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.
2370
Near the Cardassian DMZ
USS Mutsu
Captain Orela, a female Hekaran, sat in her chair at the head of the briefing lounge's table. The rest of her senior officers were arranged around this table, all eyes on the large screen at the front of the room. USS Mutsu's AI, in the form of a small, Japanese human woman dressed as a miko, stood silently at her captain's side as the video played on the screen.
It depicted a Cardassian officer, speaking urgently, as lines of interference traced over his face.
"-repeat, this is Legate Nimok of the Cardassian Union, Eleventh Order! We are being bombarded by asteroids! Orbital defenses around Septimus III have failed-Sabotage! To any vessels in range, please, help us-!"
The transmission ended. Orela turned her dark black eyes onto her first officer, a male green Saurian named Tazrusa.
"What do we know about Septimus III, Number One?"
"It was a pre-warp, pre-industrialized civilization the Cardassians conquered about fifteen years ago," Tazrusa reported, "they turned it into a military base for their Eleventh Order. Legate Nimok married the local queen of the largest empire on the world, in order to try and ease tensions. But a resistance has formed, and the Septimians learn fast."
He shook his head.
"They've gotten good at sabotaging the Cardassians' technology and infrastructure-Even the beneficial stuff. This is the worst possible time for them to have taken down the orbital defenses."
"How is that?" Orela asked, looking over at her science officer, Rachel Green. The brunette human woman sighed.
"From what we know of the Septimus system, Septimus III has a large grouping of Trojan asteroids in its orbital path from a rocky planet near their sun that exploded a few million years ago. Meterorite bombardments are common place, and the local people have adapted to survive them-Most of their cities are built underground. Every couple of centuries they get a major bombardment though-What they call 'Heavenwrath'. The Cardassians introduced a lot of tech that brought a fair number of their population above ground, including orbital defenses. If they've failed due to a Heavenwrath event... Things are going to be bad."
"Estimated casualties from this bombardment?" Orela asked. Rachel shook her head.
"Ballpark? Three to fifty million, based on what we're getting from the long range scans."
"Why haven't the Cardassians dispatched any relief ships?" Tactical Officer Lieutenant Greg Hayes asked, frowning in deep concern.
"Many of their ships are dealing with a heavily coordinated Maquis Attack from the Badlands," Tazrusa said calmly, "while other vessels are occupied with an extensive training exercise. The closest help that can arrive is nine days away."
"How soon could we be there?" Orela asked. Her conn officer, Dirk Benedict, smiling in his charmingly roguish way.
"Two hours at warp 9, Captain."
Orela nodded slowly.
"Very well. Alert the task force, we're heading out. Mutsu, inform the Chitose's crew to prepare for disaster relief."
"Understood, Captain," Mutsu replied.
"Captain," Tazrusa rumbled in his deep voice, "I must remind you that under the terms of the Cardassian Treaty, Federation vessels are not allowed to cross the DMZ without informing local Cardassian command."
"Then we'll make it simple," Orela said, "dispatch a subspace message to Nimok: We're coming in to assist, so don't shoot us."
"Succinct," Benedict deadpanned. Orela looked at her officers.
"I want all ships in the task force underway in the next ten minutes. Dismissed."
The senior officers rose and departed out the doors. Orela looked over her PADD, studying the information on the Septimus system provided there. Mutsu looked off into the distance for a moment, before nodding.
"Chitose is breaking out the emergency medical modules now. They can make more room on the flight decks if necessary."
"Good," Orela said. She glanced at her shipgirl AI. "Anything else?"
Mutsu hesitated.
"We are going to be showing up with a tactical task force right in Cardassian space, captain," Mutsu pointed out. "Are you sure we shouldn't just dispatch the Chitose and maybe a destroyer escort?"
"I'm very sure," Orela stated, "all the better to make sure they don't start anything. After all, didn't you once say 'a drawn sword can keep another in its sheath?'"
"I did, yes," Mutsu agreed, worrying her lower lip, "I just..."
Orela glared away from her PADD.
"Yes?"
"... I have noted several instances of more aggressive behavior on your part over the past two weeks, three days and seven hours," she said, "this coincides with the report of the Hekaran System's subspace anomaly opening up. While correlation does not imply causation... It is unusual timing."
Orela was silent for a moment. She then spoke slowly and carefully.
"All right... I'll admit... I'm a bit agitated," she said, "my home system is now a warp deadzone. All because some stupid bitch decided to blow herself up to make a point."
Orela shook her head, and ran a hand through her hair to keep it in place. It was a habit she undertook when she was on edge, and Mutsu knew it.
"That doesn't change the fact this system needs help, now, and we're the only ones in range to do it," she finished, "so I don't want you playing ship's counselor. Understood?"
Her words came off harshly, and Orela almost apologized. Mutsu simply nodded, her face serene.
"Yes captain. We're ready for departure."
The hologram vanished. Orela sucked in a deep breath.
Orela got up and headed out onto the bridge. While the basic design of the bridge module was based on the Galaxy-class, for the Broadsword-class it had been significantly altered. No carpeting lined the decks, everything was in dull grays and metallic blues. The chairs were simple but functional. Hayes at tactical sat in one such chair, managing the ship's tactical systems. The Conn and Ops stations were pressed together in front of the captain's chair, and the walls on either side were lined with various stations.
Orela took her chair, as Tazrusa calmly vacated it. Mutsu appeared standing at their side, as Orela looked at the main viewer.
She could see the Coontz-class destroyers Suzutsuki, Wakatsuki, and Nowaki forming up ahead of them. To the port the Cassandra-class frigate Noshiro took point. Aft of them was the Surak-class Support Cruiser Chitose, the destroyer Asashio, and the other frigate Agano.
"Course laid in, all ships report ready," Hays reported from tactical. Orela leaned back in her chair, and nodded.
"To all ships: Engage!"
Septimus III Central Colonial Governor Outpost
Shining Plain City
The floor rumbled, the panels flickered, and the ground itself seemed to come alive as the outpost shields absorbed another hit. Legate Nimok held onto his station, just enough to keep his footing but not so much he looked desperate to stay on his feet.
His men's morale was already low, judging from the desperate looks on their faces. For their commander to fall? That could lead to anything in this calamity.
"City shields are at 40 percent, Legate!" A technician (Juna, he recalled) announced, just able to keep his voice steady. "Back up generators are not responding!"
"Legate, I just found a relevant bit of information," Gul Tarjeel, his second in command, said dryly from his own computer, "Central Command absconded with our secondary generators a week ago. The report was just filed five minutes ago."
"Of course," Nimok growled. The efficiency of the Cardassian State was, like so much else about them, an illusion. If the State required something, they took it, and then thanked their men for getting it done and being prescient enough to know it would be stolen away.
"Evacuation status?" Nimok shouted.
"We're trying sir," another far too young technician (Teris, yes, that was his name) reported, "but communications continue to malfunction since the planetary defense network went down. We're using handhelds but their range is limited, and they don't all have the UT-"
"Then we will aid you, My Lord Husband," an imperious voice broke into the command center. Nimok turned, his scaly brows rising. Queen Atena stood there, tall and like all of her race, with pale, ivory-like skin. Her eyes were large, and a deep blue. She wore simple but elegant tunics, in reds, greens and yellows, as her attendants (mostly young female Septimuans) stood at her side.
"What the hell is she doing here?" Gul Tarjeel demanded, "You should be in the shelters-!"
"Am I not Queen?" Atena asked calmly, utterly unperturbed by the gul's anger. She'd been like that from the moment they had met, Nimok recalled. She strode past the sputtering Gul, and looked him in the eyes.
"Am I not your wife, Husband? Is this not also my world?"
Nimok, as he always did when it came to his wife in public, tried to hide his smile and nearly succeeded. The proud look in her eyes was unbowed, unbroken. As always.
"How can you help?" Nimok asked, ignoring Tarjeel's outraged gasp.
"We are very used to such situations, My Lord," Atena said, "our emergency teams, as you call them, are already out and in force. We can aid your troops in evacuating to the city underneath, and aid your communications people with translation. Many of my people have gone through your 'first aid' training as well, and can assist the wounded."
Nimok noted that several of his men were already being attended to in the back of the command center. Atena was asking mainly for show-She was probably already having her people go about their duties. They knew this world so well, and she knew it.
She had been the one to negotiate the 'arrangement', marching right up to his landed troops when they had made planetfall, inquiring who was in charge, and then offering her hand in marriage so that they could conquer without bloodshed.
The audacity of this woman had impressed Nimok... And the very real concern for her people in her eyes connected with him. He'd said yes on the spot. Septimus was so rich in resources and the Union's need so dire, that the native's cooperation was welcome. The arrangement was allowed, and he, a just minted legate who had not known love since his fiance's death in a transporter accident, had become king of this world.
His men often grumbled about his 'corruption'... But he would only remind them of how bloody and costly Bajor's occupation had been without the natives' cooperation. That had shut most of them up.
Atena was no mere savage, anyway. She did not understand the physics behind their technology, but she understood them. She knew when to defer, and when to take charge. How to play the various factions of her people against one another when needed, and how to unite them. She had saved them from civil war and rebellion several times already, and he had rewarded her people with modern technology and training.
They had lived underground to escape the endless bombardment of asteroids rich in paladium, dilithium, latinum, and so many other precious resources, that even the Union's basic infrastructure was a godsend. Atena had known this... Yet she did not allow her people to be slaves.
Nimok would have felt the same way, in a similar position.
Perhaps that is why, in the secret places of his heart, he could admit that this "political" arrangement... Was far more.
That is why he asked what came next to his mind.
"And our children?" Nimok asked softly, looking significantly at her rounded belly. Atena took his hand, and held it over her belly.
"They will be no better off without their father," she stated calmly. "We stay. All of us."
Nimok was silent... Then slowly nodded.
"Tarjeel, work with her people, coordinate the evacuation," he ordered.
"But Legate-!"
"That was an order, was it not?" Nimok asked, cold and hard as steel. Tarjeel worked his jaw, but nodded, and with a scowl at the Queen he headed off to work with the Septimuans. Several went to various stations, immediately aiding the exhausted Cardassians with food, translation, or medical attention. The ground rumbled again, harshly, as Atena stood at his side.
"Any word from the strike team?" Nimok asked Scran, his Trooper commander, who stood as silent as ever nearby. He tapped the comms device in his ear.
"They've reached the main control satellite... They can see an unidentified ship docked to it. Make resembles... A Federation civilian vessel."
Nimok's eyes widened.
Before he could make any further orders though, Teris gasped.
"Legate! I'm getting telemetry from the defense system again! It's...!" His eyes widened.
"The phaser arrays are targeting us!"
"All power to shields! Brace for impact!" Nimok shouted, just as the sky roared. He saw an overhead support strut come loose, swing... Right for Atena, whose eyes had gone wide. As though in slow motion, Nimok grabbed her, pushed her down with himself over her-
Everything went black.
Grinn was a young man, and the Cardassians at first had seemed like a true Heavensend. To be able to stay on the surface, to learn about far off worlds... It had all been a dream come true! No more hiding underground like animals, they could take to the stars as their ancient records said they had long ago!
Then his parents had been killed by a drunken Cardassian... A drunken Cardassian who had gone unpunished. The promises of the stars seemed hollow and empty from then on.
It was at this point the Bajoran Teero had arrived, in secret. He had been trying to find others to rebel against the Cardassians, as his own people had betrayed him to them.
That gave them a common enemy.
And so Grinn had worked with Teero, and the other rebels. He had gained access to the control platform for Septimus. He had sabotaged it, right under his would be masters' noses. He had let the human arrived with a ship, and several armed men in the Operations Center of the control Platform.
His world would soon be free... This is what these 'Maquis' had promised.
"We have the phasers back online, sir," one of the humans reported from her station. Their commander, a tall, thin Bajoran man, nodded slowly as he looked over the readings.
"Good... Target the capital city," the Bajoran spoke. Grinn started.
"Teero...? Shouldn't we target the asteroids-?"
"Locked," the human woman said.
"Fire!"
The beams lashed out, and Grinn watched in a mixture of horror and relief as the numerous beams hit the shields over the city... But not the city itself. Teero looked over to him, shaking his head.
"Your people are used to such bombardments," the Bajoran said dismissively, "only the Cardassians will be above ground."
"No, not in this much time," Grinn tried to explain, "we need to turn the defenses back on, and then we can negotiate-"
The Bajoran laughed unpleasantly, like old stones grinding together, and Grinn saw how hollow his eyes were.
"Your people on the surface are traitors," he stated, "they need to be cleansed... Just as we were cleansed. With fire. It will free you from the Cardassians, rest assured."
"'Cleansed?!'" Grinn demanded, "This isn't what we agreed to-!"
"Sir," the female human said dully, "a Federation fleet is entering the system."
"On viewer," Teero ordered, and the viewscreen soon showed the approaching vessels. Teero smiled.
"Well. Well. Well," he murmured, "we can make things even more interesting..."
"Wait," Grinn tried, "they offered to help! They can help my world-!"
"They betrayed all of us," Teero said, "and if one of their task forces is attacked and destroyed? So much the better. Target the lead ships."
"Wha-NO!" Grinn shouted. He pointed his phaser at Teero. "No! You're going to call this off, right now!"
Teero just chuckled softly. He shook his head.
"I knew you'd be unpredictable: An idealist," he stated, "unwilling to do what needs to be done. But I'll soon change your mind."
Two of the humans shot Grinn from behind. He went down as the stun setting made his vision go dark. The last thing he saw was Teero's deranged little smile.
"I'm very good at that..."
Teero is the crazed mind controlling Bajoran mad scientist who was utterly wasted in Voyager's "Repression". A mad mind controlling Maquis scientist really needed to be used here, in DS9's era.