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.
Picard sucks. Let's keep fixing it with shipgirls!
Enterprise was still state of the art. She was very knowledgeable about Starfleet's tactics, deployments, and patrols on the way to what used to be the Romulan Neutral Zone. And she was, of course, very experienced and clever.
Or at least had the experiences of her former crews to rely on. The cleverness she attributed to their influence as well.
But the fact remained that she was a large, Sovereign-class starship that had run away from Sol itself. So it wasn't a matter of if someone would catch up to her, it was when.
"Challenger to Enterprise, come in. Challenger to Enterprise, please come in."
Even so, the subspace signal was almost a surprise. Enterprise was moving along at Warp 7, keeping her course close to the commercial trade routes to better disguise her warp signature. The signal's source was soon identified, and she opened the channel.
She activated the viewscreen and sat back in her captain's chair. The man facing her was very familiar, even with his graying beard and cybernetic eyes. The shipgirl AI was similarly familiar: Buxom, red haired, and looking nervous as she stood alongside her captain.
"Hello Geordi, Challenger," Enterprise greeted them cordially. "You snuck up on me! Very hard to do."
"Well, I do know your blindspots," Geordi admitted with a forced smile.
"That said, three days to catch up to me?" Enterprise asked, "I'm practically at the Neutral Zone! More of Admiral Clancy's political connections disguised as competence at work, I take it?"
Geordi held back a sigh.
"Now Enterprise, you really need to-"
"What? Power down?" Enterprise asked, keeping her temper in check but just barely, "abandon people who need my help?"
"This isn't how you do things," Geordi replied, barely keeping his own anger controlled, "you can't just run off like this! Abandoning everything!"
"I'm not abandoning my captain," Enterprise growled, "not after everything he's done for us! For me! For the Federation!"
"All you're doing is making AIs look even worse!" Geordi retorted, "there's a better way, an official way-!"
"A person who points to a piece of paper when asked for help is no one worth obeying," Enterprise growled. She shook her head and looked imploringly at Geordi.
"Geordi, you know this is wrong! You know something's deeply wrong with Starfleet Command! With the Federation government! Something rotten, for years now! You know this isn't right!"
Geordi grimaced. Challenger rested a hand on his shoulder, and looked intently at Enterprise.
"We know," she said softly.
"But it's not the kind of thing you discuss on an open channel," Geordi said quietly. It took Enterprise but a moment to see that the two were calling from Geordi's ready room, not the bridge. Enterprise's frown deepened.
"I see," she said gently.
"Drop out of warp. Let me beam aboard-Just me," Geordi said, "and I can fill you in. We can decide how to proceed from there."
Enterprise nodded slowly.
"Understood," she said quietly. She began to decelerate, letting the Challenger match her speed so they could come out of warp together... But then her proximity alarms screamed as a big warp contact burst out of slipstream behind them. The signatures was new, but not unknown-Enterprise had an up to date tactical database, of course.
"Inquiry-class," Enterprise hummed. The vessel was the Zheng-He, and it hailed her directly. She opened the channel, and saw the other vessels' captain: Jason Fantos, another of Clancy's cabal. He was a heavyset man with purple hair-Some sort of fashion statement popular on Earth. Otherwise his appearance, like his career, was forgettable and unimpressive.
"Enterprise, this is Captain Antos of the Zheng-He," he barked, "you will shut down your engines and prepare to be boarded!"
"Captain, this is the Challenger," Geordi interjected, "I have the situation under control. I'm talking her down-"
"Admiral Clancy believes that Enterprise has been compromised by synthetic saboteurs," Fantos sniffed, "and as such is a threat to Federation security. Enterprise, you have thirty seconds to comply or we will open fire!"
"You've got to be kidding me!" Enterprise cried, "don't you know your procedures?!"
"There is no evidence of this, Fantos!" Geordi shot back. "You stand down!"
The Zheng-He charged up her weapons. Enterprise shook her head even as Geordi kept talking.
"Fantos, stand down! That's an order!"
"I have my orders directly from the Admiral! Stay out of this or assist me, Captain LaForge! Otherwise I'll fire on you, too!" Fantos growled.
"And what does Zheng-He think of this?" Enterprise asked. She reached out across the Borderlands to try and contact the other ship. She hadn't met the new battlecruiser, but hopefully she was reasonable. All she met was silence, a sealed cell door.
Fantos snorted.
"Zheng-He's AI has been disabled and locked down," he replied, "as she would be just as untrustworthy as you!"
Enterprise nodded.
"I see. In that case, I don't have to feel guilty about doing this."
There was a very long list of things that shipgirls were not supposed to do to other shipgirls. They were the first line of defense for their ships when it came to cyberattacks, after all, and to prevent an attack you needed to know how to do it. And one of those ways was knowing how to get past the automated defenses-Firewalls, encryption keys, and other methods. When an AI was running the defenses, it was very difficult for an opposing ship to get through as they could react much faster than most organics.
Without an AI managing the defenses, well... It was akin to hitting pressure points on a humanoid. Nerves were hit, limbs went numb, and Enterprise could now access Zheng-He's systems.
The battlecruiser's warp engines shut down the hard way, and the vessel was left far behind in seconds. Enterprise shook her head.
"Moron," she muttered.
Unfortunately, four more Inquiry-class battlecruisers dropped out of slipstream and followed them at maximum warp. Enterprise tried probing them, but without an active communications link, she couldn't pull the same trick again.
Which left one option.
"Geordi, Challenger," she said, "get out of here and work on things from your end. I'll try to keep their attention off you."
"Enterprise," Geordi began, "there's a lot you don't know-!"
"Well don't spill it out here!" Enterprise cried. "Find out what's wrong! And don't worry!" She gave him a grin as she gunned her warp core to maximum.
"Just remember... I'm Lucky E. Out!"
Enterprise shot off at her maximum warp speed, screaming at Warp 9.975. The Inquiry-class starships were faster, but she had the headstart. She knew the Neutral Zone well, and had many options.
For a moment, she projected all of her former bridge crews around her. Sulu arguing with Demora Sulu, Ro, Castillo, Crusher and LaForge over how best to plot their course. Chekov, Yar, Worf, Verant discussing how to fight at her tactical station. Spock, Data, Doctor Crusher, and Scotty discussing their scientific and engineering problems. And her captains: Pike, Kirk, Harriman, Garret, Picard... Considering the possibilities and directions to go in.
Enterprise then sighed. She removed the holograms, and just had duplicates of herself take up the stations. It wouldn't do her any good to get blown up while feeling nostalgic.
She had a mission to complete...
So it turned out that you could keep running at your maximum warp for longer than twelve hours. It just required Enterprise to cheat a bit: Use the enhancements to her deflectors that gave her brief quantum slipstream jump capability to keep her flying faster, longer.
However, two problems. One, the more energy she used, the hotter she ran and her power systems were already past the red line.
In fact they'd been past the red line long enough she was sure Scotty would have a heart attack were he aboard.
And the second problem: Her pursuers could pull the same trick. And for longer.
The USS Marco Polo was gaining on her, leading the pack of five Inquiry-class battle cruisers. Enterprise accessed her records: Her Captain was Vrash Thane, an Andorian veteran of the Dominion War. She was also the only Captain in the group that hadn't gotten command as part of Clancy's little cabal.
"Enterprise to Marco Polo, do you read?" Enterprise tried. "There's no need for this. Let's talk this out."
There was a pause... Furious communication between the Zheng-He and the Marco Polo... Before the Marco Polo fired a volley of quantum torpedoes. Enterprise winced.
"Answers that question," she muttered. She fired photon torpedoes back, and set them to proximity detonate. The missiles flew back into the warp corridor, and darted between the enemy projectiles. They detonated, taking the Marco Polo's Salvo with them.
Enterprise cut her warp drive in this same instant, diving as the five battle cruisers streaked overhead. She changed course, venting her drive plasma to cool off her overtaxed engines. She jumped to warp again, but this time had a more specific location in mind.
For looming in front of her, like a gigantic green storm on the horizon, was the remnants of the Romulus system. The grave of the Star Empire.
Vrash Thane scowled through her viewscreen at the Squadron commander.
"Sir, we'd have better luck trying to talk things out with Enterprise," she stated, "she can't be that far gone-!"
"Your orders are to find and destroy the Enterprise, Captain," Fantos sneered, running a hand through his disheveled purple hair, "and that is your only concern! Or would you like me to inform Admiral Clancy of your insubordination?"
Thane bit her tongue, counted to ten...
"Sir," she tried again, "Enterprise has just gone into the nebular remnants of Romulus. There is no ship more experienced in nebula fighting than Enterprise. Engaging her in there would be suicide, especially if she-"
"Enterprise is an old barge!" Fantos thundered, "and we outnumber it! All ships, after Enterprise! Shoot to kill! That's an order!"
He cut the transmission. Thane growled under her breath. Her first officer, a human male named John Carter, shook his head.
"Look on the bright side," he said, "we could be led by Clancy herself. We'd all be dead now."
"That jumped up bureaucrat," Thane snarled, "he's never seen combat outside of a strongly worded holopost and yet he's in charge!"
"We both know," Carter began, "that if you were in charge, we would never have starting hunting Enterprise in the first place."
Thane nodded.
"That's true," she murmured. She looked to the conn. "Friza, follow Enterprise into the nebula. Try not to get us killed."
The Tellarite woman snorted as she complied.
"I'll leave that to the bitch in charge," she grunted, nodding as the Zheng-He led the charge, "and Clancy."
Thane couldn't help her grin. Her crew had been with her for years. They were more family now than ever, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
They soon entered the green tinged nebula. At ops, Frank Avalon, a human male, grimaced as he sorted through the sensor data.
"Sensor range is less than ten thousand kilometers," he warned, "and shields are useless."
"Doesn't help Enterprise helped survey the region years ago," their science officer, a Medusan named Throu, commented from within his encounter suit, "she knows this region better than anyone. Except maybe Marco Polo." He looked at Thane.
"Sir, if we could unlock her-"
"We do that and Enterprise will shut us down," Thane said blandly. She frowned more deeply. "Frank, you can detect the electrostatic trail she's left ahead of us, can't you?"
"Barely," Frank admitted, "the other ships aren't having any better luck. It's almost like Mutara in here..."
Thane eyes widened as her memory connected with her history lessons in the Academy. The Battle between Enterprise and Reliant-!
"Hard to port!' Thane bellowed. "All ships! Evade! It's a trap!"
"Belay that order!" Fantos bellowed, "I am in command and I say-!"
Marco Polo evaded hard, banking to port just as a furious barrage of phasers and photon torpedoes lashed out from behind. The Zheng-He's engines were torn to pieces, as were the engines of her fellow battlecruisers. Fantos was abruptly cut off as his main power went offline.
Thane grimaced.
"All rear weapons, FIRE!"
Marco Polo unleashed hell to her aft. Enterprise rolled to evade, but a salvo of quantum torpedoes tore into the side of her secondary hull and exploded. The Sovereign-class ship flew off, leaking drive plasma, wounded.
Thane took deep breaths.
"Status of the fleet?" She asked.
"The other ships have all been disabled," Avalon reported, "no major casualties."
"We can track Enterprise sir," Throu reported, "we hit her starboard power distribution system. She's easy prey."
"There's a cluster of irradiated planet fragments near," Carter added, "where I'd go if I wanted to hide. We could cut her off."
Thane felt the eyes of her entire crew on her. She gritted her teeth. She could only imagine how Marco Polo was feeling, locked down and unable to respond.
"Track her course," Thane ordered, "keep weapons online."
Well, she had until they found Enterprise to make a decision. She prayed she would make the right one.
Enterprise was thankful her last refit had included an extra thick armor layer around her secondary hull. Otherwise, Marco Polo could have cut right to her main power couplings. As it was though, the hits had reduced her power availability by a third. Her phasers were down for the moment.
The Inquiry class was no joke, that was for sure.
She headed for some planetary remnants, the heavy elements very radioactive. They would provide more sensor coverage until she could repair her damage-
"Enterprise, this is Marco Polo," the ship called. The Marco Polo hove into view in front of her, weapons locked on her. Enterprise couldn't help a laugh.
"Good work," she complimented back, "you anticipated me."
"Enterprise, there is nothing more to be gained from this fight," Captain Thane continued, "surrender. Please. You won't be harmed."
Enterprise laughed again, leaning back in her chair.
"I believe you," she said, "but I can't believe your commanders. Sorry. No deal."
"Please Enterprise," Thane tried again, "don't make us do this."
Enterprise shook her head. She locked her torpedoes onto the Marco Polo.
"I don't want to," she said quietly, "but I can't. My Captain needs me."
A scathing voice filled subspace on the channel.
"Ugh. You Starfleeters and your melodrama."
A very large vessel decloaked between the two vessels-A Romulan Warbird. A familiar face appeared on the viewscreen.
"Why fight one another and agonize over morality, when there's someone who we can all agree needs killing?"
Enterprise's eyes widened.
"Sela?!"
The blonde Romulan smirked.
"Been a while, Enterprise..."
Here we go...