Uninspired Voyages
A Star Trek: Voyager fanfiction by Andrew J. Talon
DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine, The Next Generation et al are the property of CBS Television, Para creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.
Shepherd was back in the mess hall, eating voraciously. Kes was still at his side, minding him. Tom and B'Elanna sat at the table too, eating their lunches, both still wearing bandages from the battle. Harry was sitting across from Shepherd, Tal Celes was tending to him, though the young ensign seemed more annoyed than anything else.
"I'm fine, really," Harry grumbled, "you can go somewhere else, you know!"
"No, y-you got hurt on the bridge because you caught me," Tal insisted, "I should help you in return! It's only fair!"
"That seems extreme," Harry grumbled.
"It's a-a Bajoran ritual!" Tal insisted, blushing a bit as she helped hold a spoon up to Harry's lips, "you'll dishonor my family if you refuse!"
"I don't think that's a thing," Harry sighed. Tom and B'Elanna shared exasperated looks, as Kes shook her head. Shepherd was focusing on his lunch, a sandwich made of local bread and meats from Talax. He was perfectly fine eating it himself, but Kes kept insisting on minding him.
"You know, most guys wouldn't be upset about gorgeous women waiting on them hand and foot," Tom opined with a wink to Kes. Tal blushed, and Kes smiled wryly.
"Yeah, but I think Kes is just doing it to avoid talking to Neelix," Shepherd said. Kes scowled.
"SHEPHERD!"
"I was guessing! Or teasing! Which one doesn't get you hitting me?" Shepherd said quickly. Kes sighed and shook her head, a surprisingly scary glare on her pretty face.
"I'm not avoiding him... Exactly," she said, "we just decided to... Split apart. And now it's awkward."
"Honestly, talking about anything related to that fiasco is awkward and exhausting," B'Elanna sighed, resting her chin on her hands. "Let's find something else to talk about. Anything else. Hell, make it absurd."
"How absurd?" Tom asked with a grin and a roguish tilt of his head.
"Not that absurd," B'Elanna grumbled. Harry though seemed struck by sudden inspiration, and looked over at Shepherd. He was rolling his eyes as Kes held up his glass so he could sip his drink, when Harry decided to make his move.
"So... About Section 31," Harry began. Shepherd slurped the last of the drink through the straw, and Kes put the glass down on the table. Shepherd looked over at Harry, a wary look on his face.
"... What about Section 31?" He replied. Tom, B'Elanna and Tal leaned in, suddenly interested.
"Well, I mean... Are they real?" Harry asked.
B'Elanna snorted, smirking a bit.
"Seriously Starfleet? You're asking him about that?" She teased. "He probably gets asked about that all the time!"
"It's something absurd then," Harry countered.
"Section 31..."
All eyes went back to Shepherd. Tal gasped softly. The normally cheerful (or at least calm) Shepherd grit his teeth and gripped his glass so hard, the metal began to groan under the strain. Kes' eyes widened, and even she scooted away from the furious Starfleet Intelligence officer.
Shepherd took deep breaths. Many deep, calming breaths. It did little good, his voice filled with a barely controlled raging fury.
"... Yes. They're real. And they're all fucking bastards!"
"I-" Harry tried, but Shepherd stood up, his voice getting louder. More eyes locked onto him, as the lieutenant continued.
"They're not an actual part of Starfleet Intelligence, they're renegades who think they're all so cool and edgy and 'totally doing terrible things for the sake of the Federation!' But you know what they really are?"
"Uh-" Harry tried, but Shepherd continued as though he hadn't heard him. He was now in a full on rant, nearly spitting in his rage.
"They're just a bunch of tryhard LARPing edgelords who actually make everything worse! Real intelligence work requires hard work, careful analysis, and being adaptable! Sure my experience wasn't normal, but at the end of the day we were successes when nobody got killed, and we got useful intelligence to use! Not to mention accurate intelligence! These fuckers just think 'oh we'll fake terrorist actions to stir up trouble between Federation enemies what could go wrong?! LOL!' Well it turns out a whole fucking lot can go wrong! Especially when you're in the middle of it TRYING TO GET INTEL THAT WOULD ACTUALLY BE USEFUL!"
Everyone in the mess hall is just kind of horrified, as they watch the normally sedate (albeit snarky) man rant as he waves his glass around. Kes is already reaching for her medical kit, in case she has to sedate Shepherd.
"Or 'let's make a plague on a planet a whole lot worse so the Federation can get more influence with them!' Or other bullshit horrific things that should get them all fucking strung up! And in truth, a lot of the bastards do get caught! Because they're dumbasses! But they just. KEEP. COMING! They're a bunch of bored fanboys of 'Hard Men making Hard Decisions' who don't actually know what that means! You know what it means?! IT MEANS STOPPING BAD SHIT FROM HAPPENING, NOT MAKING BAD SHIT HAPPEN! They claim they're the most elite intelligence forces of the Federation?! FUCK THEM! If they were, the Federation would have been conquered centuries ago! We do all the hard work and WE make sure things get better! They just fuck them up and go 'lol for the greater good!' They're morons with power tools who make every actual intelligence operative embarrassed to even be associated with them! FUCK. SECTION. THIRTY. ONE."
Shepherd sits down, breathing hard, his face red. Kes pulls his glass out of his hand quickly, hypospray still at the ready. He finally regains his composure, and nods apologetically to his friends and the slackjawed crew in the rest of the messhall. Even Neelix is transfixed in shock.
"... I really don't care for them," Shepherd said, now perfectly calm. The stunned silence in the messhall held like a brittle piece of glass.
"Couldn't tell," Paris quipped dryly.
That Tom Paris naturally broke.
"They... They're really that bad?" Tal murmured.
Shepherd nodded.
"Yes," he stated. "Unequivocally. I swear, if one of their agents was aboard, oooh..."
Roberta Luke, a blonde security officer nearby, squeaked softly and looked down at her food. Kes looked over at her suspiciously, as B'Elanna leaned forward with another question.
"Well... I mean, what are they like?" B'Elanna asked, "if one was aboard, how would you know?"
Shepherd shrugged, leaning back in his chair.
"Well, an actual Section 31 agent would do one of two things. Depending on what kind of agent they are. If they're the usual, stupid, braindead kind of agent, they'd have revealed their secret like a mustache twirling villain and done something ridiculous like try to take over the ship with their secret codes or some crap like that," Shepherd said, shaking his head in disbelief.
Tom smirked, shaking his head. He shared a glance with Harry and Tal, who were both enraptured by Shepherd's performance. But then, they usually were.
"All right. What would you do to them?" Asked Tom.
Shepherd grinned, and cracked his knuckles loudly.
"Same thing I did to the other stupid Section 31 agents I had to deal with: Beat the stupid out of them," he said.
Unnoticed by the others, Roberta Luke broke into a cold sweat. Shepherd continued on.
"Of course there's usually too much stupid to actually get out with a single beating so you need to keep applying violence for them to get the idea that messing with you is a bad idea." He shook his head, exasperated. "I swear, the whole outfit should be a bunch of Darwin Award winners."
B'Elanna wasn't sure if this was a game or not, but she gamely played along.
"Okay, and what's the other type of agent?" Torres asked.
"Oh, those," Shepherd scoffed, taking another bite of his sandwich, "they can almost be called competent in that they're smart enough to not broadcast what they are. They're usually the ones in charge but they do go out in the field for high risk operations. They'll play it cool but they give away their bullshit in a million different ways to people who actually know what they're doing."
Roberta Luke began to look pale.
"Oh? And you know how to spot one?" B'Elanna asked skeptically. "You could point one out in this room?"
"Of course I could!" Shepherd said defensively, chewing on his sandwich. He made a face, and then looked over to the blonde at the table next to them. "Hey, Roberta?"
The ensign looked fit to have a heart attack. She was pale and sweating. She took a deep breath, and shakily answered.
"Y-Yes sir?"
Shepherd frowned curiously, then shrugged at her.
"... Pass the salt, won't you?"
Roberta nodded frantically, looking like a coiled spring had been released from her insides as she handed the salt shaker over.
"Oh, um, s-sure! Here you go!"
Roberta handed it off like it was a live photon grenade to Kes, who handed it to Shepherd. He nodded with a cheerful smile.
"Thank you." He set the salt shaker aside, then took another bite of his sandwich. He nodded with a smile in his eyes, and swallowed before he continued.
"But you see, these same agents are still dumb. They're just a different sort of dumb. Rather than actually targeting a real threat, they choose to hinder everyone else. Out here, their tendencies towards short sighted decisions would probably end up getting everyone killed. Like, me. I've done a pretty good job of keeping the ship and crew safe, right?"
"As well as could be expected, I suppose," Tom said dryly. Shepherd chuckled and nodded.
"Fair enough."
"We're not all dead, so hey, point in your favor," B'Elanna supplied.
"I-I think you've done great, sir!" Tal squeaked.
"Pretty good, A minus," Harry suggested.
"Tuvok thinks you're 'adequate'," Kes added.
"Huh! Don't tell him that, don't want to make him blush," Shepherd laughed. "But yeah. So this theoretical Section 31 agent might do something stupid like trying to kill me with, I don't know, a poisoned salt shaker, despite realizing that we all need to work together to survive."
Shepherd goes to put salt on his sandwich. Which is when Roberta Luke stood up and reached over the table with speed enough to shock everyone.
"WAIT!" She grabged the salt shaker, stood back up, and then awkwardly held out another. "Ah, s-sorry sir! I handed you pepper instead! Here, salt!"
Shepherd blinked, then shrugged as he took it, much to Kes's annoyange.
"Oh. Thank you very much Roberta."
"N-No problem!" She back down at her table, shaking. Tal looked over at her, concerned, then looked at Kes.
"Is she all right?" Tal murmured to the Ocampan. Kes smiled like the sun.
"Oh yes. She's fine," she said. "Shepherd? You were saying?"
"Hm?" Shepherd salted his sandwich, and chewed happily before swallowing. "Oh yeah! But what I mean is, they'd try to kill you with something stupid like that, or an exploding replicator, or a commbadge set to overload, or poison in your toothpaste."
"Oh come on!" Tom scoffed, "no one could be that stupid and obvious!"
Shepherd sighed heavily, shaking his head in grim expasperation.
"I wish it were true... But me and my partner-"
"Manny the Super Horta?" B'Elanna asked dryly.
"He's totally real, look up the record," Shepherd said, "and he's not a Super Horta... As far as I know. Anyway! If there is a Section 31 agent aboard, I'm hoping that they'll have enough common sense to realize we need to work together. If they're willing to do that, we all benefit. And I don't have to beat the living shit out of them until they stop being stupid."
"Is that your only solution? Beating them up?" Tom asked. "No seduction like James Bond?"
Shepherd shrugged.
"I am a married man. Besides! Violence is just the start. After I've let my anger cool and if they're still alive? Then I get... Creative."
Harry had the thought he might regret asking his next question... Too late.
"How creative?" Harry asked.
Shepherd grinned demonically. Five minutes passed of Shepherd describing horrific, twisted things that made Tal bury her face in Harry's chest, Tom gape, and B'Elanna shake her head in disbelief. Kes just kept rolling her eyes.
"... While reading the Iliad in binary-"
Kes at last found the decency to end Shepherd's litany, by smacking the back of his head.
"Owww... Kes!" Shepherd whined.
"They get the picture," Kes stated.
"Geez! Is that torture or performance art?" Tom asked, "Either way, it's demented!"
Shepherd shrugged.
"Well... That could be all a bluff. Or it could be the real thing. Either way? You'd be surprised how effective it can be. Oh hey! Roberta?"
Roberta Luke had been trying to sneak out of the mess hall. She started, and turned back from the double doors. She walked back stiffly, smiling like she was trying to hold back tears.
"Ah! Y-Yes sir?" She managed. Shepherd beamed and handed back the salt shaker.
"Here's your salt back. Thank you very much for lending it to me," he said.
Roberta nodded back, white as a sheet.
"N-No problem, sir!"
Shepherd tilted his head.
"You all right? You look kind of pale."
"I uh-I um-" Luke started.
"Very pale, actually," B'Elanna observed.
"You should go to Sickbay!" Shepherd said with a friendly smile, "Wouldn't want you to catch your death, would we?"
"That would be... Unfortunate," Kes said kindly, her large eyes locked onto Roberta's, "wouldn't it, Ensign?"
"Y-Y-Yes sir! Right away sir!" Roberta stuttered. She turned around and practically ran out of the Mess Hall.
Shepherd looked around at his friends, and shrugged.
"... What was her problem?" He asked.
"Whatever, she's always been weird," Tom said dismissively, "now, you got any more entertaining bullshit to tell us?"
"Loads," Shepherd said cheerfully. Kes sighed and gave him a look.
"Why are you persisting in tormenting her?" Kes asked telepathically.
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Shepherd thought back, his mental self looking excessively innocent. Kes rolled her eyes.
"Fine..."
"Now, how about the time Manny and I had to fight a dragon?"
"Let me guess," B'Elanna deadpanned, "Manny disguised himself as a princess for the dragon to kidnap and you had to play the knight to rescue him?"
Shepherd shook his head.
"Nobody likes spoilers, B'Elanna..."
Yes, Roberta Luke was a Section 31 agent in the Voyager novels. And Shepherd is going to enjoy making her life hell...
And now, an omake.
Shepherd did try to not end up in sickbay a lot, but in his line of work it was unavoidable. Not that he hated doctors or healing (he was engaged to marry a doctor!), he just hated sitting around with nothing to do.
Shepherd: "Stupid freaking Kazon..."
Captain Vethren was sitting on the biobed nearby, as the Doctor gave her another injection from a hypospray. She worked her shoulder and smiled at the young security officer.
Vethren: "Yeah... They're all bastards."
Shepherd: "Sorry we couldn't get here sooner."
Vethren: "You got here, that's what counts... Thank you."
Shepherd: smiles "Just doing my job, sir... Er, ma'am?"
Vethren: laughs, her antenna twitching a bit "Either works. Geez... Captain, huh? It's kind of a shock."
Shepherd: "Yeah... But you'll be all right. I saw you in the camp: You were keeping it together, despite everything."
Vethren: "I was pretending to... Someone had to."
Shepherd: "That's what being in command is all about. Looking and acting like you're invincible, no matter what. Because your crew needs you."
Vethren: "... I guess we'll see..." She looked him up and down "I've heard you're a Starfleet spook?"
Shepherd: "Well I was. Right now I'm just chief of security."
Vethren: "So... You're used to crazy shaav going on?"
Shepherd: "After a fashion. I just got shoved into a lot of crazy crap because the head of SI at the time was senile. That, or maybe I picked up the Enterprise curse."
Vethren: laughs "Could be! So... Tell me about a crazy incident."
Shepherd: "Hm... Why?"
Vethren: "I want to be cheered up."
Shepherd: "Fair enough. Let's see... Oh! There actually is a reason we keep finding Section 31 cells."
Vethren: "Section 31 is real?!"
Shepherd: "Yeah, but they're not super awesome black ops experts... At least most of them aren't. The vast majority are just morons. Case in point...?"
Two years ago, Agent Shepherd breaks into a Section 31 hideout with his partner and mentor, Manny the Horta.
Shepherd: "Looks like your hunch was right, Manny!"
Horta: Horta noises
Shepherd: "So, where's the main center for-?"
The lights switch on, and they are confronted by several Section 31 agents... All with Bluegill tails wriggling on the backs of their necks.
Manny: Horta noises!
Shepherd: "Oh God, don't tell me..."
One Section 31 operative walks up, his stomach bulging.
Section 31 Queen: "Yes! We survived, foolish Federation! And now that we have control over your greatest intelligence agency, we will soon control the Federation entirely-Wait, what's so funny?!"
Shepherd and Manny were laughing hysterically.
Shepherd: "Ahahahaha... Oh my God... You guys actually bought that?"
Manny: Amused Horta noises
Section 31 Queen: "But-But Section 31 secretly runs the Federation! There are the supreme puppetmasters-Their minds say so-!"
Shepherd: "Geez, they're really that deluded? That's sad. Here's the thing, Queenie: If Section 31 was really that good... We wouldn't have been able to get in here with these stun grenades."
Section 31 Queen: "Stun wha-?"
Shepherd and Manny throw stun grenades and stun most of the operatives, before firing their phasers on the Queen and vaporizing her and her host. The operatives all come to their senses, looking bewildered.
Section 31 Agent: "Yes! We're free! We're-!"
Manny stuns him.
Shepherd: "Still going to jail!"
Manny: Mocking Horta noises
Shepherd: "HAHA! Good one Manny!"
Back in the present...
Vethren: "... How could Manny hold a phaser?"
Shepherd: "Manny was awesome like that!"