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.

30. Chapter 30

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to or part of Star Trek.

The Adventures of Augment Gothic

Chapter 30

Island Fortress. Bajor.

It had begun, the war with the Hur'q or the Collectors, or whatever name you preferred. For some reason, I truly thought we'd have more time to prepare.

I'd often complained in the past that the Federation needed a kick in the proverbial balls, like the Borg had been in another dimension, specifically some terrible existential threat to get their heads out of their asses in order to survive the war with the Dominion in the future. The Collectors might be an even greater threat in the long-run and the Federation and its official and publicly known agencies had done fuck all to truly prepare. Luckily, the Collectors were a lot more straightforward in their plans for domination than the Dominion would be and seemed inclined to attack everyone indiscriminately, which would unite the quadrant against them. If the Federation had to go it alone, they'd be well and truly fucked. Alliances crumbled faster than a house of cards when the threat was that big. Even the Klingons would probably say it's the Federation's problem and stay out of it.

Another stroke of luck was that the Collectors were unlikely to engage in any kind of sophisticated intelligence gathering operations, or to capture and impersonate key officers, or to sew division amongst the alliance of races set against them, like the Dominion would do masterfully in the future. The Collectors didn't seem to give a shit that their actions were uniting even the most diehard and ancient of enemies together to fight off the collective threat to survival. Reports that the Collectors were seen eating their captured enemies whole, probably helped quite a bit in that regard. Most races, humanoid and otherwise, were understandably squeamish about that kind of thing. I knew that I would rather put my sidearm in my mouth and blow my own head off if I was in danger of that happening. There were some shit ways to die, but being eaten alive was probably near the top of that fucked up list.

No, the Collectors just didn't give a shit about traditional intelligence gathering or how they were uniting so many against them.

And that was truly the scariest aspect of this war. They could have just targeted one race only, like the Cardassians or the Romulans, which would have almost certainly meant few came to their aid—both races were almost universally disliked and had few true allies that would stick their necks out for them-but no, they attacked everyone indiscriminately. Even with so many races lined up against them, they obviously saw victory as possible, maybe even a certainty. From what I'd learned from the database I'd stolen, they'd defeated much more powerful and technologically advanced enemies in their history with these same tactics.

With their advantages in power generation, their gigantic ships, and their ability to quickly breed genetically superior fighters, the alpha quadrant was in deep, deep shit. It'd be even worse when they inevitably got their hands on technology from their defeated foes and started reverse engineering it all. And they were really good at that.

Even in those rare few cases in their history where they'd bitten off more than they could chew, they'd ruthlessly sacrifice whole world ships, cutting them off from the whole, in order to allow the rest of the race to retreat from the universe altogether to rebuild.

The aliens had been making small attacks all over the alpha quadrant for a while now, resource and technology gathering, if I had to guess, but those had been mere skirmishes in comparison to what was going on now. Hur'q hive ships were now spotted traveling through space controlled by the Romulans, the Klingons, the Cardassians and the Federation, even a few of the minor powers were reporting sightings. I had shared my speculation with Section 31 that these were likely reinforcements from other dimensions that had been called here. Several small colony worlds had been attacked already, their populations wiped out.

With so many races and powers being attacked, the alpha quadrant was united against a common enemy in a way that they had never been before. As such an alliance had never occurred before, sharing intelligence information between parties, concerning the Collectors and their movements/actions, was vital, but had proven to be difficult and cumbersome. Delays in intelligence sharing could mean the difference between victory and defeat, after all.

Luckily for them, I had a solution that I had long worked on for myself. It was something I had never actually intended to share with anyone, even Section 31, but dire circumstances demanded that I be flexible. After speaking with Sloan, we had decided that such a capability needed to be shared with Starfleet as a whole, rather than just Section 31. With Sloan's assistance in arranging an introduction to several Admirals in the know about Section 31, I offered them the 'Galaxy Map' system to Starfleet, a great idea that I had shamelessly stolen from the Mass Effect franchise/universe.

When they'd seen the effectiveness of my system and how seamlessly and efficiently it integrated so many different data sources, something they couldn't currently do, they hadn't balked at the huge sum of latinum I had requested in payment for licensing the hardware design and accompanying software, or worried overmuch that it had come from an Augment. Yes, we were facing an existential threat that could well see me killed and some may ask why I was charging for it, but that didn't mean I shouldn't profit from the situation. In time, the Federation, with all their technical genius, could have come up with something similar, probably even better, but they didn't have the time to dick around when a proven and tested system was available for purchase and use immediately.

Beyond the latinum, my hope was that this high-level and public transaction would improve my cachet with the various powers in the Federation and elsewhere. If it improved my reputation, I'd take it.

With the new capability in hand, the Federation and Starfleet had become the information hub for this new alliance of powers fighting against the Collector invasion. Each new piece of data submitted from various Alliance ships all over the galaxy, listening posts, or sensor networks input into the Galaxy Map, provided the Alliance with real-time information on Collector movements and attacks. Assets were being deployed for maximum effect all over the galaxy based on the information collected and synthesized by the Galaxy Map. I, on the other hand, was using the Map in an attempt to track the Collector's movements and to ultimately see if there were any patterns to be found in their attacks.

The Galaxy Map had been an idea inspired mostly by Mass Effect, but also the infamous astrometrics lab of Star Trek: Voyager fame. If my ship redesign of The Flighty Temptress ever came to fruition, I had every intention of building a galaxy map/astrometrics lab of my own in my new ship; the alien database the Collectors had long ago stolen had contained detailed designs that were much more advanced than anything the Alpha quadrant had for mapping the galaxy. In fact, it had only recently occurred to me that the same database that I had used to help me design my weapons and redesign my power cells might have a lot more technology that could be useful to me. Fully reviewing that database had jumped to the top of my to-do list the next opportunity I had.

The prototype 'Galaxy Map' that I had built, which had proven the concept to Starfleet, was sitting in a large room near my design lab under my island's palace fortress, which really deserved to be given a proper name at some point. When I had designed my home and the extensive subterranean levels built into the large hill the house sat upon, my girls had questioned why I was building so many extra empty rooms that had no discernible purpose. This was why. New and unexpected ideas required space to see come to fruition and I had built my home with plenty to spare.

The Galaxy Map with all its advanced hardware and software meant to take in and synthesize vast quantities of data, was still, fundamentally, an advanced CIC for the 24th century, which utilized a large three-dimensional holographic projection of the entire Milky Way galaxy. This projection could be manipulated in a myriad number of ways, including voice command, tactilely, or through the console in the corner. The map was so large that it took up most of the space in this rather large room. At the moment, I had it zoomed in on the part of space which contained star systems under the control of the Romulans, the Klingons, the Federation, the Cardassians as well as other multi-planet races like the Tholians, the Breen, and the Ferengi.

In many parts of space, it was a very general map, since there were no detailed star charts available for parts of the galaxy the various alpha quadrant species had yet to explore and chart by ship. No, the only knowledge we had of those areas had come from images taken with advanced space telescopes and long-range survey probes. That meant that most of the details, beyond star locations themselves, of the Delta and Gamma quadrants and most of the Beta Quadrant, were entirely unknown, and only a handful of star systems near the mouth of the wormhole within the Gamma Quadrant had yet been fully mapped. Even the map of the Alpha Quadrant itself, which I had zoomed in on, had rather large gaps in it. Of course, current 24th century technology allowed most of the stars in the larger galaxy to be seen and catalogued, but all the fine details were absent because we'd simply never been able to reach that far with current warp technology.

Setting this room up had been a vast undertaking. I didn't just have a few holoprojectors in here projecting a static image of the galaxy as we knew it; I had an entire subspace communications suite, which monitored unencrypted transmissions on the subspace communications network and even those encrypted ones it could crack. The computer in here contained all the star charts I'd gathered and would automatically update the map when new systems were discovered or mapped. The computer even kept track, as best it could, of all the ships it could detect, as well as the general state of inhabited worlds and any news or other pertinent information coming from them.

Starfleet was always exploring new systems, after all, and there were ways to track ships through tracking their comm traffic, as such the map was always updating even while it was not in use. The sheer amount of information being handled and stored by the computer was staggering, and I was glad that I'd spent the time upgrading my systems and spending so much money expanding my systems' capacity for information storage.

Prior to the Collector invasion and the deal I'd worked out with Starfleet when I'd licensed them the Galaxy Map technology, the amount of information I had had access to and fed into the Galaxy Map system was minimal, at best, information largely available to civilians or through purchase on the commercial market. I simply didn't have access to the various powers' sensor networks or their vast fleets of ships all over the galaxy. It was different now. Part of the deal I'd worked out with Starfleet was that I would be granted access to all the data coming into the system. They were extremely reluctant to agree to that and had classified a great deal of it, but desperation had a way of cutting through such objections.

That was something which they had not shared with the rest of the Alliance, but I really didn't care. Once the Collector crisis was over my access would be officially terminated, but I was saving everything I was being given now so that I could use it in the future. Little did Starfleet know, but I had also built-in backdoors in both the Map's hardware and software which should continue sending me information they input into the system. It remained to be seen if they would catch on to my access or even continue using the Galaxy Map system itself, though, after this crisis was over. The Federation was mostly honorable, but if they or anyone else should attempt to steal the technology, in order to continue using it in the future, my hooks were deep in that software. Like weeds, they'd self-replicate to preserve my hold on it. The only way to avoid those traps was to start from scratch.

Designing and building the Galaxy Map system had been a long-term investment in building up my capabilities for the future as I continued to explore the galaxy, but was mostly in preparation for the Dominion War which would span the length and breadth of the quadrant. In the short-term, I had little actual use for it, but the incredible expenditure in time and resources had certainly paid off. Starfleet would continue to pay me a licensing fee for use of the mapping system and as long as they continued to use it and feed it information, I would be privy to their collected intelligence. Information was power, but it was also money, clean money at that. My initial capital investment in the Galaxy Map system had been paid off 100x over with Starfleet's first payment, everything on top of that was gravy. When you've got them by the balls, you squeezed them for every last bar of latinum. I'm sure there was a Ferengi Rule of Acquisition that supported that behavior, I thought with a chuckle.

"Emma, show me the current location of the Enterprise," I ordered aloud, the galaxy map already working to comply by zooming in across vast expanses of space.

One of my many, many, many to-do list projects that I just hadn't had time to get to yet, had been to create the equivalent of a Mass Effect VI (Virtual Intelligence), so that people could more easily interact with the main computer of a starship or a space station. My future plan, once I figured VIs out, was to create a seriously stripped-down version of it to install on all the omni-tools I sold. Over time, I'd incrementally introduce improvements. Each improvement would require a nominal fee, of course. As these were software improvements, and not hardware, it wouldn't fall under the deal I'd make with the Ferengi.

At the moment, the project was still in its early stages and still undergoing rigorous testing. I had considered it both wise and prudent to take my time on this and to be as slow and methodical as possible, as I couldn't be sure that I wouldn't create a rogue AI in my haste. I had no intention of accidentally creating an AI and hoping that it turned out as friendly and good as Data had. Data's brother, Lore, had been created in the same manner as Data-they were essentially identical in every way-yet Lore had turned out both hostile and arguably evil and had even killed his creator in the end. If all those fictional universes I'd read about were real, which I had no reason now to think they weren't, there were plenty of horror stories when it came to AI, so it was wise to be exceedingly careful and paranoid with anything that even came close to resembling true AI.

Onboard my ship, the computer's voice and personality, if it could even be called that, sounded like Scarlett Johansson, who in my time was well known for playing the role of Black Widow in the Avenger Movies. Here, on my island, the computer in the Galaxy Map room sounded like Emma Watson, Miss Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, and the computer's holographic avatar looked exactly like her. Thankfully, she had been a minor actress in this universe as well and her picture and voice samples were found in Earth's historical archives. Giving an advanced computer a beautiful holographic avatar with a sexy voice and body had a place in many science fiction properties and that had inspired me to do the same.

This holographic Emma Watson, was my first prototype VI, and currently served as the computer's avatar and the holographic interface. She was limited to the Galaxy Map room only, for the moment, since I couldn't be sure she wouldn't become an AI and go all Skynet on me. My plan was to reevaluate that restriction once the testing period was over and I had had time to thoroughly review her programming and logs. Essentially I'd be reading her 'inner thoughts' to determine if she had achieved sapience and was questioning her purpose or me as her 'creator.' If all went well, I might expand her reach and domain to cover my entire island's systems and perhaps evolve Scarlett the same way on The Flighty Temptress. Scarlett, as the Black Widow, seemed a good choice for the avatar of a sexy warship after all. A holographic avatar of the computer could be an amazing assistant for me to interact with and give tasks to in the future.

In a fit of perverted teenage whimsy, I had dressed Emma the hologram in a rather slutty version of a Hogwarts' student uniform, complete with Gryffindor red short skirt, thigh-high white stockings, and white blouse, tied in a knot under her good-sized breasts to expose her toned stomach. She even had a magic wand in hand, which she waved for effect when she changed the galaxy map at my command to show the Enterprise. I had even given her a sexy and posh British accent! Some in my old time and dimension might call me 'basic' for all this, but fuck them, I was living my best life in the Star Trek dimension and their opinions didn't matter.

After her wand wave, a bright red Starfleet chevron appeared on the map before it started to quickly zoom in closer, showing me an uninhabited star system that I knew to be along the new Cardassian/Federation border that the recent treaty had created.

Tracking the flagship of Starfleet was shockingly easy when you had the resources I did, and that was even before Starfleet had shared their internal data, but even I didn't know exactly what was going on in that system. I would have known more if Bajor had any sensors in the area, but Bajor was a long way away from having its own listening posts and long-term spy probes along the Cardassian border, nor were we allowed access to the Federation's sensor data yet, even as an ally. That would change soon hopefully; these Hur'q attacks gave me all the justification needed to ask for more access.

"The Enterprise has just sent a priority 1 subspace message to Deep Space Nine on an unsecured channel," Emma reported in that breathy and sexy British accented voice.

An unsecured message meant that it was most likely a distress call or something along those lines.

"The Enterprise along with a Klingon Bird of Prey are engaged in battle with three ships of Hur'q/Collector design," Emma reported. "I'll provide you with more details as soon as I have the data."

I could only hope that the Enterprise wasn't tangling with one of those gigantic Hur'q hive ships the size of a moon or planet, as even their plot armor might not be enough to protect them from being destroyed… or eaten.

XXXXX

The Bridge. U.S.S. Enterprise.

The Captain of the Enterprise turned his head to face his Chief of Security at the tactical station, watching Mr. Worf deftly work his console.

"Anything, Mr. Worf?" Picard asked, quietly.

"All sensors read negative, sir," the Klingon reported in frustration, lightly slapping his console. "I am also not detecting a warp trail to or from the area."

"Damn," the captain quietly cursed.

He peered back at the main viewscreen at the front of the bridge. At the moment, it was showing an empty starscape, but not that long ago it had shown three Hur'q ship energy signatures which had attacked and destroyed a Federation base near the new Cardassian border. Over three thousand men and women had been stationed there. Unfortunately, the Enterprise had been too far away to get visual confirmation; by the time the Enterprise had arrived in-system, after receiving a distress call from the base, the raiders had already vanished somehow, from both visual and long-range sensors. It was a worrying development as it meant that these Hur'q had unknown capabilities not previously seen, either a new FTL method or some kind of cloaking technology. Both possibilities were worrying in the extreme.

Picard had orders to stop the Hur'q ships before they could do any more damage to the Federation or her current allies in this conflict with the mysterious race, which was a quite an expansive list at the moment. As was his philosophy, the captain would have preferred a more peaceful method of settling this conflict, but that would only be possible if the Hur'q answered his hails. So far, despite numerous attempts, by multiple parties, no one had reported ever having received a return communication from the Hur'q, only weapons fire, blood, and death.

"General Martok of the IKS Ki'tang is signaling his combat readiness on a tight channel," Riker reported, using his chair's dedicated console to review information as it came in.

Martok was a Klingon military officer who'd quickly risen through the ranks to become a general during the recent Klingon Civil war. They were quite some distance from the Empire's borders here, and what Martok had been doing all the way out here was a question that would need answering eventually. Though the peace treaty between the Federation and the Empire allowed free travel through each other's space, it was still very unusual and some notice was usually given when either side was far from their own borders in order to prevent any misunderstandings. Nonetheless, it reassured Picard to have some of the galaxy's best warriors at his side if the Hur'q showed back up.

Given recent events, there was a distinct possibility that the Hur'q now possessed cloaking technology, so Picard was very glad that Martok was keeping his ship cloaked and only risking communications through secure means. Martok was limiting himself to simple text messages sent on a tight beam, in order to lower the chance of detection. It was an extremely rare ship Captain that went to such paranoid lengths in the modern day, but with how little they knew about the Hur'q and their capabilities, perhaps it was prudent. The texts were capable of being sent in nanosecond data bursts and were very unlikely to be detected, much less intercepted.

Picard glanced to his left where Deanna Troi was still standing, staring intently, almost unblinkingly, at the main viewscreen, as if waiting for something to happen, but the captain knew from past experience that she was actually focusing intently on her empathic gifts, trying to extend its range as far as possible in order to sense if the Hur'q were still in nearby space. In the past, if close enough, her gifts had even been able to sense emotions from personnel on cloaked vessels.

"Captain, Hur'q vessels have just arrived in system," Mr. Data reported.

As it turned out, they actually hadn't been nearby, but they were now. The Hur'q, or Collectors, as they were sometimes interchangeably called, perhaps a more apt term given how different they were from the Hur'q of old, referring to this race's observed tendency to take people and technology from their defeated enemies, had somehow jumped into this system without any advanced warning from sensors, making use of some kind of subspace corridor.

"Captain, after consulting with historical records from the 22nd century, this type of propulsion system is not unlike what the Xindi races used in the Delphic Conflict in the years before the Federation was formed," Data reported from his station, having quickly reviewed the sensor readings of the Hur'q's arrival and comparing them to all of Starfleet's historical archive records. The speed at which this analysis was completed and an evidence-based conclusion was reached was something he'd come to rely upon from his artificial Second Officer and part of what made him such an invaluable officer on the ship. "I have sent the relevant historical sensor records to your console for your review."

"Data, are we sure that these even are Hur'q vessels?" Riker asked. "They look nothing like the ships that had been previously encountered, nor do they use the same FTL method."

"The hulls of these vessels are made partly of a bio-engineered organic material. This material is identical to the personal armor the Hur'q themselves have been observed to wear in combat," Data reported. "The ship's energy signature is also identical to observed Hur'q power generation methods."

Picard reviewed the information Data had sent him. According to the records, a subspace vortex (also called an energy portal) was an extremely fast method of propulsion utilized by the Xindi races. This method of faster than light travel was capable of transporting a vessel at a rate of about six light years per two minutes, the vortices being opened through the generation of a phase deflector pulse, using onboard generators, and were sustainable for hours at a time.

However, the portals required an incredible amount of energy to open, and the larger the portal was the more unstable it could be, and unstable portals could destroy a ship rather than transport them. A ship the size of the Enterprise would never be able to create a stable portal given its size even if it had the power to make one, and it was uncertain whether the ship could even produce enough. Xindi vessels also had unique hull geometries suited for their method of FTL, which Starfleet vessels did not possess.

Smaller craft could make use of the portals, however Starfleet had never made much headway in understanding the technology, even with a few captured ships to study, as even the Xindi had never fully understood the underlying science underlying the portals. What little they did understand they had been unwilling to share, even after the end of the hostilities between Earth and the Xindi. That technology had come from the Sphere Builders, a very advanced and very strange extra-dimensional race from a trans-dimensional realm, a race that had been changing space to allow them to survive in our universe, but which would ultimately kill everyone else.

Somehow, the Hur'q had obviously found a way around those limitations. The Federation and the Xindi had had little communication, official or otherwise, in the intervening centuries since the war ended. Too much blood had been spilled in that conflict, he supposed, and it would likely take a momentous event to bridge that divide.

Perhaps the Hur'q had captured a Xindi ship at some point and had reverse engineered their FTL technology? According to scans the ships before them were generating an enormous amount of power for their size; was that how they were generating and stabilizing such large subspace portals by which to travel?

Any more ruminations Picard might have had on where the Hur'q had acquired this technology ended abruptly as even more Hur'q ships came out of subspace vortices. A swarm of fourteen ships. Then four larger ships, possibly command ships, made an appearance. Those ships were perhaps a little larger than an old Excelsior-class starship, yet according to the readout on his chair's inbuilt console, the power output of each of these four ships surpassed that of the Enterprise multiple times over.

"On screen," Picard ordered grimly, doing his best to set the proper confident tone on the bridge and quell fears at encountering such a large fleet of enemy ships.

The largest Collector vessels were not a seamless fusion of organic and machine like the smaller ones were, rather Picard was reminded of a bee hive, only in this case the bees had used some kind of metal to build parts of their large hive.

"Each of the smaller ships is armed only with a single antiproton weapon," Worf informed the bridge. "They also possess torpedoes of some unknown type."

This was good news, while the known varieties of antiproton weapons could defeat any kind of material armor, they were of limited use against a modern starship's energy shields. The Hur'q didn't use shields, though, their ships had thick armor which was strong and had some self-repair capabilities, which meant antiproton weapons would be effective against them, hence why they likely chose that weapon type for their own ships. Phasers and photon torpedoes would be less effective against thick, robust armor, but hardly useless. Photon torpedoes were most effective when they could penetrate targets and explode inside, a surface detonation was far less effective in doling out damage.

"Captain, the four larger ships are armed with phasers and shields," Worf reported as he continued to take in the sensor output, the surprise clear in his voice. "Crude and primitive designs by our standards, but powerful in that so much energy is being fed to them. They also possess small laser cannons as well, again not very powerful. Perhaps they are intended to be used to shoot down incoming torpedoes or as an anti-fighter weapon?"

Picard had read a lot about the Hur'q recently, intelligence files both public and highly classified. The most highly classified report on the Hur'q race, which contained information he was uncertain of the provenance of given how detailed it was, stated that the Hur'q were not an imaginative race, in the traditional sense, but were highly adaptive. They maintained a strict, almost caste-like society, where individuals were bred to serve a specific role, soldier, officer, engineer, etc., from birth. Of course, saying the Hur'q were 'born' was inaccurate. They were bred, for a purpose and only as needed, and had no parents as such and nothing in the way of traditional familial attachments.

They had no art or music of their own either, or any other trappings of culture as most understood it, and they were not supposed to be inventive either in the traditional sense, but they were allegedly highly skilled at stealing, reverse engineering, and adapting the technology of other races for their own purposes, which, he supposed, required a creativity of a kind. The fact that they now had shields, phasers, and torpedoes, when previous reports said that they used none of those things, confirmed that belief. They must have stolen and adapted technology from the races they'd already encountered in this dimension, like the Romulans, the Cardassians, and even the Federation. It had been confirmed that they'd stolen technology from the USS Tikuma during their raid on that galaxy-class ship. This was all extremely troubling given how little time had otherwise passed since their return to this dimension. What would they be like in a year's time? Or two? Or ten? It truly frightened him. He was honest enough to admit that the Federation was unprepared to face such an alien enemy.

The intelligence files on the Hur'q, shared with the alliance to better understand their shared enemy, had even more data, along with sensor records that could only have come from inside a Hur'q ship. He had a mind to heartily shake the hands of the men and women who had managed that intelligence coup. Extremely detailed sensor records and video files had been included in the most highly classified reports, including video of a horrific death where a captured human Starfleet officer had been consumed by what the reports had speculated was a Hur'q Queen type. The sensor records and video had been carefully edited and redacted to hide the identities of who had taken them, the audio even stripped out entirely at various points where something identifying had likely been said.

He had tried to find the source of this data and the extremely thorough accompanying analyses and after-action reports, even as highly redacted as they were, but his security clearance was not high enough to learn more, nor were any of his contacts in the Admiralty willing to grant him access or even say anything more. Even the required security clearance level necessary to get those answers was, itself, classified. That was incredibly strange on its own. Starfleet and its intelligence arm just didn't act that way. Having insufficient clearance was an extremely rare occurrence these days, at this point in his career. His long, accomplished, and storied career in Starfleet and his command of the fleet's flagship, a ship which was often at the center of galactic events, had ensured that he had a security clearance on par with most high-level admirals in Starfleet, yet it had utterly failed him now.

"Captain, they are hailing us," Data reported to his superior officer.

Now that was certainly a surprise, but a pleasant one. There had been no report of any Hur'q ever attempting to speak to anyone.

"Open a channel," Picard commanded immediately, eager to hear what the Hur'q had to say.

Every member of the bridge crew, other than the android who lacked emotions, found themselves taking a short, ragged breath as the view of space changed to that of a truly alien alien. Few humans had ever seen a Collector and lived to tell the tale, and their insectoid appearance was instinctually unsettling even to those who were used to dealing with many strange lifeforms.

This Hur'q was a large example of the species from reports. It was covered in bio-engineered armor and had four forward facing glowing eyes, which was unsettling to look at.

The alien shrieked and chittered for a time, the sounds grating and harsh on the humanoid ear, yet there was no simultaneous translation offered by the computer. Then the transmission simply cut out. Starfleet Intelligence had hoped that the universal translator would work, should the Hur'q ever deign to speak to anyone. Their language must be so alien to the universal translator, so unlike the language of any other alpha quadrant race, that a new translation matrix would have to be created specifically for the species. Unfortunately, that would require many samples and he sincerely doubted the Hur'q would be willing to provide them. The Klingons might have some surviving records which could help in the translation, even as just a base to start from, but given the amount of time that had passed it would likely take a great deal of time and effort to succeed in that endeavor. Languages, like planets, inexorably shifted over time. Starfleet Intelligence would likely be taking on that particular project. Learning your enemy's language was the first step in attempting to understand them, and to defeating them, if necessary.

"They cut the transmission," Riker said. "Captain, General Martok is hailing us."

Picard ordered a channel to be opened.

"They are the Hur'q, make no mistake," Martok stated solemnly, with hatred and loathing clear in his eyes. "They must pay for what they did to my home world so long ago, to my people. Join us in battle, Enterprise, songs shall be sung of this day. Qapla!"

The viewscreen once more returned to the view of the approaching alien fleet.

"Red Alert!" Picard ordered tersely, his mind running over dozens of tactical scenarios.

The Collector fleet opened fire first and on the bridge of the Enterprise the lights flickered ominously, verging on total failure, the bridge crew being shaken about, several taking serious injuries. A few standing crewmen failed to tightly grab hold of their consoles in time before falling down to the deck. Deanna was gripping the arms of her seat tightly for stability as the starship shook violently around her. She winced as she shut down her empathic abilities against the unending aggression of the Hur'q. Their anger was not like the bloodlust of the Klingons, it was more… evil, more indifferent. That was the only way she could explain it. Complete indifference to another life could oftentimes be the worst form of evil.

"Status report!" shouted Picard over the blaring of the red alert klaxon.

The bridge lights returned to normal illumination.

"Partial failure of the aft shields. Minor injuries reported. No other damage," Worf reported. "The antiproton weapons of the Hur'q are proving to be less than effective at penetrating our shields, though the number of ships firing on us is making up the difference. The crude phasers of the four larger vessels, however, are far more effective against our shields, but they are dividing their fire between us and General Martok's ship."

"Small mercies, then," Picard whispered to himself.

Picard was pleased to hear this, but he also knew that if the shields failed, even partially, the hull of the Enterprise would provide little to no protection for the crew and the families onboard against powerful antiproton weapons. Without shields those weapons would carve up the ship like a laser scalpel on naked flesh. Starfleet hadn't used armored or polarized hulls since the very early days of the Federation, when energy shield technology either wasn't available or prevalent yet. Without shields they had no true defense to those weapons. Armored hulls just hadn't been needed; no one used antiproton weapons.

"Return fire, target engines and weapons where possible," the captain ordered quickly and succinctly, again, trying to provide a source of unflagging strength and calm to his people, despite the dire circumstances.

Worf's fingers seemed to dance over his tactical console and moments later the Enterprise spat bright crimson beams of deadly phaser energy and volleys of photon torpedoes at the Collectors, crossing large distances through the black of space in seconds.

When it was over the Klingon officer fumed. Only three of the Collector ships had been taken out of the fight with disabled weapons.

"Target torpedoes on their engines!" Picard ordered. "Disable those ships!"

Worf shook his head in frustration.

"Sir, it is unclear to sensors what constitutes their engines. They have an unknown means of propulsion."

Feeling frustrated, Picard could see the Ki'tang stabilizing itself on the main viewscreen after taking several glancing hits despite their impressive evasive maneuvers. As much smaller ship, the Ki'tang could run circles around the Enterprise. To his chagrin, but not his surprise, the Klingon ship began firing disruptors and torpedoes at the three vessels the Enterprise had disabled, destroying them utterly. It appeared the Klingons had no intention of sparing any disabled ships so Picard saw no reason to continue holding back, but given the opportunity he would greatly prefer to end things peacefully.

"Hail them," Picard ordered.

The Collectors kept firing, refusing to return their hails.

"Captain, the Ki'tang's shield strength is very low. They will soon fail," Data reported.

"Very well," Picard grimly responded, his face hard as stone as the ship shook again. "Mr. Worf, target the Hur'q ships' power cores. Weapons free, fire at will. Mr. Data, bring us closer to the Ki'tang. Lock onto the ship with a tractor beam and extend our shields around her."

XXXXX

The bridge was literally falling apart around General Martok, its structural support beams having been broken. Thick smoke filled the air as fires were put out and the injured and dying were tended to. His second in command was already dead courtesy of an exploding console and the Ki'tang's shields were down to a paltry six percent. At this point they'd already lost main power, which meant no weapons or engines and the ship was moving on emergency thrusters only. With their engines inoperable, they couldn't even take the ship to a respectable ramming speed to take a few more of these honorless petaQs with them to the afterlife. What a terrible way to die, he thought.

"The Hur'q fight well," Martok complimented with a growl, already accepting that his ship was lost.

He'd not meant to be heard, but he had been.

"The Hur'q still die like dogs when facing true Klingon warriors. Like they did on Qo'noS a thousand years ago," the gunner said, a head wound bleeding profusely, covering his face in purplish blood. "Now we will join those same noble warriors who freed us so long ago from slavery in the afterlife. The great stories they will tell! The songs they will sing! It will be glorious!" the man roared to the heavens, a rapturous smile on his face at the idea of dying in battle against their ancient and most hated enemy.

"Aye. Perhaps today is a good day to die!" Martok responded with a smile, happy to be surrounded in his final moments by such proud warriors. "Prepare self-destruct, we may yet take a few of our enemies with us to the afterlife!"

It looked as if they were going to die soon and go on to join the honored dead in Sto-vo-kor. The two larger Hur'q ships were now focusing their fire on the smaller Bird of Prey, sensing its weakness. Once the shields came down, which would happen soon enough, the smaller ships would rip the Klingon vessel apart with their antiproton weapons. Even Klingon ships didn't possess armor strong enough to stop such a weapon for long.

As those thoughts went through the General's mind, the Enterprise locked the Ki'tang in a tractor beam to keep the ship still and extended its mighty shields around the Klingon Bird of Prey.

"General, the Enterprise has finally unleashed its full firepower upon the enemy," the Klingon at the scanner station reported excitedly. "The Hur'q vessels are being destroyed. Perhaps today is not our day to die."

The general grinned at the little quip and considered that perhaps the Federation could be honorable allies for the Klingon Empire after all. It took them long enough to realize that this enemy needed to be utterly destroyed, but they got there in the end.

Maybe that would be enough.

XXXXX

Bridge. The Enterprise.

"Captain, I have scanned the most recent Hur'q torpedoes and have information to report," Data attempted to report to a distracted Picard.

The Frenchman had been quite intently looking over the tactical sensor readouts that were displayed on the small screen on the arm of his chair before giving the android his full attention, though he had heard the man's words. The Hur'q ships now had shields, which they hadn't had or used before now for some reason. While these barriers were basic in comparison to their own, they did offer the Collectors some small protection, especially since they had so much power to throw at the system. If this was truly the Hur'q's development curve, the alpha quadrant was in serious trouble.

"The torpedoes contain Hur'q life signs," Data reported. "I believe they are designed to board ships."

Now this got Picard's attention. What kind of monsters put living people inside torpedoes and sent so many with so few actually reaching their targets?

"The Hur'q ships are firing torpedoes," Worf grimly reported.

A long pause ensued before Picard finally issued orders, not realizing that the delay would cost him lives.

"Target those torpedoes, Mr. Worf, and fire," Picard ordered. He was tempted to order that they be disabled only, rather than destroyed, but the risks were too great.

"18 of 21 torpedoes destroyed," Worf reported. "Captain, 3 boarding torpedoes have penetrated our shields and hull. We are being boarded!"

"Intruder Alert!" Picard yelled aloud.

XXXXX

Ops. Deep Space Nine.

"I can spare 6 fighters from my squadron, Commander, they can reach the station in a matter of hours," Major Lupaza offered from the viewscreen.

Sisko sighed.

"As much as I'd like to request your assistance, Major, if we are unable to repel the Hur'q with the station's firepower, then your ships will be needed far more urgently protecting Bajor itself."

"Understood, Commander," Lupaza offered solemnly in response. "We will remain on high alert. Please keep us apprised of the battle. Lupaza out."

Commander Sisko watched the viewscreen in Ops as the station's three dedicated runabouts were launched, tasked with engaging the Hur'q ships if they approached the station. The fleet of enemy vessels had suddenly jumped into the Bajoran star system with no warning, having fled an earlier battle with the flagship of Starfleet, but they hadn't attacked right away and this had given the crew of DS9 time to mobilize their extremely limited forces and ready the station's weapons and defenses. After several hours of waiting for an attack that hadn't come, General Gothic had decided to cloak his personal vessel and follow the Hur'q ships, hoping to figure out what they were after. Sisko was unsure if that decision had been the right one, but it hadn't been his place to try to stop the man.

Sisko looked over at Dax, hoping that she had some good news for him. The lieutenant was still tinkering with the sensor controls, but before long she looked up from her console.

"Commander, I'm detecting additional ships entering the system. One is the Enterprise, the other is a Klingon Bird of Prey, heavily damaged, but moving under its own power," Dax reported to Sisko.

The Starfleet officer found himself glad once again that the flagship of Starfleet had remained in the sector due to some recent trouble with the Cardassians along the borders. Starfleet might not be willing to fortify Deep Space Nine by stationing a starship here permanently, but at least they were keeping an eye on the border. Keeping a Galaxy-class ship nearby in the sector certainly allowed him to sleep more soundly at night as it provided Bajor vital protection and deterrence.

"Have all civilian ships and personnel departed the station?" Sisko asked.

If the Hur'q attacked the station he didn't want any civilian ships in the middle of a potential battle. Pitched combat was chaotic enough without adding that element into the mix. From all reports on the subject the Hur'q made no distinction between military and civilian targets. Perhaps because they seemed to have no such distinction themselves.

"Yes, sir," Dax replied a moment later, after consulting her monitor.

This was good news.

"Hail the Enterprise," Sisko ordered.

The main viewscreen soon showed the bridge of the approaching starship. Sisko could see that a few bridge stations were dark, hinting at possible battle damage, and the crew looked tired and haggard, some with visible injuries and/or bloodstained faces.

"Captain Picard. I'm glad to see you, sir," Sisko said by way of greeting.

Picard looked grim. From the smoke in the air and the look of the bridge in the background, the Enterprise had taken her fair share of battle damage. According to the reports he'd received after the battle, the Enterprise and the Klingon ship had suffered numerous casualties in the battle. The Hur'q had also managed to board both ships and a desperate action to repel them had been undertaken where even more had died before it had been stopped.

Picard had shared a highly classified addendum to the report, stating that it had taken far too long stop the Hur'q boarders and that his security teams, though highly trained, were not armed with weapons that matched well against the Hur'q armor, nor were their standard tactics, security procedures, and security technology capable of effectively dealing with such a militant and violent species. It was practically a repeat of the disastrous Tikuma boarding all over again. It was only the Enterprise's far less damaged state that made the difference this time.

Picard had admitted, to his great shame and regret, that he had had to resist asking the Klingons to beam some of their warriors over to help repel the Hur'q. It was only the fact that this would send a terrible message to the Klingons, essentially one of weakness, that the Federation were unable to protect themselves even on a ship as well armed, crewed, and advanced as the Enterprise, that had stopped him, even though he knew that that decision had assuredly cost the lives of more of his crew in the end.

Sisko understood the decision, and empathized with the captain, trusting his judgement given his long experience with the Empire. Picard clearly laid out his thinking, that a perception of weakness, especially during wartime, given the Klingon's martial culture, could have long-lasting consequences and needed to be avoided at all costs, lest they sew the seeds for another war in the near future. Better to pay that cost in a few dozen lives now, rather than millions later on.

"Have the Hur'q made any move yet to attack Deep Space Nine or Bajor?" the captain asked.

Sisko shook his head.

"No, sir. By the look of things these Hur'q are committing only half their fleet to keeping us on alert, the other half seem to be searching intently for something. We don't know what," Sisko said in answer to Picard's question. "Their smaller ships are spread out all over the sector, but I can't send my runabouts after them in case the bulk of their fleet targets them. They'd be no match for them; a runabout is not a ship designed for true or sustained combat. However, approximately 12 hours ago, General Gothic took his personal ship, which has cloaking capability, to follow them and determine what they're doing."

Their communication was interrupted by a Bajoran Militia officer who reported that the Hur'q had changed vectors and appeared to be moving to attack the station, likely having detected the Enterprise and the Ki'tang.

"Increase speed to maximum, Mr. Data. Signal General Martok the same," Picard ordered tersely. "We'll be there to assist as soon as possible Commander Sisko. Good luck," Picard offered before the communication ended.

This reduced Hur'q fleet would be no match for the station's firepower, even as diminished as it was, but not so long ago the Enterprise itself had been boarded even with its shields up, so the same could easily happen to the station if their shields were similarly bypassed. The Hur'q who'd boarded the Enterprise had eventually been dealt with, but they'd killed many security officers and a handful of unlucky civilians before they'd been stopped and had done significant damage to the ship itself before being killed to the last. No doubt the security footage from the Enterprise would be carefully studied to determine how best to fight such an action again in the future.

DS9 had the Bajoran Militia to defend it, a rather well-trained and well-armed force after General Gothic's rather extreme training, but the station was a very big place and it had a lot more resident civilians for the Collectors to target, civilians who'd chosen not to abandon their homes and businesses on the station despite his urgings; Bajoran law hadn't allowed a forced displacement either. The disrupter weapons the General had insisted on and procured for his Militia forces should also be much more effective against the Hur'q's personal armor if it came down to it. The station's Starfleet personnel were still using their standard phaser weapons, however. He just hadn't seen the need to make that change. Hopefully, General Gothic had enough spares to arm his men if it came to it.

XXXXX

"Torpedo batteries 1 through 5, target the lead ship and fire!" Sisko shouted as the station shook around him, heavy smoke in the air. "Chief, can we rotate the station? I want our undamaged shield emitters to be facing the enemy."

"Rotating the station will severely strain the structural integrity fields and it won't be a fast rotational speed, Commander, but aye, I can do it!" O'Brien answered after several moments thought.

"Do it!" Sisko ordered.

"Aye, sir! Firing thrusters!"

"Sir!" shouted Lieutenant Dax. "The Enterprise and the Ki'tang are coming in fast and hard!"

The station shook as the Collectors continued to fire on the station, its shields admirably holding up to such concentrated fire, especially as the station began to slowly rotate. The Cardassians were technologically behind the Federation in many ways, but their shields were strong.

"On screen!" Sisko ordered.

The Federation starship and the Klingon bird-of-prey came out of warp practically right on top of the raiders, firing all their weapons, strafing as many ships as possible. A few of the already damaged alien ships exploded immediately, the ones that were severely damaged and likely couldn't fight anymore began a full impulse burn directly at the station. It seemed those reports of suicide ramming attacks had not been exaggerated. The Enterprise and the Klingon ship were doing their best, but some ships would inevitably get through and impact the station's shields at a good percentage the speed of light. Unfortunately, unlike a starship, the station could not exactly move out of the way, even with warning that they were going to be rammed. They were a very big target, but thankfully with commensurately stronger shields. Those Cardassian designed shields would be truly tested today.

"Execute first priority retargeting on any ships on a collision course with the station!" Sisko quickly and urgently yelled his order. "Otherwise, fire at will!"

Victory would be theirs this day, of that the Commander was certain. The cost of that victory, well, that yet remained to be seen.

XXXXX

The Flighty Temptress. Gamma Quadrant.

While it was impossible for sound to be conducted through the airless vacuum of space between starships, I still attempted to keep the noise to a minimum whenever I used my ship's cloaking device, like I was on a fucking submarine engaged in silent running or something! A foolish habit perhaps, probably from watching too many movies, but it certainly seemed appropriate for sneaking around.

At the moment, I was closely tailing a Hur'q vessel, a single ship out of the small fleet that was on some kind of search mission in the sector; this one had ended up going through the wormhole itself. It was larger than many Starfleet ships, and it somehow looked a lot like a Xindi Arboreal's ship seen in the show Star Trek: Enterprise, but perhaps that was just how my human mind made sense of what was very much an alien craft. And it was alien, in the most literal sense of the word. As best as I and my passive sensors could tell, the advanced bio-engineered hull armor that the Hur'q used in this day and age had been grown around a massive metal frame. I wonder what that meant. Did this result in their ship construction rate being faster? Or were the bio-engineered components superior to traditional methods?

While I was limited to taking only passive scans, as an active scan would greatly increase the risk of discovery, cloaked or not, I could still detect that the Hur'q ship had a massive power signature, some crude first generation version of phasers, torpedoes, laser cannons for point defense and rather primitive shields. My intention was to take as many scans as I could while I had the chance. Not only would I learn more about my enemy, which was always a worthwhile pursuit, but Section 31 was always willing to pay for my scans of the Collectors.

From what had already been input into the Galactic Map by Starfleet, the Federation and the Klingons had already engaged the Hur'q, so they likely had scans of their own, but scans taken during active combat with all the interference that that entailed coupled with battle damage, would almost certainly degrade those readings. My records, on the other hand, had been taken over the course of many hours of close and methodical observation while the Collector ships were 100% intact and operational, without the rigors of combat to muddy the proverbial waters.

While the Collectors' new shields and phasers were downright primitive by modern standards, they were throwing a lot of power into those systems and that had a distinct way of making up for any lack of overall sophistication. It was akin to a bizarre mixing of 25th century power generation with 22nd century phasers. It distinctly reminded me of my time in Afghanistan. Stolen Soviet weapons from as far back as the 50s and 60s, which many of the Afghan fighters had, while old as fuck and virtually archaic by modern standards, could kill you just as dead as the most sophisticated weapon systems of the 21st century. Primitive and old didn't necessarily mean ineffective.

The ship I was following was nowhere near the size of the gigantic ones I'd previously observed, but they were still pretty damn large. On further thought, it was possible, maybe even likely, that those much larger ships I'd seen before were ones meant to cross the dimensional divide on their own power, whereas these ships were meant to be in the hanger bays of the moon/planet sized hive ships.

These upgraded ships were a worrying development. The Collectors were not supposed to have any of this technology, yet after only a short time back in this dimension they'd obviously already gotten their hands on new tech—probably through captured vessels or through raids, like they'd done on the Tikuma-reverse engineered it, and most worrying of all, had quickly adapted it for their use in our dimension to better match up against their new enemies. Until now these modified Hur'q had used small fighters when on the offensive, now they were building warships. Primitive ones, admittedly, when compared to the powerful and advanced ships of the Federation, Klingons, or Romulans, but it showed that they were capable of quickly adapting their tactics and armaments to their new enemies, which meant that they weren't as limited or slow to change as I'd once thought they were.

I was honest enough to admit that none of the big powers would have been able to adapt and change as quickly as the Collectors had. It was virtually impossible to adapt that quickly, even if they had the will. That was one of the greatest strengths of a hive minded race with a strong, central authority, one who had no issue throwing away lives and ships like they were nothing. And that philosophy worked if you could easily grow replacement people and ships in little to no time.

If they kept adapting and improving at the current rate, especially with their ability to generate virtually unlimited power via their scalable singularity power cores, they could become a deadly serious threat to the entire Alpha Quadrant, more so than they already were. With their ability to generate so much power they could supply the power requirements of any ridiculously massive ship they wanted, no matter how bristling with weapons. And if they kept collecting and reverse engineering new technology from their defeated foes in this dimension, then they'd keep advancing and improving, and would be that much harder to defeat. At some point, possibly very soon, if not already I thought with a sigh, they'd be a threat beyond them all, no matter how united they were.

The Hur'q were pretty much 'ferocious bugs with advanced technology.' They could breed fast and mature to combat capability thousands of times faster than virtually any humanoid race. We also still had no idea where their industrial bases were, beyond the ships themselves, if they even had any, or how they were even entering this reality, which meant that they could just keep coming at us until any resistance was worn away through sheer numbers. I could easily imagine that many much more technologically advanced and powerful races had been defeated through such attrition alone. An extremely mobile enemy, one that appeared self-sufficient, would be a nightmare to fight against.

For now, at least, the Federation and the alpha quadrant alliance held the advantage. The Hur'q had inferior weapons and shields, and while they had boarding torpedoes which were somehow able to bypass shields altogether according to reports, the Collectors could be trapped by internal force fields for a time. Hopefully, I'd get a chance to study one of these torpedoes. A quantum torpedo that could bypass shields would be an excellent weapon for me to use against my enemies, at least until a countermeasure was developed and widely distributed, which I was sure would happen relatively quickly.

While all of this was rather worrying in the mid- to long-term, I'd have to concern myself with such thoughts later as right now I had to focus on the ship that I was following. I might need to find a way to quickly destroy it, or warn some unlucky race that they were about to receive some rather unwelcome guests.

XXXXX

Vault. Ancient Hur'q Outpost. Unnamed Planet. Gamma Quadrant.

Following the Collector 'Cruiser' had led me to an uninhabited world that contained a vast network of caves and tunnels deep beneath the surface. The Collectors had sent down a smaller landing craft to recover something and I'd followed them while using my personal cloak, making judicious use of my transporter to beat them down to the surface and then to stay ahead of them via short transporter jumps with my personal transporter device. Thankfully, that was still a technological advantage we had over them, at least for the moment. Prophets only knew how long that would last though.

It was relatively easy to determine where they intended to enter the tunnel system given the direct route that they were taking, like they knew where they were going. As I still didn't know what they were looking for, I strongly considered letting them find it first, then killing them, but if they were going into those caves and tunnels, I had zero desire to fight them there. While I could potentially find a few choke points and bottleneck them, rendering their numerical superiority useless, it'd also limit the number of targets I could kill at one time, assuming I wasn't myself caught in some bad area or my luck ran out. There were a slew of other variables that could fuck up my day including a potential cave in from all the weapon's fire. The acute risk of cave in also meant I couldn't use grenades or other explosives to winnow the group down at one time. And, if I waited till they found what they were looking for, there was a very strong possibility that a battle could see whatever it was destroyed. No, no, best to wipe them out now, in the open and at range, and roll the dice on finding whatever it was they were looking for on my own.

There was actually an ideal ambush site on the path that they were taking to reach the entrance to the tunnel system. It was a depression with steep rock walls on either side, maybe 50 yards apart, with little in the way of defensive positions to hide behind. I'd have the high ground too. Hopefully their lack of strategic thinking and willingness to throw their lives away to achieve an objective meant they stayed on course and didn't give this rather dangerous area a second thought.

Using four hidden grenades set to 'mine mode' that I had hidden on the path, I waited at the top of the West rock wall, fully hidden behind a large outcropping of some native rock, completely out of view of the Collector landing party, though I could see them perfectly well using the exographic targeting sensor technology I'd built into my armor's headpiece. Seeing your enemy, when they couldn't see you, was a huge tactical advantage and one that I was willing to exploit shamelessly.

In my primitive HUD, a projected kill zone was shaded an angry red, with outlines of darker solid red circles, all slightly overlapping, showing the kill radii of the four hidden grenades that I had set for remote detonation. I could have set the grenades to a proximity detonation mode, but I wanted as many inside the kill zone as possible before I pushed 'the button', though I didn't have a button to push, strictly speaking, nor would it be ideal to have one since I was ready to pop up with my phaser minigun, or phaser Gatling gun—I still hadn't decided on a name—to wipe out any survivors.

No, I'd have to content myself with a much less cool whispered 'detonate.' While phasers were less effective than disrupters when pitted against a Hur'q soldier's bio-armor, the sheer amount of firepower at my command had ensured that this wouldn't be an issue. Quantity had a quality all its own, which was what I was banking on. The delicious irony that I was also powering my weapon with one of their stolen power cells, was also not lost on me.

The group quickly approached the kill zone showing no signs that they'd detected me under cloak with any sensors they might have, which was again kind of ironic considering my personal cloaking field was, again, based largely on their own technology. That was a cautionary tale for any would be designer, of weapons or otherwise. Don't build something that even you can't defeat or counter, and certainly don't build something without putting in some countermeasures against scans and reverse engineering.

The digital counter in my HUD slowly ticked down from 40 feet to 30 to 20 to 10 and then they were inside the kill zone.

Only 12 of the group of 15 Collector soldiers were in the red kill zone before I noticed one of them look down at one of the grenades I'd hidden and I knew that my time had run out. What had given the game away? Or had they even spotted it? It didn't ultimately matter because I couldn't risk waiting any longer.

'Time to burn, motherfuckers,' I thought, thinking of that beautiful human woman who'd been eaten and the little boy this race had killed on the Tikuma.

"Detonate."

At my whispered command all four plasma grenades detonated simultaneously, releasing a concussive shock wave and a swiftly expanding plume of deadly, neon green superheated plasma. The heat flash instantly vaporized internal fluids and burned flesh and bone to an unrecognizable charred state in the 13-foot kill radius of each plasma grenade. The concussive shock wave released also caused disorientation and injury outside the effective kill radius when rocks and other debris were ejected out of the kill zone at high speeds as a result of the detonation itself.

Popping up from behind the outcropping I'd specifically chosen for this, but still mostly covered by it, I snapped my muzzle up on target, the rifle butt firmly pressed against my shoulder, the bipod now resting on the rock outcropping. This weapon was large and heavy, but not enough for me that I couldn't use it like a traditional rifle, especially with the bipod deployed. I pulled the trigger, sending hundreds of deadly crimson red phaser beam pulses down on the surviving Collectors. As I wasn't a fucking idiot Starfleet officer, my weapon was actually set to vaporize, but that wasn't possible with the Collector armor being as good as it was. The three Collector soldiers that had been outside the kill zone at the time of detonation had already stumbled to their feet showing how tough and hard to kill these motherfuckers were. They were my first targets, each of them getting multiple kill shots a piece to the chest and head before they went down to the ground, unmoving. Thankfully, they hadn't had time to even get a shot off, so the concussion had obviously caused some disorientation, which delayed them in returning fire.

I wasn't taking any fucking chances so I began strafing a line of deadly crimson energy over the Collectors on the ground, striking each body multiple times, making sure that they were all well and truly dead, before I stopped firing and then went perfectly still. The complete silence after a battle was always jarring to me, considering moments ago there had been a deafening cacophony of explosions and weapons fire. The way I had ambushed them hadn't given them much time to react, but I could have sworn I heard something akin to death screams.

Every sensor I had said there were no more life signs in the vicinity, but I waited for an additional 90 seconds, watching closely through my targeting scope to see if there was any hint of movement. They remained as still as the corpses I believed them to be and that my sensors told me were dead.

Hopping down from the rock outcropping with all the grace an Augment was capable of, I moved with caution, but haste, to the kill zone, my rifle still up and on target, ready to fire again if one of them moved even a slight bit. Still nothing.

Most of the Collector soldiers looked like they'd been burnt to charcoal, but that didn't stop me from picking up their dropped weapons, many of them looking worse for wear, and dropping them on top of a corpse. As I was a big fan of not repeating my past mistakes, I had upped my looting game and had a roll of special sticker transporter tags that I placed on each Collector corpse. Since my humor was rather dark, the transporter sticker tag was in the form of a shiny, bright gold star that any school age child from the US would recognize instantly…which I promptly stuck on the foreheads of the Collectors (when it was still present). Each star had a unique, but easily overlooked (if you weren't looking for it) isotopic signature that the transporter could easily lock onto.

"Scarlett, begin transport of all deployed transporter tags in my vicinity," I commanded aloud.

Instantly, the corpses, and the weapons piled on top of them, started beaming away, two at a time. They were being sent to the floor of my ship's main cargo bay. At the first sign of trouble, like an unexplained energy build up, for instance, Scarlett had been ordered to open the bay doors and explosively jettison everything not tied down into space to protect the ship. My plan was to keep one of the more intact Collector soldiers and sell the rest to Section 31, assuming they even wanted them at this point. Price was a reflection of scarcity, after all. With the Collector invasion going on, and thus the likely greater availability of Collector corpses, they might not actually be worth anything anymore. I'd probably keep all the weapons for myself, though, as their power cores were incredibly valuable to me and were useful to have around to power my various projects. Some of them were almost certainly destroyed by my violent attack, but my hope was that some of them would be intact and still operable.

It was time to find out what the hell the Collectors were looking for.

With the help of my sensors and omni-tool, a holographic map was generated of the cave network itself and I'd soon found the room they'd likely been heading towards. It was ransacked, probably centuries ago, but my foreknowledge from this episode appeared to be good as I could detect a hidden room protected by a still active force field. A room, hidden within another room, how melodramatic. In that secret hidden room, on a rotting stand, was the most important blade in the galaxy, assuming Excalibur wasn't real, a priceless cultural treasure of the ancient Klingon people, the Sword of Kahless.

The Sword of Kahless was the first bat'leth ever forged. It was designed and created by Kahless the Unforgettable and dated to the 9th century AD. According to Klingon history (or mythology, depending on who you asked), Kahless created the sword by dropping a lock of his hair into a river of lava from Kri'stak's summit, and then cooling the burning lock in the Lake of Lusor and forging it into a blade.

Brandishing his newly-forged Sword, Kahless slew the hated tyrant Molor, conquered the Fek'Ihri, and created the first Empire. Kahless later used the Sword to skin the serpent of Xol, to harvest his father's field, and to carve a statue of his beloved, the Lady Lukara.

At least, that was the fanciful story behind the sword. I imagine only a small portion of that was true, if you squinted just right and turned your head in the right direction.

What was clear and relatively supported by historical accounts and evidence, was that after Kahless' death, the Sword became a revered object among the Klingon people. The Sword was wrapped in a special cloth, the Shroud of the Sword, which also became a revered object. However, both the Sword and the Shroud were stolen about five hundred years later by the Hur'q, during their invasion and plundering of Qo'noS.

I scanned the weapon before picking it up as it might be booby trapped, or alarmed, but it wasn't. I considered the possibility that the sword might hold some sort of mystical power over those who touched it, as the existence of creatures like the Pah'Wraiths suggested that some supernatural power could exist in this universe and be imbued in objects, but I had no idea how I'd test for that and the sword's effects on Kor and Worf in canon had been more psychological, not metaphysical, so I decided not to worry about it. Every scan said that it was a primitive sword, old certainly, but nothing intrinsically special about it beyond the value the Klingons themselves placed on it.

"I guess I could sell it on eBay," I joked to myself.

Well, they didn't have eBay anymore, but I could auction it. The Klingons would almost certainly take great offense to that if they learned about it, though, would almost certainly and perhaps reasonably insist that it was a stolen cultural treasure and not mine to sell in the first place and would demand it back, and would almost certainly hunt me to the edges of the known galaxy to take it back and kill me for the terrible affront I'd given them if I didn't immediately comply with their demand. I was a badass in many ways, but if the entirety of the Klingon Empire united in shared purpose to capture or kill me, well, there was no other way to say it, I'd be fucked.

I could maybe display it in my office like a display piece, but one surreptitious carbon dating scan and I'd be back to being fucked once again.

I quickly decided to just hold on to it and store it in my most secure vault back at my island fortress. One day it could come in handy, perhaps by using it to support a Klingon leader whom I actually approved of. Or to cement my good standing with the Klingons. Or maybe I could give it to Worf just to see what he did with it. Nah. That guy hadn't even said 'thank you' after I'd put my ass on the line to help him.

For a moment, I wondered what the fuck the Hur'q actually wanted with this sword. Were they aware of its cultural significance and the debilitating and divisive effect it could have on the Klingons? Had they intended to use it to insult the Klingons, or to break their morale? Or was it to anger them, or to use it as bait in a trap? Who could guess? The Collectors were really odd and despite having reviewed much of their database, I still didn't understand them. Maybe it was simply to destabilize and demoralize the Empire, which I think was the feared outcome in the episode in which Worf found the sword and later got rid of it. That was not one of my favorite episodes from the series so my memory of it was shoddy at best. In your rewatching of the series in a plywood, B-Hut shit box in Afghanistan and Iraq you tend to skip over the shitty episodes.

Unfortunately, I couldn't even be sure that this thing was what they wanted when they came here. Who knows, maybe they wanted one of the other Klingon relics here? There were plenty of bits and pieces of pottery and statues scattered around. Hell, they might even have been looking in the wrong place! Or there could be some secret stash of technology in a secret room? None of my scans I was running continuously showed anything of the sort, nor did my foreknowledge tell me that anything else was present.

Perhaps why they came really didn't matter, but the Collector Cruiser had come here for a reason, and if the Hur'q possibly wanted this sword that badly they'd send more troops to look for it. Which meant that I should get back to my ship as soon as possible and take this sword far away, and all this other junk too. Who knew what in this pile of junk might actually be Aladdin's lamp or some secret to cross-dimensional travel? It was time to bust out my roll of transporter tags and put a gold star on all this shit. The outrage the Klingons would have at the act just warmed my soul.

In reality, I cared far, far more for the weapons and power cells of the Collector soldiers I'd just killed than all this other junk. They, at least, had some practical, recognizable, and immediate value to me.

As soon as I got back to the island any power cells that were salvageable would get the now standard set of improvements made to them and I'd have plenty of spare power cells for my backup weapons and armor, and other projects.

My greedy, more mercenary side acted up again as I thought of the empty and unguarded Collector landing craft just sitting on the surface a few miles away, its entire crew dead at my hands, just waiting there for me to steal it. I let out a deep sigh as scenario after scenario played out in my mind. Each time, my plan had a very high likelihood of failure or the risks were just too great and I probably ended up dead. There was just no way I could risk taking it with the resources I currently had available to me.

As far as I knew the Collectors did not have cloaking technology, and even if they did, and had one on their landing craft, the atmospheric disturbance caused by my ascent into orbit would be detected by the Collector ship in orbit. I had no idea if the Collector drop ship had FTL capabilities, but I sincerely doubted it going by everything I'd seen thus far, so there'd be no quick escape. I could beam back to the Temptress and attempt to destroy the Collector ship in orbit, then claim my prize, but I really didn't fancy my chances of winning that fight, and even if I did, winning it unscathed and in a way that would allow me to leave immediately with my prize in tow seemed unlikely. Suppose I won that battle, I'd have to beam down to the surface and somehow/someway figure out how to pilot the Collector landing craft into orbit under its own power, then beam back over to the FT and tow the thing back to my island. I couldn't bring the FT down and try to tow the Collector landing craft into orbit; my ship just wasn't strong enough for that kind of heavy lifting out of planet's gravity well.

No, unfortunately, there was just no way to swing it at the moment. And there was no use crying over spilled milk.

XXXXX

Onboard Hur'q Vessel. Designation Unknown. Uninhabited System.

"You know, there was literally nothing stopping you from just beaming over," Neela pointed out incredulously over the comm, a bit of humor in her voice.

I wasn't actually onboard the smallish, wrecked Collector ship that I'd found floating dead in space, at least not in the traditional sense. I was standing on top of its hull, in the vacuum of space, my boots magnetically locked to the hull's surface. Thankfully, it had enough metallic components to actually lock on.

The 'Superman' fists on hips look I was rocking as I giddily looked around the ship and into the void of space wasn't strictly necessary, but it was a proud moment for me. I was testing out my Iron Man-esque armor at the moment and loving it! My version of Tony Stark's most famous creation was sleeker and cooler than any Federation environmental suit, and much better protected.

It was also stuffed to the gills with advanced technology, like the retractable helmet with built in HUD, omni-tool, magnetic boots with impulse thrusters, reaction control thrusters, wrist mounted disrupter weaponry, anti-matter tipped mini-missiles in the shoulders (remember that from the movie?), a suite of built-in sensors, personal shield, micro-replicator, and the armor could mimic clothing and change color to help me blend into the background or go full on invisible like a Jem'hadar soldier while shrouding. Future models would no doubt contain more fun toys, or improved tech as I got a hold of more stuff and reverse engineered it, but I'd rushed the construction of this prototype since I would soon have other things I would need to work on, like the redesign of The Flighty Temptress if today's work bore fruit. Now that, really excited me!

"Yeah, I know," I admitted, chuckling a bit. "But I wanted to test the new armor as soon as possible and this seemed like the ideal time. As an engineer yourself you know what it's like. That burning desire to see if it all works just like you planned is hard to ignore, especially with something as cool as this. Do you even see me right now?! I'm freaking standing on the outside hull of a ship, in the dark, vacuum of space! This is badass! I'm a badass!"

Cue evil megalomaniacal laughter.

"Yes, I see you," Neela snarked right back at me, a smile in her voice. "You're such an adorable child sometimes, you know that right, Gothic?"

I carefully moved across the hull, making sure each boot had properly locked onto the hull before taking the next step. I stopped when I found a damaged weapon turret. It was a ship mounted anti-proton weapon. These could already be built by some of the local alpha quadrant races (though powering a mobile version of it was another story), so I paid it no mind and moved on.

There was already a decent sized hole in the side of the hull, the Enterprise's work my sensors concluded from the weapon signature, but part of the reason why I was here involved testing how I'd board ships without using the transporter, so I didn't use the pre-made hole to enter the vessel, no matter how convenient that was.

"So why did we need to rush out here so quickly?" Neela asked. "That attack caused some damage to the station, you know, and Chief O'Brien could have definitely used my help."

"This is more important and I need you more. He has plenty of help."

"Aww, way to make a girl feel appreciated, Gothic," Neela responding as if joking, but I could tell that she was happy to spend some time alone with me, and even happier knowing that I needed her help specifically. With the day-to-day demands on our time, it had been quite a while since we'd last spent any time alone together, apart from the others. That's one thing they don't tell you about in the stories. Harem management is a 24/7 job and you can ignore it at your peril.

I'd grabbed her and brought her out here because she was an engineer, one that I trusted, and therefore qualified to aid me if anything went wrong during this field test and salvage operation. Having someone at the controls of the Temptress, especially while I was out in space testing a new variant of my armor, seemed like a prudent decision. An alternative to a live person at the controls in the future might be a VI, if that project continued successfully, or a hologram with something like the Voyager EMH's level of sophistication. I could simply give them orders and instructions to move the ship on this or that course, or transport me, or fire weapons on this target, etc., but that required that I be conscious. If I was incapacitated in any way, or otherwise rendered unconscious due to injury or technical malfunction, I'd need someone who could correctly evaluate the situation and act independently to save me.

I made a mental note to insert some core laws into all my VI's programming to prioritize preserving my life above all other considerations.

"I read a classified after-action report on this battle earlier, written by Picard," I responded to one of my Bajoran babes as I plunged my sword into the side of the Collector starship's hull and began to cut a hole through it with my active antiproton blade. Even with all its armor it provided little resistance to my badass blade. One of the smaller button power cells I'd recovered from the Collector ship we'd boarded, was in the handle of my sword, providing the power to generate the antiproton edge. "These ships have the means to open what are called subspace vortices, which is kind of like hyper-warp, to put it in terms you'd understand."

I'd never heard that term before, but I think it conveyed essentially what I was talking about without getting into the poorly understood science of it all.

"What matters is that these vortices allow a ship to travel about six light years in two minutes whereas the max speed of a warp drive is roughly 0.73 light years per hour. So, to do the math, about 180 lightyears per hour, at least on paper, though I have sincere doubts that that is accurate. Sustaining that for any length of time is difficult supposedly and the power demands increase exponentially as the object or ship size going through the vortex increases," I explained to Neela as I entered the Collector ship through the hole I'd just cut in the hull. "This is a fast, but an extremely power intensive method of propulsion, so if I can grab both the power core off this ship and maybe reverse engineer the propulsion technology, I could use it on the Temptress' rebuild. If I seize this opportunity and do it right, we could end up with a ship faster than anything in Starfleet."

The Temptress was small enough to use a stable vortex and powerful enough with the Collector power core I was currently stealing, to sustain a vortex. In simple terms, I'd have a hyperdrive while everyone else was at warp. While that was certainly appealing to me, I would really have preferred to expand the size of the Temptress a great deal more to allow space for more weaponry and other amenities, so, in one sense, this FTL technology was limiting.

At the moment, the Temptress could manage 1.402 light years in a 24-hour day, which was why it took weeks to get anywhere. In the show this hardly mattered as they had plot speed, but being stuck on a ship for weeks at a time before you reached your destination was ridiculously boring. With a vortex generator, or a faster version of FTL than standard warp drive, I could make week long trips in less than an hour. I could even visit Risa whenever I wanted!

This really was a great opportunity for me, but one with a distinct time limit. For so long I had had such grand plans, but hadn't had the ability to make them a reality because of a lack of power. When I was feeling really desperate, I looked into the possibility of creating my own red matter in order to make the two Collector-style power cells I needed to move forward with my bigger plans, one for the Island and one for the redesigned Flighty Temptress. Now, I was spoiled for choice! Eighteen Collector wrecks, fourteen smaller ships and four large ships, were right in front of me just waiting to be salvaged, though only a handful were in decent shape or still had active power cores.

Unfortunately, as much as I wanted the surviving power cores from the large Collector ships, and though my personal mantra was 'there is no kill quite like overkill,' The Flighty Temptress was just not strong enough to grab those yet. After the redesign, it would be, but not yet. I'd have to get creative to successfully grab at least the two power cores from two of the smaller ships today. Thankfully, my scans showed the power cores from even the smaller ships were many times more than I needed for my current plans to succeed. My best guess was that the Collectors greatly overpowered these ships, relative to their size, in order to ensure the vortex drive actually worked, probably by using a much larger power core than a ship this small would normally get. That was definitely to my benefit and quite a stroke of luck.

"Gothic… how exactly do you plan on getting the power cores off these ships? They're pretty big!" Neela asked, her engineering mindset trying to attack the problem. "We can't exactly beam them out. And even if we can get them out, they're never going to fit in this ship!"

I'd already considered this.

"Don't worry, my dear, I have a plan," I assured my Bajoran babe. "I specifically chose the ship I'm on right now because it's one of the most intact wrecks out here. As soon as I'm sure this ship is devoid of any surviving Collectors, we're going to tractor it back to Deep Space Nine, though I'm also going to grab another power core from one of the more gutted wrecks, remove it entirely from its old hull, and attach it to this ship's hull for easy towing. Thankfully, the Collectors, just like with their weapons, made the power core modular, so it can be easily removed from another wreck out here. We really don't have time to disassemble everything I want from this ship, so I'm just going to take the whole thing. Who knows when the Federation or the Klingons or the Collectors might return."

My plan was met with total silence.

"By the Prophets, are you serious, Gothic? Don't you think you're being a bit too greedy?" Neela asked, sounding concerned and a little appalled, if I had to put a word to it. "Is the tractor beam even strong enough to tow a ship this size?! And let's assume it works, what is going to happen when we arrive at Bajor with a freaking Collector warship in tow?! Do you think that's going to have no consequences? The Federation and the Klingons are not going to like that we stole from their battlefield and they're definitely not going to like you or Bajor having such advanced technology."

Well, she wasn't wrong on any of those counts. While the Federation didn't think in terms of the 'spoils of war' belonging to them, the Klingons almost certainly did. They'd say that they paid for it with blood and lives and therefore it was theirs. No, the Federation would care more about the fact that I was appropriating advanced alien technology that I (and by extension Bajor) shouldn't have. Their prejudice against Augments would certainly factor in, though they would never admit that out loud.

"Trust me, Neela. I've already run the calculations on my omni-tool. The Temptress' tractor beam is military grade; every simulation I've run says it can handle the strain as long as we don't go over warp 5. The cloaking device is also military grade and actually meant for a much larger ship. With a few modifications and maybe adding some additional power to the emitters, I can extend the cloak over both ships. Then we just need to get it safely into one of the hanger bays on my island."

"I'll believe it when I see it, Gothic."

"Oh, ye of little faith! You wound me, my dear!" I joked, though part of me was slightly worried now that maybe I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Ah well, fortune favors the bold.

With Neela pacified for the moment, I moved deeper into the ship that I had cut a small hole in with a sword of all things. It was about half the length of the Enterprise's saucer section, though more of an oval in shape, so therefore not as wide. The design felt oddly familiar to me. My omni-tool's sensors quickly located the ship's power core and a floating map with a labeled waypoint, including direction and distance to target, was sent to my HUD for me to visually follow. Following the bright yellow line leading to the waypoint superimposed on my vision was easy, and I was directed deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship.

On my way there, I stepped over dozens of cold Collector corpses with the same level of concern most people would give to stepping over a piece of trash on the pavement. These were the enemies of the alpha quadrant and I wouldn't shed a tear at the death of their entire fucking race. In fact, I was more bummed out about the fact that I now had confirmation that the Collector corpses I had would definitely be worthless to Section 31. Sighing now, I placed a few gold stars on the foreheads of various Collector types for transport, at least the ones that were mostly intact. I needed to collect more data on the biology of the different types, and information was power.

Approaching the location of the strongest remaining power signature on the ship, to my great luck, my sensors and eyes confirmed that the ship's power core was intact and probably in some kind of emergency standby mode. Even in standby mode, where it was producing the minimum amount of power necessary to keep the artificial singularity's gravity contained, it was still producing a truly ridiculous amount of power if my sensors were accurate.

This ship perfectly met my needs. The ship's main power core was still intact and generating power and the ship itself was in relatively decent condition, even in its wrecked state, which meant the various systems were mostly intact. If it was anything like a modern starship, it probably had a distributed secondary or auxiliary power system that would supply me with more of their lovely power cores. There were also a lot of useful raw materials here that I could repurpose for other uses.

"The main power core is intact and active, Neela," I reported over the comm, my readings being automatically relayed back to the Temptress. "Ready the tractor beam to pull it away from the other wrecks for now. I don't want to risk any more damage due to a collision."

"Understood, as soon as you're away, I'll engage tractor beam and move it 10 kilometers away from the nearest wreck," Neela responded. "That should be far enough."

That was one ship down, now I needed to select another smaller ship, one that I only needed the power core from. There were several gutted wrecks out there just floating idly that still had active power signatures. The huge holes in their hulls would make removing the power cores that much easier. I'd love to spend time gutting these things and taking what I wanted, but time was of the essence. There was no telling when someone might return to this battlefield and find me here taking what I wanted.

"Gothic, are you still set on ripping out the power core from one of the smaller ships?" Neela asked.

"Yes?" I drawled uncertainly, unsure where this question was coming from.

"I'm sending you the coordinates and sensor scans from one of the four larger shipwrecks to your omni-tool," Neela reported. My omni-tool lit up showing new data had just been transferred from the Temptress.

"What am I looking at here?" I asked, reviewing the sent information.

"The ship I'm tagging has a power signature profile that matches the one that you just confirmed is still active," Neela elaborated. "You said that the power cores are modular; I'm assuming you're just going to rip one out and bond it to the wreck we're towing."

"That's the plan."

"The power core from one of the larger shipwrecks is physically bigger than the ones found on the smaller ship, but they're not so large that your plan still isn't feasible."

"Huh," I said, as my omni-tool showed the sensor data. I had been so focused on what I was doing I'd missed that. "Good work, Neela. The power core from one of the larger ships would be ideal to power my island. Heading there now."

And that's why it was a good idea to have help. Being the smartest guy in the room didn't mean I couldn't make mistakes, or couldn't miss opportunities. With that thought, I released the hold my magnetic boots had on the deck plate and pushed off, flying through the hole and out into the dark of space, my thrusters engaging moments later.

XXXXX

Three hours later I was sitting in the cockpit of The Flighty Temptress traveling under cloak at Warp 5 with a Collector warship and a second power core successfully in tow. The loose power core had been bonded/welded to the shipwreck we were towing like an ugly lump or a parasite. It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done and made the towing a much simpler process overall.

The words 'I told you so' were on my lips, but I made do with just sending smug looks to my left which Neela was steadfastly ignoring, her engineer's pride slightly bruised perhaps. I was taking it easy on her considering she had alerted me to an opportunity that I hadn't recognized and she arguably had the same 'I told you so' rights.

I couldn't help feeling giddy at what I'd accomplished today. Not only did I have a ton of Collector tech and dozens of small Collector power cells from the hand weapons that I'd found on both ships I'd boarded, I had two Collector ship main power cores, with large artificial singularities at their hearts, producing ridiculous amounts of power. This opened up so many options for me; so many impractical or impossible projects I'd cooked up were suddenly possible with all that power at my command. Power generation really was the true measure of an advanced civilization.

The larger of the two power cores would feed the power needs for my entire island, including its always thirsty industrial replicator. The other would become the beating heart of The Flighty Temptress and the only reason my new ship design was even feasible given all the bells and whistles I'd stuffed into its hull. Traditional ship designers always had to keep in mind the power draw of their systems; I neatly sidestepped that issue with a Collector power core.

The cherry on the proverbial sundae were the boarding torpedoes onboard the intact ship I had in tow, torpedoes that I was eager to take apart and study to figure out how they pierced active shields. Torpedoes that could bypass shields sounded mighty handy to have around for the conflicts to come, though boarding was the last thing on my mind. A quantum torpedo that bypassed shields would make destroying Collector or Dominion ships so much easier.

Of course, the Federation and the Klingons would soon have examples to reverse engineer, so they'd likely figure out a way to alter their shields to prevent this technology from working in the future. This counter would inevitably fall into the hands of the Dominion in time, considering they were true masters at intelligence gathering and espionage.

Now I just needed to sneak by the station and the ships there and get my salvage/pirate booty onto the island and into one of my hanger bays with anyone realizing it. My girls had questioned 'why on Bajor' I wanted to build two huge hanger bays under my palace, bays that were many times bigger than what was actually needed for a ship the size of the old Flighty Temptress.

Maybe I should start practicing my smuggest 'I told you so face' right now?

XXXXX

Holographic Design and Fabrication Lab. Gothic's Palace Fortress. Bajor.

I'd done it! The Collector warship and the second power core I'd stolen were safely in my hanger bay and as far as I could tell no one had detected us.

When we'd entered the Bajoran system we'd slowed to a quarter impulse, charted a course to keep us as far away from the station and any other ship traffic as possible, and practically crawled the rest of the way to Bajor over the course of many, many hours. With the cloak extended so much further than normal to cover both ships, there were concerns we might be detected at a higher speed. Luckily, there had been no indications we'd been detected in the form of ships suddenly changing course or changing the intensity of their sensor sweeps.

With my command codes, I'd hooked into the sensor output from the station and ensured that they'd detected nothing out of the ordinary either. It probably wasn't necessary, but why take the chance?

Thankfully, the Enterprise hadn't been in system at the time, otherwise I had a feeling that they, of all people, might have realized something was up. Data was far too good at his job and I was obviously straining the cloaking device beyond what it had been designed for. Due to the recent battle, ship traffic in the system was virtually non-existent, which definitely played a part in my plan succeeding. It was difficult to avoid a collision with a couple of cloaked ships after all, even in the vastness of space.

I leaned back in my comfortable chair and couldn't help the smile that bloomed on my face. What should I do now? Well, the better question was, what should I do first? I couldn't even ask for Neela's opinion on the subject since she was already busy making the same improvements to that loose ship power core that I'd made to the Collector power cells found in their hand weapons. The first improved ship power core would replace the Federation-designed fusion reactor which powered everything on my island. There was nothing wrong with it, per se, but its max output was not where I needed/wanted it to be, it required valuable consumables to keep running, and a great deal of ongoing maintenance to keep it in good operation. The Collector power cores, on the other hand, had a much greater standard output, produced power practically at no cost as it required no consumables, and had been designed with minimal maintenance requirements in mind.

It was amazing how fundamentally similar the main power core of a ship was to the power core of a Collector hand weapon, despite having vastly different outputs and capabilities. One could power a single handheld weapon, the other, could power an advanced starship and propel it at FTL speeds. This power generation technology was scalable in a way that was hard to believe. Need more power? Just increase the size of the singularity at its heart! The same containment technology designed to leash and harness the singularity's output worked just as well on the handheld weapon power core as it did on the power core meant for a ship! The race that had created it, that the Collectors had stolen it from, must have been incredibly advanced. It was a truly elegant design.

Once Neela was done, she was planning on immediately swapping out the Federation fusion reactor that powered that powered the Island with the new power core. As I was a strong believer in redundancy, we'd likely reintegrate the Federation fusion reactor into the Island's power grid as a secondary/auxiliary/emergency power source.

During our trip back to the station Neela and I had had a lot of time to study the ship power cores. I had initially assumed that while the Collectors may have cut corners on the power cores intended for their handheld weapons, that they'd design and build their ship power cores with a bit more attention to detail and would have otherwise used better materials.

Nope. That was an incorrect assumption. Again, I just didn't understand the alien thinking the Collectors engaged in. They had cut corners on materials and the overall quality of the construction in fundamentally the same ways. Did they view even their ships as just as expendable as their quickly bred soldiers? The resource costs and combat value of a starship, in the economics of warfare, had always been maybe tens of thousands of times more expensive and valuable than a soldier's life, or his individual rifle, yet the same lack of care was present in the ship power core build quality. It just didn't make any sense to me.

With better materials, stricter build tolerances, and the more efficient design I'd found in that database the Collectors had stolen from that advanced race, simulations indicated that that already overpowered ship power core would see a 50% increase in standard output. Put another way, I could power a dozen galaxy-class ships with this power core alone. Now that was power. Once I had my designs for the new Flighty Temptress ready, my industrial replicator was going to be running 26 hours a day to produce materials. The whole idea strongly reminded me of that one episode in Voyager where the Delta Flyer was designed and built.

Actually, thinking of that power core design I'd found in that stolen database made me wonder yet again. At the time, I had been ultra-focused first on searching for hints of red matter and then how to create an artificial singularity, but that database had a very advanced race's complete database. What other advanced technologies might it possess? And could any of the information there be used in the Temptress' new design?

XXXXX

"Scarlett, please load that database the Collector's stole from the Black archive, the one that I found the power cell design in. Display the file directory holographically with brief summaries of the contents," I ordered aloud.

I had considered letting the Island's computer avatar, Emma, in on this project, but I still hadn't had time to review all her logs. When dealing with the possibility of accidentally creating and unleashing a full-fledged AI, it was best to take your time and be as cautious as possible.

"Please stand by," Scarlett's sexy voice informed me, after I had successfully passed all the security checks on this data. Moments later the directory was displayed holographically in front of me. "Loading complete."

With a few hand gestures in mid-air, I started looking through the files, hoping to find a technical database for any of this race's more advanced ships, which should contain a large collection of technologies all in one place and thus easier to find in this large haystack.

Opening up one file, I saw an untranslated word/name I immediately recognized, one that made my mouth dry and my eyes open wide. The word, I soon realized, was the name of the race that this database had once belonged to, before they'd had the misfortune of encountering the Collectors.

It read, 'Husnock.'

That was a raced mentioned in only one episode of TNG, one of my favorite episodes actually, featuring a destroyed human colony and only two apparent survivors. Picard eventually learned the truth, that a violent race, known as the Husnock, had come and destroyed the colony and in the process had unknowingly killed the much-loved human wife of a Douwd, an immortal energy being with vast cosmic-level powers.

Big fucking mistake. Anger God-like beings at your peril.

Holding her broken body, and in a moment of self-proclaimed insanity, that ultra-powerful uber being had not only wiped out the invaders, but the entire Husnock race, everywhere, throughout the universe. Fifty billion of that race died instantly, with just a thought. As this was one of my favorite episodes, I remembered the exact words this being had used to described the Husnock, saying that they were "beings of hideous intelligence, knowing only aggression and destruction." For a God-like being to describe a race that way, you'd better believe that they were intelligent and advanced.

When the Douwd had been trying to drive the Enterprise away to avoid learning the terrible truth of his crimes, he had recreated a Husnock warship, the same that had destroyed the colony. The thing was many times bigger than the Enterprise and had defeated it with ease.

This database came from the Husnock, but from a dimension probably further along in the timeline than this one, one where a God-like being hadn't wiped them out because they'd unknowingly wronged him. While I certainly wouldn't want to meet them in person, this was a complete database from an ultra-war-like race and war had a way of spurring crazy innovation, and that was ignoring what kind of technological advancements the Husnock had stolen from the various races that they'd conquered. Since my plan was to turn The Flighty Temptress into a warship capable of surviving against the Collectors and the Dominion, having a database from such a race was akin to winning the lottery jackpot.

With a much better context with which to read and understand this database, I instructed Scarlett to search through the database for this race's most advanced warship and to find any and all corresponding technologies involved in its design, construction, and maintenance. An hour later, she found it.

"Scarlett, display an image of this warship, side profile, put the Enterprise D side-by-side for scale. Include by its side a list of all included systems and a brief description of their functionality and capabilities."

With that command a truly monstrous ship appeared next to the Enterprise D, at least 10x larger than that of the galaxy class ship. In fact, it was the same ship that had attacked the Enterprise in the show. I turned to the list of systems present in this warship and read the brief descriptions in shock. Yep, there was the power core design I'd taken inspiration from, just scaled up massively for this huge ship, but that wasn't the only advanced system that had me quivering in excitement.

If I hadn't watched all five series of Star Trek, where the various Enterprises (past, present, and future) and Voyager had encountered more advanced races and technology, none of this would likely have made any sense, but I had seen those series, and they provided me with much needed context. On the list of systems was an ingenious design for shields set up to emit in a reinforced lattice structure, almost like a crystal, whereas modern shields were essentially just a rather simple bubble of energy. These shields were shaped with intent, like the overlapping armored scales of a serpent, but made with energy.

This ship also had a thick layer of ablative armor should the shields be penetrated, but nothing like any alpha quadrant race possessed. Somehow it could refract and dissipate directed energy. A torpedo would still do damage, but phasers or disrupters or any directed energy weapon type would be much less effective. As sensors were essentially directed energy of a type, even with shields down, the armor had the side benefit of making internal scans impossible.

The computer architecture was also more advanced, but actually not as much as you'd think. Yes, it was more advanced than the Federation, but not as much as those systems more directly related to waging war. It even used bio-neural circuitry, which Voyager also had, but this seemed like a much more mature version of that same technology. It'd still be useful to upgrade my systems, though, on the island and on my ship.

This ship had much more advanced transporters and sensors too. The transporters were somewhat similar to the principles I'd already learned about, each race adding their own slight twist onto this frequently invented technology, but these transporters were far more sophisticated in that they could beam through much more interference and at far longer ranges. If memory served, the Dominion had transporters that could work over 3 light years with a transponder. This transporter system could reach 5 light years and cut through weaker shields altogether. With this transporter system I could beam from DS9 to my home on Bajor, instantly. No longer would I need to travel for five hours at impulse to get from the station to Bajor. It also allowed much larger things to be transported. This certainly wouldn't let me transport a ship the size of Voyager like the Voth race did in that one episode of Voyager, but a runabout sized vessel was doable with enough power.

Their sensors were also much more sensitive and had a very long range. If I was reading this description right, the long-range sensors could reach over 100 light years, though the Husnock favored a network of cloaked sensor buoys which could communicate through some kind of quantum-entanglement based communication network. If I understood this correctly, with this communication system you could be three galaxies over and it would still work instantly. Distance didn't matter. Now, that was crazy.

Like another race of conquerors, the Klingons, the Husnock used cloaking technology too, though theirs operated on a slightly different principle. Like the Voth race as seen in Voyager, their cloaking tech pushed their ships slightly out of phase. It wouldn't allow the ship to pass through matter like the phase cloak I'd stolen from the Pegasus, but it would make the ship very, very hard to detect. The Klingon cloaking device on my ship wasn't compatible with this tech, but I'm sure I could find another use for it elsewhere, maybe on the Island somewhere. No, I'd rather recreate this technology.

Though I'd long ago stolen the phase cloak technology from the Pegasus and had come to better understand that technology, it had been fundamentally incompatible with the current design of The Flighty Temptress. I had been waiting on my ship's redesign to make use of it. An issue that I hadn't overcome, however, was hiding the fact that I had it at all. The chances of a Federation ship seeing me come out of phase cloak in the future was high and the risk that those sensor readings would trigger an alert back to Starfleet (or Section 31) indicating that I possessed a phase cloak which matched the technology that they themselves had developed, was equally high.

There was no telling how Starfleet or Section 31 would react, or if they'd come to the unlikely conclusion that I had stolen that technology from them. The Pegasus had been destroyed years ago, by all accounts, but Section 31 was a paranoid organization. No, ideally, I'd keep the Pegasus phase cloak in reserve, using it only for true emergencies, and primarily use the Husnock style phase cloak the database had designs for. With some tweaking, maybe I could make it appear to sensors exactly like the Klingon cloak I already had which they already knew I possessed.

The Husnock ship's weapons were many, which was expected for such a war-like race. Unlike the Federation and the other races of the Alpha quadrant who only used two primary weapon systems, like phasers and torpedoes, the Husnock obviously believed in having a bit more variety. You never knew when your latest target for conquest could be using some strange defensive technology which rendered your weapons useless.

Their primary weapon was a directed energy weapon, which used the underlying principles that the warship in that TNG episode had used. That Husnock ship had fired jacketed streams of positrons and antiprotons as an energy weapon. That made no sense to me, since everyone knew that antiprotons were much less effective on energy shields than armor, but somehow it worked. That episode proved it when they took down the Enterprise's shields with a single shot, though part of that might have been the Douwd's work.

I suspected the mix of positrons and antiprotons somehow had an effect on shields, perhaps by attacking more of the shield bubble at once, rather than only one specific point, which would result in the shields being drained much quicker. Imagine a very thick pane of slowly self-repairing glass as a shield. Striking a single big hammer against that glass was like a single phaser strike. The self-repair functionality only had to work on that one spot. To quickly overcome a ship's shields, it'd take many hits, in the same place, in quick succession, to break through, and if that pane of glass was moving erratically, like a ship in combat, it was going to be near impossible to strike that same spot again and do it close enough in time to the first strike to make the damage truly cumulative.

If my understanding of this technical data was correct, my guess was that this weapon worked on a different principle of propagation, like you were striking the same glass pane in this metaphor with that same big hammer, but the impact spread, as much as it could, simulating hundreds of hammer strikes along the entire pane of glass, weakening entire sections as a whole, until the energy was expended. It would be like throwing a rock in a still pond and the ripples spread. Even unshielded ships would be devastated by this weapon since the antiprotons were present inside the positron shell. It was an intriguing idea and one I couldn't wait to test, at least once I understood the technology better. Simulations would then bear out how effective it would be. In this case, one combined, coherent energy beam seemed to grant both shield penetration and matter annihilation.

The other weapons were a bit more understandable and actually reminiscent of other weapons I'd seen before in the various shows.

The first were this ship's torpedoes. These weapons seemed to be quite similar to what I knew of Federation quantum torpedoes. They flew faster, further, and had a bit more of an explosive yield, but they were very similar. If I could add this Collector anti-shield tech, they'd be even more deadly.

The next weapon was most likely meant exclusively for point defense against incoming torpedoes or as an anti-fighter weapon. It actually reminded me of a Star Wars turbolaser, though in this case it was a powerful phaser weapon capable of reaching a decent distance around the ship. On the Husnock warship there were dozens of these turrets with auto targeting capabilities and a fire rate of 1500 phaser pulses per minute. With that many discreet shots, an incoming torpedo or fighter would be hard pressed to reach the ship intact or without damage.

The final weapon was again similar to another weapon system that I was familiar with. In an episode of Voyager, the crew encountered a Cardassian self-guided missile in the Delta quadrant that Torres was familiar with and had had a large hand in reprogramming after it had failed to destroy a Maquis base. That missile had a defensive weapon which could release an omnidirectional burst of plasma, which created an energetic expanding wave in all directions that could vaporize small ships and fighters and torpedoes in its blast range. This Husnock warship had something similar, but far more powerful and with a much greater range due to the greater amount of power available. They'd obviously encountered some race that used many small fighters, like that race that appeared in Voyager and had nearly destroyed the ship, or one that relied heavily on torpedo swarms or large minefields. The larger your ship was the more difficult it was to fight against small fighters which were usually both faster and more maneuverable. The Husnock ship that had encountered the Enterprise made even that galaxy-class ship look tiny in comparison.

I wanted all of these systems and more on the new Flighty Temptress. The final two systems on this ship were the real treasures, though, the first being particle synthesis-based replication/holography and the second was a new FTL propulsion system, a quantum slipstream drive. Again, if I hadn't watched the Voyager series, I would have no context to understand what these things actually were or how they worked per Federation scientific knowledge.

In a later episode of Voyager, Janeway and her crew had encountered an alien who tried to deceive them by sending them a supposedly Federation designed ship which used a quantum slipstream drive. This new propulsion method, supposedly designed by the Federation, would allow them to return home in months, instead of decades. That alien, Arturis, was of an exceedingly advanced race with an instinctive ability to understand languages and this race had been resisting the Borg for centuries. Desiring revenge against Voyager for assisting the Borg to win their war with Species 8472, and thus allowing the Borg to refocus on the eventual destruction of his people, he had come up with an elaborate deception that would force the Voyager crew to abandon their ship. Once they did, he planned to deliver the entire crew to the Borg for assimilation. In order to sell his deception, he had used particle synthesis technology to make his ship appear like a Federation designed ship called the USS Dauntless.

The coincidences kept piling up here because the Dauntless was one of the coolest looking ships to ever appear in any of the shows, in my opinion, looking organic and sleek and like it was moving at warp even when standing completely still. Arturis had done an amazing job designing that ship and he had obviously inspired Federation ship design centuries in the future because a ship using that same design had even appeared in the 26th century, at the Battle of Procyon V, where the Federation defeated the Sphere-Builders, which Captain Archer got to witness in the show Star Trek: Enterprise.

The Dauntless' quantum slipstream drive allowed it to travel 300 light years per hour and the Husnock ship was comparable, as best as I could tell after a cursory look. The Husnock, like Arturis' race, had long ago figured out how to deal with the complexities of that kind of travel, including determining the phase variance of the subspace tunnel which allowed that kind of speed. An inability to determine and adjust to the phase variance quick enough had led to the destruction of Voyager in an alternate timeline/dimension. With a quantum slipstream drive of this design, I didn't have to worry about keeping the size of the ship down anymore, like I would be forced to using the Xindi FTL propulsion design.

Particle synthesis was another answer to a problem that I didn't even know I had. The way it had been explained in the shows and various novels was that it worked by exploiting, and altering, virtual particles on a quantum level. As the basis for a replicator, that meant a much wider range of materials could be replicated, materials which would be impossible for traditional replication to create. In combination with holography, particle synthesis meant the creation of 'real' elements that could be disposed of quickly, in conjunction with the illusions of traditional holography. This made the illusion much, much harder to detect since 'real' elements were mixed with the illusions. Particle synthesis blurred the lines between replication and holography, showing how they were actually two sides of the same coin.

The best part was that modern replication technology wasn't so terribly different from particle synthesis technology. The underlying software was included in this database and could be easily adapted. With a software upgrade and several new bits of hardware, my industrial replicator could be modified to use these new principles and therefore expand the list of materials it could successfully create.

For a while now I'd struggled with how I was going to redesign and actually build the new Flighty Temptress. I already had an industrial replicator to produce a lot of the materials I'd need, though I lacked the necessary power to supply it. I even had all the money I needed to buy those materials that I couldn't replicate before and had four freighters worth of materials that could also be used in the ship's construction, if needed. Buying the materials, though, in the quantities I needed, would set off alerts and have eyes turned on me and my activities.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the capacity or manpower to build the ship on my own, as much as I wanted to, even if I had the time to do so. If I wanted my new ship, and in a timely manner, I'd have to hire a professional shipyard to build it, preferably somewhere outside the Federation. Hiring a third party to build a large advanced warship with a lot of advanced technology the alpha quadrant didn't already have would be a disaster waiting to happen, on multiple levels, assuming it was even possible with the threat of the Collectors on everyone's mind. No, I had no desire to give away any of my secrets or technological advantages. Having someone else build my ship meant those plans could be gotten, systems sabotaged, or countermeasures developed, etc.

Now, though, I had two powerful Collector power cores in my possession, and, in time, the ability to use particle synthesis-based replication. An idle idea that I'd had back in my old life watching the shows might be the answer to my ship problem. Again, I can't emphasize enough just how valuable it was that I'd seen all of the Star Trek series as a fan. As a fan, having seen all of the series and thinking deeply on what it could mean, I had a rich tapestry to study and be inspired by, from many different time periods. Taken as a whole, I could make connections others couldn't, allowing me to combine and synthesize ideas from that rich tapestry to help me solve my problems, to grant me more insight and context when I needed it. It went so far beyond just having knowledge of future events.

Sometimes the knowledge of past events in the Star Trek universe could be just as valuable as my knowledge of the future to come, like an episode of Enterprise in which Captain Jonathon Archer and crew, confronted with the need for extensive repairs they couldn't complete in a reasonable time away from Earth, encountered an automated repair station. That station was a marvel of design and engineering and had completed the extensive repairs on the Enterprise in 34 hours when it would have taken 3 or more months back on Earth in space dock. Of course, it had also stolen a crew member to add to its processing power, but it was still an impressive feat.

The two repair births of this automated station could each be collapsed into a small cylinder, but could also expand to encompass and surround a starship the size of the Enterprise. Using multiple 'arms' equipped with advanced built-in replication and holographic technology, the ship was repaired quickly and to even better engineering standards than Starfleet itself could after the station had used the ship's own design specs to direct the work. Luckily for me, the Enterprise had taken many deep scans of the repair station, including while it worked, both by the ship and internally as the episode progressed.

"Scarlett, interface with Earth and Starfleet's historical archives. Retrieve any and all information, including ship and crew logs, and sensor scans of the original Enterprise, registry NX-01, captained by Jonathon Archer. Use my clearance level as an allied general if any files are classified, especially any records pertaining to the automated repair station that was used to repair the Enterprise's saucer section. Also purchase the holonovel based on that Enterprise's mission and charge to my personal account using Federation credits. If there are any references to the automated repair station in other databases I have access to, please download that data as well," I ordered aloud. As I recalled, a Tellarite vessel had been the ones who told the original Enterprise about the station. They might have useful sensor logs too.

I had no doubt that my official security clearance was woefully inadequate to get me anything the Enterprise had reported regarding the temporal cold war and time travel, Xindi/Sphere builder technology, and/or anything regarding temporal agents like Daniels, who was from the 31st century.

"Understood. Information downloaded. Holonovel purchased," Scarlett offered in response. Subspace communications interlinks were incredibly fast for data transfers.

"Display the holoimage of the repair station from the holonovel alongside design schematics derived from all sensor readings taken during the mission and from any other source available."

"Extrapolation complete. Image is displayed," she answered after a few minutes. The holoimage of the station was now rotating in mid-air above my console and was exactly as I remembered it from the show.

Wow, whoever created that holonovel must have used the actual sensor readings from the Enterprise because it was exactly like I had once seen in the show. Looking over the copious amounts of data available, in the day and a half of repairs the Enterprise underwent, T'Pol had obviously taken many intensive scans of the repair station, so I had everything I needed, at least with regard to the hardware and its innovative design. Sure, this thing could repair a ship, but I could see it being used for so much more, like building a ship from scratch. Two hundred years ago the technology of this station was so far beyond Earth and the Enterprise (including Vulcan) that it wasn't even funny. Now, though, computer architecture had come a long way and replicators were a well-known technology that many races had improved upon.

My instincts were telling me that the automated repair station design was the key to building the new Flighty Temptress myself, without the aid of a shipyard outside of my control.

With the larger of my two power cores feeding the island's power grid and with my industrial replicator using particle synthesis-based replication technology, I could easily build one of these repair berths in my lower hanger. If I included an anti-gravity structure in the berth's ribs, it could float anything inside the field for easier construction, like a ship. If I equipped the arms with the new replicators, whole sections could be replicated once I input the new design of the Temptress. The best part was that the ship's construction could proceed autonomously! Once I input the full design I could set it to run and let it start the construction process. Any issues or problems that arose could hopefully be worked out over subspace with remote commands sent from DS9 to the Island, though if I installed a Husnock transporter system, I could simply beam back to handle the issue, without the need for an hours long commute via ship.

I still needed to finalize the ship design I'd been working on and off for months now, which was going to be an undertaking, otherwise the ship couldn't be built. The new capabilities the Husnock database offered needed to be integrated into that design as well and that would take time and effort because I sure as fuck didn't intend to install a technology into my new ship that I didn't fully understand the workings of. While this would be a lot of work in the future, it'd be a labor of love too.

My mind made up, I asked Neela to come to the lab. My list of priorities were clear.

First, modify the two power cores I'd stolen to the more efficient and better constructed hybrid Gothic/Husnock design, then install in the Island's power distribution network.

Second, modify the island's industrial replicator to allow for particle synthesis-based replication.

Third, build one of the automated repair station berths that the original Enterprise had encountered in the 22nd century, which I was going to rename to the 'auto repair and construction yard.'

Fourth, finalize the new design for The Flighty Temptress and begin construction.

Fifth, install a Husnock-style transporter on the island.

There was a lot of work to be done, so I was going to need all my girls with me to help. As soon as I spoke with Neela, I was going to comm Sisko and ask for Ro Laren, Nerys, Neela and even Dax to be assigned to me for a week or two to help me on the Island. Since Dax was a member of Starfleet and therefore not under my official command, I might need to offer Sisko a favor to get him to agree to assign her to me, but it would be worth it. With the war with the Collectors heating up, this wasn't just a vanity project, the additional firepower and capabilities this ship would give Bajor, through me, could mean the difference between life and death.

It was also incredibly exciting and cool to build my own ship, of my own design (kind of), and would make me even more of a badass, but I'd leave that out when talking to Sisko.

XXXXX

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Chapter 31: 19,939 words

Chapter 32: 20,953 words