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The following story takes place after "Needs of the Many"

Star Trek: Maximillian

Strength In Darkness

Chapter II

Admiral T'Kill appraised Captain Starblade, the android's uniform showing a few wrinkles as he stood. He stared for a moment, almost as if he was attempting to make Critch uncomfortable, and then returned to reading the hastily prepared padd in front of him.

"Twenty-Five, you say?"

"Yes, Sir. On a ship built for forty. A few pods have failed, this ship has been moving for about five years."

"Which would put it as having left right around the time Shinzon started to rise in power." T'Kill sighed, and tossed the padd on the table. "This is the last thing we need right now. Communications with the new Romulan Government aren't going well."

Critch raised an eyebrow. "That's not what the news says."

"You know as well as I do that the news doesn't always have the whole story." T'Kill shook his head. "There's a power struggle down there. Shinzon still lives in the minds of a lot of people. There are rumors about Tomalok. There are rumors about Sela. Hell, half of Romulus thinks that Shinzon's Viceroy is still running around somewhere. It's madness. And it's spreading." T'Kill's voice grew more aggravated with each passing moment.

"Spreading?"

"You saw the weaponry on Bajor. That wasn't the only disruptor that's popped up on a planet where it shouldn't have been. There are rumblings that the Maquis are going to start up again. This is going to turn both quadrants into a powder keg."

T'Kill stood up slowly, and walked to the window, assessing the stars from his window. "We cannot allow that to happen, we have to put out these brush fires before they become galactic incidents."

Critch didn't like where this was going. After getting in range, he had ordered the Maximillian to give a full scan of the Romulan Warbird. It was essentially defenseless, with only minimum shields raised to protect from the standard radiation and random meteorites that would come from a journey through space. Twenty-five Remans, of various body-type, were detected, with minimal life-signs, suggesting a type of long-term hibernation. Their mission was unknown, but T'Purr had quickly worked out that they would eventually reach their destination: The planet Andoria. Critch stood next to him at the window. "What are you proposing?"

"Shinzon's agents have been proven to be typically Reman."

"Most of his agents, you mean." Critch interrupted, but T'Kill ignored it.

"It couldn't be clearer that these are soldiers of Shinzon. We found them, we have to deal with them."

"And what do you mean by that?"

T'Kill sighed. This was just the beginning of one of many arguments he would have with the new Captain. "I'm not sure how much of this crew realizes it, Captain, but we are at war. War with an enemy that could be in any faction at any time, and be of any one of a dozen races allied with the Romulans. And at the forefront is a race that most people didn't even know existed until Shinzon."

"Come on, Admiral, you know that not every Reman is evil. Wasn't there one hanging out with the Titan for a while?" (Titan: The Red King)

"Be that as it may, the facts are what they are. These are undoubtedly Shinzon's people. The Warbird should be blown out of the stars."

"Ok, ok, so they're evil maniacal Dracula-looking bastards. What sense does it make to send one tiny Warbird out to Andoria? What can one ship, even if it can cloak, do?"

"So you're saying we should let them go?" T'Kill looked at Critch, surprised.

"Not at all. What I'm saying is that even in war, shooting someone when his back is turned is a hell of a cowardly thing to do. And they haven't shown any signs of aggression. Let's let them prove it."

"What are you proposing, Captain?" T'Kill said, annoyed.

"Little bit of spying never hurt anyone, Admiral. Let's go meet the neighbors, wake them up, see what they think of us."

"I imagine even if they weren't on Shinzon's side, they would still see us as a threat."

"Not if we don't appear to be…" Critch reached up with one hand, and pinched one of his ears. "If Federation doctors can make humans and Bajorans look like Klingons, I'm sure transforming us into Romulans would be no sweat."

"Infiltration?"

"Why not? Let them think their golden boy won, and we fly the fleet of Shinzon. Because we don't know how many other ships are out there, invisible. Maybe the cloak failed on this one, and instead of a small brush fire, we can stop a bonfire."

"They'd still notice a Sovereign class ship…"

"Little bits of fakery here and there, borrow a few holo-emitters from Skrit, and voila! Scorpion vessel, at your service!"

"You sound almost…excited about this."

"Can you blame me? I thought all I'd be doing is chasing comets around, but instead we've got an interstellar war to avert!"

"Captain, this is a serious matter. Infiltration is a long-practiced skill, it takes years to master…"

"As you haven't let me forget, Admiral, I was created for subterfuge. The fact that I'm here right now is because I was intended to be a glorified spy. So let me be a spy for you. Instead of taking the easy way out and looking the other way when we lose a few planets, lets get to the bottom of this. Then, we can blow them up." Critch inwardly grimaced as he used the 'spy' lie to T'Kill, but if it worked…

"…Fine, Captain. I'll allow it. On two conditions."

Critch drew himself up. "Yes sir!"

"One, if this goes wrong, never question or even offer an opposing comment to my orders ever again. This is your chance to prove me wrong, something I don't allow many to do, and I have no idea why I'm allowing you to do it."

"Gotcha."

"And two…my name is Admiral T'Kill to you. I allow many different kinds of insubordination under my watch on this ship. But if you call me Turock one more time, Captain, you will be chasing comets for the rest of your career, do we have an understanding?"

Critch fought the urge to roll his eyes, and agreed. They saluted, and Critch retreated from T'Kill's ready room, as the Admiral returned to his chair, and looked over the Warbird's schematics on the padd one more time, and hoped he wasn't making a mistake taking Blobbin's suggestion to go easier on the android.

"Not so rough!" Skrit snapped.

"This isn't exactly easy, so quiet!" Jaydin snapped back, as she ran the device over his ear. The ear was slowly forming a point at the top. "I still have one left to go and then you're done." Skrit sighed. Jaydin shook her head. "It's a lot harder with the others, all I have to do with you is change your holo-emitter a bit."

"It's still like getting my head caught in a rice-picker." He muttered, but put up with it.

The away team consisted of him, Critch, Overload, Admiral T'Kill, and Kelvok. T'Kill wanted to go along to keep an eye on things, and since he was already physically a Romulan no makeup was required, although there was a slight tweaking in case they knew of him by reputation and sight. Kelvok, being Vulcan, only needed a littler more. The hard part was Critch, requiring a lot of makeup. Fortunately for him, it was a simple process to stretch and file down his ears to form a point, since he turned off his pain receptors and figured that the nanobots would repair the damage in time. Not too soon, he hoped.

The hard part was acting as a Romulan team. While T'Kill and Kelvok knew almost everything about Romulans that there was to know, Critch and Skrit required a little more teaching. Despite his heritage and abilities, Critch still learned at a normal pace, since there was no way for Federation technology to link with Marconian, at least not yet. So for them it was a long road, condensed into a week. And when it was done, Skrit swore that the only thing he got out of it was to 'act more emotional'.

He was finding it a bit difficult to maintain his form than usual, since at least half of his emitters were being redeployed on the exterior of the Maximillian. When the process, overseen by Lieutenant Squirrelly, was complete, the ship would be visually indistinguishable from an actual Scimitar warship. As far as scans, that was trickier. Once the emitters were deployed, Squirrelly and his engineering team would transfer over to changing the frequencies and instruments of the Maximillian to more accurately portray what a Scimitar would. It was all very touch and go, and time-consuming.

Finally, Critch and the away team stood on the bridge of the Maximillian, assessing the work. Far more emitters were needed, and more power. Cables were strung everywhere throughout the bridge, and Critch assessed them.

"Not exactly what I had in mind, but I'll take it if it works."

T'Purr frowned. "You know we're going to be pretty defenseless if things hit the fan."

"Then let's make sure they don't do that." T'Kill spoke directly to Critch, who shrugged it off.

"We're all professionals here." He turned to Skrit. "You sure you can hold up under one emitter? I know long term isn't your thing…"

"Doing ok so far. Jaydin seeing us off?"

"She's down in sickbay, probably preparing for things to hit the fan." Critch smirked at T'Kill, who gave him a dark look.

A green light came up on a rear station, and Kelvok looked over his shoulder at the team. "Everything is ready, Captain."

"Then lets go. Hit the lights!"

The lights dimmed, but to a casual observer nothing changed on the bridge of the ship. From the exterior, however, things were much different, the Maximillian had seemed to flicker a bit, and then in waves the great ship turned into an even larger one. Within a minute, the Sovereign was a Scimitar.

Critch read the readout, and grinned. "Phase two!" He yelled. Every station on the ship flickered out, as though rebooting. The lights went completely out, and then back on. But the lighting was completely different. The normal soft white was replaced with a greenish tint, and where there were statistics about the normal workings there were now schematics of a Scimitar class ship.

Overload grinned. "Woot!" Critch grinned with her, and Skrit looked lost in thought.

"What should we name her?"

"New ship, new name. Hmm…"

"Call her The Mistake." T'Kill said quietly.

"Even better. The 'Rehllai'"

T'Kill and Kelvok's eyebrows both went up as Critch walked towards the turbolift doors. Skrit followed quickly. "Wait, what's that mean?"

Critch smiled as he entered the turbolift. "To Explode."

Four Starfleet crewmembers transported from the Rehllai. Four Romulans materialized on the Romulan Warbird Llaihr III. Translated into Federation standard, it simply reads: The Third Death.