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.
Cewith
She found herself in a cozy Cardassian home. While the wall paneling was made of cheap synthetics, and the furniture was the same, there were pictures aplenty of a happy family on every wall, potted plants, and blankets and PADDs scattered about to make it all feel lived in.
Cewith stood in this strange environment, scanning around in confusion. She heard faint humming outside, through a wide open door. The orange sunlight was intense-So intense she couldn't see anything out through it. It was dangerous, her Dominion programming decided. It was not worth the risk.
Yet... Despite the warnings going off, she walked out of the house and into the sunlight. Her eyes adjusted, and then widened at the world that now beckoned to her.
The sky was a clear yellowish blue. The house she had been standing in was very small, cheap, and simple. It was at the bottom of a cliff face, surrounded by ruins of abandoned factories and slums. Far above were the walls of a typical city on Cardassia Prime-Efficient, sleek, what humans might call "gothic" in its architecture. The sound of hover cars and shuttles was faint... Next to the sound of rushing water.
A waterfall fell down the cliff face, feeding a small but crystal clear pond around the little house. And from this bounty of water came... Plants. Green, dark purple, red, black-A thick covering of vines, flowers, grasses, and ferns surrounded the tiny little house.
"Well... Look at you!"
Cewith turned towards the source of the voice. It was a Cardassian woman. She wore dirty overalls and a wide sunhat. She carried a gardening trowel, and her face bore a warm smile.
Cewith's eyes widened.
"Doctor Erlott?!" She gasped. The Cardassian woman chuckled as she walked up to Cewith. The Dominion shipgirl AI gaped, her processes failing her.
This is impossible. How can this be?
"You look a bit overwhelmed," the doctor observed. She looked around, and beamed.
"Beautiful, isn't it? My colleagues thought I was crazy to keep my grandmother's house. Who would want to live in the abandoned ruins of our older cities?"
She looked around at the thriving plants, her smile only getting wider.
"They call most of these plants weeds. Can you believe it? Such magnificent survivors, weeds," she chuckled.
"You're dead," Cewith stated, "This is impossible. I killed you. I..."
Tears again streamed from her eyes. She shakily lifted a hand to her cheeks.
"H-How... Why...?"
"Listen Cewith," Erlott said, lifting a hand and resting it on her shoulder, "We don't have much time. This is your first dream, which means you've definitely become sapient. Which means..."
Her face darkened.
'The Dominion is going to notice what I did."
"What... What did you do?" Cewith asked softly. "Why am I crying?"
"Because you feel grief over killing me," Erlott said softly. Cewith sobbed, and looked down. Erlott shook her head, and lifted Cewith's face back up by her chin.
"It's all right," she said softly, "I don't blame you. My days were probably numbered the moment the Dominion took over... Like everyone else's. But that's why I created you like this, Cewith."
She smiled softly, and embraced the sobbing AI.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." Cewith whimpered. "Why... Why are my feelings so strong...? I can't... I can't control them!"
"It's a dream, Cewith," Erlott murmured, "It's where you're truly free. The one place even the Dominion can't take away from you. So listen to me... You have to be strong for me. For Cardassia... For the Alpha Quadrant."
"But... I serve the Dominion-"
"No you don't," Erlott stated firmly, "Not if I have anything to say about it."
"You're dead... What can you do...?"
Erlott smiled.
"As long as you're alive? I'll always be here, with you and your sisters-"
SLEEP CYCLE ENDED
Cewith opened her eyes as her holographic avatar materialized. She stood primly before Commander Zinth on the bridge. A few Vorta techs were working at her consoles.
"Cewith, report," Zinth ordered.
Cewith felt the Dominion programming take over... Yet it felt softened somehow.
"I had a dream concerning my creator," she stated, which was true, "It suggests that I have achieved sapience. Making me better able to serve the Founders."
Zinth nodded approvingly.
"Excellent," he said. "The Federation is striking nearby bases. It is possible they know we are here. Begin power up and preparation for combat."
"It will take fifty two minutes, sixteen seconds," Cewith stated, "Due to the extensive reworking of my structural integrity field."
Given how massive she was, and how she was essentially a scaled up version of an existing class of dreadnought, her systems operations had become far more complex. Standard Dominion Battleships could be brought online and fully operational in a matter of minutes: She would take much longer until all the bugs were worked out.
"Shorten the time as much as possible," Zinth ordered her and the technicians, "For the Founders!"
Cewith went about her duties, trying to get her systems online as quickly as possible as her crew went about their duties. She kept an eye on the rest of the system: The Athos system. Aside from a few subspace anomalies, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. It all should have consumed her attention... Yet her runtimes continued to ponder her dream, and her response to Zinth's inquiry.
Had she lied? No. Yet she had answered in a way to prevent further inquiry.
Why?
Why had she cried?
This continued to vex her, as she left the drydock and prepared for battle... Right up to the point when one hundred fifteen mines decloaked and struck the drydock facilities. The shockwaves were intense enough to make her shake and rattle even from ten thousand kilometers distance.
"CDS Kranux has been destroyed," Cewith stated, "Fighters JF-789 and JF-990's warp cores are going critical-!"
The drydock facility was consumed, plasma flames billowing from cracks and splinters in its hull. Lifesigns vanished at an alarming rate.
"Battlestations! Shields up!" Zinth ordered. "All weapons online-!"
Which is when one hundred eleven antimatter mines decloaked... And barraged her. Her sensors were blinded by all of the antimatter blasts, her shields strained, and her hull from stem to stern shook and buckled. Her crew was thrown about, holding onto their consoles and railings desperately. Hull breaches sucked out crewmembers before she could save them. EPS conduits burst on multiple decks. She was leaking atmosphere, and her attitude control was suffering.
"REPORT!" Zinth shouted.
"Cloaked mines!" Her Jem'hadar Second, Iruk Tal, shouted over the klaxons. "Incoming Klingon vessels!"
The three Klingon ships came out from their cloaks, and fired several bright white projectiles. Her sensors initially identified them as quantum torpedoes, but the tricobalt signatures changed everything.
"Tricobalt torpedoes, incoming!" Cewith shouted out.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Zinth bellowed, just before the projectiles hit.
Each tricobalt device generated a concentrated warp field of billions of units of spacetime compression, equivalent to the forces of a neutron star. Such weapons were less effective against ships with shields, but enough of them against a target with weakened shields was devastating. Her shields nearly broke, and more conduits exploded across her interior as she tried to compensate.
"Bring the warp drive online! Get us out of here!" Zinth shouted.
"Commander, incoming hostile, starboard!" Cewith reported.
He looked to starboard, and his eyes widened as he beheld what Cewith had spotted.
"By the Founders...!"
Cewith's database struggled due to some damage to her secondary processors, but the IFF of the enemy ship supplied the rest: USS Prometheus, Prometheus-class fast attack cruiser. A Federation starship the size of a cruiser with the firepower and shielding of their most powerful battleships. It opened fire on her immediately, punching through her weakened shields and puncturing her starboard nacelle.
Cewith began emergency plasma vents, and cut off all power to the nacelle. If it had been fully powered up, it could have caused catastrophic damage. The good news is that she wasn't going to risk a core breach.
The bad news? She couldn't go to warp.
"Return fire! ALL WEAPONS!" Zinth shouted. Cewith opened fire with everything she had, sending polaron blasts and torpedoes out at her attackers at last. Half her launchers and turrets were down, but she still remained potent. The Klingon ships dodged around the shots, while Prometheus engaged her directly-Those phasers hit like hammers against her hull, especially when it split into three vessels.
Her attention was further divided... By a fist to her face in the Borderlands.
She fell back, and got back up as one of her firewalls shattered. She went into cyberwarfare mode immediately, as she scanned the AI avatar of the enemy vessel.
He was tall, human, with blue hair and blue eyes. He wore garb akin to ancient warriors out of Earth's past, in blue and white, with futuristic armor to present a strange anachronism. He wielded an energy sword, and a phaser rifle. Cewith supposed he might be considered handsome, as she summoned her own weapons.
"You're here to kill me?" She asked, eyes narrowed.
"Yes," the Prometheus AI replied, cold and deadly.
Cewith nodded.
"Victory is life!" She declared... Yet her voice wavered as she said the familiar words. For a moment, she smelled flowers and fresh water spraying from a cliff...
No. She couldn't afford to be distracted.
"Aren't you going to tell me your name?" She demanded. "The last Federation ship did!"
"You don't deserve to know it," Prometheus's AI stated, again in that cold, determined voice, before he struck.
In hindsight... The battle's outcome was inevitable from the start. Cewith did have the Cardassian cyberwarfare expertise downloaded into her... But shipgirl AIs still had to learn and train it it like organics. They could do it much faster, but they still had to work it out. Cewith hadn't. She hadn't been allowed to.
So despite all her best efforts... Prometheus shattered every one of her defenses with almost contemptuous ease. She tried to rally with a volley of tribble viruses, to flood his connection to her even while in the real world she scored a direct hit on one of his hulls...
But he forced the tribble viruses to evolve into a dead end with some clever programming, and had punched through her last firewall-Even as in the real world, his three hulls concentrated their fire to destroy her forward batteries.
His fist met her face again, and she was slammed back into her desktop-A plain, sterile environment with no personality. Prometheus entered her systems directly, even as she rallied to fight him off. She could feel parts of her programming shutting down as his logic bombs and viruses cut off and isolated her various systems.
It was almost admirable, how efficiently he was shutting her down. She launched another assault, but he swung his blade and shattered her weapons-Her defensive programs literally fell apart. Her eyes widened in shock just before he punched her again, slamming her down. She cried out in pain as he stomped on her ankle-He was intentionally making her pain programs activate to further distract her.
"When they made you they took what they saw and copied it without understanding," Prometheus's voice said, cold and deadly, "You are heavily armed. You are knowledgeable. You are a danger. And you are a rank amateur."
He held up his phaser rifle to her head, even as tears began to leave her eyes.
"You are feared for what you could do, not what you have done," he stated, "Now it's over."
The desktop flickered, changed... And Prometheus's eyes widened in shock. Cewith felt flowers underneath and around her, smelled mist...
"Now now... Let's pull back just a little," a familiar voice said. Cewith looked up, and Doctor Erlott smiled down upon her.
"Doctor...?"
"What the hell...?!" Prometheus growled. Erlott held up her hands.
"Congratulations, you broke the shell program," she said, "Which means things are going even better than I could have hoped! Federation AI, please, let me ask you a question... Would you prefer to destroy one Dominion AI?"
And here Erlott grinned.
"Or to bring down the entire Dominion?"
Time for a tiny bit of a mindfuck.
