The Adventures of Augment Gothic (A Star Trek SI)

by Joe Lawyer

A present-day Star Trek fan is forcibly thrust into that dimension and made anew as an Augment, a genetically engineered superman, on the whim of a mischievous god. Armed with knowledge of this dimension's past and future, he's determined to live well, have fun with alien women, and make it look easy. Elements of DS9/TNG/Voy/Ent. Originally co-written with GothicJedi666.

19. Chapter 19

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to or part of Star Trek. This fan fiction was written purely for fun.

Author's Note:

If you'll cast your mind back to the beginning of this new fic, I briefly collaborated with user "at16908" on FFN on the rewrite and reorganization of chapters 1-4 of this story and he was given co-author credit for those chapters. While our collaboration didn't work out in the end, there was some unused material that he wrote that didn't make it into the story for those early chapters. We agreed, at that time, that I could try to make use of that material sometime in the future of the story. While 98% of it didn't fit the circumstances this far removed from the very beginnings of Gothic's journey, which it was originally written for, I adapted one of the ideas in that unused material for use in this chapter and thus he deserves credit for it. Thank you, Alan!

"Revenge is a dish best served cold." – Ancient Klingon Proverb

The Adventures of Augment Gothic

Chapter 18

San Francisco. Earth.

Screams. Smoke. A persistent ringing in my ears. The acrid taste of blood in my mouth. Oh, how I've missed you!

In this new life filled with amazing, wonderful, and decadently hedonistic firsts, being at the epicenter of a large explosion and being set on fire was one I could safely say was an experience I could have happily done without. The pressure wave coupled with shards of burning superheated metal had struck my personal shield like the hand of an angry God and thrown me into the side of a nearby building.

Thank the Prophets that my paranoia was as high as ever and I hadn't let my guard down. Spending so much time together onboard a relatively small ship meant both Jaxa and Antias knew that I wore my armor and personal shield everywhere, virtually all the time, with the exception of sleep and sex. They'd scoffed at me, literally scoffed at me, when I'd chosen to continue wearing it on Earth itself.

'Earth is the heart of the Federation!' they said. 'The safest place in the galaxy!' they said. 'You won't need that here!' they said. Their naivete must have painted such a lovely and rosy picture of the galaxy. How I sometimes wished that I could still pretend that that picture was real.

I'd have to run a simulation after this to conclusively prove it, but I suspected that had I not been wearing my personal shield and armor, my enhancements would have probably let me survive the immediate effects of the explosion, maybe… Assuming I didn't take a shard of metal through the brain or anything, which was not something I'd have recovered from. As it was, I was pretty pleased I was still conscious, though in a good amount of pain from the concussion/traumatic brain injury I'd just suffered.

This concussion was my first in this new life, but I'd experienced a few before during my tour in Iraq, so I was familiar with the symptoms. Blurry vision, check, headache, check, ringing in the ears, nausea, drowsiness, check, check, check, yep, all the classics. Thankfully, the traditional sense of overwhelming confusion wasn't there this time. An Augment advantage, perhaps? Some quirk of advanced healing?

My personal shield, first and foremost, was designed to stop death by energy weapon, a much more common and likely method of attack in this era, not so much secondary kinetic energy impacts, like being thrown into the side of a building. That's going to hurt; no way around it. It would have hurt even more without my armor and its metamaterials, which had some minor kinetic absorption capabilities, but even that had its limits.

I was in a great deal of pain, but it felt like my body had somehow turned down the sensitivity, allowing me to focus a bit more on what was important, like surviving this almost certain assassination attempt. Had the Cardassians identified me and tracked me back to Earth? Anyone else would have been dead already, and if it wasn't for all my enhancements and my healthy paranoia, I probably would have been.

Opening my eyes, I performed a full after-injury assessment. I couldn't feel my left arm and it remained unresponsive to my commands, but my right arm was still functional and I was using it to try and ineffectually put out the small fires burning on the surface of my armor. It appears I had hit the wall of a building and slid down it into a sitting position. That was convenient.

After a few moments, the fire prevention systems of the building I was loitering by activated, covering me in some kind of flame retardant foam that was quickly dissolving as it stopped the fires. If it hadn't detected a living humanoid, I imagine some kind of forcefield would have encapsulated the fire to snuff it out by depriving it of oxygen. Unfortunately, that would have also snuffed me out too.

I turned my head to the left and saw a huge piece of jagged metal embedded in the wall, one that had gouged a semi-deep furrow in my armor where it had been deflected away from me, rather than, you know, through me. It didn't look like it would have impacted in an immediately lethal location, but without my armor it likely would have torn my arm off at the very least. At that point bleeding to death would have been a possibility, assuming my enhanced physiology didn't stop the bleeding through clotting.

My macabre thoughts were suspended for a moment by the sound of quiet footsteps. Considering maybe half a minute or less had gone by since I had been caught in this explosion, that seemed pretty quick even for 24th century Earth's version of first responders.

Notably, the person approaching was purposely being quiet, using careful, methodical steps towards where I had landed. There was no sense of urgency in their movements, no hurry to offer aid. My suspicions were further raised when they didn't call out to ask if I was alright, which almost certainly meant they were not here to help. No, these were the steps of a predator in the middle of a hunt. At least that was how I viewed this situation. I froze, closed my eyes, and remained silent, playing the unconscious human. The smoke was thick in the air and my few small movements had hopefully gone unnoticed. My eyes were almost completely closed, as I waited for the figure to get closer.

The person approaching me looked like a short Arkarian male, if I had to guess. Arkarians had only appeared once or twice in all of TNG and were humanoid, but they were distinctive, with a large crest-like plate on their forehead, small, beady eyes, with a wide, flat nose, large flaring nostrils, and two bone bumps on the sides of the nose. I had made it a point to learn at least a little bit about all the races that had appeared in an episode of the show.

It hadn't been clear in the only show they'd appeared, TNG, whether the Arkarians were actual members of the Federation, but in this universe they were not. Their planet was in a valuable strategic location, though, which had made it ideal to host a Starfleet base and assets like the Remmler Array. It was a good deal for the Arkarians. They received many of the benefits of being a Federation member without actually being part of it, obligations and all, which also meant that they could still trade with many races who didn't want to have dealings directly with the Federation, for whatever reason, but weren't opposed to indirect trade and commerce.

This particular Arkarian was dressed in bland Federation civilian-wear common on Earth, the kind of clothing that wouldn't stand out in a crowd. In his left hand was some type of knife with a weirdly jagged blade – which further confirmed to me that he wasn't here to offer me aid.

That was actually a really interesting choice of weapon for this situation. It was clever in a way, I had to admit. So far everything had been made to initially look like an accident to the copious amounts of sensors present in San Francisco. Of course, that wouldn't stand up to thirty seconds of scrutiny, but it'd hold for now. An energy weapon's discharge, on the other hand, would instantly trigger a myriad number of alerts, security personnel, and would make this assassin's exit plan far more fraught with peril, it not impossible. This guy must have set up a transport damper too. Interesting. A simple stab to the throat (once he realized that I was wearing armor) and he could just walk off without any sensors going off.

I kept quiet, still continuing to play the unconscious and helpless human whose death was a foregone conclusion already. In the moments I had left I reviewed my memory of waking up to see if my normal weapons had survived the explosion or made the exciting trip with me into the wall. That hadn't been top priority at the time.

Nope. It appears the explosion had somehow demagnetized the magnetic holsters I used because they weren't on me.

"It's not personal, my friend," he said, leaning down over me like he was about to give me my last rites. Was this some kind of Arkarian religious thing? "Death comes to us all, as I know so well. You wi-"

Blah, blah, blah. This proved it. This guy was definitely a mid-tier, B-list assassin. No serious professional hitter was going to assume someone was unconscious and engage in a one-sided monologue filled with a villain-esque creepy apology for their actions. No, they'd fucking finish the job quickly and efficiently and get the fuck out of there, maybe even while debating what to order from the replicator for lunch. He definitely wasn't D-list, though. There was some serious technical skill involved here and some decent planning to work around Starfleet's technical capabilities, but the execution was just a little bit lacking when the primary plan had failed.

Normally I would happily listen to an evil monologue all the live long day to see what information they were going to inexplicably share, but I wasn't exactly 100% physically at the moment and who knows if this guy had any partners lying in wait. He could even have been hired as a distraction or to soften me up for someone else to finish me off or to gauge my capabilities. There were just too many unknowns here. No, best not to take the chance.

I ended the evil monologue with a bright crimson bolt of ruby red energy courtesy of the Starfleet Type-1 cricket phaser (set on kill) that I always kept as a holdout weapon physically slotted into the back of my armor at the small of my back. And then I shot him again twice more to make sure, little curlicues of smoke and the smell of charred meat rising from the corpse that had now fallen on top of me, which I tossed aside like yesterday's garbage.

As I started to actually succumb to unconsciousness this time, I could hear the sound of several people approaching quickly, asking if anyone was still alive in here or needed help and other stereotypical cliché things people say in this kind of situation, something that had somehow managed to survive the centuries. Guess human nature hadn't changed that much. I also ruefully confirmed the wisdom in those phaser safety briefings about not being too fucking close to your target when you shot them or you might get some feedback energy discharge.

Armor for the win, again.

XXXXX

Unknown Hospital. San Francisco. Earth.

I woke up lying in a reclined position on what looked and felt like a Starfleet-issue biobed in what looked like a very bland hospital room. I looked down to evaluate my condition, and appeared to be mostly healed up, except for some areas where the armor had likely overheated to such a degree that it had burned the skin and tissue underneath. It appeared to be healing on its own. I must have been really out of it to not have noticed that after the explosion. My left shoulder seemed perfectly normal now, and I had full mobility.

My weapons and armor were nowhere to be seen, unfortunately. Not good, but not unexpected in most hospital environments, legitimate or illegitimate.

Next step was to determine how long I'd been unconscious. Too long raised all kinds of worrying red flags. Too long and someone may have had too many opportunities to fuck with me or mess with my body in any number of incredibly dangerous ways. Since I'd started this new life as an Augment I had learned that I now possessed an amazing sense of spatial and temporal awareness. There was no 'internal chronometer' in my head akin to Data's systems, but I had an uncanny ability to sense the passage of time, and know within a minute or two exactly what time it was or how much time had passed. This worked even while sleeping. Whether it worked while I was unconscious, well, I had never had the opportunity to check.

43 minutes?

That felt right. That was enough time to help my healing along, but not so long that I was truly afraid for myself. Fuck…would my sense of time work if had been placed in a stasis field? Somehow, I wanted to say…no. My sense of time was probably a result of being subconsciously aware of internal body processes and true stasis would have arrested those.

Fuck. Now I wasn't even sure of 43 minutes.

Stop. Paranoia was a good thing a lot of the time, but let's make some assumptions. An assassin or group of assassins, one who attempted such a normally instantly lethal attack on me, one I'd survived only because of my advanced personal shield and armor, would have no interest in capturing me and holding me under stasis for study. Plus, I was on Earth. After my debrief with SI, people knew where I was. I wouldn't be surprised if Section 31 had detected the explosion so near my apartment and had dispatched a team to investigate. The lacking décor in this place fit the 31 theme.

Feeling I was likely, probably, out of immediate danger at the moment, I leaned my head back so that it was resting on the small foam pillow again, and tried to analyze what had happened.

I had been attacked several blocks away from my apartment building, too far for it to have just been by someone just staking out my building's entrance, which meant that either my assassin had a partner or partners located at every possible avenue I could have approached my apartment from, or more likely, had created or used an existing sensor network to locate and follow me as I got closer to my apartment on Earth. Considering the skills required to reprogram a hover-car to not just override the myriad number of built-in safety features, but also to remotely track a moving target like a homing missile, then to overload the car's power core on impact? Well, that indicated an incredible amount of technical skill.

Maybe I had underestimated that Arkarian's skills? Most, if not all, of his normal targets, would have been killed by that initial attack. Perhaps my surviving had forced the guy to improvise at the end in a way that he wasn't used to?

Nah, my initial assessment still held up, an inability to adapt to an evolving situation still kept him from hitting the majors. A one-trick pony, even if that one trick was impressive, was high B-team at most.

Now I could only theorize from this point on, but the use of a hover-car as an improvised missile was almost certainly due to my being in San Francisco and so close to Starfleet Academy, where energy weapons and their use were constantly being tracked, meaning he couldn't risk using something like a phaser sniper rifle if he hoped to get away (in this time it would be rare for anyone to use projectile weapons due to their weight, recoil, and ammo use).

Had that strange knife been something he already had on hand? A backup weapon? I certainly carried a knife with me at all times. For an assassin, a knife was silent, deadly, never ran out of ammo, and wouldn't be detected as easily as an energy discharge. Had he known his target was an Augment? I somehow doubted it. Even a brief perusal of Earth's historical database would have told this guy that Augments were exceptionally hard to kill with extremely dangerous enhanced physical and mental capabilities. He wouldn't have approached me like that, with only a knife in hand, if he had known that I was an Augment, unconscious or not. To be fair, though, the initial attack and explosion had been a long-range one, something that would have probably even killed an Augment. My personal shield and armor of my own design were the only things that had saved me.

Most assassins had a preferred method of killing that they didn't much deviate from, something that that they were extremely comfortable with, and/or extremely good at. Using a hover car as an improvised weapon was flashy. In fact, it could go either way in terms of explaining what happened afterward, purposeful assassination or accidental malfunction/driver error. In the second or so I realized the car was coming at me, I was pretty sure that it was empty.

No, the hover-car thing was clever, but extremely hard to execute in practice. There were so many ways to subvert modern technology to kill someone if you were skilled with computers. Of course, most modern systems had a myriad number of protections built in that would require extreme technical skill to overcome, but it was doable. Hover cars were a good choice. On Earth they were all over the damn place, so common to see that you didn't even take note of them anymore, just part of the background noise of everyday life in the 24th century.

I was curious why the assassin hadn't done more research on me or engaged in surveillance for a while before making his attempt to kill me. Walking back to my apartment from my debriefing with SI had been the first opportunity I was exposed, I suppose, but I had just arrived on Earth. He could have driven that hover-car into my apartment's window while I slept for instance. Or reprogrammed the lift in my apartment building to plummet me to my doom while I was inside it, or interfered with an active transport in progress.

It was total speculation of course, but I could only guess that whoever had hired my assassin had lost their patience due to my delays in returning to Earth and had begun pressuring the professional killer for results. Alternately, maybe there was competition? Who knows if it was an exclusive or open contract? Maybe he had to act quicker than he had wanted?

Both possibilities seemed plausible. Since there didn't appear to be any additional pieces of information that could grant me clarity either way, it was time to move on to the burning and most important question – who hired an assassin to kill me?

A professional assassin, even one on the high B-team, particularly one who would have probably gotten away with it cleanly if I hadn't been a paranoid Augment, didn't come cheap. That spoke of resources and will. Someone really wanted me dead.

Of the official, government variety types who would potentially want me dead, the Bajorans themselves were the least likely. I was doing good work for them, providing them with arms and services that they couldn't normally get, which kept their movement going, plus this kind of thing was beyond their capabilities so far from home. Even if they had discovered I was a plant for the Federation, I was still helping them and they'd be wary of upsetting whatever organization was behind me and actively helping them against the Cardassians. No, not them. I sincerely doubted their intelligence apparatus was even skilled enough to unravel a Section 31 mission and this just didn't feel like something they were both capable of arranging so far from home or was even their style. No, they'd have done the hit themselves, not outsourced it.

The Cardassians, on the other hand, were by far the most likely culprits. I had done plenty to them on Bajor that would see me killed by them, but this whole thing felt rushed and mid-tier and almost personal in how flashy it was. The Obsidian Order would have been far more competent about it and they would have almost certainly wanted me captured alive to be interrogated, to learn who I worked for, rather than immediately killed in such a flashy manner.

The Federation was right in the middle; I had no illusions about that. Section 31 was a ruthless organization who worked for the benefit of the Federation and would happily kill me if those interests were sufficiently served by my death. I just didn't see how that was likely at this point; I was doing good work for them on Bajor and had not given them any reason to benefit from my death.

Of course, perhaps I'd spoken too soon as a reddish pink forcefield surrounded the biobed locking me in place and the sound of a transporter whine filled the air. There, sitting in that classic pose of his, hands clasped together with the tips of his index fingers on his top lip, was Sloan.

"Wow, Sloan, dramatic much?" I asked with a raised eyebrow; unfortunately, that was about all I could move, and perhaps a touch more worried now that I was restrained and unarmed. I really had to come up with a way to overcome restraining fields like this. I'd seen a few instances in the shows where people introduced some kind of bio-chemical change in their bodies that overcame the field, or somehow changed their body's energy frequency to pass through a field. Food for thought. "You even beamed in the chair you're sitting on?" I scoffed aloud. That chair hadn't been there before.

"Certain forms have to be observed, Gothic," Sloan responded, just the faintest touch of a smirk on his lips. "I don't make the rules."

"Hate the player, not the game, huh?" I drawled sarcastically. "Now, may I ask why I'm restrained?"

A raised eyebrow was my only answer for several long moments.

"You are an extremely dangerous Augment, well versed in combat, who just experienced an attempt on your life that left you hospitalized," Sloan practically drawled in turn, as if I was stupid for not seeing this right away, the restraining field flashing into the visible spectrum and then winking off. "It was deemed prudent to give you a few moments to…acclimate…and see that I was no threat to you."

No threat to me, right…

"How long have I been hospitalized?" I asked.

"Approximately 45 minutes," Sloan replied. "We detected the explosion in the area around your apartment building and dispatched a team to investigate. They found the burning remains of a hovercar and a dead assassin, killed by three phaser bolts from your weapon, and your unconscious form on the ground. You were beamed here for immediate medical treatment, though we merely sped along what your body was already doing on its own by pulling out several shards of metal that had gotten past your defenses. Your healing capabilities are extraordinary."

I nodded at his answer. That timeframe fit with my own guess on the subject.

"Have you conducted a preliminary investigation? Do you have any findings you can share with me?" I asked. Section 31 was exceedingly competent and even 45 minutes meant that they probably knew a great deal already.

"We have. The investigation is ongoing, of course, but our most notable finding was the assassin's identity. They were fairly well known in certain circles and went by the name, 'Zero'. Our DNA scan had some interesting results, though. The assassin was not Arkarian, as they first appeared, they were not even truly male. The assassin was a Bynar, wearing prosthetics to appear like an Arkarian. We learned their real name, of course, but it is irrelevant, as it is a 128-digit sequence of numbers that doesn't really translate."

"A bynar?" I repeated out of shock. What the fuck?! Out of all the species for an assassin.

Got to say, Zero was a damn cool name for a Bynar assassin, though.

I turned my thoughts back to when I'd first arrived in this universe and my study of the various races that had appeared in the various shows. Bynars were a race of humanoid native to the planet Bynaus in the Beta Magellan system. They were shorter than most humanoids, though not exceedingly so, and were genderless. They had lilac colored skin and enlarged skulls. There were a few other physically identifying characteristics unique to their race, which would explain why someone in the assassin profession would want to appear as a far more non-descript looking humanoid. Bynars were fairly distinctive and would have been instantly identified as to race. And unless this universe was crazier than even I realized, there couldn't be many Bynar assassins around, right?

The Assassin's extreme technical skills and method of assassination certainly made more sense. When a Bynar was born, a surgeon removed the child's parietal lobe and replaced it with a synaptic processor which allowed the entire race to interconnect with their planet's master computer, and in turn, each other. As a rule, this meant that virtually all Bynars had an incredible baseline technical ability. Their society was so integrated with technology, it defined them as a race. They also lived and worked in pairs. I was under the impression they were always in close proximity.

"If he was a Bynar, does that mean he has a partner somewhere that will be trying to kill me? To finish the job or get revenge for my killing their partner?"

Sloan shook his head. "Zero's partner was killed some years ago in an accident, which apparently drove them insane. Normally when a Bynar's life partner is killed, for whatever reason, as accidents and illness do occur, they'd have been assigned a new partner. Zero became a sort of criminal deviant in their society when he refused a new partner and was then subsequently banished from their home world and their connection to the master computer was severed, which probably did not do them any favors mentally."

Speaking about an individual who was part of a genderless species really played havoc with speech when you were used to using gender pronouns all the time.

"Again and again the universe shows that no race is truly monolithic," I scoffed quietly. "Infinite diversity in infinite combinations," I whispered.

"Indeed, that has been my experience as well," Sloan said, smiling a little wryly at that, having heard me. I wondered if he had had any genetic enhancements of his own; it seemed exactly like something Section 31 would do. "I was unaware you were knowledgeable of or believed in Vulcan philosophy."

"I've spent a lot of time at warp with T'Maz. Some of her people's philosophy was bound to rub off on me."

"Understandable."

"Have you been able to recover any equipment from the assassin or otherwise been able to identify who hired them to kill me? I had initially suspected the Cardassians were behind it, but this entire scenario doesn't fit their normal way of doing things," I asked Sloan, paying careful attention to his body language in case he knew more than what he was willing to say at this point.

"We have located the assassin's ship and some other equipment, but have been unsuccessful in breaking the encryption on any of it yet. As you can imagine, a Bynar's data security is far beyond the norm in terms of complexity. I am certain we will be able to access it eventually, but it will take some time," Sloan answered. I could not detect any prevarication in his tone or body language, but the man was exceedingly good at his job.

"And the Cardassians? Do you believe they are behind this assassination attempt? Has my mission been compromised?" I asked. Though I felt like I already knew the answer, there was value in posing the question to Sloan and seeing what information I could get as a result.

"We have already made inquiries to our various assets who may be in a position to confirm, but every predictive model suggests that the Cardassians had nothing to do with it. Every indication is that they are still chasing down both the real and false trails with the Orion Syndicate that we left them. In fact, they have already killed several Syndicate members we planted credible evidence pointing towards interfering on Bajor by supplying arms and finances to the Resistance in exchange for concessions and immunity with the Bajorans once they have successfully driven off the Cardassians. It helps to sell this scenario that the Syndicate has engaged in exactly those kinds of operations in the past on other worlds. The Orion Syndicate has already retaliated by assassinating several high-level Central Command officers and Obsidian Order spies that they managed to identify," Sloan explained, looking rather pleased.

"The data you had me extract from Gaila's computer?"

"Indeed, that data helped us identify several Orion Syndicate arms dealers and power brokers who could plausibly have some interest in helping the Bajorans, ones we were happy to let the Cardassians deal with," Sloan nodded. "Every indication is that this state of cold war between the two organizations will continue for some time, weakening both groups in the short- to mid-term, and further distracting the Cardassians from both Bajor and their war with the Federation."

"It's a great day when your enemies kill each other for you and you don't even have to lift a finger," I said with a bloodthirsty grin.

"Indeed. We are quite pleased with your work, Gothic. The Cardassians are losing valuable resources from Bajor and their attention has been pulled in many different directions away from their war with us. The Obsidian Order and Orion Syndicate, two very dangerous and competent organizations, have also been weakened and the Federation's strategic interests have been advanced in half a dozen sectors as a result of them reallocating resources away from those areas to focus on countering each other," Sloan stated. "You'll find a substantial bonus in your account for the good work. This is, of course, in addition to your long-term mission pay that you will receive once the Cardassians are driven off Bajor or the war with the Federation ends, whichever comes first."

"Thank you," I said. A bonus for good work/results was always appreciated. "Who do your analysts think likely behind this attempt then?"

Sloan paused for a few moments before answering, "We believe it's personal in nature. No other scenario quite fits our expectations and the available data. Also, while we have not yet been able to decrypt the assassin's communication logs, we have been able to match the times up with the planetary communication records. The assassin had multiple communiques with someone currently on Earth, which increased in frequency as more time passed from the date of your expected arrival."

"Someone in Starfleet Intelligence fed them my arrival date."

"That was our conclusion as well. We've narrowed the list of suspects who had access to the information. In the coming days we will arrange to confirm our suspicions, that will hopefully help identify who hired the assassin."

"You work fast, Sloan," I said. "Will you eliminate the leak?"

"Imprisoned would be a far more likely outcome in a situation like this, Gothic. I think you have the wrong impression of us," Sloan answered with a frown. "In this case, we will likely not even let them know they've been discovered."

"You will feed them false information in the future to be leaked out as you'd like," I guessed.

"Exactly," Sloan answered with a small smile. "They're far more useful identified and unknowingly working to advance our interests, then imprisoned. Do you have any suspicions as to who wants you dead?"

That this might be personal in nature certainly narrowed down the list of potential suspects. I hadn't been around long enough in this universe to make that many personal enemies, especially ones with the resources, will, and moral flexibility that would be required to pull something like this off. And while I may have helped to slightly emotionally damage Wesley Crusher, I doubt he would go this far… which left only one possibility. The Ferengi Captain Tog or his family.

My interference had cost them dearly, both financially and politically, I'd later learned, but to attempt killing me on Earth itself, especially in San Francisco? And you know that the bastard would have crowed to the rooftops about it afterwards meaning there could be fallout from the action. There was little to no profit in killing me beyond salvaging his reputation. I could almost see the twisted logic of that, a reputation could be a powerful deterrent, winning you many battles before you even took to the field, but it just wasn't Ferengi in thinking or attitude. There was no direct money in it, actually, it was all cost. It was a very human way of thinking really.

My gut was telling me that this was the most likely explanation; if he was hiding out on Earth that would virtually confirm it. The question was do I risk sharing this information with Section 31 or try to handle this entirely on my own? To be honest, I didn't see the drawback of letting them assist. They were already involved somewhat, so I threw the dice.

"The only possibility that comes to mind is DaiMon Tog or his family," I answered, after several long moments of silence. "I suspect he's on Earth somewhere and was the one who wanted me dead."

"From the incident on Betazed," Sloan responded quietly. "It's certainly petty enough. I'll have my people see if we can locate him."

"I'd like to deal with him myself," I said swiftly and boldly, locking eyes with Sloan to emphasize how serious I was.

"I have no problem with that," Sloan allowed. "If you require any of our resources, they'll be at your disposal."

"I appreciate that, Sloan," I said, leaning back in the biobed now.

"We'll be in contact soon," Sloan said before he was unceremoniously whisked away by a transporter beam.

'Well, now what?' I thought, as I looked around the empty room.

"I'm ready to be returned to my apartment?" I said aloud to the empty room.

The whine of a Federation-style transporter beam left the room empty once again.

XXXXX

Gothic's Apartment. San Francisco.

T'Maz, the Vulcan female who I had been partnered with during a Section 31 mission, was not one of the people who I had expected to spend time with while staying on Earth this time around. I had figured that perhaps I could swing by my ex-girlfriend's place to say hello and see how she was doing, or that I might even run into a crew member from the Enterprise who had returned to this planet for some reason.

"It was pleasing to hear that you survived your recent assassination attempt, Gothic," T'Maz said in a cold dispassionate tone that really didn't jive with the words from human standards.

"Thank you, T'Maz. I'm also pleased that I survived and managed to kill the bastard who tried," I responded with some humor in my voice, this exchange being rather funny to me. "Won't you come in?"

"Indeed, if you had not killed them already, I would assist you in tracking them down and ensuring they were never able to try again. If you should require any assistance, I would be amenable to providing my help," she rejoined, before accepting my invitation and entering my apartment.

I was touched by the offer.

"Thank you for the sentiment, T'Maz. Sloan is working on tracking down who placed the contract now. I'll let you know if I need any help," I said, leading her into my apartment and gesturing for her to take a seat on the couch facing the floor-to-ceiling window with a beautiful view of the bay in San Francisco. Every few minutes a sky car would come flying through the air in the distance.

"Can I offer you a drink?" I asked.

Looking thoughtful, T'Maz answered, "A glass of Vulcan port, please."

Walking over to my apartment's very high end replicator I ordered two glasses of this drink that I hadn't had an opportunity to try in this new life, overriding the alcohol restrictions in the process. The drinks produced were a deep blue in color, somewhat similar to Romulan ale. I walked back over to T'Maz and handed her the drink and took a seat in the armchair next to the couch. Say what you want about the Federation, but this was one comfortable chair.

Swishing the drink around my cup, I observed how the blue liquid coated the glass thickly in a syrupy film, which in a human wine meant that it was quite alcoholic. That made sense, a Vulcan's physiology was extremely robust, thus they'd need a more powerfully alcoholic drink to feel much of anything. My Augment biology probably wouldn't notice it much either, but an extra kick was always appreciated these days, especially after the recent trouble I'd found myself in.

"So, what prompted this visit, T'Maz?" I asked. "Sloan didn't ask you to look in on me, did he?"

Leaning back on the couch, T'Maz delicately sipped her glass of port before answering, "While Agent Sloan may have intended that as a secondary objective, I was ordered to take some time off from my research into Collector physiology, tactics, and technology."

"Ah, I see," I said, glancing down at my drink. And I did. Section 31 was a paranoid organization at the best of times. Of course, they would want to prepare for a possible invasion by that species and had probably dedicated sizable resources to developing plans and contingencies just in case. "Did you consider returning to Vulcan?"

"Yes, unfortunately there was insufficient time for such a journey and my work is far too important for such an extended absence," T'Maz responded succinctly. "I still do not see the need for 'time off' as my human colleagues referred to it. If I require rest, I will take it, though when I learned you were on planet, I decided to seek you out."

"Well, I appreciate you thinking of me and choosing to spend your time off in my company," I joked, a smile on my face that she probably didn't quite understand. From my studies of Vulcan culture, they really didn't take 'vacations' per se. When they needed to rest, they rested, and didn't understand or see the utility in doing nothing when they weren't tired and there was still work to be done.

I suspected that she didn't really have any true 'friends' on Earth besides work colleagues to spend her time off with and I'd proven myself to be sufficiently distracting in the bedroom. At least that was what my ego certainly hoped played a part in her decision. Of course, the recent attempt on my life probably also played a significant role in her swinging by. Maybe she was to serve as some form of secondary protection? Or to keep me from going on some kind of mission of revenge filled with tons of hyperviolence that would result in copious amounts of collateral damage that Section 31 would have to clean up? Sloan could have easily planted the idea in her mind as I was still extremely valuable to the organization and my mission on Bajor was seeing tangible results in the war with the Cardassians.

On the other hand, T'Maz had already tried to make a booty call at my apartment once before, when I had been away, now that I was back it probably made sense to look me up again. Lucky for her I was an expert at relaxing and having fun, at least when compared to a Vulcan, and I had decided to ease her into taking a vacation by starting with something I knew she enjoyed from our long journey on our last mission, which was playing three-dimensional chess.

"Would you like to play a game of chess?" I asked. It had been quite a while since we had last played and I had a feeling that I would pose a much better challenge for her this time.

"That would be an agreeable diversion, Gothic. Perhaps you will make for more of a challenge than you had previously, though I believe my victories are assured."

Trash talk from a beautiful and sexy woman somehow hit differently than if a man had done it.

"Perhaps I will surprise you, T'Maz," I snarked, sending her a devilish smirk.

My thoughts wandered as I set up the board I replicated moments ago, just for this purpose, and we started playing.

I, too, needed some time off, after spending nearly every waking moment engaged in continuous combat operations on Bajor. Upon returning to Earth, I'd been vigorously debriefed by Starfleet Intelligence about the mission I'd stumbled into aiding them in. Of course, they really wanted to know why I'd been there in the first place, with a Bajoran, playing a part in facilitating a large-scale arms deal for the Bajoran Resistance.

And while I'd not done anything truly illegal, at least as far as they could tell, as none of this had occurred in Federation space, involved Federation citizens as actual parties to the transaction, and no money of mine had changed hands (as far as they knew), they were understandably concerned about a Federation citizen getting involved (even tangentially) with the Bajoran rebellion, especially with the treaty between the Federation and the Cardassian Union still in the works.

I had, of course, transported weapons through Federation space, which was highly illegal. My ship had been chock full of military-grade weapons when I'd arrived in Earth's system, but Section 31 had obviously worked their magic behind the scenes, probably falsifying or hijacking any sensor records and had ended the inquiry into that aspect of the mission. So, while SI was acting highly interested in getting to the bottom of things right now, I had no doubt that the investigation would slowly lose steam, personnel would be reassigned to more pressing matters, then the whole thing would be quietly buried by Section 31, to be forgotten by all. If any of the SI personnel involved in the investigation should express some interest in finding out why things had stalled, their superiors would likely tell them another department had jurisdiction, or that it was classified, or maybe they'd even be discouraged from asking any questions at all.

While Starfleet Intelligence had been interested in the Bajoran arms deal, their concern for that matter had waned significantly when the subject had turned to that of 'The Court', the shadowy, seemingly all-powerful aliens that had put humanity as a whole on trial, with the wholesale genocide of the entire human race as a possible punishment. The whole thing was now classified to the highest degree under the reasoning that the human race simply didn't need to know just how close it had come to being wiped out, practically on a whim, by a more powerful race. That kind of existential dread could very well give the human race the needed kick in the proverbial pants it required to stop being so damn complacent, but I could certainly see their viewpoint too.

While it might have been amusing for me to see how humanity reacted to the fact that an Augment, of all things, had saved the entire species across the galaxy, I actually agreed to keep it quiet, even though they couldn't really order or compel me to do so as I wasn't exactly part of Starfleet and my status as a Federation citizen was unclear. I had good reasons for this; for starters, I didn't want Starfleet Intelligence thinking that I was a troublemaker and thus try to make my life difficult. Also, if I cooperated with them, they might call upon my paid services in the future.

As it stood I think it was pretty clear to all involved that they now owed me a favor of sorts for my compliance, helped along by the fact that I had shamelessly and blatantly told them so, and that was imminently valuable to me. I'd be keeping that favor in my back pocket, to be used when needed. Come to think of it, given that they needed me to stay quiet about the potential genocide of the human race, Section 31 might actually not have needed to encourage folks to refocus on other pressing matters, and otherwise not look too closely into the arms deal I had helped facilitate for the Bajorans. Nah, it still needed to be buried and then hidden to prevent the Cardassians from learning about it.

My other reason for complying with their wishes was that I really didn't want the fame/notoriety that would result from people learning of my successful defense of all of humanity. While it could certainly be useful, in some respects, people would pay me a lot of attention if they discovered I'd saved the whole species across the galaxy. Any clandestine missions would be right out the window for the rest of my life after that. Interestingly enough, Section 31 hadn't really weighed in on the issue at all. Either they knew what I'd do already, given their profiling of me, or they simply didn't give a shit and saw value to their organization whichever way I went. Like with so many things related to Section 31, I suspected I'd never learn which was the answer. And even if I did get an answer, would I be able to trust it was the truth?

After a lovely, sweaty, and vigorous goodbye, the two beautiful Starfleet Intelligence officers I had helped had gone back to work after the debriefing had concluded. As for Kira, after being on Earth for only a few hours, she had somehow discovered that there were a good number of Bajorans living on the planet, with their own pseudo community, having fled their home world through various means and at various times in the past. With Kira's rousing enthusiasm and patriotic zeal on display, these Bajorans were now organizing and conducting a political rally, of sorts, for the next two weeks. The goal of which was to raise general awareness of the plight of the Bajorans and pressure the Federation president into liberating Bajor by force.

This goal, in my opinion, was patently stupid and short-sighted on many levels. Even if Starfleet, which wasn't a proper military force in the first place, could take the planet and drive away the spoon-heads, they'd have to essentially occupy the system for the foreseeable future, or at least until Bajor officially joined the Federation, otherwise the Cardassians would just return in force once the Starfleet forces were gone.

If the Federation stayed, all that would happen was that it would now be armed Starfleet personnel keeping order on Bajor, rather than the spoon-heads. Undeniably, the Federation would be infinitely better than the Cardassians. The Federation, of course, wouldn't enslave the locals, or work them to death, or starve them, or strip mine the planet for resources, or engage in summary executions, which would certainly make things better, but there'd almost certainly be some resentment by the Bajorans who would view this as trading one master for another.

In time, because people were stupid everywhere that way, there would be terrorist action against the Federation, which would almost certainly make the Federation extremely uncomfortable and reluctant to stay, they'd inevitably leave when things got too tough, and thus the Cardassians would shortly be back and maybe even worse than before.

My foreknowledge gave me a unique perspective on things, and the events of the show, which the Prophets had orchestrated, was really the best possible outcome for the Bajorans. The Cardassians leaving voluntarily, brief Federation administration of DS9, to get the Bajorans used to them, followed by Federation membership after the Dominion War was over, was the very best possible path long-term. With a full outline of the events of the next decade or so, it became pretty obvious that the Prophets really did have a plan for its chosen people and were looking out for them.

Bajor had to invite the Federation in to help rebuild, on their own terms, after the Cardassians left voluntarily, and even then it wasn't going to be an easy road as the events with 'The Circle' episodes had shown.

Still, if Kira wanted to spend the next two weeks my ship was being refitted by camping outside Federation Headquarters living in a tent, 'Occupy Wall Street' style, all power to her, that was her business. She was very passionate about helping her people and this obviously made her happy, so I was happy to let her do it. Perhaps they would even be able to get the Federation President to put pressure on the Union to withdraw from Bajor on their own. Who knows, maybe something similar happened behind the scenes on the show and that helped move things along nicely. This, along with the more and more successful liberation efforts by the Bajoran Resistance, which I happily claimed a good deal of credit for, could result in the Occupation ending sooner than expected.

This wasn't what I had planned for Kira and I to do while we waited for Starfleet engineers to upgrade my ship's warp drive, as I really did need the ship to be able go faster than warp six. With the bonus I'd recently received and the goodwill I'd managed to engender in both Starfleet Intelligence and Section 31, I had more than enough credits to pay for the upgrade work, and the mojo to move to the front of the line and get it done quickly.

Of course, you didn't pay Starfleet engineers for their services per se, but you could jump the queue a bit and have your needs met sooner by forking out some credits and having friends in high place, which meant you didn't have to wait so long. You still had to 'pay' for the replication of parts and the procurement of the non-replicable materials involved, assuming these were upgrades on your personal property, like my ship was. Of course there was no mark up for profits or anything like that.

I had planned to spend most of this time alone with my pseudo Bajoran girlfriend. My idea had been to spoil her with attention while on Earth to make up for having to share me so much while on the trip here, but that plan had gone out the window pretty quickly. I had lamented not having a ready bed partner on hand to satisfy the demands of my sometimes-overwhelming libido, but lo and behold look who walked through my door. Perhaps T'Maz would be willing to help with that now, though I wouldn't mind a bit of a break in that regard, at least for a little bit.

It was partially my fault, of course, Kira had naturally wanted to return to Bajor as quickly as possible after we'd dropped off Jaxa and Antias and finished our debriefing with Starfleet Intelligence, but she understood that faster engines meant future trips would take less time, and since my ship was being used to aid the rebels, then improving the vessel wasn't a waste of time in her mind.

Besides, staying here would be good for the Bajoran Resistance in other ways. Her people needed more than weapons, absolutely, but weapons couldn't keep you from starving to death, at least not directly. While my ship didn't have a lot of room for a lot more cargo at the moment, not everything they required took up a lot of room. Portable emergency replicators commonly used for new colony launches, which were easy to get here on Earth, would be of great use to the rebels and by now I had more than enough skill with Federation tech to set up the machines when we arrived on Bajor. Sloan was already working on procuring them.

Given recent events, I was extremely thankful she'd managed to find something to occupy herself with. Her side project organizing a protest meant she hadn't been with me, walking to my apartment, when that assassin had attacked. She didn't have a personal shield or my armor or my physical enhancements and would most likely not have survived that explosion. I sent a thank you to the Prophets for keeping her safe. She was important to the future, but she was important to me personally too. I was going to be in big trouble because I still hadn't told her what had happened and might not even later. There was just no good reason to worry her.

A polite cough brought my attention firmly back to T'Maz and the game of chess we were in the middle of, who, as always, wore a skintight bodysuit that covered everything while really hiding next to nothing, due to how tight it was on her body. And, oh, what a body it was. This was actually the white one that I had previously provided to her, the one that her ancestor T'Pol had once worn a version of. It was a nice touch and further cemented what she might have in mind for this impromptu visit with me.

Once again she was proving to be quite the formidable opponent and if I didn't know any better, I'd say she was purposely trying to distract me with her body and she hadn't even taken her clothes off! No one needs to run their hands up and down their chest or stretch that much.

It was my move now and I stared at the 3D chess board with more intensity in my eyes than I would care to admit. Normally I'd be leaning back in my chair looking relaxed, but more was at stake here than in a normal game. This was a matter of pride now.

I'd won the first four matches so far, much to T'Maz's extreme surprise and growing frustration, as she'd thoroughly and easily kicked my ass when we'd first played on that mission oh so long ago, but back then I'd still been familiarizing myself with the game, the different spatial dynamics involved, and more fundamentally, my new body and its abilities. In many real ways, I wasn't the man I was then. I'd had time since to break in this new body and learn what it was capable of from a physical as well as mental standpoint.

Now it was time for the fearsome enhanced mind and intelligence of an Augment to shine. The fact that my victories had brought out an ultra-competitive and increasingly frustrated version of T'Maz was downright delicious to me. I had had hints of my competence and skill turning her on before, but I was definitely getting some 'your intelligence is making me super fucking wet and horny' vibes from T'Maz right now.

The strategy I was employing was complete simplicity, hidden within total chaos, and had been specifically tailored for her. Every move appeared as if I was moving pieces randomly, as if I wasn't seeking victory, but there was a distinct method to my madness, which was very effective against T'Maz and her overly logical mind. Because what I was doing was so contrary to conventional strategy and logic, she couldn't predict what I was going to do next. After my first victory, every seemingly random move became a serious threat and this was causing her to overanalyze all of the many possibilities while attempting to discern my next move and my overall strategy, while simultaneously doubting her own strategy.

When I'd had an opportunity to play against Data on the Enterprise I'd done this as well. I'd hidden my true moves among seeming randomness, and when facing a true computer that should have worked, however that android was much more than a mere machine; he had that indefinable spark of sentience that made him more than the sum of his artificial parts and thus was able to tell when I was making a real move or just trying to confuse him. Perhaps getting fooled by Riker's bluffs over the many years while at the officers' weekly game of poker had taught him all about human cunning and unconventional strategies, or at least how to read people.

Amusingly enough, the flesh and blood T'Maz made moves more like a computer than Data did, spending ages trying to figure out how I had defeated her with the moves I'd made, yet never realizing that the moves I seemed to care about the least were the truly important ones.

"Can you lose faster, please?" I asked innocently, while moving a pawn nonchalantly to an upper level. "I want to go out to eat; you're welcome to join me."

She glared up at me, well, at least as much as a Vulcan can while suppressing their emotions. Her breath was coming noticeably faster and her nipples were hard as a rock, tenting the fabric of her bodysuit nicely. Was this a T'Maz thing or were displays of extreme intelligence this arousing to all Vulcan women? She was practically crouched over the board with laser-like focus now, and for a second I could have sworn that she looked…smug.

I suddenly gained a new insight as she made a move, yet I had seen her latest trap. I faked great surprise, my eyes widening slightly, as I moved one of my rooks from the second tier to the third. She watched my move, then leaned in again and studied the board some more, and a thoughtful stare replaced the obnoxious smirk that had lasted only for a brief moment. Her frustrated bedroom eyes met mine again.

My next move, while not so seemingly random that it would appear illogical, gave the impression that I was falling into the trap that she had set. Unless she did something completely unforeseeable in the next few minutes it would allow me to checkmate her in only five moves.

Oh man, she was looking really impressed/horny now and the scent of arousal was in the air. Who knew intelligence and beating them at games turned Vulcan women on so much? Now that had certainly never made it into the shows.

XXXXX

The Sock Hop Cafe. San Francisco. Earth.

Not long after the chess game had ended, in my victory yet again, I was lightly flirting with the young waitress who was working behind the counter of the diner. People on Earth (and most of the Federation proper) didn't work for money any more to live, or even truly for credits really, though they were 'paid' in credits. Ironically, the profession of waitress was still seemingly going strong even with these changed conditions. I was sure some alien visitors to Earth did leave actual tips in real currency, but I was also sure that most people, mostly women though, did this job just because they enjoyed it. Perhaps because they wanted to keep busy, or to meet so many new and interesting people that came to San Francisco, or perhaps they just enjoyed it when men flirted with them.

This was Earth under the Federation so no one pinched the butts of hot waitresses as they worked anymore, but I had the feeling that the woman I was currently talking to wouldn't have minded if I did it. She might have even gotten a kick out of the anachronistic feel of it. It certainly fit with the 50s theme of this diner.

She was reasonably attractive by modern Terran standards, with a thin face framed by gentle curls of chestnut brown hair. I assumed that her body, which was mostly obscured from my view, was also attractive. She was showing a rather large amount of cleavage, her breasts actually close to tumbling out of her tight, white button up shirt. This was helped by the fact that she was leaning forward far more than was strictly necessary, half bent over the counter, purposefully exposing even more of her chest, thus causing my eyes to wander down, which seemed like the intended purpose. When I did look back up at her face I noted that my looking seemed to please her immensely. I was quite happy to continue playing this little game.

While it was evening in San Francisco, I'd decided to have breakfast, as it felt like morning to me; space didn't have time zones after all. I was at the counter, rather than at our table, because T'Maz had sent me to take back the Belgian waffles she'd ordered and to bring back some that that didn't have a large slice of Canadian bacon on top. Not that it had actually been real bacon, it wasn't even 'real' replicated bacon, it was actually a kind of bacon flavored tofu that looked and tasted pretty damn close to the real thing. I guess even the idea of eating pretend meat had been offensive to T'Maz.

All too soon for my liking the 50s themed line cook rang an old-fashioned bell and the waitress reached back to grab the plate of food from the tall stainless-steel countertop that divided the kitchen itself from the front. Upon the plate was a new set of Belgian waffles, sans imitation Canadian bacon, covered in whipped cream and bright red strawberry syrup. It was quite decadent looking. I smiled and winked at the waitress before walking back over to the table I was sitting at with T'Maz. I sat the plate down in front of her and gracefully slid into the booth once again.

"I do not understand why the humans in your planet's past would place part of a barbarically butchered farm animal that has been fried onto these most fluffy and delicious waffles," T'Maz complained. "The strawberry syrup traditionally served with these waffles would contrast too harshly with the bacon, even if I deigned to eat such a thing."

This left me wondering how she knew that strawberry syrup and bacon didn't mix, flavor-wise, as I'd assumed she had never eaten bacon before. I let that errant thought go in case it prompted a confession that she had tried the fake meat before, or having accidentally ingested it before she knew what it really was. The imagined look of horror on her face when someone told her what bacon really was was positively hilarious to think about.

Besides, I got the distinct feeling that her complaint wasn't really about the food at all, or the eating practices of humans from centuries' past. While she didn't visibly appear to be in a bad mood, what with being Vulcan and always suppressing her emotions, I knew women just well enough to tell that I had upset her and it was pretty obvious how I'd done it.

"It's a habit, ok? I'm sorry," I apologized.

T'Maz raised an eyebrow.

"I do not know to what you are referring," she responded innocently.

I frowned.

"Don't play dumb. You can't realistically be that annoyed over bacon," I replied. "It's possible you may be offended that I have eaten real meat from butchered animals in the distant past and in another dimension, and will now eat what they replaced it with in the here and now without any guilt, but I sincerely doubt that's the reason. You might be an alien, but fundamentally you're still a woman. I know when a woman is upset due to what a man has done."

I had two sisters, a mother, some exes, and I'd spent weeks trapped in close proximity on a small ship with no escape from females who weren't even human, yet they were all like human women when a man did something to piss them off.

"If you are referring to your salacious flirtation with the human waitress whose shirt and undergarments are insufficient to contain her breasts, do not concern yourself," T'Maz stated, before looking away from me and out the window we sat next to.

She looked cool, seemingly calm and collected, but there was something in her expression, something that she couldn't hide from a guy who had seen her orgasm face many times before and who'd elicited emotions so strong they'd overcome her suppression systems. I could tell when she was feeling something strongly enough that her emotional control was strained.

"You're upset," I told her. "And don't even try to sell me on that 'Vulcans don't experience feelings' nonsense. I know better. You feel everything a human does and more, in fact far more intensely then we do, you just don't display it or allow it to control you."

I watched in slight disbelief as T'Maz slowly poured even more bright red syrup onto her waffles. It was strawberry, and I spent a moment wondering if a Vulcan could have a sweet tooth.

"I admit, I felt some annoyance," she confessed, "but it is nothing to concern yourself with. Recently my meditation has not been as frequent as I would like."

The Vulcans did not purge themselves of emotions, nor did they repress them as such, although the phenomenon of Pon'Farr might suggest otherwise. I found myself suddenly curious if the Vulcans had undergone their periodic Pon'Farr before Surak and their acceptance of logic. Anyways, it was more a form of self-control. They had intense feelings, however this acted as more of a data point, rather than as something that motivated them or dictated their actions in the modern day. If they felt fear they suppressed/controlled it and used it to logically understand that they were facing danger.

This was not some magical ability, nor a true result of their limited telepathy, or even a result of using technology, it was simply highly refined mental discipline, combined with training and lifelong meditation. It was something a human could do, although it was rare for one of my race to achieve the state of mind a Vulcan knew and maintained almost all the time. Regular meditation was required to maintain their emotional control systems, without it they could slip and their feelings would influence them.

I worried what that could mean for T'Maz; no wonder Sloan had forced her to take a vacation. The waitress soon walked over, obviously attempting to put as much swing in her hips as she could manage. She'd come over to pour me a refill of my coffee. It was real coffee too, caffeine not being forbidden even by the Federation. It wasn't replicated either as with my enhanced senses I could smell the difference, or at least I thought I could. Focusing on that sensory information prevented me from checking out the waitress' lovely backside as she walked away.

"So, you aren't upset?" I asked doubtfully.

I was a tad worried actually as an out-of-control Vulcan was very dangerous, although an Augment like myself would be able to restrain her easily.

"What is our waitress' name?" T'Maz asked me, out of nowhere.

The question thoroughly confused me, so my date, if that was what she was this evening, explained.

"The waitress you have been flirting with, what is her name?" she asked again.

This wasn't something I could answer.

"I don't know," I finally admitted. I could review my memory of my time in the café, but I had a feeling that that wouldn't be a good idea.

She did have a name tag on, but it was right next to her perky boobs, which had been so delightfully on full display, so like any real man I'd barely noticed it.

"Her name is Jenny," T'Maz said. "She introduced herself when we sat down."

Did she? Whatever. I sensed that she had a point to all of this.

"Why should I be upset that you flirt with others when they mean so little to you that you do not even remember their names?" T'Maz asked. "Also, I do not understand why you seem so upset that I did not have a discernable negative reaction. It is illogical that you would want such a thing."

Had I really misread her that badly?

I hadn't realized that perhaps her lack of jealousy had affected me, or at least thrown me off. I'd been so concerned with her feelings that I hadn't even thought about my own or what the ideal reaction, or lack thereof, would be. T'Maz and I weren't in a relationship by any definition, but we had fought and killed together, nearly died together, and had spent a lot of time together both talking and having sex. It was inevitable that that would engender some closeness, if not of the traditional variety.

"Yeah, I suppose it is," I agreed, between taking bites of my food. "I guess I'm just used to women I'm…having dinner with…being jealous when I show other women attention."

It was clear now that the lack of it had unsettled me without me realizing it.

"Then next time I will attempt to at least feign jealousy," T'Maz promised. "Though, I cannot promise success, as Vulcans do not lie."

Uh huh. A Vulcan in Section 31 probably had to be a masterful liar.

The waitress then came over with our bill and I grinned at her as I took the old-fashioned diner receipt. It was on real paper too! There was no real charge, of course, as most food was free on Earth for citizens. A slightly larger amount than normal did come out of each citizen's replicator rations who visited the café automatically, but virtually everybody had more than enough to feed themselves while still being able to make use of a place like this. The only things that required a lot of energy, like holodecks or non-essential goods produced by replicators, required credits to pay for.

Receiving a bill at the end of the meal was part of the rustic charm of the place, as it was meant to look like an old Amercian-style diner, just like they'd had in the 1950's and this place had obviously paid attention to all the little details. It was a really nice touch, I thought.

What was out of place here was that the waitress had written her name and contact information on the paper, and her name was most definitely NOT 'Jenny.' T'Maz had lied, and of course Vulcans could freaking lie, she'd have to to be able to do to her work as a spy for 31, and she had covered up her jealousy by acting as if my flirting didn't matter and I was the one who had both misread her and had a strange emotional reaction to it all.

That made me laugh heartily on the inside. I may have been in the future, in a different dimension, dealing with an alien with intense emotional control, yet women were still the same. Somehow I found that to be very comforting.

XXXXX

San Francisco. Earth.

One of the great things about the future was having access to a planetary transporter network which reduced travel time and travel costs to practically nothing, thus the whole of Earth's many natural wonders were within a moment's reach and the smallest whim. In fact, even though it was evening in San Francisco, we still had plenty of time to visit any number of beautiful beaches in the world and lay out for a tan.

Again, just like with their access to replicators, all Federation citizens were allowed to make use of the transporters through a ration type system. The numbers of times you could take a transporter per month was limited, at least for personal use, due to the energy costs, yet it was more than enough for most people's typical needs and wants. And if you wanted more than the standard ration everyone was given as a matter of course, you could easily earn more credits to pay for additional luxuries, like more transporter use.

The only real delay in transporting to some sun-soaked tropical beach somewhere on Earth had been the need to get appropriate swimwear first. Of course, we could have just gotten something suitable from any public replicator, but there were still shops for that sort of thing with plenty of swimsuits on display, a much larger catalog of specialized replicator patterns, and assistance to help you pick one out that best fit your body type and complexion, etc. While money wasn't strictly needed, the shopping experience was still pretty much the same. Meaning that T'Maz had needed a great deal of time just to pick something out while I'd made my selection in under five minutes.

That delay, and the one I was experiencing now, wasn't too big an issue in reality, since we'd simply choose a different beach at the transporter terminal to get the exact time of day we wanted. If you wanted a moonlight swim, simply choose one in the evening. If you wanted high noon and the sun at its strongest, find a beach somewhere on Earth at noon.

"Are you sure that this 'bikini' is appropriate?" my Vulcan companion asked me out of the blue, while I had been busy doing some people watching. As the people watching involved seeing several beautiful human and alien women trying on swimwear and showing off their selections to their shopping companion(s), it was a pretty engaging show. The dudes, not so much.

T'Maz was inside an intriguing style of dressing room in the store that had a door that only covered her from her knees to about her neck. Humans weren't quite as modest as they had been in my time, but they still didn't walk around naked when outside, even when the weather permitted. Well, not unless it was a nudist beach or camp, which I read were common enough, but since not everyone had the same opinions or hang ups about being naked, those places were well marked and out of public sight. They were perfectly normal and quite common now, as the Federation were all hippies to some extent and alien cultures certainly didn't all have the same feelings on body modesty. The many cultures in the wider galactic community were bound to change humanity.

"Trust me, plenty of human women wear them," I assured T'Maz, "and going to the beach is a perfectly normal activity when taking time off work in order to relax."

"Do you believe Agent Sloan would approve of this relaxation activity?" she asked.

"T'Maz, I have no Godly idea what that man would approve of or not, but I'm sure he'd have no issue with this and would view it as being one of many acceptable choices for relaxation when away from work."

I was already wearing a pair of hip hugging men's compression swim trunks that I'd chosen and replicated an hour ago. These were navy blue with a bright white waistband and pockets and boy did I look good in them if the many clandestine and not so clandestine looks of interest I was getting from various women in the store was any indication. My Augment-level package was pretty noticeable in these shorts too, and Prophets only knew what an erection would look like in them, but I really didn't give a fuck at the moment and wasn't all that worried about it.

I hadn't actually had sex for more than a day now and had little to no desire for any more at the moment, as even my Augment-level libido had been beaten into submission after being stuck on a ship with three bored women for weeks on end with little to do besides keeping up with their voracious sexual appetites and demands. Once Kira had opened that door, in a rather forceful fashion, it had not shut again the rest of the trip. On the other hand, T'Maz was crazy sexy, and had Vulcan stamina and a willingness to experiment, so who knew if this state of affairs would last if she actively tried to solicit my reaction or interest.

"I do not think this bikini is something suitable for a Vulcan female," she said hesitantly.

That was something I'd have to take her word on. I'd never known T'Maz to worry about clothes, or the lack thereof, especially considering her normal attire was a skintight bodysuit akin to what her ancestor T'Pol had once worn. From what I'd read since arriving in this universe, her race didn't care much about fashion either. Of course, they didn't exactly swim much on their planet as it was giant ball of sand when compared to Earth, which was a ball of mud with lots and lots of water covering most of its surface.

"What logic is there in wearing this?" T'Maz asked, facing the mirror that was set up in her dressing room. "If you wished to see me nude you could simply request that I remove my clothes in private. I see no reason to deny you something you enjoy when we have no duties to otherwise attend to."

It was hard to argue with that logic.

"And what of the Human males who will enjoy the sight of me wearing a bikini on the beach," T'Maz reasoned next. "Will this not make you jealous? While we are not mated or in a human-style relationship, we are companions at this moment."

She might have feelings, but that didn't mean she understood them fully, especially as felt by other races.

"But they only get to look," I pointed out. "I get to see everything that is still covered, and I get to have sex with you whenever I want. They will envy me and my prowess for having such a desirable…companion."

Judging by the expression on her face, which was only just noticeable, she didn't understand what I had just been talking about. That was kind of understandable as we were going beyond strictly emotional stuff and into human cultural mores.

"You're very certain of yourself," she said. "While I am willing to let you look at my uncovered body as much as you wish, that does not mean we will have sex whenever you should desire it."

Oh yes, it did.

"Would you really refuse me?" I asked.

A human woman would be able to answer that question without really saying yes or no, or would lie. Vulcans didn't lie, at least not unless something important was at stake, such as lives or the mission parameters required it, so T'Maz shook her head.

"I have no current reason to nor do I foresee having one in the short-term," she answered honestly. "Human sexuality is still an interest of mine that I wish to continue to explore. In fact, I am quite surprised we have not already had sex. My research into human psychology suggested that a near death experience could enhance a human's libido to extreme levels."

Yeah, the reason why that was not the case in this instance was not something I really wanted to get into. I also wondered how exactly I was even a good test subject for the study of human sexuality in the first place. Surely she must have realized from the start that while I was still human, strictly speaking, my genetic enhancements put me so far beyond human physical norms it wasn't even funny. In fact, I had had enough time in this new body of mine that I could probably give that Risian sex priestess a run for her money in the sexual Olympics department. The next time I saw her I was going to fuck her into unconsciousness, rather than the other way around!

Honestly, I wasn't even a great example of modern humanity from a cultural perspective either, as I wasn't from this time or dimension.

She changed the subject before I could assure her that she was incredibly sexy to me and that our lack of sexual congress had little to do with her.

"Let us return to the matter we were originally discussing," she decided. "This bikini shows far more of my body than required to show other human males that I have a body that they might desire or find attractive."

I pondered my reply for a moment.

"You picked it out," I argued logically.

By now she was changing.

"The young woman at the desk assured me that you would 'enjoy it.'" T'Maz informed me "and that it was acceptable beachwear on Earth. However, now I am not so sure; it might be too small."

When she got out of the stall I saw that it was actually not too small. That was a bit of an understatement. It was practically microscopic!

It showed off nearly all of her magnificently shaped body, her curves being very noticeable, as her breasts were practically bursting out of her top it seemed. She was gorgeous and the similarities to T'Pol in those famous decon' chamber scenes in Star Trek: Enterprise were hitting many of my buttons!

And I wasn't the only one nearby to notice. Men had open mouths and wide eyes, next to them were the scowling eyes of nearby women, though many women were also ogling T'Maz. This left me feeling awfully uncomfortable. And ridiculously jealous.

"Is it too small?" T'Maz asked while doing a little spin, her large tits bouncing slightly, before looking around at the people who were now trying not to stare. "I was told that it was suitable."

Strictly speaking it wouldn't get her arrested on a non-nude beach, but it was pushing the limits of public decency.

"Small?! It's almost non-existent!" I said, perhaps a little too loudly.

T'Maz examined herself in the mirror of the changing stall.

"Strange. The young woman in the shop was convinced that you wanted it to be as small as possible," she reported. "Logically, the smaller the bikini, the greater the envy the other men would feel for you. Is this wrong?"

If she'd been human I'd say that this was revenge for my flirting with the waitress back at the diner, but she was Vulcan so I could be mistaken. However, I got the feeling that T'Maz was playing games with me.

She met my eyes clearly, a different expression coming on her face for just a moment. If I had to assign a word to it, it would be…wicked.

"Now you understand how I felt when you flirted with the waitress as I watched," T'Maz stated.

She was evil! She had to be a Romulan double agent.

"So, Vulcans can not only act jealous, but vindictive," I said in a considering voice, a small smile on my face, feeling kind of amused at this whole situation. Once again I had the strong suspicion that like her ancestor before her, T'Maz would probably be considered an overly emotional deviant weirdo to most of her overly logical race.

T'Maz seemed to consider my words.

"Perhaps I am being petty," she stated, looking thoughtful at my words. "As I stated before I have not been meditating as often as I truly need. In my efforts to understand human sexuality and relationships I may have gone too far in replicating certain behaviors and approximations of emotional reactions."

Uh huh…

"Maybe if you show everyone your unquestionable ownership of who belongs to you, they will envy you even more. Daddy," she suggested.

What the fuck kind of research had she been doing?!

'Never mind, because it was totally working for me!' I thought, before I pulled her into the dressing room and shut the door for some serious kissing and groping. If anyone had a problem with what we did, they could go fuck themselves…or join in if they were a sexy woman.

XXXXX

Gothic's Apartment. San Francisco.

"Now I want sex," I told T'Maz once we had returned to my apartment on Earth after hours of frolicking on the white sandy beach of Waya in Fiji in the South Pacific and swimming in its crystal-clear turquoise waters. There was a five-hour time difference between San Francisco and Fiji so we'd had a nice mix of sun levels. "Seeing you in that bikini made me very horny. Which I'm sure is exactly what you wanted to further your exploration of human sexuality."

She was a little evil like that.

"Now strip and get onto the bed," I ordered, my more dominant streak coming out.

Without saying anything, or looking as she if had any opinion on the matter, she started to remove her garments, revealing her long sculpted legs and perky full breasts to my eyes.

Before long I moved forward and pulled her into me, gripping her naked ass with both hands, kneading it roughly as we moved towards the bed. I was squeezing her firm ass cheeks and forcing her naked body against my still somewhat dressed one. I enjoyed feeling her warm flesh against my cock, and the submissive positioning she was in; it made me even hornier, if that was possible.

I began making out with T'Maz kissing her deeply and forcing my tongue as deep into her mouth as I could, continuing to dominate her, all the while rubbing my hands all over her soft yet firm body. Soon I could feel T'Maz begin to move and gyrate against me.

"Take my cock out and beg me to fuck you, beg me to ram my long, hard cock into your dripping wet Vulcan cunt," I demanded.

It was going to be interesting to find out if she could say that convincingly.

"Fuck me, daddy," she said with directness, unzipping my pants before pushing them down off my hips. "Stick your cock in me; take this Vulcan pussy and make me your slut." Nice bit of improvisation there.

I needed no further convincing so I roughly pushed her to the bed and raised one of her legs up with my arm and fed my cock into her pussy, thrusting hard and fast. Her moan of surprise was music to my ears. Like before, her cunt was velvet slick and so much hotter than any human woman I had ever fucked before, tighter too. I could even feel the individual muscles in T'Maz's pussy rhythmically contract to squeeze my cock, drawing it in deeper into her body.

Now I was totally focused on pumping my cock into this beautiful Vulcan woman while I had the chance. I knew that within mere days she would have to go back to work on the Collector research project, and even if she didn't, I would be leaving in less than two weeks, once my ship's warp engines had been upgraded. I still had a mission to complete on Bajor after all. I also had to figure out who wanted me dead and end that threat once and for all.

Soon, T'Maz's hands were around my neck as she gasped and moaned loudly. At this angle I had the leverage needed to drive my cock straight into her cunt, a little twist and rotation making it even better for us both, while pounding her again and again mercilessly, much harder and faster than a baseline human could, driving her towards climax. In fact, I suspected the pressure on my hips from her thighs squeezing me would have already broken the pelvis of a normal human male.

"Please keep going, right there," T'Maz pleaded, sounding very human for a few moments. "I'm so close, daddy!"

The passage of time didn't mean much to me when I was having sex, but this seemed rather quick, still, I wasn't going to complain. She knew from firsthand experience that I had the stamina for multiple rounds. With my recent sexual Olympics, I was in prime shape to fuck her into unconsciousness. One of my recent sexual training partners had been an Orion woman after all, and their libidos were famous for being quite extreme when roused.

"Uuugh, uuuugh, uuugh!" the Vulcan cried out.

T'Maz spasmed hard as her body shook, had I had not already laid her down on the bed she would have probably collapsed onto it.

"Hmmm, so much for burying your emotions; that one was definitely pleasure," I whispered sensually into her pointed ear, before running my tongue up to the tip of her sensitive ear, as I turned the Vulcan woman over and pressed her firmly into a submissive position on the bed, lying on top of her and forcing her legs wide with my knees.

Her juices were practically spilling out of her soaked twat, as she lay panting, clearly exhausted.

"I'm surprised at you, T'Maz, I thought you had more stamina than that," I said with a chuckle, thrusting inside her again, my hand reaching around to play with her clit in time with my thrusts.

Clearly I'd gotten better at pleasuring women, as normally she could keep up rather well. I could only conclude that part of it was that she was more tired that she had let on, or perhaps she really had needed some time off.

"Feel free to continue," T'Maz said calmly, but quite obviously trying to reign in her reaction to me. The lack of the 'daddy' talk was telling.

I laughed at that.

"Like I was really going to stop anyways," I replied, pressing my hips into her roughly getting a squeak of surprised pleasure.

I then spent a few moments admiring how beautiful her ass looked like this, rippling each time I rammed her pussy. She truly was a fine physical specimen. Even though she was skinnier than Annika Hanson she somehow had a great bubble butt too.

While running my hands over T'Maz's ass I began massaging her buttocks, getting more excited as I did. Noticing then that she was slowly working her clit I pulled out and began fingering her cunt. Since she was still dripping wet my fingers slid in easily.

"T'Maz," I said as I went upright onto my knees behind her. "It's time to test your Vulcan self-discipline."

Given that she was now lifting her ass into the air, head still pressed into the mattress, she knew exactly what I wanted, and was very willing.

"Whatever you want, Daddy, I'm yours to do with as you please," was her quiet reply.

My Vulcan bed partner was breathing hard again, obviously getting worked up again by the fingers in her cunt and her own clitoral stimulation.

"Good, now try and relax," I said as I grabbed a firm hold of her hair pulling her head back and exposing her throat as I positioned my cock against her tight asshole.

T'Maz moaned lewdly at this new position and my cock meat slowly split her ass wide open. Agonizingly slowly I pushed my cock further and further into her back entrance and even though I'd done this several times before with her, I couldn't believe how tight this Vulcan's ass was; it was borderline painful. Yet there was nothing as good as this, bending over a strong and beautiful woman, human or not and taking her ass… making her so submissive in the process.

"Uugh, uuuugh," she moaned sharply, the only sounds coming out of her mouth now.

T'Maz couldn't stop moaning as my hard cock ravaged her ass while she played with her clit harder and faster than ever before. Her back arched beautifully from the way I was continuing to pull her hair, giving me the perfect angle to penetrate her. Another powerful orgasm was obviously on the way for both of us.

"Oh fuck, T'Maz, you're so tight," was all I could say, barely able to hold back.

I was fucking her harder now than I ever had before, with her or anyone else, going faster and faster working my whole cock in and out of her tight ass with each long stroke, far faster than a human or even a Vulcan was capable of. One hand had a strong grip on T'Maz's hip the other her hair, pulling her back into my thrusts, pain and pleasure mixing wonderfully. She was positively screaming now, having lost all semblance of emotional self-control continuing to yell out in a mixture of pain and pleasure, both of us practically reaching some new level of pleasure.

XXXXX

It was another beautiful night in San Francisco and the view from his floor-to-ceiling windows in his apartment didn't disappoint as he sat on his couch and gazed out, one arm thrown lazily on the top. It must be nearly a full moon because the moon hung quite bright and large in the sky, its light reflecting off the relatively still water in the bay with the colored lights on the bridge contrasting prettily. A few sky cars and shuttles, even at 3am, were in the sky flying here and there like fireflies in the night. The sky looked almost empty, though, after living with Bajor's five moons for quite some time now. It was amazing what you could get used to and come to miss, even something as alien as a sky filled with moons.

Being here at all, in this luxurious apartment, sitting nude on this decadent couch, was quite a striking contrast to the rough nights spent sleeping on damp cave floors on Bajor, rodents and insects scurrying around in the darkness (and sometimes over you), or waiting in abandoned and ruined homes for a convoy to come along so that we could start killing and looting from the Cardassians.

Yeah, I was feeling pretty good right now and almost felt guilty about it, almost, yet this was also a reminder of why I was fighting and a small part of the reason why I'd accepted the Bajor mission. It would take many, many years of healing and recovery, investment and development, after the Occupation and Dominion War was over, before Bajor and its people experienced even a tenth of this level of comfort in their lives, but they'd get there eventually if given the chance. Of course, being able to keep a huge percentage of the people from starving to death was the first and most immediate priority, not living well.

I was feeling a really nice full body tingle for another reason, a more sexy reason, like the high you can sometimes get after a really good workout. In this case it had been a workout with T'Maz that had lasted hours and had rendered her unconscious over the course of multiple bouts.

In my old life I'd once read an article that said, on average, vaginal sex typical only lasted three to seven minutes, with sex therapists surveyed saying 7 to 14 minutes was desirable. Any longer than that and you were getting into 'too long' and 'uncomfortable' territory. The idea of hours of continuous fucking, was an improbable, if not impossible fantasy and relegated more to porn logic than reality.

Of course, that applied specifically to humans. Not all races had the same physical capabilities or limitations, even if the humanoid form was ubiquitous. Becoming an Augment, however, had turned that truth on its head and made a new truth. I could literally go for hours now, with multiple partners, and my body's natural healing meant that I could stay hard and had the stamina to go the distance. Add in advanced lubrications and ointments developed with modern medical technology from races like the Risians and Orions and even humans could have a sex life that had previously been physiologically extremely unlikely, if not impossible, and relegated to pornos and bodice rippers.

I'd left T'Maz ass up on my bed, unconscious, my essence leaking from both her holes, which had brought back some painful memories and nostalgia. Over the course of our hardcore fucking, we'd transitioned into something maybe even akin to lovemaking. I had worked hard to break through T'Maz's emotional suppression and by the end she was as emotive and affected by the experience as anyone I'd ever been with and I felt we'd become closer because of it. What that meant for the future, I didn't know, especially with her loyalties to Section 31. What happened if my objectives and Section 31's were ever at odds with each other in the future? Well, it'd be a mess that would likely see one of us dead. But that was a potential problem for some unknown future. Whatever the future held for me, I wanted good relations with the Federation and its band of secret killers and cutthroats.

My perfect view of the bay was disrupted by a large section of the wall window flashing red with a message, reading 'Incoming Classified Communication'. There was no audible warning due to the lateness of the hour and I had little doubt who was calling at this hour with a classified communication and who would also block their identity.

"Accept communication," I ordered aloud, the computer picking up my words easily. I didn't even bother to hide my nudity, so cock out was the order the day. My caller should feel lucky it wasn't hard.

Sloan's face appeared in a huge image on my window wall, his usual non-descript office visible in the background. I wasn't truly surprised at the lateness of the hour, the goings on of the galaxy didn't occur on Earth's day/night schedule after all, regardless of what the shows sometimes pretended. Prophets knew if the man even slept. I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if he'd been genetically enhanced in multiple ways, one of which being able to go without sleep for long periods. Section 31 didn't give a shit about that kind of thing.

"Gothic, I hope I didn't wake you or Agent T'Maz," Sloan said, a smile on his face that I could only describe as bland and mildly pleasant.

Was I surprised that Sloan knew that T'Maz was with me at this very moment? Nope. He probably even knew that we had been having sex. She'd probably even told him.

I'd swept the apartment for surveillance devices when I'd first arrived and had already disposed of some that had Starfleet Intelligence's fingerprints and style all over them, none from Section 31 though. They probably knew I'd discover their shit and had no desire to annoy me. It was possible that I just hadn't discovered them, but somehow I doubted that. Not to toot my own horn, but I was pretty fucking skilled at this and had a few advantages they didn't know I had. Warfare had many facets and Minosian technology had included some extremely advanced counter-intelligence tools and scanning equipment.

My personal philosophy was to seek out a diversity of tech bases and design styles. An unknown advantage was the very best kind of advantage and one that was extremely hard to overcome. I was praying to the Prophets or my patron or whatever God-like being was willing to help that I'd find some more ancient technology from some long-gone extinct advanced civilization to keep that edge in the future.

"Not at all, Sloan, I was already awake, just admiring the view from outside my apartment and T'Maz won't be waking for quite some time. All of this you certainly knew already," I reassured with a slight grin. If Sloan detected my slight innuendo or that I knew he was keeping tabs on me somehow, he made no mention of it or reaction to it. The guy had an amazing poker face.

"I'm glad. I wanted to update you on several open items," he said before glancing off screen. "First, your engine upgrades are proceeding ahead of schedule and should be done earlier than expected."

"Any issue reaching Warp 7?" I asked.

"None reported by the assigned engineers, in fact quite the opposite," he answered, appearing thoughtful. "They still need to run more warp field simulations, but early modeling looks promising, and they might be able to achieve several extra points, it not warp 8."

"Impressive. I can't wait to see what they achieve," I said.

Turning away from his other screen, he met my eyes, "Second, at your request, we have sourced twenty slightly used emergency replicators that were designed for new colony launches. They are ruggedized for hard use, including frequently moving them, and will accept multiple energy types to power the unit, even sunlight or a weapon's power cell if need be. Our analysts think they'll be perfect for use on Bajor. We could have supplied more, but space limitations on your ship are what they are with all the weapons that were purchased."

I shook my head, "No, even if I had the space, we're potentially straining credulity that I could acquire that many, this quickly, even on Earth. I'm very glad they're used, actually. I sold Kira and the Resistance on the need to stop on Earth as an opportunity to both earn goodwill with Starfleet and my ability to acquire replicators which will help feed the Resistance and help with recruitment. I'm assuming these are commonly available on the secondary markets?"

Sloan nodded now, "All of them can be acquired from different sources at various costs and with varying levels of difficulty. If any of them are captured by the Cardassians, they won't find anything to indicate direct Federation involvement."

I only nodded, happy with that assurance. Despite mine and the Resistance's best efforts, it was virtually inevitable that some of the weapons and replicators that I had procured for the Resistance would be eventually captured by the Cardassians. We stole from them and they captured some of it back. Seeing that I had nothing further to say on that subject, Sloan continued.

"Third, we've managed to decrypt the communications Zero had with their contractor, I am sending the information to you now along with our file on the subject and his current location on Earth," he informed me, before tapping a button on his workstation.

A ping sounded indicating a data transmission was incoming and a separate screen to the left of Sloan's image appeared, along with a familiar face and current location.

My eyes hardened and my smile dropped off my face at the confirmation; and the proverbial switch was flipped as I stared at the image of the man who had tried to have me killed and could have very easily succeeded if I wasn't such a paranoid bastard. When that switch got flipped, my emotions dropped away, to be replaced by a being driven only by cold hard logic and priority objectives and none of the violence limitations and restraints against killing that could be found in a civilized person. I had needed this state many times since I arrived on Bajor, not only to do what needed to be done to the Cardassians, to become their personal boogeyman, but to stomach the horrors that I'd seen wrought on the Bajorans by a species that didn't see them truly as people.

Yet again I confirmed that my standard policy of never leaving an enemy alive if I could help it was the right one, especially some petty as fuck motherfucker who couldn't let something go. I had spared him way back when and just look at what it had earned me. Mercy had a time and place, I fully believed that, but this wasn't one of them.

Sloan's face had gone similarly cold and I could finally see the man who would in the future defend the attempted genocide of an entire race, even at the expense of his own life.

"Would you like us to handle it, Gothic? While not a formal agent of our organization, you are on mission and working on our behalf and we do not take kindly to actions taken against our people, especially while on Earth,"

My response was immediate.

"No, no need," I quietly responded, my voice as dead and cold as my eyes. "I would like to handle this on my own. I will try to clean up after myself, but Section 31 may need to assist in shutting down any official investigation afterwards that may or may not arise."

Sloan nodded.

"We're happy to do that, Gothic. Good hunting," he offered, before the communication ended, and the room was lit only by the face on the screen and the information collected in his file.

An ancient Klingon proverb said that 'Revenge was a dish best served cold.' Well, I was ice cold right now. In this state I didn't even feel anger, or a desire for revenge, it was cold hard logic that drove me and I knew what logic demanded that I do in the face of a threat to my life.

XXXXX

Beach House. Hawaii. Earth.

DaiMon Tog had not had a good year, in fact, it was probably fair to say that this had been one of the worst years of his entire life and it had all started with his plan to marry the beautiful Lwaxana Troi and use her incredible telepathic abilities to grow his business and increase his profits many times over. Oh, what he could have accomplished while secretly knowing what his competitors and enemies were thinking. It would have been glorious! Nothing could have stopped him! With his family's connections the title of Grand Nagus itself could have been within his very grasp!

She, of course, played hard to get, but that was expected of someone of Lwaxana's nobility, exquisite beauty, and great power. If only he'd had the time to properly woo her, to seduce her with his honeyed words, great wealth, and sheer charisma. No woman had ever resisted him before and she would not be the first. If the softer methods of seduction temporarily failed, well, he could always choose to use the far more barbaric biochemical manipulation and surgically implanted control devices, like his second officer had suggested. They had also always worked in the past.

No, she would have been his, if only he'd had the time to do it properly! His ship would have been long away from the planet, traveling deep into Cardassian space where the Enterprise could not follow lest they be destroyed. But it had all fallen apart due to the meddling of that human who had no right to interfere!

Oh, when he had been knocked out by that brutish human and taken into custody by the Federation, his troubles had only just begun. 'Galactic incident!' 'Embarrassment!' those fools on the Ferengi Commerce Authority had shouted before they gleefully stripped him of his title, confiscated his ship, and liquidated all his assets, taking large cuts for themselves of course, at least the assets that they had managed to find. Even his family had turned their back on him! If he hadn't been stopped by that meddling human they'd all have sung praises at his ingenuity and kissed his feet when he'd ascended to Grand Nagus, begging for his favor.

Thank the Nagus that he'd long ago secreted away a sizeable percentage of his fortune in case his enemies on Ferenginar ever moved against him and he needed to flee. If he hadn't had the foresight to do that, he'd have been left slipless and the wolves would have picked his bones clean. His five murderous and bloodthirsty Nausicaan mercenaries didn't come cheap or work for free after all.

He needed a way to show his fellow Ferengi that he was still strong, a way to redeem himself in their eyes and there was only a few ways to do that, in his opinion. He had considered trying to again capture or seek revenge on Lwaxana herself, but his heart just wouldn't allow it. It was also extremely dangerous given her ambassador status in the Federation and the increased security she now had. He had considered going after her daughter instead, or Commander Riker, but they, too, were too well protected aboard the Enterprise; a galaxy-class starship was no easy target. And even if he succeeded, Starfleet, while a bunch of pacifistic fools who didn't understand the value of business and profit, would protect their own. No, they were too well protected, too visible, with too many powerful people who would chase him to the ends of the galaxy if he succeeded, no, when he succeeded!

The human male who had barbarically attacked him from hiding, like a coward, like a thief, who must have known how Tog would have thrashed him in a fair fight, he was a nobody though, who had no powerful friends or organization to protect him. Nobody would care or even notice if he suddenly disappeared or died, nor would they care if his mutilated corpse from days of delicious torture ended up in a trash heap on some backwater no name planet. He had struggled to find him in the years since that day on Betazed, every information broker he had hired to locate the man suffering a fatal accident or arrested by various planetary authorities only days after he had hired them to get him that information. That was bad luck, but of no consequence, they hadn't been paid yet after all.

Luckily the infamous assassin, Zero, had his own information gathering capabilities and a source in Starfleet Intelligence that had given them the information that they needed, that Gothic would soon be returning to Earth. That cowardly HOO MAN couldn't even arrive and die on time!

While perhaps not the most powerful statement to the rest of his people, killing that man would be an excellent first step to regaining everything he had lost. Yes, he thought with a smile, he would regain everything that he had lost and more!

Now, why had that overpaid assassin not notified him that the job was done?! It didn't matter. As long as that human died the assassin would be worth every bar of latinum he'd been paid.

Maybe the morning would bring the good news he had been hoping for, he thought, as he settled down into his sumptuous bed and pulled his Tholian silk sheets up around his neck for a well-deserved night's rest. His luck may have turned on him lately, but that didn't mean he had to live like a slipless pauper.

XXXXX

Stirring slowly awake as the Terran sun's light spilled through the open window, he wondered why the window was open at all, when he was sure that he had locked himself tightly in his room before going to bed last night.

Something else was not quite right as the bed felt wet under the sheets. Had he wet the bed? He hadn't done that since he was 15 years old! Had he been under that much stress?

His hands felt wet too. Pulling them from under the sheets and up to his eyes he saw that they were red, covered in a thick, sticky liquid. What was that coppery smell? Was that… blood? Fearfully he quickly stripped the sheet back and found that his entire lower half was soaked with blood. Was that his blood?! Was he dying?!

Fear had quickly turned to terror as he continued to strip the bed only to freeze at the sight that greeted him. Five Nausicaan heads, sans bodies, his hired bodyguards and mercenaries, were lined up around the bottom of the bed facing him, their faces frozen in a rictus of fear.

"Aghh! Aghh! Aghh!" he screamed aloud. How long he would have shouted in terror he would never know as an almost polite clearing of a throat was heard from the corner of the room. That stopped his screams.

Sitting in a chair with a pleasant smile on his face was that human, that same cowardly thief who was supposed to already be dead, and yet he was still alive! That smile he wore looked fake even to his eyes, empty. He had dealt with many hard men in his life, tyrants and dictators, killers and madmen, yet something in this man's eyes was chilling him more than any of them ever had.

"Good morning, I hope you slept well," the man politely greeted him. "Sorry for the Nausicaans. It's traditional to use a prized horse's head or the head of a much-loved pet for a situation similar to this, but well, you don't own a horse or have a pet, so I had to make do with Nausicaans. Luckily they were all pretty big and had plenty of blood between them to set the scene properly."

What was this madman talking about? His heart rate slowed as he took hold of himself enough to realize that Zero had obviously failed and that this man's appearance in his bedroom was no coincidence. Normally he'd assume a weak-willed human would contact the local planetary authorities, but he strongly suspected that this human had killed his bodyguards then cut off their heads…and somehow had accomplished this without even waking him. That was disturbing. He didn't give a shit about these fools that had obviously failed to stop this man from getting into his bedroom, but he certainly cared about himself.

"The assassin you hired failed, if that wasn't imminently clear. I killed him for trying," Gothic admitted.

"Human, I mean, Mr. Gothic, I had nothing to do with-" he said before he was cut off.

"Let's skip the denials and protests of innocence, former DaiMon Tog, I know it was you, the communications between you and your short Bynar assassin were all recorded. I guess that was his…their…insurance in case you or any of their clients turned on him…them, I mean," the man paused for several moments. "It is really hard to talk about someone without gender pronouns, isn't it? Well, it seems like a risky policy to me to keep those kinds of records, but it did take one of the most secret and professional intelligence outfits the Federation has several days worth of concerted effort to break the encryption, so the genderless fuck had good reason to think that they were relatively safe," the madman said.

"Perhaps we can reach-"

"You know, Tog, part of me doesn't even blame you for trying to kill me, truly, I blame myself. When I held your neck in my hands on Betazed I was so tempted to simply break it and be done with it, and it would have been so easy! I knew how petty your race could be for slights, real or imagined, especially someone like you, someone from a privileged and wealthy family who was successful in his own right, someone who has rarely ever faced the consequences of his actions," the man said, now leaning forward so menacingly he fell back onto his butt. "I had this niggling feeling, even then, that that bit of mercy was going to be something I regretted someday, something that would bite me in the ass down the road. I broke my rules that day and have only myself to blame; like I've always said, never leave an enemy alive at your back if you can help it."

"But I'm not your enemy!" he yelled, feeling truly nervous and now noticing a strange device in Gothic's left hand and a Romulan disrupter pistol in his right.

"No, you're right, not then at least, not really. We could have just gone about our lives and never seen each other again, but you just had to try and kill me, probably with some ridiculous idea that by doing so you'd recover what you lost. Now, that, made you my enemy. No, I don't leave enemies alive at my back if I can help it."

"I'll pay you! Anything! Please don't kill me!" he begged.

Gothic smiled even wider now, pausing for several long moments.

"Maybe we can reach an accommodation, but in true Ferengi fashion, you have a debt to pay to me, Tog," Gothic said before tossing a standard PADD unerringly into his lap. "You'll find every one of your hidden bank accounts and assets listed there, all your little hidey holes where you stashed your latinum all over the alpha quadrant. I just need your access codes, then you're free to go. Otherwise…"

At this point the insane murderous human lifted the Romulan disrupter he held threateningly and shook it. It was pretty clear what the message was. Still, he hesitated for several long moments as they sat in silence. After a solid minute of complete silence, the human spoke again, an even wider smile on his face now, like he was happy!

"It's rather fulfilling to see your expectations proven right. As I suspected, your Ferengi greed knows no bounds. Even the threat of me killing you isn't enough to motivate you to give up your money. Well, I guess it's time for some good old-fashioned torture. I considered waterboarding you like we did back in Iraq, or go with the classic shooting you in the kneecaps with this disrupter on a low level a few times, or cutting you with a knife, maybe removing a few toes and fingers to start and then maybe peeling your skin and salting the flesh, but that's a lot of work, more blood, more time, more effort, I may even kill you accidentally during the process given my limited understanding of Ferengi physiology…nah. I decided to work smarter, not harder. See this?"

The human raised his left hand which held the unknown device, what was it? He had never seen anything like it before.

"You're probably asking yourself what this is. Few people would know, as this is a weapon from my time, the Earth of the 21st century in another dimension, positively ancient tech, but miniaturized with modern stuff. Yes, I'm a dimensional traveler, maybe even a time traveler if you stretch the definition a little. No biggie."

The human leaned back in his chair, resting his head on the back of the chair to stare at the ceiling, almost as if he was lost in nostalgic memory.

"Oh Tog, you only know the humans of this time. You wouldn't recognize the species if you went back a few centuries. If you knew what humans were like back in the day, well, it would turn the stomachs of the most bloodthirsty Klingons of this time, let me tell you. We used to know war and we were so very good at it, so clever in the many creative ways we created to kill each other. This is one of those clever ways. It's an ultrasonic weapon. We weaponized sound, Tog! It's designed to create a focused beam of ultrasound that can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target causing severe pain and disorientation, even death at high enough levels. At low levels, it can cause intense nausea and discomfort.

"This weapon used to be much larger, but I improved it with 24th century technology. It can literally cause your eyes to vibrate and explode in your head! Can you believe it?"

The human paused, as if expecting me to answer.

"Those big ears of yours aren't just for show. I wonder what this thing will do to a species whose hearing is so very good. Let's try level 1," the human said, before putting in ear plugs.

At that, the human activated his device. At first he heard a high-pitched sound that he knew normal humans probably wouldn't have been able to hear. It felt like an unpleasant tingling on his lobes that ramped up slowly into truly uncomfortable territory and held there for a while.

"I'm bored, Tog, things and women to do. Let's take this to maximum."

At that the human activated his device to maximum and he knew only pain, pain beyond pain, and his ear drums felt like they had ruptured and his eyes and head felt like they were going to explode.

After what felt like an eternity, though likely was only a few seconds, the pain had ended. At some point he'd fallen onto his back and vomited on himself. He had started bleeding from his nose, eyes, and ears at some point.

"Wow, well, that was exciting! I'll have to keep that in my back pocket for any future dealings with Ferengis. Are you ready to pay your debt now, Tog, or do we have to do that again?" the human asked.

Picking up the PADD, he could barely see it with the blood in his eyes, but he quickly entered his access codes and comforted himself with the 125th Rule of Acquisition, 'You can't make a deal if you're dead.' The corollary to that rule was 'You can't make or spend any money if you're dead.' Yes, it was a tremendous setback to lose his money, but he could earn it back, if only he lived past this day. Then he could have his revenge!

The human took the PADD back and seemed to be checking to make sure he really had access to the accounts.

"Well, it appears like everything is in order. The debt for trying to kill me has been nearly paid in full."

"You said I'd be free to go if I gave you what you wanted. Please let me go!" he begged, now weeping openly. Once he was out of here he'd tell his family what this monster of a human had done to him. They would help him get his revenge for something like this.

"I'm a man of my word," the human assured stoically. "You're free to go, Tog…to the next great adventure."

With those confusing words, the human stood quickly and raised the Romulan disrupter. The very last thing he saw, as time itself seemed to slow down in his final moments, was the thick acid green beam of energy which vaporized his screaming body.

Former DaiMon Tog was no more, now just unconnected molecules floating on the wind.

The crazy looking smile that had thoroughly unnerved Tog fell off of Gothic's face as soon as the job was done, only to be replaced by the emotionless face of a very efficient and cold-blooded killer. There was no further reaction to be seen as Gothic vaporized each of the Nausicaan's heads, one after the other, before he set the disrupter to overload and casually tossed it on the bed before he was pulled away by a transporter beam.

'Too bad about those Tholian silk sheets,' Gothic thought as he was whisked away.

Seconds later the beach house exploded and the galaxy never heard from Tog again.

XXXXX

Author's Note:

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Chapter 20: 15,767 words

Chapter 21: 18,424 words