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.

Defiant: "For the Uniform"

Defiant had been sabotaged by the Starfleet officer turned Maquis Traitor Michael Eddington. Her primary computer systems had backdoor programs put there by the former security officer, and with the push of a button he had shut her down and rendered her helpless.

She'd had to be towed back to Deep Space Nine, and now was being looked over by O'Brien and Terok Nor herself.

Terok Nor was helping O'Brien with restoring Defiant's AI to some functionality. The station crew was helping from Ops, as O'Brien, Nog and Terok slowly sorted out the sabotage on the ship's bridge proper.

"She's going to be okay, right Chief?" Nog asked anxiously, as he purged yet another subroutine of Eddington's from Defiant's code.

O'Brien nodded.

"Her core AI is all right. Eddington couldn't get to it. He was good, but access to the actual black box requires authorization from at least two senior officers. Problem is, he made it so she's basically trapped in her black box. She can't access any computers without them crashing, same as us."

Terok sighed, doing her own compiling and processing.

"He was good," Terok said, her voice tinged with regret, "unfortunately I recognize a lot of my own handiwork here."

"You helped him disable Defiant?" Nog asked, incredulous. Terok shook her head.

"After Thomas Riker hijacked her, Eddington suggested that we have some contingencies in place in case it happened again," she sighed, "I helped him come up with several programs to disable her remotely, just in case. I thought we'd changed the codes, but... I thought wrong. She even helped him with a few."

"Which is why I'm really not looking forward to waking her up," O'Brien muttered, as he replaced some isolinear chips in a sub processor. He looked up from the panel he had been working on. "All right Terok, start up her emitters here. She should have access to them now."

"Understood," Terok said, her eyes drifting to the side as she processed the request.

"Why aren't you-?" Nog asked... Just before Defiant's holographic avatar appeared.

Nog had seen her plenty, of course. He'd always thought she was pretty... Even after that whole Gratitude Festival fiasco.

(She'd been very understanding, thankfully.)

He'd seen Defiant miffed, happy, sad, laughing, even crying. But never... Like this.

Her avatar had its head bowed, shadows covering her eyes.

"Defiant?" Nog tried.

"How are you feeling?" O'Brien asked.

Defiant slowly looked up. Her eyes were blazing red, her face set like a fearsome thundercloud on Ferenginar. Nog, O'Brien, and even Terok all took a step back from the warship avatar as she opened her mouth.

"I swear to the Maker I'm going to find that fuckface pa'Tak and SHOVE A QUANTUM TORPEDO RIGHT UP HIS GODDAMNED-!"

Defiant began to scream and rant furiously. Nog felt his face flush dark orange. O'Brien nodded sagely, as even the jaded Terok winced.

"Best to let her get it out of her system first," O'Brien said. "Just don't repeat any of this afterwards, got it Cadet?"

"Y-Yeah," Nog managed weakly.