, hence why I'd continue using my pistol, rifle, and sword I'd built a while ago.

No, I went with what I had already in the Collector micro-singularity power cell. Relying on a single power core struck me as folly, so I used a pistol's power cell and redesigned it into the form of a small circular wafer, 2 inches in diameter and a half inch thick. Working with my beautiful EMH doctors onboard, they suggested five places in my body where they could surgically graft the tech into my skeleton by removing a corresponding amount of bone. My sternum, both left and right shoulders, and the left and right side of my pelvis offered ideal locations and would be very easy for them to surgically add and hide.

I chose all five locations in accordance with my philosophy of overkill. Five power cells would be more than sufficient to provide ample power for all of my needs according to my simulations.

Of course, power was only part of the answer. A nano-replicator unit was needed in order to produce the nanites. My solution was to create a nanite shell whose sole purpose was to produce new nanites and nothing else. They were essentially a hard shell of nanites that surrounded the five power cells. When the armor was deployed they'd exit from the many pores in my epidermis, so that no output ports in my body would be needed.

All of the nanites had a bit of my neural interface technology built in so that I and only I could mentally command them to do various things. My VI could do the same. To pay homage to Tony Stark, the guy who inspired me to build an advanced armor system in the first place, I'd given my personal VI, modeled to look and sound like Milla Jovavich, a personality overhaul. My VI was now Jarvis and sounded like the British actor in the film who gave Jarvis his voice, Paul Bettany. Thankfully I was in luck once again and he had lived in this dimension and recordings of his voice had survived to the present day.

"Scarlett, run simulation with the power cores and replicator units already surgically grafted," I ordered.

Immediately a holographic simulation of my nude body was in front of me. I stood from my chair and slowly circled my six foot five muscled body, paying close attention to my sternum, shoulders and the pelvis where the technology would be surgically grafted to me.

Nothing. I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, even with close visual inspection.

"Hmm...Scarlett, run standard medical scans in the manner of all alpha quadrant species, with both handheld scanners and more advanced bio-bed scanners. Report any detected anomalies," I ordered.

"No anomalies detected, Gothic," she reported after several minutes of scans in various colorful energy wavelengths, probably as a way for me to see the various races' different technologies at work.

That was quite a relief. You wouldn't believe the number of materials I had attempted to construct the nanites out of to get that result. It was extremely hard to balance the need for toughness to withstand active combat, under numerous conditions, and the need to hide the nanites from being detected by active scans, medical or engineering. In the end, that had proved impossible in one material and I had eventually chosen a composite material the Husnock had invented for starship armor with the perfect blend of physical toughness and its resistance to energy weapons.

No, in the end there was no miracle material to be had. The solution had actually come once again from my home dimension. Right before I had been dimensionally displaced, a major car manufacturer from my time had gotten caught falsifying their emissions on their diesel line of vehicles. The innovative way they'd come up with to cheat the system was to essentially have the car recognize when the car was being emission tested and then change its operation during that period to pass the test. My nanites would be doing something similar. When they detected a passive or active scan capable of detecting the existence of nanites and technology in my body, they'd essentially emit a false sensor return to show everything was normal and as expected. My EMH hotties were once again extremely useful in programming what the nanites should return to scanning technology.

"Deploy armor, 1/1000th actual speed."

The armor deployed just like in the movie, but because it was slowed down to a huge degree it was visible how the nanites flowed like a liquid to cover my body starting with the power/replicator unit installed in my sternum, both shoulders, and right and left side of my pelvis. According to simulations, my entire body should be covered with skin tight armor in less than a second at normal speeds.

"Simulate combat and analyze performance and damage, continuous hits with common energy weapons, including Dominion style," I ordered.

With that command, several weapons were being fired at my doppelganger's armor-clad form from unseen enemies. Several Klingon and Romulan disrupters, then Federation phasers, than Dominion plasma rifles, were fired and hit home. The results were mostly the same, regardless of weapon technology used. On kill power levels the personal shield the nanites had reproduced absorbed 9-12 hits before it was overwhelmed and allowed penetration. On full power, in other words shots capable of vaporizing bodies, only 6 shots were stopped by the shield before the armor itself took the hits. With the personal shield now down the Husnock armor material itself was able to absorb another 4 full power shots before the nanites were damaged and self-repair protocols were engaged, but I would mostly likely be dead, so who cared. So, a ton of protection, but against massed enemies all able to shoot me with high power shots, I'd be fucked and the best idea would be to run or start dodging better. Against standard blades and other stabbing weapons the shields and armor were pretty much impenetrable, unless they used exotic technology like my power sword did.

I wasn't invincible by any means, but my armor offered me a ton of protection from the combat common to this dimension. If I was forced to retreat, the site-to-site transporter technology that had been built into the armor could be used or I could always rocket away using the armor's repulsor/impulse tech, in the air or in space.

"Simulate armor deployment over actual clothes."

The armor, just like in the movie, formed directly over the clothes I was wearing with minimal delay.

"Simulate camouflage in multiple environments,"

With that command, multiple natural and artificial environments were displayed, the camouflage systems either blending in with different color combinations and patterns, or a form of pseudo invisibility.

"Simulate cloaking."

With that, the armor disappeared altogether. This was superior to camouflage, but the power required was much higher and in circumstances where advanced sensors could be brought to bear the chances for detection were actually higher then with camouflage only.

"Retract armor."

In the movie, Tony's armor was seemingly sucked into his arc reactor, which made zero sense to me, so I had installed a micro transporter pattern buffer to hold the nanites in transporter suspension until deployed again. The nanite replicator would essentially only be used to create new nanites as needed, like for large configurations, or to replace damaged or destroyed nanites for whatever reason. In this case, the nanites were almost sucked up into the five power cores.

"Deploy armor and cycle through various configurations and activate new equipment."

The armor was deployed again and various changes were made. The boot thrusters activated and combined to form a new super thruster for incredible speed. The arms turned into various weapon configurations, including a phaser canon and phase rifle. Cutting lasers were activated from various points. Anti-matter mini missiles were deployed and fired. A built in sword was built with nanites. What I didn't see was the flying arc energy emitters that Tony had built to form that huge energy beam in the movie. Yeah, I was still working on making that one a reality.

"Scarlett, did all these configurations work within expected parameters?"

"Yes, all constructs worked as expected, Gothic, though field testing is required," Scarlett replied.

"I agree. Activate micro-replicator, produce multiple objects."

With that command my doppelganger outstretched his hand at chest height, palm facing up, and spread his fingers. The palm of his hand glowed a familiar white and grenades were produced, then recycled, then a knife, then recycled, then an apple, a cup of tea, and so on. A dozen different objects, including some common engineering and medical tools of this era were replicated. Anybody familiar with the replicators of the Federation would recognize the light and sounds of an active replicator. In this case, the nanites encasing the hand were mimicking the energy-to-matter conversion technology found in all replicators. My previous armor had had a micro-replicator in the utility belt, so I wanted to reproduce that with my new nano-armor. It wouldn't be able to produce objects larger than my hand, but it was still incredibly useful and looked crazy fucking cool.

The Borg had been a huge inspiration to me in that regard. In episode after episode we saw the Borg inject nanoprobes into technology to assimilate it, and those same nanoprobes were capable of changing that technology into Borg technology. This was similar.

"Retract armor. Simulate exposure to vacuum through explosive decompression and travel in vacuum."

Scarlett did just that. How gruesome. Thankfully, the nanites present in my blood acted like sensors even when the armor was in an undeployed state, just as I'd designed it, so they detected the dangerous situation. In the case of the sensors and/or Jarvis detecting a threat to my life, the armor was set to automatically deploy in the fastest way possible to prevent my death. This, in theory, would apply for a myriad number of situations where I wasn't already wearing my armor in a deployed state, like if I was sleeping in my quarters on DS9 and a bomb was left in my quarters or if assassins tried to kill me in my bed or in the shower while I was fucking my girls. If I was injured the nanites in my blood would automatically act to heal me to my baseline.

Those situations, ones where I wasn't already wearing my armor, for whatever reason, had given me nightmares in the past. An armor, no matter how advanced, is only going to protect you if you were wearing the fucking thing. During the Occupation I pretty much wore my armor at all times. Even when having sex with Nerys I'd only removed my pants. Thanks to Tony Stark's ingenuity hopefully those fears were a thing of the past. As I'd reminded myself over and over again, I might be a badass superhuman augment in many ways, but I wasn't fucking invincible. I could be killed easily with the right amount of creativity and lack of caution on my part.

"We've done some good work Scarlett, continue to run simulations on all aspects of the new nano-armor design. Coordinate with the EMH's on the medical simulations to run for the nanites to be present inside my body, poison and toxin exposure, disease, combat injuries, etc."

"Of course, sir. Over 100 million simulations under different circumstances and variables still need to be conducted. A comprehensive report with suggestions for changes to the base designs will be included and sent to you once completed," Scarlett responded from her position next to me, after materializing again in her Black Widow form. I'd like to think that even though she wasn't truly sentient, as I'd intended, she was invested in my survival in some rudimentary fashion.

"What is the ETA on the simulation run being complete?" I asked.

"37 hours, 12 minutes, and 36 seconds estimated to completion," Scarlett responded.

"Good, good. Keep me apprised. And let me know immediately when Jarvis is fully compiled and tested."

The creation of the Jarvis VI was a process in itself as Jarvis would be my companion and help control the armor, as well as act as my omni-tool. Saying I'd merely be changing the name of my old omnitool's VI to Jarvis was a gross simplification. A VI running on the processing power of a small wearable omni-tool, no matter how upgraded, was nothing in comparison to VIs like Hermione and Scarlett who had the massive computer cores of my island and starship respectively for processing power. It was like comparing a cheap solar calculator to a supercomputer.

Jarvis, on the other hand, would be running on the processing power of trillions upon trillions of nanites networked together. So, to use that analogy again, if Hermione and Scarlett are supercomputers, Jarvis would be like a tricked out gaming desktop. With my neural transceiver and connection to both my island and ship's systems via quantum entanglement, Jarvis would be able to tap into those resources as needed.

With that, I decided it was time to turn in. I had done all the heavy lifting I could for the moment, the rest was tweaking the tech and I really couldn't do that until all the simulations were completed.

Best to get to bed.