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.

Cornwallis, Cerritos, and Roon: Lost Sisters

By Pyeknu

Douglas Station, Stardate 58513.3…

"Wow! Now that's some damn party they're having."

Hearing that amused voice, a groaning Cerritos blinked before she noted a cup of coffee hovering before her face. Sighing as the smell of freshly-brewed java assaulted her nasal sensors, the gynoid – who had shifted her conscience into same to endure the considerable repairs now being done to her hull by quite sympathetic station staff – took up the offered cup before sipping it. Two cream, two sweetener with a dash of cinnamon. How the HELL did Starfleet's infamous Black Crow know THAT?

"Thanks…" the brunette bespectacled utility cruiser breathed out.

Taking a seat on the empty bed beside her, the now-smirking, red-eyed brunette in her normal dress picked up her own cup of Tim Hortons before drinking from it. Given what had happened to Cerritos, all the California-class AIs had donned their physical forms so they could be there while their sister recovered. "So, what hauls you over here to Douglas, Wallis?" class leader Sacramento then wondered as she gave the visiting adopted Nova Scotian a curious look. "Last I heard, you were patrolling the areas of the Romulan Imperial Remnant making sure pirates didn't get past the frontiers into the main shipping lanes."

"Just got relieved by Grove, so I'm putting in to Queenston Station for a year of systems refit and ashore crew training at the Annex," the Zodiac-class surveillance cruiser NCC-51943 answered before sipping her coffee. "Was passing by Pakled space when I met up with Cessie. She got assigned there after Cerrie here ran into them the first time." Seeing Cerritos stiffen on recalling what happened when she stumbled across the wreckage of USS Solvang before losing her port warp nacelle in battle against the Pakleds the previous year, Cornwallis smirked. "Relax, Cerrie, Cessie discovered something great."

"What's that? Actual sapience?!" San Diego demanded.

Snorts and barked laughter escaped her sisters. "Wait a minute! Who IS this 'Cessie' by the way?" West Covina asked. She was the youngest of the whole California-class, having been commissioned only ten years before. And while she could have easily tapped into her ship's memory banks to get the information, bandwidth in the Borderlands was being taken up more by Douglas Station's own AI unit and the various servitors now moving to pull apart the wrecked parts of Cerritos' hull.

"Gloucester, Covie," Cerritos answered before gazing at Cornwallis. "Right now, she'd be Five-One-Nine-Four-Nine, right?"

As the adopted Nova Scotia nodded, Sherman Oaks perked. "Oh, right! The super spy ship, right?! Named after that special radio station near Ottawa that helped support SALRON One and the NTOG against the Optimum, right?!"

"Actually, it was Station Leitrim – which was close by – that supported the colonel's campaign against the Optimum, Shermy," Cornwallis answered. "Gloucester was declared surplus to requirements in the late 1960s and disbanded." As her spiritually Californian hosts winced, she took another sip of her coffee. Being declared "surplus to requirements" wasn't a phrase that any long-lived AI wanted to hear from the Admiralty brass in San Francisco. Among the California-class ships, San Diego and Sacramento were the eldest of the group due to their being contemporaries of the first generation of Constitution-class ships in the 2260s and 2270s. They would have made VERY DAMN SURE that their new sisters would understand the gravitas of what that phrase could mean to one's service life. And given what happened just now which saw Cerritos once more in the hands of repair engineers…! "Still, given what HMCS Gloucester did for the Canadian Forces back then, it didn't surprise any of us that Cessie would get into the EW and ECW game much better than the rest of us did back in the Soyuz-class days."

"Ditto with Massey and the Newfie, right?" Diego asked.

"Same."

"Who are they?" Covina asked.

"Masset and Gander," Sacramento answered. "Both were radio monitoring stations back in Royal Canadian Navy days."

People hummed. "I know that Starbase Gander is a major planet side resupply unit and supports Base Annex Cornwallis with the Field Trauma Training Unit," Sherman noted. Given that it was now seen as part of standard Starfleet medical officer, nursing officer and sickbay technician training, all the California-class ships knew of Starbase Annex Cornwallis in Nova Scotia, where a special field trauma training facility for all medical personnel had been run since the 2170s. "Where was Masset?"

"Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Columbia near the Alaska border," Cornwallis answered.

"So were the Pakleds their normal idiot selves when Cessie came by?" Cerritos asked.

"They were…until Cessie discovered Solvie's black box."

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

Then…

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!" Cerritos and her sisters screamed…

An hour later…

For she's a jolly good fellow!
For she's a jolly good fellow!
For she's a jolly good fellow!
Which nobody can deny!

A madly-blushing Solvang – in a freshly-synthesized gynoid form; her black box was still aboard the orbiting USS Cornwallis awaiting transfer to the San Francisco Fleet Yards for full systems refurbishment – raised her own cup of synthetic ale to return everyone's toast before she yelped as a sobbing Cerritos – who clearly had recovered enough to join the party with the rest of her sisters – swamped her with an embrace. Seeing such a show of relief from their own ship's AI, Captain Carol Freeman and her subordinates whooped with delight, knowing that the recovery of a lost shipgirl – and one that obviously hadn't gone Abyssal as a certain supernumerary member of Cerritos' crew had been before one Bradward Boimler had something VERY STRONG to say about that! – would do much more to heal their own ship's AI way more than any dozen starbases' worth of engineers could.

Seated off in one corner so she didn't interfere with the celebrations – after all, the destruction of the Aledo not two days before was yet ANOTHER demonstration to her that the "peaceniks" infesting the Admiralty needed to be exterminated with plasma flamethrowers – Cornwallis savoured another cup of Tim Hortons coffee, she casually observing the jubilant show of delight from the mass of "lower deckers" nearby. Much that old school border cutters like her didn't often interact with the support fleet which ships like Cerritos personified so well, the-now surveillance cruiser understood what sort of vital work that her host and her sisters did for the whole of the Federation and their allied powers. To have them replaced by automated ships…?

It's the whole M-5 thing all over again…! the adopted Nova Scotian mused to herself; her own sentience had been awakened the very same year of those tragic trials near Starbase Six. Indeed, the lessons of that disaster had been driven in again and again by the teachers at the Field Triage Training Unit at her namesake base in the Annapolis Valley while Cornwallis and her seventeen sister "Port Weller girls" had been activated and allowed to evolve to full sentience before installation into their first starship hulls. To allow a machine that didn't have any means to evolve beyond its own programming to control something as potentially destructive as a starship – especially something like a Constitution-class cruiser was back then – was just ASKING for trouble!

"Um…Miss Cornwallis?"

She perked, then looked up to see a blushing man standing nearby at parade rest, his blonde shadow trying not to glare at the older AI with that slightly-crazed way of hers. Given what she had learned over scuttlebutt over what Bradward had done for the modified Emmet Till-class strike cruiser when he discovered how dilapidated her own systems had fallen in the wake of the Dominion War and her going nearly-full Abyssal, that Roon was sticking to her "captain" like a barnacle would a wooden ship in the way-old days wasn't surprising. "Ensign. Roon. Make yourselves comfortable," she bade.

"Uh…th-thank you, ma'am," Bradward stated as he allowed the blonde AI to take her own seat first before sitting down.

"Oooh…! A gentleman!" Cornwallis then teased before firing an automatically-stiffening Roon a warning look.

Sensing her deflate, Bradward mentally breathed out. Much that he loved the passionate gynoid who had been by his side since he first stumbled on her while Cerritos had done a supply run to Memory Alpha a year before, she did overdo it at times when it came to keeping the "hussies" away. "Um…w-well, please pass on all our thanks to Miss Gloucester for what she did when she rescued Solvang. Cerritos really took it bad when they found the wreckage. It's just a pity Titan or one of your sisters weren't close by help when they nearly wrecked the ship the first time." He then gazed at Roon before turning back to the older AI. "Um…I wonder what will happen to Solvang now that she's recovered. She'll need to recover from crew loss…"

As Roon slightly stiffened on hearing that, Cornwallis sipped her coffee. "I'll have Captain Archer press to have Solvie rehabilitated at the FTTU at the Base Annex before she can take up a new hull again. There haven't been plans drawn up on a new support cruiser to replace the California-class yet, but there are enough spare parts available at San Fran, Utopia, Port Weller and Jupiter Station to whip up something in the interim before the REMFs back on Earth get their shit together finally and start preparing something a little more long-lasting." Here, she knocked the table they were sitting at. "Don't get me wrong; the guys at San Fran did a good job building these hulls to last, but nothing lasts forever."

"Well, that's a good thing," he noted before sipping his own drink…