Paint and Powder

A Star Trek anthology by Andrew Joshua Talon

DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager et al are the property of CBS Television, and creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.

2374, USS Lexington

Lexington hadn't expected to wake up. The battle with the Dominion battleship hadn't been going well. She'd lost her port nacelle and her tactical pod had run out of weapons. As typical, Lexington had only one card to play when it came to protecting her escape pods: Charging at the enemy Jem'hadar ships to keep their attention off her escape pods. This often let shipgirls escape, too, but the Dominion had begun targeting their black boxes just as they targeted escape pods.

Bastards with their silent, soulless starships.

So it was a shock to Lexington when she awoke. She could see her chief engineer, Rorkan Talkz, running a sonic spanner over her black box in a computer core access area. He looked up at the shocked avatar, and smiled widely.

"Good morning!" Talkz greeted her, "how are you feeling?"

"... Confused?" Lexington admitted. "I thought I was-!"

"The captain's runabout beamed you aboard just in time," Talz explained. He walked up to the avatar, the Denobulan still smiling broadly. "We weren't going to lose you too."

Lexington smiled warmly at her engineer. He was always so cheerful and optimistic: With the way this war had been going, she and the rest of her crew had needed that.

"Thank you," she said sincerely. She hummed. "So, where am I? This... Looks like a computer core room, but I don't have access to anything else."

"Ah, yes," Talkz said with a mild wince. "You see, we were a bit short on vessels at this shipyard to install you in, so..."

"Don't sugar coat it for me, Talkz," Lexington stated, "as long as it's not a garbage scow, I'll manage!"

"Right," Talkz said. "Hang on..."

He got to work on the main console.

"Enabling network connections... Full access granted... Final connections opened," Talkz recited, like it was a magic ritual. Lexington supposed that in some sense, it was. Like bringing her back to life after a fiery death.

If only it would work on her crew...

"You're online," Talkz finished, and in a split second, Lexington was a starship again. She could feel her hull, see around herself, test the power of her warp core and...

"This is... Strangely familiar," Lexington said. "Excelsior-class?"

Talkz nodded, his wide smile becoming a bit wry.

"Yes. Not just any Excelsior-class though!" He said cheerfully.

Lexington paused.

"Wait... You mean you actually put me back in my old hull?!" Lexington gasped. Even as she said it, thousands of details she had set aside when she'd upgraded came back to her. Power fluctuations in her starboard power coupling, tension on her deuterium tank bracings, scratches on her bridge deck...

"It was all we could get you," Talkz said apologetically. He shrugged. "I'm sure as soon as a new hull is available, you'll be first in line!"

Lexington sighed.

"Well... At least I know how to work it," she admitted. "It feels a bit... Cramped though."

"We can fix that over time," Talkz said with a beam. "Now! Let's work on getting you reacquainted with yourself. I'm sure you've met."

Lexington sighed. Again.

"Are you going to make these kinds of jokes the whole time?"

"Well, someone's a bit full of themselves-?"

"I knew it," Lexington groaned.

Just a random moment.