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This is a Star Trek story, so the light cone idea seems so grounded in science that it doesn't seem plausible in universe.

The sensor resolution / time consuming data crunching necessary to find Voyager in a light cone could be a plausible excuse. It could simply be something the Kazon don't regularly do and don't have the equipment on hand. Extra costs and all that...

Anyways, wanted to chime in that this story is absolutely amazing. Keep up the great writing!

Elessar wrote:This is a Star Trek story, so the light cone idea seems so grounded in science that it doesn't seem plausible in universe.

The sensor resolution / time consuming data crunching necessary to find Voyager in a light cone could be a plausible excuse. It could simply be something the Kazon don't regularly do and don't have the equipment on hand. Extra costs and all that...

Anyways, wanted to chime in that this story is absolutely amazing. Keep up the great writing!

No, that doesn't work at all as an excuse. The Kazon don't have ship-mounted FTL sensors. What are they going to do if the First Maje doesn't lend them a Spyglass? Or they're from a poor clan that can't afford one? Or it gets blown up in battle? Right. Scouts and lightcone games. I just missed it because I wasn't thinking all the way through the scene. Fortunately, it really doesn't break the scene and I can fix it easily when I clean the story up for later.

I don't necessarily think it's a huge flaw. Light cone games utilizing FTL is a good thing to do, but there is a time limit for it to be practical. The image of the Voyager movement event is a shell of major and minor radius expanding outward at the speed of light and if you aren't in that shell, you can't observe the event. With FTL, you can hop around and try to get in that shell, but you are attemping to hit a moving target that may be mere lightminutes across, depending on how quickly Voyager bugged out. Depending on how skilled and lucky the Kazon are, they may keep missing the shell, because by definition they can't know where the shell is until they hit it (if they did, they have information on where the shell started and thus searching is irrelevant).

However, if they can resolve Voyager with sufficient resolution, they might well just hang out and just wait for the shell to hit them, saving on gas. They don't know what shape Voyager is in and if they are actively searching for her and Voyager gets tipped off, that jeapordizes her capture. Moreover, all the light cone games in the world are useless if the event that happened was Voyager going to warp. Waiting to see where Voyager went from a distance and if she hasn't moved from her final destination, hitting her all at once, might be the smart move.

Yeah, it's an easy fix: "Hold the scouts," said Razik. "If they're still there, we don't want to spook them, and if they've warped off, there's no point." I basically just have to acknowledge the tactic and give a plausible reason not to use it.

I suppose, but even if you didn't, it's not such a big flaw to overlook. They may NEED all those ships in one place to resolve Voyager from that distance anyway.

Voyager
Total elapsed time on surface: 15 minutes

The connection with the Kazon went dead.

"We're ready, captain," said Gombe.

"Go. Try to get away from the planet on impulse and then light the warp drive. When you get there, try to get them to pass the information to you before you send any antimatter over, but if things get hot, kill them."

"Understood, ma'am," said Gombe. "Earhart out."

The connection with Earheart broke. There was silence on the bridge.

"Mister Kim, exterior camera view, please."

The main viewscreen, which had been blank, flashed on. Voyager was sitting on a flat canyon bottom. Janeway could just make out the trench walls in the murky distance, hidden by heat shimmers and dust suspended in the impossibly thick, impossibly orange air.

"We're getting fantastic data, Captain," said Wildman. "The seismic readings alone...this isn't like any class N planet I've ever seen, ma'am."

Janeway wished she could be excited. Now the only thing she heard was "seismic". "Is there any danger to us from seismic activity?"

"Not from earthquakes," she said. "We're far enough from the trench walls we're in no danger from rockslides. It looks like all the loose material has fallen already. The sediment we're resting on is dry and compact; it won't liquefy."

"What about volcanic activity?"

"We're five thousand kilometers from the mid-ocean ridge. That's where most of the active volcanoes on this planet are. The subduction zone we're in doesn't seem to have any active volcanoes associated with it...which is damn weird. Pardon me, ma'am. Plate tectonics must have frozen already, which is unheard of on class N which tipped over from M so recently."

"If tectonics have frozen, why are we getting seismic readings at all?"

"The crust is frozen, but the mantle is very hot and active. If the star didn't show every sign of being a middle-aged G3V, I would assume this was a much younger planet. And...Captain, without better two more seismometers, I can't tell for sure, but there appears to be a very hot mantle plume directly beneath that tower a hundred klicks from here."

"Did they build the tower in a caldera volcano?"

Wildman shook her head. "The topographic data doesn't look like it. The tower is standing in a river delta, so maybe river sediment buried all of it, but we have good radar data all the way down to the bedrock, and there's no sign of previous eruptions. In fact, there's no evidence of mantle plume vulcanism anywhere near here."

"Could be a new plume," said Janeway.

"It would be an odd coincidence if it was," said Wildman.

"Not if the tower builders wanted to take advantage of geothermal power."

"There are one-hundred twenty towers spaced in a perfect grid around the planet's surface," said Wildman. "The way I see it, either this tower was unique in taking advantage of geothermal energy, this planet just happens to have one-hundred twenty good geothermal sites spaced in a perfect grid around the planet, or the tower-builders made one-hundred twenty good geothermal sites."

"When we build a big project on a planet's surface, we modify different parts to take advantage of different local conditions all the time," said Janeway.

"All the tower sites are outwardly identical," said Wildman.

Janeway's head hurt. "Just keep working on it," she snapped. "Are we in any danger of an eruption?"

Wildman shook her head. "I don't think so, ma'am."

"Good. Just keep gathering data. We can analyze it when we get home."

"Yes, ma'am," said Wildman. She sounded faintly hurt. Janeway's stomach churned. Too much coffee.

Janeway squeezed her eyes closed, trying to focus through the discomfort and exhaustion. Half an hour until Earhart reached the Kazons.

#

Earhart
Voyager elapsed time on the surface: 47 minutes

"Approaching Kazon battlefleet," said Baytart.

"Drop warp," said Gombe. "Load the transporter. Keep the shields up until I say to drop them. Phasers on standby."

Earhart dropped to sublight speed sixty thousand kilometers from the Kazon battlegroup. "Their shields are up," said Gombe. "They're on their guard." He instructed the computer to highlight the ewar ship on the main viewscreen. Then he took a deep breath and hailed Jal Razik.

#

Wrath

"We are being hailed by Earhart," said the comms operator.

"Show me the ship," said Razik.

Earhart appeared on the main viewscreen. It was about the same size as a scout, with external warp nacelles mounted on what looked like wings.

"Not very intimidating, is it?" said Razik. "Answer their hails."

"They say they're ready to download information about the Caretaker."

"Tell them we don't have the subspace bandwidth to send it quickly," said Razik. "We will have to use a comms laser. Make sure they maintain a constant velocity and heading."

"They have agreed," said the operator.

"It's only a few quads," said Jabin. "They'll see through this."

"Then send them whatever," said Razik. "Sports scores, payroll reports, pornography, humorous dataweb videos. Just keep feeding them garbage until we get a firing solution."

"Yes, Maje Razik," said Jabin.

#

Earhart

"Here it comes," said the engineer. "It looks like it's encrypted, but the computer is cracking it. Standby."

Gombe gripped the sides of his chair. "Ensign Baytart, be ready to warp. Don't even wait for my command. As soon as they start powering their guns, we go to maximum warp. Get us as close to that ewar ship as you can."

"Got it!" said the engineer. "Looks like there are actual reports about their encounters with the Caretaker here. Video too, standby, generating a codec."

"Show it to me," said Gombe.

An inset appeared in the main viewscreen. A naked Kazon was being fellated by another naked Kazon.

"What a bunch of assholes," said Gombe. The computer sounded an alarm; they had just been pinged by a tracking radar.

"Power up sequence!" said Baytart. "Going to warp!"

#

Voyager

Janeway was shaken awake in her chair by Ensign Kim.

"Earhart has engaged the Kazon," he said.

A feeble squirt of adrenaline hit Janeway's brain. It woke her up, but it wouldn't last long. "On screen," she said.

#

"We have a firing solution on Earhart," said Jabin.

"Fire at will!" said Razik.

Wrath shook with the power of a full alpha strike--massive overkill for a tiny scout. Every other ship in the fleet fired, too, creating a cone of death a hundred kilometers across, with Earhart right in the middle.

What happened next was so fast Jabin had no time to warn anyone.

The subspace sensors detected a massive warp spike from Earhart and saw the ship warping faster than light to a position less than a hundred meters from the Spyglass. But the radar, infrared, and visible light sensors which controlled the guns saw two Earharts. The confusion lasted less than a tenth of a second, but it was long enough to delay the guns' reaction--no matter how fast the computers were, turret tracking motors operated at finite speed. Jabin had just enough time to process it when Earhart fired on the Spyglass.

#

Earhart's phasers ripped at the ewar ship's shields. Up close, it looked like a collection of radar dishes glued to a cylinder a third of a kilometer long. The shields, which had been designed by the Kazon to block kinetic weapons and lasers, flickered under particle beam bombardment. Sparks flew from the sensor dishes and the ship's hull.

"Our phasers are getting partial burnthrough," said the chief engineer.

"Mr. Baytart, keep us moving, full impulse. Stay as close to the ewar ship as you can." Shit, the ewar ship is unarmed, thought Gombe. No transporter bombs here unless we can knock a hole in the shield.

Baytart took these contradictory commands and pulled a maneuver that made the inertial dampers wail in agony. Gombe was thrown around in his seat.

"Hull stresses exceeding safety margins!" shouted the engineer.

"Keep moving!" said Gombe. He keyed the phaser firing buttons and kept blasting the ewar ship. "Bring us across their bow. That's where the subspace array is."

#

"They're firing some kind of particle beam weapon at the Spyglass," said Jabin. "The shields are only partially containing it, and they're doing terrific damage to the sensor arrays."

"The sublight sensors don't matter," said Razik. "Just keep them off the subspace array. All nearby ships, fire your point defense into this area," he said, his fingers dancing across a touch screen as he spoke. "Don't worry about the Spyglass; PD rounds won't penetrate its shields."

#

Earhart whipped across the bow of the ewar ship, right into a cloud of bullets. The shuttle's shields flashed continuously, rapidly eroding away. The phasers flahsed uselessly against the ship's reinforced forward shields.

"Warp out!" said Gombe. The warp drive roared for less than a second, and they were ten thousand kilometers away from the fleet.

"Microtorpedoes ready," said Gombe. "Targeting the ewar ship."

"Warping back," said Baytart.

The warp engine lit up again. Earhart fired its entire magazine of grenade-sized antimatter missiles in one burst. Earhart came to rest near the ewar ship's stern just as they hit the bow shields at warp speed. Baytart hit the impulse throttle and Earhart skimmed over the ewar's ship dorsal side, raking it with phaser fire. They passed the bow, where the shields were still fizzing and glowing, enough to block transporters but not much else. Earhart gave the ship a solid shot in the face. This time, they penetrated, splitting one of the detector's hexagonal cells before the shields recovered. More point defense bullets chewed away at Earhart. They warped off again, this time to three full light seconds away.

"Earhart to Voyager," said Gombe.

"This is Janeway."

"Captain, the subspace array is protected by heavy shields. We managed to knock them down momentarily and damage one cell, but we can't penetrate them again with what we have left. What are your orders?"

"We're not going to get another opportunity like this", she said. "Warp back to transporter range, try to goad the battleships into firing their main guns. Kill as many as you can."

"Yes, ma'am," said Gombe. "Warp to within twenty-five thousand kilometers of Wrath. Be ready to drop shields"

#

"They're back," said Jabin. "They're making an attack run on us."

"They couldn't be more obvious if they painted 'bait' on their hull," snorted Razik. "Well, let's oblige them. Target them with main batteries and fire when ready."

#

"Main guns powering up," said the engineer.

"Lower shields. Ensign Golwatt, activate automatic transport sequence."

From behind the cockpit came the whine of a transporter.

#

Ensign Golwatt had specialized in transporter operations at the Academy. She had a knack for the temperamental machines, an instinct for their operations that bought Earhart and her crew approximately ten extra seconds of life.

When the transporter beam struck the Kazon shields, the beam "bounced" and the five kilogram antimatter bottle returned to the pattern buffer, waiting to rematerialize on the platform. The only problem was, the bottle's containment field was on a five second timer, after which it would collapse, and there wouldn't be enough time to cycle the transporter again.

She did the only thing she could do. While the bottle rematerialized, she flicked up the transporter bay's containment fields. By the time it was done sparkling, the transporter's cubbyhole--located next to the ship's main airlock--was sealed from the rest of the ship. Convincing the computer to open the airlock took three seconds. She snatched the bottle off the pad just as the doors blew open, and, pushing off the deck as the air rushed out, leaped out the airlock with a bottle of death clutched to her breast. She was three kilometers clear of the shuttle when the seals fell and antimatter touched matter, vaporizing her and searing everyone in the still-unshielded Earhart with enough raw gamma rays to kill a Tyrannosaurus.

#

Obayana Gombe knew he was dead even before he heard the radiation alarm. "Voyager, this is Earhart," he said. "We have taken severe damage. We will try to complete our mission." Pause. "Tell my parents I love them." He sent Voyager a copy of all the data the Kazons had sent him, then cut the comms.

The world was starting to spin. Big dose, he thought. At least 20 grays. He'd be unconscious in minutes. He focused long enough to put a course into the computer, made the sign of the cross and prayed the isolinear chips hadn't all been fried, hit the "engage" button, and then slumped over into a coma.

The Federation starship Earhart lit her warp engines one last time. She slammed into the weakened forward shields of the Spyglass at warp 3 with forty-five kilograms of antimatter still on board. Most of it was blown back into space, but more than enough hit to turn the forward hundred meters of the Spyglass, subspace sensor and all, into molten, twisted junk.

Damn nice fight sequence, Red. Damn nice.

Whoa.

And would explain the Delta Flyer, that poor Aeroshuttle.

*salute*

Well they're down two more officers who appear competent in a crisis, which is probably among the more irreplaceable resources Voyager has on hand.

Youch. Screwed.

Sounds like they just RickRoll'd the Earheart.

At least they accomplished the mission objective, which pulls Voyager out of the imminent crisis.

Indeed, though I feel bad for the guys in the shuttle. They actually got a bit of character development before they went, and they had one hell of a heroic death.

I mean, really, it was almost a suicide mission from the get-go. There was just no way a shuttle should have been able to seriously hurt a capital ship at all (even a Kazon capital ship). Those guys should all get medals.

On a lighter note, lol at the Kazon porn bit.

The previously unchronicled first entry in the proud Voyager tradition of the Burn Baby Burn.

You know why I really like this story? Humanized villains. I can't offhand think of a single depiction of villainous aliens in the entire history of the franchise (except maybe for DS9's Cardies, sometimes) that bothered with things like "pictures of his grandchildren" or "letters to the deceased's family." And they're primitive, fratricidal caste-society pirates on top of that.

Wait, the Kazon are villains? I thought they were just characters in a morally ambiguous story with no "good" or "bad" guys.

(What I get for not ever watching Voyager.)

Surlethe wrote:Wait, the Kazon are villains? I thought they were just characters in a morally ambiguous story with no "good" or "bad" guys.

(What I get for not ever watching Voyager.)

The Kazons are Voyager's example of the standard-issue sci-fi hack "mindless dark-skinned warrior culture" meme. Every Star Trek series needs its dark-skinned mindless warrior culture. These guys usually become villains because they're written to be mindlessly belligerent, and they allow the writers to show how comparatively enlightened their protagonists are.

Very nice update.

Good thing it's not a typical Star Trek show. Otherwise the Array would have blown up, and taken the Kazon fleet with it in an instance of irony, leaving only one pissed of Kazon commander to have a dept against Janeway.

At least now it's a squadron of ships that are pissed of.

Very good. Janeway made a wrong assumption, that the Kazon would not adapt. I hope she unbends her neck and goes to see the nearest tactical expert. It would be neat if he listened to what she had done and predicted what happened before she could finish.

Also, real physics in Star Trek... inconceivable!

Problem is, the nearest Tactical Expert is currently Chakotay, whom she had recently stunned, and arrested.

Guys, just so you know, my updating pace might slow down in the near future. I got a pretty good response from an agent regarding HI (my "serious" project), so I've got some revisions to make on that book. Since I'm close to the end of this (and frankly, enjoying the shit out of writing it), I'll work on both at the same time, but I probably won't be able to maintain the pace I've had for the last month or so.

Best of luck with HI, I really enjoyed the first draft.

Do you have a link to the rough draft? I'd like to see if it's something I'd buy

JonB wrote:Problem is, the nearest Tactical Expert is currently Chakotay, whom she had recently stunned, and arrested.

And who, conveniently, is aboard Voyager.

Kartr_Kana wrote:Do you have a link to the rough draft? I'd like to see if it's something I'd buy

Unfortunately due to the whole First Rights issues (see sticky), it had to be pulled. But trust me, it's something you'd want to buy. And buy for all your friends and relatives who have or possibly could have standards and plant in libraries where impressionable kids could get their paws on it. Just hope the cover art is good so it doesn't scare people off.


But back to Voyager. We're really close to the end? End as in "episode one of a two-parter" or "they will soon be crushed on Hell World; game over?"