Re: "A Time for Heroes" - Reimagined Fic Setting
Posted: 2013-07-16 07:08pm
Act 7
The Kelley orbited lazily over the Chesapeake, her cloak active to prevent telescopes from reading their presence. Below them, on the planet, smoke belched from the smoke stcks of new industrial plants. It was 1853 locally, Universe C1P2.
In a set of private quarters, Robert was fidgeting with what now passed for a uniform worn by he and his fellows. The black jacket and color-coded trim was different from his usual pproach of "wear what is comfortable". The torch insignia they'd adopted was displayed on the collar. "I really prefer just normal clothing," Robert lamented.
"You need to make a good first impresssion," Farmer pointed out.
"Still... this is a uniform?"
"A very sopisticated one, honestly," he continued. "I saw some of the conceptual holos for the universalization of Starfleet uniforms in a couple years, it inspired me. Didn't like the gray shoulders though, if you're taking the department color off the jacket then why bother with a second color?"
"I'll take your word for it." Robert straightened the jacket up. "I was surprised when you said you wanted to come along."
"As much as I enjoy focusing on building ships, the Aurora is now in the capable hands of Mister Scott to prepare for her shakedown. I'm not needed at the moment. Besides..." Farmer smirked. "I'm really looking forward to seeing their reactions."
At that Robert could only smile. "Well... I guess we'd better get this done. What I wouldn't give to have swapped duties with Julie..."
The Koenig rocked under Julia, a jolt that shifted everyone in their seats. Energy beams played over their shields repeatedly from the strangely-shaped asymmetrical vessel ahead. "Enemy ship coming around," Jarod warned from Ops.
"Ignore him. Zack, Angel, deal with the pirate after those transports."
She was answered immediately and under Zack's control the Koenig shifted to avoid a big hit from the pirate's main gun. As that enemy's sister ship tried to hit them from behind Zack lined up the Koenig and gave Angel a clear shot. Orange blasts of pulse phaser fire lashed out and struck the ship before it could maneuver out of the way. It twisted and brought stronger shields to bear, dispersing the effect of Angel's fire.
Which was exactly what they wanted the pirates to do.
The Koenig went past the enemy ship and fired aft torpedoes into the now-barely-shielded quarter of the pirate. "Hang on!" Zack manipulated the controls and the ship spun around, hard. Julia barely got a chance to protest before Zack shouted, "Now!"
Angel was ready; her cannons hit the enemy ship in the weak side, blasting through the weak screens and into the hull. Flame erupted from the wounds in the enemy ship. A pair of solar torpedoes crashed into those wounds, blasting through to the other side. The entire ship disappeared in a white fireball.
The ship that had been pursuing them now faced them, having to maneuver to avoid the exploding remnants of its fallen comrade. Angel poured fire into the ship, stripping away its shields so that her spread of solar torpedoes could penetrate. The bow of the pirate ship almost disintegrated under the attack. The pirate ship tried to turn too little too late, as a follow up burst of cannon fire ripped into the wounded ship and destroyed several more sections. "And they're giving up."
"We'll let the convoy handle the prisoners. Can you raise them, Jarod?"
"No need. I've got one of their Starfleet escorts on speaker."
Jarod pressed a key. A female voice spoke over the line. "Koenig, this is Major Kira Nerys on the Orinoco, sensors are clear. The Bajoran Militia thanks you for your assistance."
"Any time, Major. We're always ready to help Bajor." That had, indeed, been the unanimous decision of the Council following the final examintions of S5T3's political situation. Aided, of course, by the continuing negotiations - now relocated to the New Liberty Colony - to form a multiversal alliance, which Bajor had been invited to participate in but respectfully turned down.
"It's appreciated. If you're interested you can dock at DS9 and have some leave time."
Given the material they'd reviewed of S5T3 in the past months, that invitation was rather inviting. A stable wormhole to the other side of the galaxy, a reputation for all sorts of varieties of characters to come through... And if I take it without Cat here she'll be so upset... Julia shook her head by reflex. "I'll have to decline, Major. The Koenig is due elsewhere."
"Understood. Orinoco out."
"We'll follow them until we're close enough to Bajor that there's no worry." Julia looked to Jarod. "So, how did we do?"
"No damage." He flashed her a smile. "We had shields drop to about sixty percent during the worst of it. We might want to have someone beef up the shield generators."
"I'll see if Tom and Lucy can manage that. In tthe meantime..." Julia finished giving some orders, and when they were put into effect silence was the immediate result.
"It's a shame we can't stop at DS9," Zack finally said, breaking the quiet. "I mean, lots of aliens, stuff from across the galaxy..."
"We don't have any local money, Zack, so how would we pay for anything?", Julia asked. "I doubt they'll take dollar bills."
"I dunno.... maybe if we trump them as collector's items?"
"Zack, no, just no."
"Oh come on, where's your sense of adventure? All sorts of interesting things happen on DS9."
"Cat would be furious if she wasn't here for it," Angel remarked.
"Yeah. So, how is she doing anyway? Getting her first mission as a commander, I mean?"
"Knowing Cat, even the most boring ice planet has her going nuts with excitement," Julia said, grinning.
The Weaver slipped out of orbit of an ice planet with grace, piloted by an exchange officer from the Dorei Federation. Cat was not in her command chair as she was intended to be; instead she was camped out at sensors while the actual sensor officer for the trip, Philippe, looked on in boredom and bemusement. "And look at those atmospheric effects! Isn't it stunning? I wish we could have sent a landing party..."
"Good luck getting a people to go down to such a world," Philippe remarked.
"There's got to be more to space travel than blasting pirates." Caterina finished examining the readouts from the planet.
"I think you should give Philippe his seat back." The Ops officer, Magda, had been Ops at one point for the Kelley; now the Colombian girl was acting as Cat's XO. "You can look over that data later."
"You're no fun. And sorry Philippe." She stood and let him take the controls back. Caterina let out a sigh and nearly flopped into the command chair. "Next planet?"
"Jovian-scale gas planet and its thirty moons."
"Oooh. Those should be fun to study. Vanrya, set a course."
The Daxai woman nodded. Caterina found her interesting as a "blue elf lady", though calling a Dorei an elf wasn't being accurate. "We're at full acceleration."
Caterina waited as they came up on the Jovian body, arguably larger than its namesake in the Sol system. She was about to see about commandeering Philippe's post again when he looked up. "I'm picking up some debris near the ninth moon."
"Oh? On screen?"
The viewer changed to show a field of metal flotsam arranged haphazardly. "Scans?"
"The material is reading as very old. This station was destroyed long ago. We'll need to examine it to determine what happened."
That sounded like a fun challenge, a very fun challenge. "Okay, transport it into the cargo bay."
"Doing so now." Magda remotely activated the transporter systems. "I'm having trouble locking on to some of the material."
Curiosity swelled up in Caterina. Transporter-resistant material? "Okay, we'll do this another way. Open the main shuttle bay and tractor everything in."
"We don't have the systems to examine it here," Magda reminded her. "We'll have to go back."
"We've only got a few space systems left on the list anyway. I want to get this stuff examined immediately." Caterina leaned back in her chair. "Get every piece we can and set the drive to return us to the Facility."
At Facility Control Julia was waiting when Robert returned. He gave her a look and drew in a sigh. "It didn't go well," she remarked.
"Well, they won't be going into civil war soon, I think," he answered. "We've given them a common threat. And I almost got beaten with a cane by a historical figure."
Julia crossed her arms and her expression became curious. "Oh? Who?"
"That guy from South Carolina who beat the New England senator with a cane." Robert looked deep in thought for a second. "Mom would be ticked that I can't... oh yeah. Brooks."
"And what happened?"
"Oh... um... I stopped Kwang from shooting him. Instead I just decked him." Robert rubbed his shoulder. "He winged me before I got my free hand on the cane."
Julia started laughing hard. "You mean you almost got caned by the guy behind Bleeding Sumner?"
"And then I punched him." Robert allowed himself a small laugh. "I got to punch a historical figure."
"Angel will be really jealous."
That brought more laughing until Robert noticed a ship through the Control window he hadn't expected to see. "Wait, is that the Weaver? Did something happen with Caterina?"
"She found some debris and decided to put her survey mission on standby to do a personal examination." Julia allowed herself a half smile. "Angel's going down to talk to her about it, don't worry."
"I won't." Robert went over to the seat by the main station, his favored seat in the Facility Control. "I'll be too busy worrying about the mess I've made in C1P2. No good deed ever goes unpunished."
Caterina had gathered four of her fellow science officers to go over the debris field, now moved by tractor drones to one of the cargo bays. "An interesting formula for an alloy," she muttered, looking at its molecular structure. "And look at that..... no wonder transporters don't like it, the disruption it causes..."
"Cat!" Caterina went over to where Simon, a Russian Jew from C1P2, was looking over a piece. "What do you make of this?", he asked.
She went over and found why he was so interested; it clearly wasn't a broken piece of anything. She looked over the rectangular object and brought up her scanner. "Hrm, a low level energy field of some kind from within. It might be a stasis container or something. If it's not letting us see what's inside on sensors, we'll need to start a quarantine procedure to open it."
"I can start whenever you're ready," Simon offered.
"Let's get everything else catalogued first." Caterina moved on to the next piece. She hadn't done more than a cursory scan when she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned. Angel faced her, smirking and crossing her arms. "Woh, sis, what is it?"
"We need to talk, Cat. Privately?"
She nodded and looked to the others. "Go on, I'll be right back." She turned and followed Angel to the control room for the chamber. "This is about me coming back early isn't it?"
"Just because you found something new doesn't mean you can drop everything just to see it." Angel let her admonishment hang for a moment. "Things are getting serious now, sister. Orders are given and have to be obeyed."
"But... Angel, it's just so... this is material that could alter how we use transporter technology!"
"And it'll still be there tomorrow."
"Something could have happened though! I can always go back out, but if something happened and I lost these samples...! And I'd rather be here doing science than doing that anyway."
Angel smiled at her with bemusement. "Cat... you do know the old saying, right? You can't always get what you want, ooo you can't always get what you waaaant..." Angel continued to sing the song until Cat playfully slapped her on the shoulder. "Isn't it your favorite?"
"It's one of my favorites." Caterina took a breath. "Let me finish examining this stuff and I'll go back out? Please?"
"I'll recommend it to Rob and Julie," Angel promised. This prompted her to get a glomp-style hug and a delightful shout that came out as "squee!" "Don't thank me, little sis. They might pile on more work for you as reprisal."
"That's fine, I'll do it!"
In Control Robert had put up a screen showing the Aurora. After all that time as a shell, the hard work of Farmer, Scotty, Barnes, and others had brought it almost to completion. "I see the weapons are in place. Engines?"
"Ready for shakedown." Farmer nodded to Scotty. "It's been a pleasure working with you and your teams on this."
"She's a beauty of a ship, that's for sure." The portly old Scotsman patted Barnes on the shoulder. "Me and the lad made sure she'll run like a champion. I can't wait tae see her go."
"We're hoping to shatter some warp speed records Scotty's told me about," Barnes confirmed.
"And I should know, I set some of them meself!"
"What's the status of moving things on board?" This was from Julia.
"Well, yer personal effects are in assigned quarters already," Scotty replied. "Unless ye're changin' yer minds on who's going tae be doin' what. And we've copied some of the Darglan database over."
"So does that mean Control is going to be on the Aurora too?"
"Regrettably not, Jarod," the AI answered, appearing beside them. "My personality matrix and memory core would take up too much space in your systems. It is better to have the data from the database."
Jarod crossed his arms. "I might be able to help with that. We might be able to compress your matrix enough to fit in an auxiliary core."
"The effort is appreciated, but not necessary."
"Well, we'll still be around," Robert pointed out, as if looking to reassure Control. "And it'll be months before we transfer permanently to the Aurora."
"Still the issue of command to work out..." Julia looked at the ship intently. Robert went silent for the moment; he wasn't sure which of them deserved it most.
"Just leave the engineering stuff to us and anyone can command the thing." Barnes nodded and noticed Zack standing, his arms crossed. "Hey, Zack, you alright?"
"He's still irritated that we didn't take a look at Deep Space Nine," a new voice teased. Angel stepped through the doors from the corridor. "I think he heard some stories about the Dabo girls and got bright ideas."
"I just think it's a wasted opportunity," Zack responded. "Dabo girls or no dabo girls... and I don't even know what 'dabo' is anyway."
Robert smiled a little. "I'm sure we'll all get there one day. Besides, if anyone had gone without Cat, she would've been furious."
"Speaking of Cat..." Julia looked over to Angel. "You two talked?"
"We did. She won't do it again. And she'll be going back out just as soon as...."
The alarms started to go off. Control was quick to provide the reason, shouting "Energy spike detected!"
Caterina was finishing the last catalogue of pieces while the others checked the unopened container. "Simon, how is that power flux?"
"We just finished scanning it with our best equipment. Near as we can tell, it's... it's opening, Caterina! It's opening!"
Full of shock and eagerness, Caterina turned and faced the others. The side facing away from her opened. Simon's expression turned to wonder to bewilderment.
A moment later, he let out a scream of terror as an energy beam lashed out and struck him.
Jarod had rushed to the internal sensor station the moment the alert came. "It's from Cargo Bay 10!"
Angel's face went white. "Cat!"
It took only a second for Jarod to check the readings. "Picking up large energy releases, various photon and gamma effects with x-ray emissions showing up..."
Control's face shifted to show what clearly came off as horror. "Oh no... power signature detected and matched with files!" The alarms grew louder and changed tone. Unused monitors across the facility flashed to life with orange and red light. His voice shifted to take on a more mechanical tone, booming throughout the Facility. "Omega level threat detected! Omega level threat detected!"
Caterina was in a bad place; the things killing the others were between her and the door. She rushed behind a corner and hit her comm. "Control, this is Caterina! Something came out of the debris, it's killing people! Please get us out off here and reinforce quarantine to max level! Please get us out!"
The stack of materials she was hiding behind disintegrated and almost made her lose her balance. She turned and stared down at the inhuman things that were facing her, the weapons that had killed Simon and the others pointing toward her.
A group of single electronic eyes, each a cold blue, stared back at her. A shrill mechanical voice dripping with malice came out clear, an announcement to her of her impending death.
"Your species is inferior! You will be exterminated!"
The others joined in.
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
The Kelley orbited lazily over the Chesapeake, her cloak active to prevent telescopes from reading their presence. Below them, on the planet, smoke belched from the smoke stcks of new industrial plants. It was 1853 locally, Universe C1P2.
In a set of private quarters, Robert was fidgeting with what now passed for a uniform worn by he and his fellows. The black jacket and color-coded trim was different from his usual pproach of "wear what is comfortable". The torch insignia they'd adopted was displayed on the collar. "I really prefer just normal clothing," Robert lamented.
"You need to make a good first impresssion," Farmer pointed out.
"Still... this is a uniform?"
"A very sopisticated one, honestly," he continued. "I saw some of the conceptual holos for the universalization of Starfleet uniforms in a couple years, it inspired me. Didn't like the gray shoulders though, if you're taking the department color off the jacket then why bother with a second color?"
"I'll take your word for it." Robert straightened the jacket up. "I was surprised when you said you wanted to come along."
"As much as I enjoy focusing on building ships, the Aurora is now in the capable hands of Mister Scott to prepare for her shakedown. I'm not needed at the moment. Besides..." Farmer smirked. "I'm really looking forward to seeing their reactions."
At that Robert could only smile. "Well... I guess we'd better get this done. What I wouldn't give to have swapped duties with Julie..."
The Koenig rocked under Julia, a jolt that shifted everyone in their seats. Energy beams played over their shields repeatedly from the strangely-shaped asymmetrical vessel ahead. "Enemy ship coming around," Jarod warned from Ops.
"Ignore him. Zack, Angel, deal with the pirate after those transports."
She was answered immediately and under Zack's control the Koenig shifted to avoid a big hit from the pirate's main gun. As that enemy's sister ship tried to hit them from behind Zack lined up the Koenig and gave Angel a clear shot. Orange blasts of pulse phaser fire lashed out and struck the ship before it could maneuver out of the way. It twisted and brought stronger shields to bear, dispersing the effect of Angel's fire.
Which was exactly what they wanted the pirates to do.
The Koenig went past the enemy ship and fired aft torpedoes into the now-barely-shielded quarter of the pirate. "Hang on!" Zack manipulated the controls and the ship spun around, hard. Julia barely got a chance to protest before Zack shouted, "Now!"
Angel was ready; her cannons hit the enemy ship in the weak side, blasting through the weak screens and into the hull. Flame erupted from the wounds in the enemy ship. A pair of solar torpedoes crashed into those wounds, blasting through to the other side. The entire ship disappeared in a white fireball.
The ship that had been pursuing them now faced them, having to maneuver to avoid the exploding remnants of its fallen comrade. Angel poured fire into the ship, stripping away its shields so that her spread of solar torpedoes could penetrate. The bow of the pirate ship almost disintegrated under the attack. The pirate ship tried to turn too little too late, as a follow up burst of cannon fire ripped into the wounded ship and destroyed several more sections. "And they're giving up."
"We'll let the convoy handle the prisoners. Can you raise them, Jarod?"
"No need. I've got one of their Starfleet escorts on speaker."
Jarod pressed a key. A female voice spoke over the line. "Koenig, this is Major Kira Nerys on the Orinoco, sensors are clear. The Bajoran Militia thanks you for your assistance."
"Any time, Major. We're always ready to help Bajor." That had, indeed, been the unanimous decision of the Council following the final examintions of S5T3's political situation. Aided, of course, by the continuing negotiations - now relocated to the New Liberty Colony - to form a multiversal alliance, which Bajor had been invited to participate in but respectfully turned down.
"It's appreciated. If you're interested you can dock at DS9 and have some leave time."
Given the material they'd reviewed of S5T3 in the past months, that invitation was rather inviting. A stable wormhole to the other side of the galaxy, a reputation for all sorts of varieties of characters to come through... And if I take it without Cat here she'll be so upset... Julia shook her head by reflex. "I'll have to decline, Major. The Koenig is due elsewhere."
"Understood. Orinoco out."
"We'll follow them until we're close enough to Bajor that there's no worry." Julia looked to Jarod. "So, how did we do?"
"No damage." He flashed her a smile. "We had shields drop to about sixty percent during the worst of it. We might want to have someone beef up the shield generators."
"I'll see if Tom and Lucy can manage that. In tthe meantime..." Julia finished giving some orders, and when they were put into effect silence was the immediate result.
"It's a shame we can't stop at DS9," Zack finally said, breaking the quiet. "I mean, lots of aliens, stuff from across the galaxy..."
"We don't have any local money, Zack, so how would we pay for anything?", Julia asked. "I doubt they'll take dollar bills."
"I dunno.... maybe if we trump them as collector's items?"
"Zack, no, just no."
"Oh come on, where's your sense of adventure? All sorts of interesting things happen on DS9."
"Cat would be furious if she wasn't here for it," Angel remarked.
"Yeah. So, how is she doing anyway? Getting her first mission as a commander, I mean?"
"Knowing Cat, even the most boring ice planet has her going nuts with excitement," Julia said, grinning.
The Weaver slipped out of orbit of an ice planet with grace, piloted by an exchange officer from the Dorei Federation. Cat was not in her command chair as she was intended to be; instead she was camped out at sensors while the actual sensor officer for the trip, Philippe, looked on in boredom and bemusement. "And look at those atmospheric effects! Isn't it stunning? I wish we could have sent a landing party..."
"Good luck getting a people to go down to such a world," Philippe remarked.
"There's got to be more to space travel than blasting pirates." Caterina finished examining the readouts from the planet.
"I think you should give Philippe his seat back." The Ops officer, Magda, had been Ops at one point for the Kelley; now the Colombian girl was acting as Cat's XO. "You can look over that data later."
"You're no fun. And sorry Philippe." She stood and let him take the controls back. Caterina let out a sigh and nearly flopped into the command chair. "Next planet?"
"Jovian-scale gas planet and its thirty moons."
"Oooh. Those should be fun to study. Vanrya, set a course."
The Daxai woman nodded. Caterina found her interesting as a "blue elf lady", though calling a Dorei an elf wasn't being accurate. "We're at full acceleration."
Caterina waited as they came up on the Jovian body, arguably larger than its namesake in the Sol system. She was about to see about commandeering Philippe's post again when he looked up. "I'm picking up some debris near the ninth moon."
"Oh? On screen?"
The viewer changed to show a field of metal flotsam arranged haphazardly. "Scans?"
"The material is reading as very old. This station was destroyed long ago. We'll need to examine it to determine what happened."
That sounded like a fun challenge, a very fun challenge. "Okay, transport it into the cargo bay."
"Doing so now." Magda remotely activated the transporter systems. "I'm having trouble locking on to some of the material."
Curiosity swelled up in Caterina. Transporter-resistant material? "Okay, we'll do this another way. Open the main shuttle bay and tractor everything in."
"We don't have the systems to examine it here," Magda reminded her. "We'll have to go back."
"We've only got a few space systems left on the list anyway. I want to get this stuff examined immediately." Caterina leaned back in her chair. "Get every piece we can and set the drive to return us to the Facility."
At Facility Control Julia was waiting when Robert returned. He gave her a look and drew in a sigh. "It didn't go well," she remarked.
"Well, they won't be going into civil war soon, I think," he answered. "We've given them a common threat. And I almost got beaten with a cane by a historical figure."
Julia crossed her arms and her expression became curious. "Oh? Who?"
"That guy from South Carolina who beat the New England senator with a cane." Robert looked deep in thought for a second. "Mom would be ticked that I can't... oh yeah. Brooks."
"And what happened?"
"Oh... um... I stopped Kwang from shooting him. Instead I just decked him." Robert rubbed his shoulder. "He winged me before I got my free hand on the cane."
Julia started laughing hard. "You mean you almost got caned by the guy behind Bleeding Sumner?"
"And then I punched him." Robert allowed himself a small laugh. "I got to punch a historical figure."
"Angel will be really jealous."
That brought more laughing until Robert noticed a ship through the Control window he hadn't expected to see. "Wait, is that the Weaver? Did something happen with Caterina?"
"She found some debris and decided to put her survey mission on standby to do a personal examination." Julia allowed herself a half smile. "Angel's going down to talk to her about it, don't worry."
"I won't." Robert went over to the seat by the main station, his favored seat in the Facility Control. "I'll be too busy worrying about the mess I've made in C1P2. No good deed ever goes unpunished."
Caterina had gathered four of her fellow science officers to go over the debris field, now moved by tractor drones to one of the cargo bays. "An interesting formula for an alloy," she muttered, looking at its molecular structure. "And look at that..... no wonder transporters don't like it, the disruption it causes..."
"Cat!" Caterina went over to where Simon, a Russian Jew from C1P2, was looking over a piece. "What do you make of this?", he asked.
She went over and found why he was so interested; it clearly wasn't a broken piece of anything. She looked over the rectangular object and brought up her scanner. "Hrm, a low level energy field of some kind from within. It might be a stasis container or something. If it's not letting us see what's inside on sensors, we'll need to start a quarantine procedure to open it."
"I can start whenever you're ready," Simon offered.
"Let's get everything else catalogued first." Caterina moved on to the next piece. She hadn't done more than a cursory scan when she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned. Angel faced her, smirking and crossing her arms. "Woh, sis, what is it?"
"We need to talk, Cat. Privately?"
She nodded and looked to the others. "Go on, I'll be right back." She turned and followed Angel to the control room for the chamber. "This is about me coming back early isn't it?"
"Just because you found something new doesn't mean you can drop everything just to see it." Angel let her admonishment hang for a moment. "Things are getting serious now, sister. Orders are given and have to be obeyed."
"But... Angel, it's just so... this is material that could alter how we use transporter technology!"
"And it'll still be there tomorrow."
"Something could have happened though! I can always go back out, but if something happened and I lost these samples...! And I'd rather be here doing science than doing that anyway."
Angel smiled at her with bemusement. "Cat... you do know the old saying, right? You can't always get what you want, ooo you can't always get what you waaaant..." Angel continued to sing the song until Cat playfully slapped her on the shoulder. "Isn't it your favorite?"
"It's one of my favorites." Caterina took a breath. "Let me finish examining this stuff and I'll go back out? Please?"
"I'll recommend it to Rob and Julie," Angel promised. This prompted her to get a glomp-style hug and a delightful shout that came out as "squee!" "Don't thank me, little sis. They might pile on more work for you as reprisal."
"That's fine, I'll do it!"
In Control Robert had put up a screen showing the Aurora. After all that time as a shell, the hard work of Farmer, Scotty, Barnes, and others had brought it almost to completion. "I see the weapons are in place. Engines?"
"Ready for shakedown." Farmer nodded to Scotty. "It's been a pleasure working with you and your teams on this."
"She's a beauty of a ship, that's for sure." The portly old Scotsman patted Barnes on the shoulder. "Me and the lad made sure she'll run like a champion. I can't wait tae see her go."
"We're hoping to shatter some warp speed records Scotty's told me about," Barnes confirmed.
"And I should know, I set some of them meself!"
"What's the status of moving things on board?" This was from Julia.
"Well, yer personal effects are in assigned quarters already," Scotty replied. "Unless ye're changin' yer minds on who's going tae be doin' what. And we've copied some of the Darglan database over."
"So does that mean Control is going to be on the Aurora too?"
"Regrettably not, Jarod," the AI answered, appearing beside them. "My personality matrix and memory core would take up too much space in your systems. It is better to have the data from the database."
Jarod crossed his arms. "I might be able to help with that. We might be able to compress your matrix enough to fit in an auxiliary core."
"The effort is appreciated, but not necessary."
"Well, we'll still be around," Robert pointed out, as if looking to reassure Control. "And it'll be months before we transfer permanently to the Aurora."
"Still the issue of command to work out..." Julia looked at the ship intently. Robert went silent for the moment; he wasn't sure which of them deserved it most.
"Just leave the engineering stuff to us and anyone can command the thing." Barnes nodded and noticed Zack standing, his arms crossed. "Hey, Zack, you alright?"
"He's still irritated that we didn't take a look at Deep Space Nine," a new voice teased. Angel stepped through the doors from the corridor. "I think he heard some stories about the Dabo girls and got bright ideas."
"I just think it's a wasted opportunity," Zack responded. "Dabo girls or no dabo girls... and I don't even know what 'dabo' is anyway."
Robert smiled a little. "I'm sure we'll all get there one day. Besides, if anyone had gone without Cat, she would've been furious."
"Speaking of Cat..." Julia looked over to Angel. "You two talked?"
"We did. She won't do it again. And she'll be going back out just as soon as...."
The alarms started to go off. Control was quick to provide the reason, shouting "Energy spike detected!"
Caterina was finishing the last catalogue of pieces while the others checked the unopened container. "Simon, how is that power flux?"
"We just finished scanning it with our best equipment. Near as we can tell, it's... it's opening, Caterina! It's opening!"
Full of shock and eagerness, Caterina turned and faced the others. The side facing away from her opened. Simon's expression turned to wonder to bewilderment.
A moment later, he let out a scream of terror as an energy beam lashed out and struck him.
Jarod had rushed to the internal sensor station the moment the alert came. "It's from Cargo Bay 10!"
Angel's face went white. "Cat!"
It took only a second for Jarod to check the readings. "Picking up large energy releases, various photon and gamma effects with x-ray emissions showing up..."
Control's face shifted to show what clearly came off as horror. "Oh no... power signature detected and matched with files!" The alarms grew louder and changed tone. Unused monitors across the facility flashed to life with orange and red light. His voice shifted to take on a more mechanical tone, booming throughout the Facility. "Omega level threat detected! Omega level threat detected!"
Caterina was in a bad place; the things killing the others were between her and the door. She rushed behind a corner and hit her comm. "Control, this is Caterina! Something came out of the debris, it's killing people! Please get us out off here and reinforce quarantine to max level! Please get us out!"
The stack of materials she was hiding behind disintegrated and almost made her lose her balance. She turned and stared down at the inhuman things that were facing her, the weapons that had killed Simon and the others pointing toward her.
A group of single electronic eyes, each a cold blue, stared back at her. A shrill mechanical voice dripping with malice came out clear, an announcement to her of her impending death.
"Your species is inferior! You will be exterminated!"
The others joined in.
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"