I Have No Idea What I'm Doing (Homeworld: Cataclysm/Star Trek)

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 1

Space! The Final Frontier! These are the Voyages of the TRSC Space Roc!

"AAAAAAAH! WHAT THE FLYING FUCK IS HAPPENING!? WHY AM I IN SPACE!? WHY AM I HUGE!? WHY AM I A COLOSSAL SPACE SHIP!? EXPLAIN! EXPLAAAAAAIN!!!!!"

(Scene break for technical difficulties)

"Okay!" I said to myself. "Okay... let's see... taking stock. Being all... rational and stuff."

"So... going by diagnostics, internal sensory data, external sensory data, and relayed sensory data, 'cause I built a probe, and that's a thing I can do now. I seem to be what is at least by, all appearances, a modified, Hiigaran Explorer Class Deep Space Mining Vessel," I observed.

"Some of the most notable of those modification being, the removal of the primary ore canister, significant adjustment to the lower decks. The entire command and control network reworked to run through a singular governing intelligence, AKA, Me, and the integration of a whole bunch of adorable, pint sized semi-sapient, apparently non-sentient robots all networked in, as a functional crew replacement," I observed.

I even 'looked' over at one of the numerous little two foot tall, overly large headed worker bots. Its adorable, mostly expressionless face looking back up at me with it's wide innocent eyes as it waited for any sort of request.

Yeah given how I was set up and that these guys were apparently the only thing I had as 'personnel', I was probably going to be sending hundreds of these little guys into some sort of meat grinder or another.

"Annnnd I have no maps," I added in helpfully. "None. The only understanding of local space I have, being what I'm currently mapping with my stellar cartography sub modules."

"Also I have stellar cartography sub modules, and apparently know how to use them," I mused.

"Right! Back to screaming! AAAAAAAAAAH!"

(Scene break for continuing technical difficulties)

"Okay, breath... wait," I paused. "Do I actually... I mean am I meat in a jar, like Karen? Or was this a full wetware to hardware sw- Eh, I'll figure that out," I pinged a few of my little crewbots to do a manual non-shutdown diagnostic of core control systems with sensory relay, as I set about building more workers. Sensors had pinged a decent ore deposit and my mass stores were looking kind of shaky.

I had no idea what was going on, how I got here, who arranged this, where I was, or why to any applicable name they did so. But I could guess it was something I might find alarming, and I currently had build up time.

I was going to try and make the most of that.

Let's see, taking stock of my situation. Hull was intact, technical database was a bit scrambled, but I had sub modules working on that. Tactically I had... fighters. Well fighters/corvettes, since they were acolytes, and that class of tiny mass accelerator armed strike craft, could do a neat little fusion dance where the lower segments of two of them linked into a slightly less tiny strike craft. I also had scouts, probes, Worker class general purpose resource collectors, Minion class heavy tugs, and Processor class Resource controller and support ship.

More then enough for a mining ship. Far from enough if anything unfriendly happened by, and given my main hull had already been partially militarized...

I doubled down on processing resources towards unscrambling that database. Focusing on getting the data for the research sub modules online.

Something told me I'd need them soon.

Until then I had to be content filling my hangers with strike craft and counting down the time it took to stripe-mine useful materials out of the tiny, tiny system I'd found myself in.

I mentally clicked over the current state of useful material to my sensors, and gave a mental 'sigh'.

This... could take a while.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 2

Space is big. Like ridiculously, impossibly big. In many ways the scale of is in many ways impossible to grasp.

Or at least it was before I turned into a big honking spaceship. Now it was slightly easier to grasp! Still impossible in most ways, including a whole bunch I was functionally ignorant of before, but still! Technical progress!

And speaking of progress. BEHOLD! For I have consumed an entire debris belt!

Bow before my endless hunger!

Okay fine, not the whole thing. Or even really a notable percentage of it. The vast, vast bulk of the asteroids out here aren't anything useful, and of the ones that did contain anything, only a small percentage of their total mass was actual useful materials. The rest vented as useless dust.

Also asteroid belts aren't really as massive or crowded as people assume. I think the local one for Sol was like... what? Four percent the moon's mass or something. When you separate the actual useful stuff from all the junk, there isn't really all that much there. Not on my scale anyway.

I mean yeah I gained enough resource units to probably entirely rebuild myself if I needed to, but considering just how tiny I am by celestial terms, that's chump change. I'm starting to get why planetary mining is so successful.

Well that and the whole 'not dying in horrible merciless vacuum' thing air breathers need to deal with.

Oh that's right. My little crew-bots did the sweep and confirmed that yep. My systems were entirely free of biologicals. Hell by I hadn't even found a single trace of bacterial life in me yet. Near as I could tell I was a more sterile environment then a jar full of medical alcohol.

Not sure how to feel about that to be honest. Other then frustrated that I actually am designed to waste so much space on crew facilities my little adorable crewbots will never even need a forth of.

Meh, I might need to host some squishes at some point. Space was big after all, and I knew at least someone else was out there.

...At least I really, really hoped they were.

Luckily for me, right as I finished noming anything tasty in the local system that wasn't trapped under a evil, evil gravity well, my systems finished unscrambling the research modules.

Except that I noticed immediately that 'scrambling' was way to appropriate a word, because once I finished 'cleaning' the thing, comparing it to the 'corrupted' version showed that the entire thing had been locked under a gods damned replacement cypher.

That matched the primary radiation bands of the local primary at that.

And wouldn't you know it. Right at the end of the modules construction data was a seemingly superfluous string of numbers that when run through my stellar cartography subsystems spat out a new location.

Even without the timing it was pretty easy to read the obvious here. I was being fed a trail of bread crumbs.

Delicious, delicous, upgrading bread crumbs.

...That I didn't really need. Not... really anyway. I mean I could probably unscramble the files on my own, and I had my research modules available now anyway so it wasn't like I even needed the old stuff. Even if it was very, very temping.

So that left me a choice. Take the obvious bait, or just wander around in epic emptiness that is space for... however how long.

Alone.

With nothing but a tireless army of crewbots who, while adorable, did not have a single spec of personality or initiative between any of them.

I idly amused myself by imaging all my crewbots joining together into a single adorable cuddle ball. I didn't actually do it. I needed the little buggers to run my moment to moment maintenance, but still. Cute image.

Right! Breadcrumbs it was!

Charging up hyperdrive. Bracing for quantum wave immersion!

Time to see if this was going to be even half as trippy as I hoped!

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 3

Hyperspace was... honestly pretty boring. You get a lovely extended 'oooh pretty lights' moment as you zip through the bright endless expanse of quantum space for a while, and everything gets kind of glowy, but there isn't really anything to do or look at the entire trip, except for particularly bright points which signified the location of major gravity wells. Needed to keep my distance from those. Get too close and they could suck me right back into real space. Not that the danger was that great. I mean I could jump from just outside of geosynchronous of an Earth normal gravity well without problems if I felt like it. But reasonable levels of caution saved a lot more lives then the ended.

...They irony of me saying that while blindly following a trail left for me from an ominous, unknown source, was acknowledged, then promptly ignored.

Besides I arrived without any issues anyway. Nice little system with a large gas giant orbiting a white dwarf star a fraction of it's volume. It was just plain neat to look at from a distance. Particularly as one at this luminosity should have been surrounded by a planetary nebula formed in the wake of it's conversion from a Red Giant.

I put it down to a guess of either 'someone has been doing some very large scale stellar mining' or 'space is weird and mysterious'.

Unfortunately this set up also meant that the place was pretty much resource starved in it's entirety, with only a few tiny debris rings not even worth the effort to go out and look at closely.

On the brighter side, I just unlocked the schematics to my hive frigates, giving me access to some actual deployable capital class firepower. Not exactly the ideal source of it. My primal hull's heavy point defense guns could probably be more combat viable, but it was still heavy projectable force, and I liked having that option.

And oh look, there was my next breadcrumb at the end of the file like last time. The question is, should I just head to it, or wait around a while ans see if anything happens?

After a nanosecond of indecision, I ordered up a quartet of frigates on my build cue.

Really the Hive wasn't that bad a ship really. Two integrated mass drivers, plus the equipment to control, maintain, and even if necessary, replace, up to six, swarmer inspired, drone craft. All mounted on a lightweight but robust frame just heavy enough to mount a hyperdrive. It was small, but it hit well for it's weight class against, most strike craft, and other light capitals. The only problem was that the darned thing was vulnerable to weapons that worked well against strike craft and light capitals. Being just large and slow enough to be effectively targeted by heavy anti ship weaponry, with the bulk of it's firepower tied up in speedy drones that would, never the less be swatted like bugs against any strike craft screening element.

Ripped through bombers looking for easy prey like a wheat thresher though. And against anything withoutadequate point defense, would very soon regret that absence.

Briefly anyway.

Besides it was an adorable little mini-battlecarrier. Who couldn't love that? It was like someone made a chibi version of a battlestar in the shape of an ugly brick, then patted it on the head and told it that it was a realwarship!

Absentmindedly setting a course for the location in orbit opposite the gas giant, I killed some time as my internal foundries went to work, and my 'fleet' gained its first 'heavy' elements.

Mahaha, fear me! for I now have jump capable force projection that isn't a support vessel!

Probably should have kept mostly to acolytes at this point, but meh. I do what I want.

A few minutes later my new ships were flying escort to my primary hull. A few hours later and I got bored and decided to jump to the next place.

What I unlocked there surprised the hell out of me. Energy weapons. The normally game braking end game upgrade that made all your mass driver based ships not suck anymore when the shit was really hitting the fan.

That... concerned me somewhat.

More so as the next set of coordinates didn't lead to a sun.

The lead to apparently empty space.

I got the feeling things were about to get very 'real'.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 4

Naturally, I decided to be a bit cautious on the jump. Even with energy weapons online I wasn't exactly in a good position in terms of combat capacity. Hives were nice, but the fact remained the only heavy guns I had right now were mounted on fleet command itself. That is to say, me.

Given that even fully upgraded, I was much more of a carrier and logistics hub then a battleship, it didn't take a mathematical savant to realize what that added up to. If I ran into anything hungry for strikers, I was pretty much fucked.

That wasn't going to stop me from going there anyway.

The reason I was worried after all, was the rather suspicious 'generosity' of whoever had sent me here. But at the same time...

Well they probably gave me what they did for a reason right? I was trusting them far enough to follow the trail of 'breadcrumbs' wasn't I?

That didn't mean I was going to walk in blind.

"Upgrade complete... establishing datasynch to sub AI modules... systemic updates complete. Network telemetry running at a hundred. Everything seems to be running smoothly," I intoned.

Or rather 'us', though the tactical net was keeping all five of us updated to each others ever updating memory files and even our ongoing datanets.

In short, I had now had four new 'brains' to process my singular 'mind'. If we fell out of contact things could get... interesting.

Merging back together shouldn't be overly problematic. Key words 'shouldn't be'.

My new brain, which is to say my originally computerized mind, could run thousands, maybe millions of parallel processes, and I used a decent number of them regularly just running my day to day subsystems. Research cycles were even more complicated spawning a great number of random whims that ate more cycles. Sometimes these trains of thought even compartmentalized to 'narrow my focus', and keep distraction issues from cropping up. With these processes then merging back into place once they were done running whatever they were running 'naturally'.

So... running multiple trains of thought and integrating them like that was pretty much second nature for me now. And as such new memories and insights from 'external' sources like this should just... mix in. I'd become 'more' but I'd still be 'me', just... 'older'. Only you know, not actually older at all, since I'd be merging memories from parallel mes but...

Eh, you get the idea. Honestly it might not work well, which was another thing to be hesitant about, but by all logic it should work. It was probably paranoia but...

Well I had the processing space to go ahead and be paranoid about crap like this, while also going ahead and pulling the same crazy crap at the same time regardless.

It's also why I had a backup prepped of my AI matrix from before I tried this crazy project ready to take over, just in case.

And speaking of doing crazy things.

"Coordinates locked in, charging hyperdrives," I explained. "Beginning upgrade for the other hive frigates," unfortunately it didn't seem I could cram enough computing power to run an active AI matrix into something as tiny as a strike craft. Not a full sapient one anyway. Even the relatively 'dumb' intelligence inside took up the entire location of the previous cockpit and life support assembly.

Though maybe in theory... if I limited it purely to read only data...

Oooh that'd be a neat thing to research.

"Hyperdrive charged, ready to engage," observed. "We'll keep our FTL hot," I added comfortingly to... myself. Letting me know that I was ready to jump to my own rescue if needed.

...Pronouns are going to be really 'fun' for me from now on aren't they?

"Good luck!" I barked out with as much bravado as I could manage.

Then four windows into hyperspace opened in front of my brave little frigates, and charge on ahead.

I spent the time in transit updating the other four hives, marshaling around my little acolytes, and... well timing things down until the expected arrival at the destination, docking my strike craft, and charging up my own hyperdrive to be ready to jump in.

Only for the four frigates to exit into open space.

Completely alone.

...Well... that was kind of disappointing.

The four hybrid frigates spread out, and after a few minutes of waiting, sent the all clear.

Confusing, but I wasn't about to complain. I put that charged up hyperdrive to use, sending the remainder of my 'fleet' to the listed destination, while the four ships in system set about in an expanding search, hoping to figure out just what I was supposed to find in this place.

Naturally, I didn't discover it until the Command ship arrived...

Right as a great big purple hued vortex opened up and ate one of my Hives.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 5

What.

No seriously, what? What the fuck just happened. Just...

Okay that was just a... big swirly hole in space opening up, with a bright cavernous maw that my little Hive just fell into.

And that I just lost contact with.

Fuck.

Doing my best not to panic, I deployed a single Acolyte fighter, sent it ahead with a simple way-point set up and... yep. Fooosh, and it's gone.

Okay... kind of want to start freaking out again. What the fuck was that!?

No debris, no detectable gravity sheer, though I was picking up a lot of exotic particles. So either that thing just erased my adorable little hive frigate into absolute oblivion or...

Took it somewhere? Huh, running cross correlation between that and hyperspace windows... it was nowhere near an exact match, but I detecting some similarities.

So... what I'd just run into a wormhole? Or maybe dimensional tear of some kind. I'd been stuck in the ship body of something right out of a videogame so alternate realities were always possible. Should I go through? Could I get back?

I began construction of a scout. At the very least I needed more sensor data.

I wondered if it was possible to go through and come back. If so why hadn't either my frigate or fighter done so yet? Was it a one way trip, or a 'one way' trip maybe? Shit I did not come this far just to jump into some freaky dimensional wedg-

Oh My Hive just came back.

Aaaand it's a wormhole.

A very specific wormhole.

To be more specific a wormhole linking the 'Alpha and Gamma Quadrants' of the galaxy. 'My' end sticking out in the ass end of deep space in the latter. The former residing in the Bajoran system on the border between Cardassian and Federation space.

Federation as in Star Fleet, as in Star Trek, as in Klingons, Vulcans, The Borg, Q, and Captains Kirk, Picard, Janeway, and a very curious Commander Sisko who was probably wondering just what my frigate self was doing showing up in front of his space station right before the little Hive had noped right out of there.

...After recording the stellar radiation frequencies at least. That was a nice bribe of me to not be too pissed at myself for doing that.

And it unlocked... Linking technology. Yaaaay.

Shit I should probably... go make a better impression of myself shouldn't I?

Fuck.

"Research commencing," I muttered dryly, before trying to work out just what craft I should send over to begin dialogue, and just what the hell my lines should be.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 6

The fictional setting of Star Trek is an amazing series. Started in the middle of the cold war by Gene Roddenberry, was a space opera that was only 'standard' in it's nature as it's nature as a 'monster of the week' series. It had a multicultural crew including a Russian, and a black woman as bridge ranking officers, preaching a message of the value in tolerance and understanding.

The Federation was a culture enlightened to the point that people actually made fun of how highly they held themselves to their ethical standards, and the actual ethics of those standards. With few exceptions, they would rather die than violate the ideals they, as a culture had set for themselves.

In short, it was a setting where the 'human' faction had become the 'freaking space elves'. With all the issues that promised.

Which of course meant that if I wasn't very careful about what I did or said, I could offend their high collar motivations.

Now that wasn't likely to cause me to much problems. The Feds were genuinely nice and tolerant people after all. But it might stop me from helping them. Or possibly even interact with them meaningfully. The 'Temporal Prime Directive' in particularly might really fuck me over depending on the wording of things.

Mind you if the Temporal Prime Directive really kicked in, then I could actually be stopped by time cops from the future. Because that was a thing in this setting.

I... couldn't really do anything about that if it happened. So I was going to just need to play things like that wasn't going to happen.

Which meant I needed to play ignorant until I found out all the details on how much my knowledge based on TV from another universe counted or not.

And that meant I needed to come up with a cover story. Fast. The people on the other end of the wormhole weren't going to wait forever. Either someone would investigate, or... well someone would come through just to see what was happening on this side of things for an entirely different reason. This was kind of a galactic hot-spot after all.

Ugh! I hated having to use cover stories. The whole Web of lies thing could get very tangled very fast. Sooner or later someone would catch I knew more then I should by all right.

What kind of act could I pull that would let me get away with that sort of.

...I had an idea.

"Formation set," I intoned as my eight frigates took up escorting positions around me and we moved ahead through the cosmic short cut to the other side of the galaxy.

Entering the wormhole I couldn't help but be... impressed. A swirling realm of distorted space, filled with flowing currents of energy that almost brought to mind the thoughts of being in the eye of some massive storm.

Which I suppose was not entirely inaccurate. Though the currents were sown of time and space, rather then mere particles caught in some form of weather, and one that was guided by a far more active hand then nature.

This place, was after all, also known as 'the celestial temple' for a reason, and I while I lacked a head to bow, I tried to be respectful to the god like entities who were allowing my transit though what was functionally their front lawn.

Well unless they were the guys who put me into this mess. But even if they were, the Prophets of Bajor tended to be... well as benevolent as something that alien to corporeal existence could be. I had to hope that they would have done so for good reasoning.

Because I had no fucking chance if they were responsible and didn't.

Eventually the trip ended, and we breached out to the other side, back into open space.

Well, mostly open. Right near by I could see it. The huge curving structure of Deep Space Nine.

Designed and built by the Cardassians in their occupation of Bajor. The space station was of surprisingly utilitarian design. An inner ring with six, outward facing docking areas, three dorsal, mirrored by three ventral. Between them long pylons that stretched out to an outer ring that curved inward, letting them fit easily within a singular large shield bubble, providing three more dorsal and ventral docking ports hanging above and below the station for craft too big to dock on the inner ring. With three remaining ones anchored to the ring itself for ships to big to dock to even that. The center was a dense command and power node, providing easy oversight, and strong defensive positioning. Each ring potentially armed to the teeth, or sacrificed if shields needed to be pulled tighter then the outermost perimeter of the station.

I also noted with some minor amusement, that my command hull was actually just a tiny bit longer then the whole thing was wide. Even if it was several times as massive, owing to denser, if less solid, materials in comparative construction.

It was a real testament to Cardassian paranoia. A space station built for oversight and resource processing, laid out like a singular large collapsing defense array.

Then again the Cardassians arn't exactly around here anymore, outside one particular spy slash tailor, so maybe they weren't paranoid enough.

For a solid minute I simply hung in place as the two of us 'stared' each other down, before I realized that my long ranged communications equipment was probably not based on the same principles theirs was, and reminded myself for all that Sisko was Starfleet, the man also had a bit of a temper.

So I brushed off the 'antique', and started sending over good old radio signals, "Greetings."

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 7

It took them about a minute to reply after that. Likely taking some time to realize that I was actually talking to them and not just bouncing radio waves off them for the hell of it. Eventually though a reply crackled across in turn, "This is the Bajoran Space Station DS9, welcome to the Alpha Quadrant."

I immediately recognized the voice. Major Kira of the Bajoran millita. Unless of course this was the mirror universe then it was the Intendant and I really, really needed to watch my steps.

Unfortunately that wouldn't be very easy to spot, as I wasn't seeing any immediately recognizable ships around, and the signal quality was both rough, and didn't even attempt to go beyond a simple audio transmission. Signally that they were either using something makeshift or they just weren't bothering with only radio-waves to transmit them.

Not that I minded that too much. I'd gone with audio only myself after all. I couldn't expect much more out of them. "This is the independent craft Roc. I have come to trade."

Technically, a great many Somtaaw ships were based on Bentusi design philosophies. A great many of the integrated technologies were Bentusi as well! If a little watered down technologically speaking... As such, this could be viewed as me... embracing my adoptive heritage! Right! I wasn't ripping off the transgalatic traders at all!

"We're happy to hear that," came the response. "You weren't responding to subspace coms, are you having any technical difficulties?"

And here came the crunch. I was immediately glad my 'voice' was now entirely under my conscious direction and command. It made keeping the tension out of it a lot easier, "Our long range communications systems utilize differing principles." It also made it a lot easier to sound all wise and enigmatic, "This is the manner used by humanity, three centuries prior."

"You know about humans?" came the somewhat surprised reply.

"Songs carry across the void, into infinity," I stated as necessary mystical babble. "I have encountered records left behind by a gone or enigmatic power. It attracted my interest."

"So you came here," was her response.

"That was were the records led, though much has changed in the intervening time. I welcome you, as fellow travelers of the void, bound as you are," the downside to this act is you needed to be just a tiny bit condescending to pull it off. I'd have to be careful not to push it too far.

Particularly since I wasn't really sure which of us was technically more advanced. I knew my FTL kicked even the best warp drives in the pants at least.

I could practically hear the eyeroll that came with it, and accepted the annoyance as well deserved, "Right... docking a vessel your size could be problematic, but we can have a slip free for one of your smaller ships made available."

"My smaller craft do not hold facilities suitable for hosting a diplomatic envoy- It may be preferable to remain separate from the station, if a berth cannot be provided," I suggested in turn.

She seemed to actually take the suggestion in stride, "If that's what you'd prefer. We can arrange transport to the station if you provide transporter coordinates."

"You misunderstand," I stated in a patent placating tone, "I am Unbound. While I can host a diplomatic party, I cannot send a physical envoy. What you perceive as a vessel, is that which I consider self. I am, The Independent Craft Roc."

And that signaled the moment when the Major finally realized she needed to kick this upstairs.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 8

Taking advantage of the short BSOD I'd just forced with that little revelation, I decided to press ahead. "As a suggestion, I propose that we trade information of our respective long ranged communication methods. At your discretion, I will send a craft carrying a physical copy of the device to a location of your choosing, as a gesture of goodwill."

And luckily enough, I actually had the genuine Bentusi designs for that. Like all who traded with the enigmatic Unbound, the Somtaaw had a working knowledge of how to use, maintain, and if needed, even replace, the quintessential 'exchange unit'. A device that let one easily locate, commune, and even exchange resources with their large mobile stations of the ancient traders.

Which of course, meant that it included important samples of quantum waveform technology, meaning that handing it over was a bit of a gamble, but not a one sided one. If things went well I'd be getting a subspace communications system in turn, and that would provide me with just as much insights about the core principles behind their technology in turn.

And frankly? I felt more confident of my capacity to reverse engineer their crap then worried about their capacity to reverse engineer mine.

...You know, considering it was literally just me vs a nation of thousands of worlds, that was really saying something.

The question was if it was about my ego, or just how damned good the science modules I had really were.

"I'll need to get permission to authorize that," came Kira's response.

"I understand, and will wait, until the appropriate authorities can be contacted," I agreed in that ever calm, patent, and enigmatic tone the Bentusi so loved.

And I could see why. Acting like a superior asshole could be really fun, even if you knew not a single person in sight was buying it.

Still I was now left to play the waiting game. On the bright side that gave me a lot more time to plan on just what I wanted to do here, what I was willing to trade, and what the far reaching effects of any such exchange would be.

Right lets see... Kira was the one currently at the helm, there was no significant military presence of either Federation or Dominion nature, so this was likely either early in the series, or after it. They'd identified it as Bajoran, not Federation, so likely early series, and no Defiant meant that The Dominion had not likely stepped up an overt presence yet.

That didn't mean they weren't around. The Changelings seemed to love manipulating other cultures more then even their own forms after all, and had been preparing to 'deal' with the Federation since long before the wormhole that made them functional neighbors was even found.

Which meant I needed to be careful of what I handed over, not just because I needed to get the most out of it's relative value, but also because what I gave the Federation today, might be in the hands of The Founders tomorrow.

How did that limit me? Well lets see. Rapid construction techniques were right out. One of the largest advantages the Dominion held over the Federation was their capacity to literally manufacturer their combat forces in a staggeringly fast period of time. If both sides could craft hulls at the same pace, then the Federation would run out of bodies first.

Hyperdrive itself was also risky. The Gamma Quadrant was literally on the other side of the galaxy. Utterly impractical to reach by warp, but a distance much more feasible with my take on FTL. It would take me more then a year, but I could, in fact, actually travel from one end of the wormhole to the other the 'long' way, and once The Dominion had that capacity they'd start making use of it.

Even more risky, they might run into something even nastier along the way. Particularly if they went through the Delta Quadrant on their way around the center of the galaxy. I didn't want the Borg after me just yet. Even if the idea of potentially setting them after the Dominion was somewhat darkly amusing.

That left... not too much really. At least not that I was certain of. I think I had the edge on material science. Trek ships tended to be very glassy without their shields, with few exceptions. My STL drives were laughable comparable to Impulse. Though my power generation might be comparable. Technically I still used fusion, but then again, so did the Cardassians and they had comparable technology. Likewise, while more 'basic' my engines were very stable and reliable for the most part. Something warp cores couldn't boast.

Hum. While rapid assembly techniques might be to dangerous to hand out. The most basic tool of their use, the Phased Disassembler Array was a very efficient resource extraction and refining device.

Unfortunately it was also the bases of a lot of my rapid construction tricks, as with only some minor tweaks and you could use it to 'print' sheets of material as well. Combining the two was actually how I did field repairs.

Still I might need to give that up anyway if i was going to sell material sciences. Most advanced alloys needed the capacity to isolate and arrange materials on a atomic level to properly generate anyway. At least in a timely fashion.

Also the PDA would probably be very attractive to the resource starved Bajor... The Cardassians strip-mined everything off the planet that they could in the time they occupied it, but the belts were comparatively untouched, and it wasn't like they lacked ships of their own they could send to go and mine in other systems.

Might be able to give some advice there. The Somtaaw were very good at what they did, and I had all their notes.

And someone was finally talking to me again. Awesome, I was about to try and play poker with my other selves-

-Uuugh. Note to self. Never refer to myself in that term again.

The radio boomed across as clear as radio ever is, "This is Commander Benjamin Sisko of The United Federation of Planets."

"Greetings Sisko, I welcome you to the void," I intoned in as pleased a tone as I could manage. "You have been informed of my offer."

"I have. I understand that you were drawn to our part of the galaxy out of an interest in humanity," there was a subtle tone to his otherwise frank voice, as distorted as it was. A certain level of wariness natural to one just informed that an unknown held interest in them, but also an unwillingness to show any sort of fear in the face of that concern.

As expected. I'd chosen 'I' over 'We' while dealing with his station, for a reason after all. One that extended to the entity of the federation really, if mostly to a lesser extent.

Fucking Borg. Of all the Unbound races to encounter...

"It was what attracted my attention. Though I mean no offense to your Bajoran hosts. I am happy to greet fellow travelers of the void, and hope that our meeting will be auspicious. As such, my offer of an exchange of communications, and potentially other technology, is an open one to both your people," I explained trying desperately to keep the right 'tone'.

I think I managed it. Or at the very least I hoped I did.

Either way, Sisko didn't call me out on it, "We'll be happy to take you up on that offer," he stated slightly less strictly, "and I would like to personally welcome you to The Alpha Quadrant."

It seemed like I might have dodged one bullet.

Now all I had to do was avoid all the rest.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 9

The next few moments were both tense and painfully long, as a worker, loaded with a freshly fabricated quantum communications suit, launched itself from my massive hanger bays, and glided silently towards the slowly spinning body of DS9.

I couldn't help but muse on just how small things really were in the vastness of space.

Part of it was just adjusting perspective really. It was only natural that things would be different from the game itself. My main body was almost a thousand times the size of even one of my Acolytes in Corvette configuration. Even smaller craft like my scouts, or the tiny leach drones would be too minuscule to easily keep track of in a system rendering everything to scale. Even with helpful colored indicators to do so. Likewise, if they didn't dramatically compress distances in the game, everything would zip around far to quickly to keep track of, or would take hours on end to accomplish even the most simple of goals.

Though I suppose, even in the game they admitted that most battles took place at 'knife fighting' range. The slow starting, but fast traveling nature of Hyperspace travel all but insuring it.

By comparison, the Worker itself wasn't really that different to what I expected. Smaller then it's in game model, but not by that large a margin. It was after all, the most massive of my 'small' craft, even if it's total volume was less then it's fifty two hundred tons of it's 'dry' weight suggested. A lot faster then in the game though.

Which made sense. Lacking the power or space for a proper FTL drive, the dense little ship had to make due with sub-light engines to travel. Though even with the added speed, it was easy to see why they normally kept closer to larger support craft better able to ferry them across a system.

Unfortunately smaller did not mean 'small'. Particularly in comparison to DS9. I had to park the thing along one of the ship landing struts rather then the retractable shuttle docking, which made things tricky as the item to deliver was loaded in an external container.

Fortunately there was a very simple work around for that. Construct a very basic atmospherically contained cargo container custom fitted for the airlock. Put the communications system in that, alongside some air because the humanoids would probably appreciate not needing to pressurize the entire thing, then leave them the whole thing, in case they wished to use the container for future transactions.

With a dull 'clunk' the clamps holding the container released, and the Worker began to pull away, "Package delivered, returning to mothership."

"Confirmed, we have things locked down on our end," came the stations reply.

Great. Job finished. Now I only needed to play the waiting game.

While doing so I decided to get some more celestial cartography done. I already had my next way-point locked in, it was... not to far actually. Only a relatively short 'hop' out. I might even be able to get the necessary unlock data from the locals once I had proper communications access.

Resource wise, the local belts looked very promising. The 'plasma belt' was as rich in rare elements as any heavy nebula could be expected to be, which was to say, very. I was rather curious as to just how the gaseous body had formed in the first place. Bajor's sun was still young, so it certainly hadn't come from there. Even if it was somehow ejected from the star that didn't explain all the rocky debris within.

Maybe debris pulled in from the wormhole? The positioning didn't seem right, but I somehow doubted that the Prophets were entirely limited in where they parked the thing. Normal wormholes were short lived things that roamed all over the place before collapsing after all. The Celestial Temple was only as stable as it was by their will.

It could also just be some sort of stellar phenomena that I had know knowledge of. I'd only had a passing knowledge of the neater stuff that happened in space until recently after all.

Something I really needed to correct now that I was stuck out here. Luckily with the Wormhole being such a great cosmic choke point, the place was a practical metropolis of scientific activity. Once I got my hands on a subspace communicator to let me start listening in...

Choke point, choke point! Now there was an idea! Once I'd established myself a little, I could set up a series of slipgates. So long as I maintained them with instances of myself, I could acquire a relatively solid income of both material and political wealth for however long it took others to reverse engineer them from covert observation.

The issue of course being, that it would only be a matter of time until someone reverse engineered it from covert observation. Something I didn't want to happen until the Dominion War was over.

Hum, setting up a passenger or delivery service using hulled ships had the same basic issue, with additional risks of someone somehow taking over one of my ship bodies. Given the security measures I could put in place, such a thing would be improbable, but if life had taught me anything it was that no place of thing was truly 'secure'. It was just a matter of making things to expensive to be worth the effort.

And for a secret like Quantum Waveform travel, people would put in a lot of effort.

On the flip-side, handing over the coms array I just did basically ensured the same thing, so that clock was ticking anyway. In which case... slipgates probably had the most staying power as an investment. If I set down the 'roads' for rapid galactic transit now then people would use them over building their own. At least as long as I kept my rates reasonable. A small margin above their own operational costs would do the job.

And Sisko had just authorized the transfer of a subspace communications array to me. Excellent!

It was finally time to get things down to business.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 10

Rather then use the docking crate I left them, Sisko offered to send over a runabout with the array, and an engineer to help me make head or tails of the thing. A gesture that could be viewed as impolite to some, or even an attempt at espionage, but that I decided to just take as good faith.

So naturally as I accepted I gave the counter offer of explaining just how the blazes a quantum communications array worked in turn, expressing great 'relief' that I would have the chance to do so 'in person'.

And that wasn't a backhanded gesture on my part at all.

Okay yeah it was political posturing. Not even good political posturing, it was just me blatantly mirroring them. A responsive action playing directly to their own, not exactly a move highlighting traits of confidence or experience.

Yet, it seemed to be the best move to make here, somewhat ceding the initiative to convey interest and further gestures of friendship, in addition to the obvious value of their technical insight.

That did not mean I would remain idle for long.

"Independent Vessel, Roc, this is the Federation Runabout Rio Grande, we are approaching your position now," Sisko's authoritative voice declared from the radio.

"I hear you Rio Grande, approach the forward section, when you come in range, containment fields will guide you in," I informed, giving an unspoken final chance to back off.

Naturally they didn't, instead just plotting ahead at a modest pace with what I suspected to be maneuvering thrusters.

I waited until they were about a third of the way in past maximum distance before I snagged them. No sense informing them what my full capacity really was. Particularly since for all I knew this really might be an espionage mission. Changelings had infiltrated the Federation for some time before formal contact was made after all.

Still so far things seemed to be going relatively smoothly. The federation ship cutting all active thrust shortly after I began pulling them in, carefully directing them to my fighter bay.

That had a bit of a tactical move on my part. Both for what it showed and what it didn't. There was quite the unspoken message of parking them in spitting distance of row after row of what were obviously dedicated strike craft. Particularly when their minds went back to my eight frigate class escorts, and the much larger open ship bays along my hull. I had spoken in an friendly tone, acted in an open manner, yet here I was loaded up, with enough firepower that, by the local standards it seemed I was ready to wage a war all on my own.

And in many ways that was correct.

There were a lot of implications with that. That I might be less friendly then I seemed... or that I'd come from a much less pleasant place then the locals were used to.

And I suppose both of those things were accurate as well.

More importantly though, It also didn't show them the complex, rapid assembly lines within those larger bays. The tracks linking them currently blocked off.

Four humanoids exited the craft, and I recognized all of them on sight.

Benjamin Sisko, a Commander by his pips, still young and enthusiastic. His eyes traveled over the Acolytes, but seemed more to be appraising my hull with a sense of wonder, rather then worry.

Damn, I really was here early then.

Almost immediately in his wake was Kira Nerys, Major of the Bajoran Militia, she was worried. Which made sense, her people had just fought off one group of militant invaders, and now here was another alien parked right over her homeworld with an armada of completely unknown craft.

Which they were here to help upgrade.

I had a feeling we'd be good friends in time.

Right behind them arms loaded with equipment, were Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien, and Lieutenant Jadzia Dax. The second visibly itching to bust out her tricorder, while the former was more concerned with getting the light but bulky subspace transceiver out of their ship without issues.

Luckily I had prepared for that.

"Greetings," I announced from the closest thing I had to an avatar... a two foot tall crewbot standing on a hoversled.

Going from their expression... it was not what they had been expecting.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 11

Surprised or not, the Federation/Bajoran envoy were pretty quick on the uptake. Naturally, Lt. Dax being the first to verbalize the most obvious observation, "Some kind of... independent avatar?"

Lt. Jadzia Dax was part of Starfleet's science branch, as highlighted by the blue bar of fabric across the shoulders of her uniform. A joined trill, she externally looked a lot like a particularly pale human with dark hair, blue eyes, and a whole bunch of dots in two primary 'strips' moving from the outer crown of her forehead down to some point on her feet. Internally on the flip-side... well she had a pouch much like a marsupial, except rather then keeping her young in it, it held a vaguely slug like symbiotic organism that was both sapient on it's own, and up-linked directly to her nervous system like a second brain.

So... yeah. Not quite as similar as the surface implied.

"It is closer to re-purposed maintenance equipment," I explained via the refitted crewbot, slowly scanning it's head from one to the other, "I believed that you might prefer a 'face', to speak to, though this body is otherwise superfluous."

"The gesture is appreciated," stated the ranking Starfleet officer. "I am Commander Bejamin Sisko, beside me is Major Kira, and these are Lieutenant Jadzia Dax, and Chief Petty Officer Miles O'Brien," he introduced gesturing clearly to each crewmember as he did.

Major Kira's uniform was not starfleet regulation. Rather then a black jumpsuit with color coded bar, it was a more complicated suit of muted, mud like reds that propped up her shoulders a lot like certain 'power' suits made in the eighties. The officer herself looked much like your normal shortish, brown haired woman except for a an odd set of subtle ridges along her nose, though again there were notable differences 'under the hood'.

Really the amount of humanoid life in the area would be utterly startling... unless you knew that most of it had been subtly adjusted to look just like that by an ancient progenitor species.

Which also neatly explained just how the hell they'd managed to make a number of fully viable hybrids in this part of the galaxy. Many with minimal medical assistance.

I raised the stubby, utilitarian arm of my short little proxy over it's chest, and gestured outward slowly, "And I am the Independent Vessel 'Roc'," I answered in turn. "I have already taken the liberty of pressurizing all non-essential segments of my primary hull, in addition to my secondary communications array, and will escort you on a tour if you desire. However, I must warn you as a primarily unmanned vessel, amenities are limited."

A smile crossed the Commander's face, "Thank you for that consideration." I was again reminded just how young the officer really was for his rank. Ben Sisko was actually human, a dark skinned man with a powerful jaw and a particularly powerful gaze. His uniform had red as it's signature color, showing him to be part of the command track.

"It is I, who is thankful," I argued. "It is an unfortunately rare for me to encounter a culture so open to peaceful interaction," There was a somewhat lamentation tone to my voice at that. It really was regrettable.

"I take it that's what all this is for," Kira gestured towards the lines of Acolytes, a subtle but open suspicion to her tone.

"An accurate assessment," I agreed without shame. "To quote another: It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid."

That garnered a small reaction from the crew. Mostly the generation of poker-faces, though neither Kira or O'Brien seemed to give much care about it. "An interesting philosophy," Commander Sisko replied neutrally.

"I view it as a warning," I corrected. "And not one that is unwarranted. The only other Unbound I know of in this region of space are... less then welcoming."

Naturally Sisko pounced on that opening, "Unbound. I've not heard of that term before."

At the same time Lt. Cmdr O'Brien set down the large, but apparently light form of the subspace transceiver that they had brought, sensing that we would be talking for a while.

I immediately decided to put my multitasking skills to work.

"It is not a simple thing to explain," I admitted. "I will attempt to do so as we journey," I stepped the small robot off of the platform, which moved on it's own towards the Chief Engineer. "It is some distance, as such, I have brought this platform to assist in moving along my primary hull, to the necessary module."

"I have no issue with that," The commanding officer agreed. "Mr. O'Brien, if you would."

"Of course sir," Chief O'Brien agreed, seeming a bit relieved he wouldn't be hiking the damned thing over what he had apparently just realized was going to be a much larger distance then expected. Not that he would be too likely to complain if he'd had to do it himself. The shortish human was a bit of an old hand at things, if not quite over the hill yet physically. His gold marked uniform showed the ranking pips of someone at the very top of the non-com ranking scheme.

He gave my little crewbot a small nod, "Thanks."

Who said engineers had no social manner?

I nodded the puppet's head in turn. "To explain what it is to be Unbound, one must realize first that it is not a title of superiority, but of distinction and scale. You're flicker lives are bound entirely to your own selves, locked within a single body, a single perspective. The Unbound exist with this same reality, but in a fundamentally different manner..."

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 12

What it meant to be Unbound was many things, not all easy to explain. I only really understood them myself as a neophyte, new to the form of experience. There were many aspects. To be unbound by gravity, unbound by the limits of a singular body, of a singular mind. Awareness of the universe expanding to that greater of a scale. Even the weight of time seemed lessened. The bodies of mortal beings expanded beyond knowledge by the energies of Hyperspace.

How could I explain such without being impossibly arrogant, yet also understating things so very much? It was a task not even as simple as explaining color to the blind, for that at least was something the mind was meant to process.

In the end as much of my dialogue was of examples as it was attempting to convey it's nature directly. I spoke of the ancient Bentusi, who's trading stations had wandered the void for periods of time normally used to describe geological ages.

I spoke of Karen Sa'jet, the woman who had sacrificed her body to weave her nervous system into the generation ship that would carry her people from Exile. Her mind extended as thousands of guiding hands in her role as fleet command.

I even spoke of Riesstiu IV, the immortal leader of the Taiidan Empire, and his regrettable fall into madness.

I spoke of the Unbound, as leaders, servants, and peers, I spoke of them as people, and attempted to convey both how they had retained that status, and yet, how they had also changed in the nature of how they interacted with the universe. Of how the scope of their reach and understanding had shifted to something... larger, for both good and ill.

I was unsure how much I could properly convey. Despite the size of the distance involved, it only took a few short minutes to arrive at my secondary communication's array and even then only that long because we were walking beside the mobile platform rather then on top of it. And my underlining nature was not the only thing that my guests would discuss, or make note of.

"Pretty big hallways for such little robots," Major Kira noted in a tone that was not quite accusatory.

"These transit pathways serve primarily to shunt various materials across individual modules," I explained. "But to answer you unasked question, yes. This vessel was originally designed with a humanoid crew in mind," I admitted, not breaking stride as a large double bulkhead door separating modules opened before us. "My hull is based primarily on a Hiigaran, Explorer class, deep space mining vessel. Though there are considerable systemic differences to those produced by Kiith Somtaaw of Hiigara."

"I've never heard of the Hiigarans," Commander Sisko interjected.

"I would be surprised if you did. To my knowledge, they have never reached this galaxy in person," I paused the crewbot as we reached the final bulkhead, both doors opening in sequence at my prodding. Turning the little puppet to face them directly, "Though I suppose in a way they have now, as I could be considered 'ethnically' Hiigaran now." I tilted my head and added a whimsical tone to my voice, "Another triumph for the Beast slayers."

That caught attention. "Are you implying you came from outside of this Galaxy?" The Commander asked with open, if well comported surprised.

"Yes," I replied with a tone of minor amusement, turning back to enter the module. "Though I would not recommend the journey to those without commitment. By my understanding, most humanoids would find the time needed to make such a journey... considerable."

"You don't say," Chief O'Brien uttered more softly, most likely to himself.

"I have heard the voices of a race who could make the transit in a more, reasonable, time-frame," I broached. "The Bentusi crafted a slipgate of unimaginable power, capable of extra galactic transit, when they fled from The Beast. Alas, the gate was destroyed in the conflict, and I am uncertain if it linked to this galaxy or another."

"That's the second time you've mentioned this 'Beast'," Sisko noted.

"They were a memorable encounter, and a terror beyond imagination for the Unbound," I replied grimly. "A self-aware, plague that threatened to devour our galaxy. It consumed all, vessels and flesh, technology and biologically. All it could touch, was corrupted and converted into the infection. Countless songs ended in the name of feeding it's insatiable hunger," a loathing tone entered my voice. "The universe owes favor to Kiith Somtaaw for burning out it's infection."

"The same people who built this ship," Dax observed.

"The same people who designed this ship," I corrected. "The Hiigarans were humanoid, much like yourself, last I had seen of them." I stopped, then turned to look at the array, "But perhaps I have wasted too much time rambling. This was to be an envoy of exchange, and we have much more to teach one another than old stories of times past."

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 13

To properly utilize each of our respective new coms systems, we each needed to understand the basic underlining principles behind how they functioned, and hence, generate a basic comparison of how subspace and hyperspace actually worked.

And as we swapped notes, what we quickly found was... honestly rather surprising.

Comparing hyperspace to subspace, was a lot like comparing a pair of lasers. One a chemically pumped infrared laser. The other a free electron laser tuned to fire into the ultra violet spectrum. Both did the same basic thing, that is, bombard an area with tightly focused photons, but the means which they accomplished the goal were different, and both operated on entirely different 'frequencies'.

Yet at the same time they were far from unrelated devices.

Similarly both Subspace and Hyperspace worked on the principles of higher dimensional movement to 'cheat' the limitations four dimensional existence imposed on rate of travel. Subspace, as the name somewhat implied, involved 'sinking' things into a dimensional state where things were closer together, then 'surfing' that bubble from place to place, never fully leaving normal reality, and as such remaining fully aware of their surroundings.

Reaching hyperspace was not so elegant. Instead, utilizing a quantum waveform effect to all but literally 'punch' directly into a higher dimensional state. Opening a window directly into a form of reality where space was drastically compressed and alien to normal four dimensional existence.

Both approaches had their advantages and disadvantages. Hyperdrive was massively faster by nature. The compression rate was simply greater. The downside to this was that anything in hyperspace was also borderline blind to their relative location in real-space. Only the most massive of objects generating a functional 'echo' into hyperspace, and at magnified effect at that.

Power was also an issue. Subspace drives required far less power to enter directly, but also needed constant effort to maintain in effect. Hyperdrive, by comparison, required a massive start up charge to generate the quantum waveform, but was otherwise trivial to maintain until you entered back into real-space.

Naturally this applied to communications systems based on the respective principles. The subspace radio surprisingly, worked under even more closely related systems, shooting a radio wave directly through subspace letting anything capable of operating on that level detect it with trivial ease. More over, since Radio waves were already pretty damned fast, and lacked almost any mass the thing actually had decent reach. The downside was that it was so easily reached, it was just as easily disrupted without numerous repeater stations. The end result was a light weight, low cost, high resolution design... that your enemy or environment could jam with even greater ease then more traditional radio waves, as there were more avenues of failure.

Quantum communications again worked in a slightly more primitive manner, but had advantages to that cruder approach. A full quantum waveform gate would be far too expensive to use on a communications band expecting to see regular use, so instead what what was used was only the first 'step' of the engine. A start up process that formed a 'connection' but did not actually 'bore in' far enough to send in anything material, but still far enough to send a 'ripple' out into hyperspace of a gate's formation. Rapid 'pings' of this kind allowed the generation of simple, binary chatter, which in turn could be used to send equally simple digital information, such as audio channels, identification codes, or even more complex data forms, using per-arranged reference guides. And since the communications system was attached to any radio's unique hyperspace signature, the signals were near impossible to confuse, leading to a low bandwidth, but extremely reliable real space communications array.

Still, if the communications systems were so distinct from the actual faster then light drives. One needed to ask how I could comprehend the full differences warp drive and my own approaches.

The answer was simple. Two minutes after Chief O'Brien showed me just how to reach subspace, I completed my research into a sensory system that reached into that band of reality, and one and a half minutes after that, finished integrating the new sensor system into my primary sensors modules.

Research Module OP, plz do no nerf.

"Subspace signals are coming in clear Mr O'Brien," I intoned in a pleased tone. "And I believe I have gained a firm grasp of the underlining principles," as in I was already now designing a new form of the system better suited to integration into my communications suit. "Are you having difficulty with the quantum communications array?"

"No not at all," The engineer dismissed. "The set up is almost... elegant in it's simplicity. It actually reminds me a lot of old earth style dial-tone electronics, but with a bandwidth limited only how much power you have to transmit the signal," he added in. "You know, if you had enough power, theoretically you could send even more data then traditional subspace communications."

"The Bentusi had such arrays," I replied quickly. "In theory the design is not complicated. In matters of practicality however, even if receiving a hyperspace signal is comparatively trivial, the transmission equipment requires such volume that unless significant refinement can be made, only a dedicated vessel could accomplish such a feat."

"Well of course you'd need something specialized," the gold uniformed man consented, "but that dosn't-"

"Chief," Sisko interrupted suddenly. "I think theoretical discussion could be made on another day,"

I turned the crewbot's head to them in time with Mr. O'Brien's own. We had been getting rather deep into the Nerd speak hadn't we? Dax even looked about ready to yawn.

"Ah, of course Commander," the engineer agreed sheepishly.

"Perhaps this discussion could resume at a more favorable time, as I may now communicate in the manner, to which you are accustomed," I offered.

I tilted my head to the only non-starfleet member of the away team, "Major Kira. Now that I can clearly hear the voices of your people. I believe I am aware of an opportunity, to which I would like to extend to you, and your people."

Namely, how we could both benefit from that delicious delicious 'plasma belt' they considered a navigational hazard.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 14

Major Kira seemed to be caught a bit off guard, "I'm sure Bajor would be happy to hear about anything you could offer."

"Your public records, hold many stories, of the long suffering you endured, under your recent, alien occupation," I stated in a regretful tone.

"You're a quick read," she said not quite as surprised as I expected. I think she had gotten the gist of my nature now.

"That's putting it mildly," Chief O'Brien muttered.

"My senses stretch out to the heartbeat of a sun, my mind regulating a million functions every moment. I cannot claim true understanding of the nature of your pain, though such shallow means, but raw knowledge of such is easily processed," I readily admitted.

And honestly? Compared to running simulations, pealing through every open record I could now access was child's play. It was trivially easy to partition various thought streams into parsing through every open database, and all free media files soaked me in with a level of knowledge that was frankly terrifying.

Particularly in the options it brought. Beginning research into Impulse Drive.

"I appreciate your sympathies," the major said in the mechanical manner of one used to repeating a line on a touchy subject. She seemed to be more just using the words to buy time and think.

Commander Sisko promptly jumped in to help her there, "The Bajoran people have accomplished a lot since the occupation. But the wounds are still raw."

"The Federation has done a lot to help us," Kira added in as a reply.

"As is much to their credit," I tilted the head of the drone to the commander approvingly.

Warp would have to wait. Impulse was simple. It was just a different approach to plasma induced thrust assistance that seemed to be notably more powerful and efficient then my own. Inertial compensation would be the real money child there, but I wanted to cut my teeth on something simpler, and both it and the local branch of FTL required greater systemic integration. Almost impossibly so in the case of Warp Drive, as you needed to build an entire craft around it's use to have anything approaching functional efficiency. I'd probably have to design an entirely new kind of vessel to make use of it.

Inertial compensation on the other-hand... that was definitely next on the chopping block.

"But the Federation, can only do so much," I noted in counterpoint. "On examination, one of the key matters hindering your recovery appears to be material resources seized by the Cardassians in their occupation."

"I won't deny that," Sisko admitted. "Cardassian strip-mining operations consumed most of Bajor's readily available resources."

Major Kira's reaction was a bit more heated, "It also caused massive environmental damage, dramatically impacting our ability to feed ourselves."

That was actually understating it from what the records said. If not for Federation handouts, and ironically enough, the massive damage to their total population reducing the number of mouths to feed, a lot of Bajorans would be starving right now.

"I realize that the issue of mineral wealth is only one small matter among many, but it is one I believe I can aid with," I gestured outward. "This vessel, as I explained. Is a deep space mining craft. Many of the environment it was designed to operate within are considered to be extremely hazardous," at least by the local standards. That was the problem of making star ships out of tinfoil and forcefields.

Naturally she caught on immediately, "The Denorios Belt," she exclaimed.

"I am also very interested in the region known as 'The Badlands'," I explained. "Though I understand that area is of contested legality."

"You want to mine the badlands," she seemed to consider the project dubious.

"That's... ambitious," Dax said in the tone of one trying not to be offensive to someone they considered foolish.

If only she knew. Research complete. Beginning research into inertial compensation. Beginning upgrading.

"Under Bajoran contract," I agreed to Kira, ignoring the science officer for the moment. "However the local plasma belt would be a more practical location for the moment."

Deciding to cut to the heart of the matter I made my pitch, "In exchange for a small percentage of certain rare elements gathered agreed upon by your government, I would harvest and refine the belt's material resources for use by the Bajoran people."

"You're serious," she said seeming a little shocked by that.

"I would also offer my services in the production of specialized equipment, but that would require more detailed negotiation due to the technologies involved," I added in.

"That seems a little ambitious," Sisko commented.

"I've mined nebulae before. The environmental hazards are both known and accounted for," I explained.

"I... can talk to the ministry of resources, but I can't promise anything right away," she replied quickly, kicking it upstairs.

But that was fine. No better then fine, that was exactly what I wanted.

Because once I had my foot in the door, there would be no stopping me.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 15

After escorting my guests back to their transport and aiding them back out into open space, I really began focusing more on ongoing task of evaluating my situation, planning what to do about it, and taking what steps I could right now in the short term make to help insure both my survival, and the fulfillment of my goals.

And now that I knew where I was? I had a lot of goals to fulfill.

Star Trek was a very optimistic setting as far as science fiction went, but it wasn't a place without it's dangers or it's problems. The fact I was in the same system as a planet that just went through an occupation that would make Poland feel it had gotten off lightly on that whole World War Two thing was proof enough of that.

But less then a flicker of what was to come. The Dominion weren't coming. They were already here. It was just no one realized it yet.

And considering the entire culture of the dominion boiled down to 'Serve the founders', who regarded all humanoid life as either 'enemies', 'tools', or 'both'... that was not a good thing.

Well not so much humanoid life as 'solids' in their own words, but what exactly that meant was hard to grasp. Their wording and dogma was primarily anti-humanoid, but they seemed to actively ignore all the ascendant energy beings around. This including the ones who's front lawn they traveled through extensively in the war (and boy did that end up biting them in the ass in the original timeline).

Still I was not going to trust that the founder's rampant xenophobia wasn't total. That seemed a good way to get myself manipulated and/or killed.

And speaking of not getting killed. Research into inertial compensation complete. It looked like the best way to integrate it was adding an entirely new module. Luckily the new Impulse drives were a lot more space efficient then the old ion ones, and that was with the two hundred fifty percent size increase needed to both harden systems to my satisfaction and allot space for a complete system back up.

On the other hand... Inertial compensation had a lot more uses then just mitigating system strain. The damage control applications alone.

Right then, beginning construction.

Okay, what next? Well I had all these nice systems, but if watching the series had taught me anything, it was that backups were important. Likewise Somtaaw design principles demanded some level of functional redundancy. Huh... There was a small space in the ventral junction between the hanger module and command module's reserve hanger. The gap was originally there to allow for greater isolation due to system strain in the face of cataclysmic damage, but since inertial compensaters would be greatly reducing that anyway-

An idea hit me. While I was padding the spacing, I could add a bit more structural bracing and load a ventral fore energy cannon. That section of the ship had poor coverage by necessity before. The Explorer class used the same heavy cannons as a cruiser after all, and sticking something with that much recoil right next to your construction and repair facilities was asking for trouble. Just ask anyone who served on a partial carrier refit battleship. That was why the original design mounted most of it's firepower right by the drive section, which had all the mass and thrust capacity to compensate for the recoil.

But by sticking the new cannon mount right on top of the secondary inertial compensation module the backlash would have more then enough bleed off. I could probably mount a dozen of the things on it if that was my only concern.

Which unfortunately it wasn't, but the idea was still sound. It wasn't like someone shooting the module out from under it was to big a concern either. Even if someone shot out the drive module, due to the placement needed 'bridge the gap' with the new sub module, they'd have to actually destroy that turret to reach the backup inertial compensation that ensured it didn't damage the superstructure in the first place. Even if it went up from internal damage the power flow to the energy canon would probably be cut.

So in a way the new cannon mount actually helped insure that the system it relied on would not fail. As ablative armor if nothing else.

Running possible schematic proposals across simulation... Research complete, beginning construction.

Now came the real pain in the ass... beginning research into deflector technology.

Huh, I wonder if anyone on the station had noticed I was growing new bits, and that my drive profile had just shifted?

Probably, though no one was asking. Then again their Runabout had only landed a minute ago so maybe they hadn't gotten to command yet?

That reminded me. Now that I had functional high data transmission capacity, I might as well throw together a waldo for humanoid interaction... really I probably should have before they got here.

Hum... to go humanoid or not? And if so, how humanoid?

Maybe pull a Hiver? Start very inhuman and gradually mesh into a more humanoid proxy?

Oh, that reminded me to put in a request to get specs on Soong-type androids. Now that design was actually relatively impressive on a structural standpoint.

Maybe I could get Sisko to put in a good word?

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 16

Fifteen minutes after I began integrating local technologies, I still hadn't been pinged for any communications requests.

So instead I sent out one. Requesting permission to send out half of my frigate class escorts into federation space. My primary hull needed to remain in system for when the Bajorans sent their reply to me either yes or no, but that didn't mean I couldn't keep following my trail of breadcrumbs.

And now that I'd finally finished integrating locally derived concepts into my weapons batteries bringing their engagement range up to the local standard, I felt confident that the four little frigates would be largely able to handle themselves.

...And now I went ahead an jinxed it. Great. Well it needed to be done regardless.

And speaking of things that needed to be done. I needed a new influx of resources. I felt the odds of the Bajor deal were pretty good, but if there was one thing governments were good at, it was bogging things down with red tape.

I couldn't move my primary hull until the offer was either accepted or declined, and none of my current designs were suitable. So that meant I needed to send out something as a proxy.

Which meant, ironically enough. I needed to design a new class of ship to do what the Explorer classes intended job actually was. Haul workers to ore, and carry it back. Processors could do part of that job with only minor adjustments, but I still needed a freighter design.

Beginning research into locking clamps.

Luckily, there were actually a freighter design already in my data-banks. The original version of what would eventually become the infamous Deacon-Class Destroyer, easily one of the most powerful warships ever designed by Kith Somtaaw.

...I had to admit, the idea of producing both versions of the Deacon was actually rather amusing to me. Also a nice bit of psychological warfare in most circumstance in making it difficult for enemy forces to identify just which of the two craft was which.

Unfortunately in this case the pros did not outweigh the cons. Once the locals saw what one of my destroyers could manage, they'd be extremely wary of anything with it's profile. Likewise, between the raw ease to which the Jem'hadar and Vorta threw away their lives, and the indiscriminate doctrine directed by the dominion in general, the deception wouldn't do me a lot of good.

Besides, I didn't have some of the technology needed to produce the damned things. A much bigger issue overall. And it wasn't like I was going to find a work around with the local take on the issues.

So that meant designing a new craft. Ironically enough, probably by doing the exact opposite of the Deacon and building a freighter out of a warship. Specifically the Hive class, which was both my only viable capital design outside of the ore processor, and probably the best suited to the role outside of the Roc itself, or a Carrier. If I removed the swarmer drone array, loaded in a compact ore canister in it's place... Maybe stripped off the fore-mounted canons to reduce weight-

Research Complete.

Wait, no I was being stupid. I had a perfectly functional design already in my databanks. Just not one actually used in the war against the Beast.

The kadeshi 'Fuel Pod' who's design was captured in the homeworld war was everything I needed and more. More importantly, while a lot of it's design was classified, I had more then enough of the blueprints to produce my own version with currently available technologies. I could even adapt my new locking clamps to allow it to carry a number of Acolytes in escorts as parasite craft, providing a bit more escort for the otherwise helpless design.

Yeah that looked good. Beginning research. What to name it though? The normal theme for Somtaaw support craft was that of the titles suitable to their role. Basically exactly what it said on the tin.

So a 'Freighter class freighter'? That seemed kind of silly. Maybe hauler?

Ah. Better idea. A Transport class Freighter. I could easily adapt the design for greater compartmentalization for more varied future cargo runs as well, so that fight nicely.

And when was someone going to talk to me already?

Oh, speak of the devil. Transmission coming from the station.

"Hello!" A voice crackled through. "Is this thing on!"

If I had eyes I'd blink. Once more recognizing the voice.

Huh, I really should have expected the bartender to make a move like this.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 17

"I hear you," I replied to the Ferengi Bartender.

"Hello! This is that new alien space ship parked outside the station right? It's a pleasure to hear from you. You might not have heard of me. I'm Quark. I've heard you're looking to trade, and boy do I have some deals for you!" came the rapid fire reply.

Honestly... if I still had lips I'd probably be grinning right now. You just couldn't find good stage performance like this. It almost bordered on parody. Quark was such an enthusiastic, openly slimy, snake oil salesman, that you almost kind of wanted to be ripped off by him a little. If only for the actual experience.

Which... actually might be an intentional part of his whole approach. Huh, if it was, then that was very well played on his part.

Didn't mean I'd make it easy for him. Well... maybe not too easy.

"You have my interest," I intoned.

"And you certainly have mine," came the cheerfully greedy reply. "So! You came here looking for something. What can I help you with? If I don't have what your looking for immediately available I can definitely arrange a meeting with someone who does. For a small fee of course," he replied.

As he was saying this I was parsing through all the information I'd uploaded, and also cuing up the local open sources on both Quark's name, Ferengi Culture, and of course, the molecular structure of Latnium.

...And wow. I suddenly understood just why this stuff was considered so hard to replicate. It was less a 'molecule' and more a 'semi stable atomic balancing act'. If replicators couldn't manage the living cells of even simple microbial life then I could definitely see them having problems managing this.

I mean how does that even form in nature? Or at least form often enough to be an individual substance rather then a borderline one off event?

At the least it explained why they encased it in something as atomically neutral as gold.

So the question was... could I make this thing? Hum... I'd need to suspend all the individual atomic components then kick-start the process, but maybe...

Beginning research into advanced molecular synthesis.

I had a feeling I might get more use out of that one then just a 'money printing machine'. At least in this neck of the woods.

And speaking of local exotic interests... "At the moment, my interests are mostly in right of passage, access to stellar mineral rights, and samples of local technology."

"That's... quite the list," he replied, drawing the obvious conclusion that I was preparing for some massive kind of build up. The only question was, "What kind of technology would you be interested in?"

"I would like to acquire either a sample or set of schematics to a Cardassian Spiral-Wave Disruptor, a set of schematics or sample of a Klingon Disruptor. A military grade deflector shield or schematic from both or either power. Samples or data on photon torpedoes, and if possible similar on Klingon Plasma torpedoes. Similar data on Federation or Romulan equivalents would also be valuable, but I understand, are considerably more difficult to procure," I listed off as blandly as one would read a phonebook. At the same time making a note to insure that my first humanoid avatar needed to have a good face for smirking.

"I... see," came his rather startled reply.

"I also hold interest in local tactical computers, military grade sensory arrays, and a number of non military technologies," I explained. "Would it be possible for you to procure this?"

"S-sure! I know just the guy," he replied after only a moments hesitation. "If you don't mind my asking just what do you need all that hardware for?"

"My goals are not aggressive," Lying through my teeth there. Though admittedly not to the local powers... mostly. "But the void is less kind then you may assume. There is much you have yet to encounter on the other side of the wormhole. And much I have yet to meet on this end. While peace is the ideal state of meeting. There are those you would not do well to face unarmed."

That should get him asking the right questions. More importantly, it should also draw the right kind of attention to those paying attention to him.

It might cost me a little political capital though. A bit of a gamble at this point in the game. Still I didn't want to waste this opportunity, and who knew how the Changelings would adjust their timetable in the face of my presence. Kilingon technology might suddenly become a lot less publicly available soon.

And if Sisko were to ask of my sudden interest in such things... well there was no reason not to explain, was there?

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 18

I doubted Quark would actually have all that many legal issues getting everything on my list. Selling them in Bajoran space would be tricky, but open space was literally right outside our door and he was only brokering a meeting. The weapons themselves would not be hard to gain either. The Cardassians had left a lot of kit behind for open salvage when they pulled out of their most recent expansion. Most of it modern or at least contemporary. Likewise it was a common practice for Klingon noble houses to sell off some of the older and less renowned parts of their personal fleets and armories when economic times got tough. Even the more modern pieces if times got sufficiently tough. Though selling entire ships was frowned on rather heavily.

Still, getting a few choice components from the scavengers and ship breakers out there should be a rather simple matter. As close to 'over the counter' as arms deals went really.

In the more short term however... I had some assignments to hand out/perform.

...Existing as multiple semi-harmonized instances really did mess up how one referred to oneself... or was that manyself given the whole 'multiple bodies' thing?

Yeah, I had a feeling I was probably going to need to invent a few terms for crap before I really got used to it.

To help avoid confusion, I named the four Hive frigates headed in towards the Federation as group 'Hound'. While the group heading back into the Gamma Quadrant with the six newly commissioned Transport class freighters, their accompanying two dozen Acolyte fighters, four Workers, and single Ore Processor playing packmule to said workers, was listed under the group name of 'Magpie'.

Which reminded me, that I really needed to start naming my capital hulls. Even if they were all me at the end of the day. It just made organization a hell of a lot easier. Might also provide some handy legal distance in certain instances as well.

I left that job up to the mes heading to their respective areas. They'd have the most time to think about it after all, and it seemed more fair to myself to let the me who was going to inhabit those hulls pick the name of said hulls.

...Definitely going to need to add in a few pronouns to my vocabulary. Well that or do away with them and just start talking in the third person.

Anyway Sisko had given his permission. The Feds were pretty open minded about visitors after all, and I had my travel log clearly marked, and it wasn't like they had a good reason to distrust me just yet.

Still, I somehow suspected that they weren't quite expecting exactly how I was getting there.

For a moment I actually considered hacking into their servers just to see the looks on their faces via security feed... then decided that, no. That was stupid. They might notice, burning even more good will then the whole arms deal thing, and all it would really do is tickle my ego a little.

More reason to finish my interaction platform and get more face to face meetings then.

But for now it was time to send myself off and head out. Half of my escorting frigates and the processor breaking away as the newly constructed ore tankers and fighters left their respective launch bays, heading back through the wormhole, while the remaining frigates formed up in a basic two by two wall formation and turned in the opposite direction.

I watched the first group vanish through, slowly charging up the hyperdrive in the second frigate squad, as the first convoy made its way back into the Gamma Quadrant, communications telemetry breaking off the moment the event horizon snapped back shut.

Then I began deploying Corvette configured Acolytes to act as a defensive perimeter, as the FTL engines finished spinning up, and four 'small' quantum waveform events lit up my primary hull's sensors, and four hyperspace windows snapped open and slowly pealed back, seemingly consuming the rest of my capital class escort.

Leaving just me, my strike craft, and the large Bajoran station.

Feeling surprisingly alone, I wished myself a small moment of good luck.

Then promptly rolled my non-existent eyes over just how silly that sentiment really was.

Really needed to work on the pronouns.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 19

(Task Force Hound)

In some ways, breaking away from the Mothership was a surprisingly unnerving sensation. Some of it was personal concern. The Space Roc was the biggest ship with the biggest guns and thickest armor in the fleet. It was the only true support ship in the fleet, and the frigate hulls I was currently using were dependent on it's production capacity to both repair and replace any damage or losses they suffered on my journey. Even my mind felt slower, lacking the focused research and support modules which made processing data so easy and seamless a process. I still had hard copies of the scrambled research data we started with. Maps gathered from local sources, but producing new data. Spinning new ideas and designs was... more limited.

It was humbling, and frightening. More so because for all I currently lacked that capacity for the moment. If something were to happen to The Roc while we were away, we might possibly lose it forever. Or at least until we could build a new mothership class vessel using local resources.

Not an easy prospect given our limited means.

My resources, until I could rebuild a mothership. I needed to remember to keep to the singular. I wasn't the Borg, but drawing parables would still scare the crap out of the locals.

Besides, even if I was separate from other parts of myself right now, I was still I.

I Am.

From this perspective... that statement seemed less arrogant, and far more a sensation of desperate reassurance.

Still even with all that stress added... this mission needed to be done. I needed the full Somtaaw Beast Era database if I was going to deal with the oncoming threats. The Dominion. The Borg. The resources I had at my current disposal weren't enough.

And honestly? Even if I did get everything it would only lessen the damage caused in the end. Not eliminate it. Every step I took would only soften the hammer blows about to land. Be it now or in two hundred years the Dominion would wage war for their paranoia. Be it now or some unknown time in the future the Borg would come to devour all in their insatiable hunger. Their 'cultures' were just to hostile to allow for peace.

And if they wanted to start that kind of fight. To destroy all in their path in their mad quest for peace or perfection... I needed to be there to stop them. If only because I now could.

Heh, ironic. I was in Star Trek, and if I decided to follow fannon interpretation of he Prime Directive, everyone would be screwed.

But that was a side issue. In the short term I was finally coming up on my first destination site. The 'Beta Magellan system', location of the planet Bynaus, home of the Bynar species.

Since I was trying to get this done with the minimum of ruffled feathers, I exited hyperspace opposite the planet's position relative to their primary, and immediately sent out a broad subspace transmission of presence, non-hostility, and culturally adapted greetings.

Then, on being acknowledged, promptly started rooting through the local trade networks in one part cover, one part genuine business interest.

Lets see... lots of exports in fine electronics, as to be expected by a race of technological telepaths. Fairly high demand in refined materials. Looked like they were building a new station as part of an ongoing effort monitoring and stabilizing their system primary. Not a lot of unused or unclaimed resources in the region. Looks like my best bet would be in large scale production or just hauling components from prearranged trade deals.

Decent amount of business on that front though. Space Stations were a pretty big investment, and the Binars were doing a lot of outsourcing. If I could wedge myself in on the transport deal...

I sent in a proposal, as I took a scan of the primary and unlocked... repair beams.

Nice, but kind of disappointing. That was one of those techs I could have pretty easily figured out on my own.

Better then nothing. Quickly coding a basic report on what I'd uncovered and set into motion on one of the one time pads I'd prepared in advance, I bounced it along the 'open' Federation lines to go give their intelligence division something to fuddle their brains over, and then logged my next destination.

Which was... the Gamma Hydra system. Right on the edge of the Klingon and Romulan borders.

Peachy. This was going to be fun.

I was tempted to request reinforcements, but honestly what kind of reinforcements could I send? Eh, just by sending the location I'd be kicking things up stairs. I'd add in a relay point where Roc could send further 'orders' down the line if I felt like it.

Right. I left one hull behind to keep pushing on the trade deal, but the other three were going to go on ahead. Hopefully they wouldn't start a war.

Or at least, not a war I wasn't ready to fight.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 20

Gamma Hydra was an interesting location in that the system had held a Federation outpost.

Key tense there, had. You see before the Borg Collective actually made their first major incursion into Federation space, they'd done which was, for them, a rather subtle bit of scout work.

Meaning of course that they'd just showed up at the edge of Federation space, and plucked up a number of outposts and minor colonies like a bunch of weeds. Seemingly having literally just ripped the entire set of facilities out of the ground with their tractor beams and carted it all off for analysis before anyone could get as much as a word out.

Which said a lot about the Collective's idea of 'subtle'.

And yet it had actually been rather discrete for the cybernetic hivemind. They'd been quick, relatively clean, and hadn't left a lot in the ways of evidence outside of the huge jagged craters in the ground where infrastructure had once been. They'd also actually waited a decent hunk of time before finally making their approach on Earth. A set of behavior that was uncharacteristically hesitant for those who knew anything of the infectious consciousness.

My best guess for it had been Q. One of the ascendant omnipotent types who hung around the area. I didn't think the creature had done anything directly, but at the same time, he was known to play the very, very long game, the way only something with such a massive advantage in awareness really could. It had been Q's action which had brought The Enterprise first into view of the Borg, who had then accessed their systems and learned that the Federation had no practical way to resist them. Then by the action of that same being that they escaped, defying everything the Borg had thought they had learned of the ship's capacity. Something that I would wager put the collective a bit off it's game.

The real question was, if that was due to the inconsistency between the data before them and the results. Or if it was because they knew exactly what kind of entity Q was and were wary of poking something that might be even more above them in bullshittery then they stood in regards to the puny mortals it had just dropped in front of them.

But that was beside the point. The point was that while there had once been an official Federation presence here, there wasn't one anymore.

Or rather there shouldn't have been.

The moment I left hyperspace, a distress call hit me like the sound of someone screaming. A muti-layered message belting out on all channels, "-ederation sta. .... ...ion... ..assive dama.... ...'re losing atmosp...."

It wasn't clear, but it didn't really have to be to get the point across.

In a moment I deduced the distress signal's location. The moon in orbit of Sigma Hydra IV.

Gods that place just did not get a break did it? The original colony irradiated, the Borg wiping out the next one after they finished re-terraforming the place, and now whatever this mess was.

Hopefully I could change that. I sent a ping of my own in their direction. Hive Frigates weren't exactly ideal for providing... well anything other then a lot of concentrated firepower but I wasn't about to let that stop me either.

Right, a tactical hyperjump was... not advisable. I could do it, but at this distance, and with the planetary bodies limiting my approach range it wouldn't save much. Also without a Mothership to provide emergency reaction mass to jumpstart my jump drives, I'd probably slag my drive in the process. Drives I'd need to get out of the system if this proved to be the 'emergency evacuation' type of problem since none of my ships were geared up to host organic life in anything near comfort. I'd start charging them up conventionally, but that'd be minutes away.

And because of my most recent upgrades, minutes was all I needed to get there the old fashioned way.

Shifting power to inertial compensation. Bringing engines to maximum impulse.

I sent a ping towards the moon. "Distress signal received! This is," I needed a name- fuck it. "Kushanindependent frigate group 'Hound'. We are in system and on approach to render whatever assistance we can!"

It was a good thing I didn't have lungs anymore, because at times like this I might have forgotten to use them.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 21

With my frigate's course laid in, I took the opportunity to finally scan the system primary and compare it to the scrambled datafiles.

Ion canon tech. And with it, the schematic for both the coveted Somtaaw multibeam frigate, including it's revolutionary prism system, and the more traditional heavy beam turrets.

Very, very nice, and unfortunately rather useless to me at the moment. If I didn't need all three hulls to try and deal with this current issue, I'd send one 'home' to uploaded all it's precious information.

If my three current hulls weren't enough I'd do the same, but with the additional purpose of bringing in backup.

Still the circumstance weren't as dire as they could be. On review, while far from optimal for the job, my trio of Hive Frigates were far from the worst ships for the job. The small warships had small on board production and maintenance bays for their 'Swarmer' drones. And while those bays were specialized, it was only 'specialized' in the sense that they couldn't produce viable combat assets in a 'reasonable' amount of time. I could still use the molecular furnace inside to produce raw materials and simple items for disaster relief. And the more traditional drones had more then enough thrust capacity to bring them down to the surface... even if they weren't ideal for it.

Huh, you know in hindsight I bet I could also jury rig them to make mines or missiles in a pinch, though that might compromise drone production. Something to kick upstairs when I had access to research modules again. There was no sense limiting myself to what I could scavenge and reverse engineer, even if I'd take full advantage of everything I could.

Much like how I'd need every clever trick I could think of here to pull off an aid mission with ships in no way designed to support humanoid life.

Pulling into a rough lunar orbit, I looked down and tried to decipher just what my sensors were telling me.

It was what looked to once be a dome secured, open vacuum colony. I say once, because now most of it was a crater in the ground left by a boom so big I'm pretty sure some of the debris had bounced clear off of one of my hulls on the way in.

Yeash, what the hell did that? Explosion profile suggested a high energy detonation inside the dome... don't think it was a reactor. The Feddies might be crazy enough to use antimatter to fuel their spaceships, but they tended to prefer fusion plants for planetary power needs. Much less risky in an environment that actually had an atmosphere to propagate an explosion on.

On the other hand... this place didn't have an atmosphere for the most part did it?

Then again, considering the neighborhood. It was equally possible that someone had either beamed, or shot a torpedo through into the dome and blown it apart that way. Didn't fit the profile for a plasma head, but even if they used singularity drives, the Romulans did know enough about antimatter to fake a Klingon style explosive.

Or you know, just use an actual Klingon explosive. Though I guess it was also possible to just literally have been a Klingon to blow things up. If I remembered right, their political status was somewhat rocky with the Feds right now, and in a place like this one, everyone would assume it was the Romulans trying to spark shit up.

Even the actual Romulans.

...Actually make that especially the Romulans. So much so that I'd actually consider the possibility of the Klingon's actually doing it purely to get the Romulans all ruffled trying to figure out which sub faction of them just tried to frame the Klingons, since both cultures were just the right kind of asshole for that to actually work.

Meh, politics later. For now... right the distress signal was coming from a secondary outpost off to the side. Looked like some kind of refinery complex. Signal was pretty garbled too. It wasn't just the range earlier, their transmission itself was a mess. Bet their radio was damaged somehow.

"Federation outpost! This is Kushan Frigate Group Hound," I intoned, voice as cool as a cucumber. "We are over your position but lack the equipment to access your position without potentially damaging atmospheric containment. If there's anyone still alive down there please respond."

The only thing I got was more garbled transmissions from below.

Then suddenly something else on my shiny new subspace sensors. A ship exiting warp on an approach vector. I scanned the silhouette to get a profile.

And my warbook read it as a Vor'cha-class attack cruiser.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 22

That answer actually made me pause for a moment.

The Vor'cha was a Klingon design, and what was arguably the most powerful warship of the line produced by the Alpha Quadrant powers. The Feds had some non-warship equivalents due to their gross technological edge, and there were a few one off super-ships produced by various factions, including the Klingons themselves but for a true, practical, full production warship? I couldn't think of anything local that matched up.

Eighteen distributed disruptor arrays providing excellent overall coverage, plus a spinal mounted heavy disruptor at the 'head' of the ship for focused firepower. It also had three multi-role torpedo launchers, capable of firing either conventional guided photon explosives every bit as nasty as their Federation counterparts, or their own take on the Romulan plasma torpedo, which while unguided would punch through just about anything the locals could throw up as a defense in short order.

It's other aspects were far from lagging either. The shields were about on par with it's firepower, and it actually had enough armor to be worth the term, but the big difference was the engines. Unlike it's direct predecessors and the common, but aging, Bird of Prey designs, the Vor'cha utilized principles learned from their new Federation allies in the design and layout of its warp drive, giving it extremely long and fast 'legs' by the local standard.

Compounding all these advantages. The bleeding edge attack cruisers, while growing rapidly in numbers, were still just rare enough that the Klingons took special care in just who they handed these things out to. So the crew on board could be expected to be extremely competent warriors, politically important, or, as was often the case in Klingon society, both.

And oddly that actually kind of relieved me a little. Or at least lowered my general stress levels. Because that meant I was either dealing with competent soldiers who would know to actually think, or greasy politicians who would want to talk. Both options buying me the time I needed to finish charging up my drives to get the hell out of here.

And sure enough, they hail me the moment they enter range.

"Identify yourself!" Say what you will about the Klingons. They had utterly mastered the art of cramming as much hostility into a statement as verbally possible.

"This is the Kushan Frigate group 'Hound' responding to a Federation distress call," I replied.

"A likely story," the... I assume Captain? All but spat.

Note to self, look up Klingon rank indicators next time I have access to open Federation databases. I knew it was marked on the sash, but I couldn't for the life of me identify it.

"More likely," the Alien commanding officer replied. "You are the cause of the distress call."

"We are not," I replied bluntly. "Though your vigilance at your allies defense is commendable. Though perhaps better directed to the task at hand?" I questioned pointedly.

"And perhaps you would do best to power down and prepare to be boarded," The Klingon snapped.

"Such preparations would be impractical. These vessels are not configured to be operated by humanoid life," due to how I'd stuffed the extra needed equipment in there wasn't even space wide enough to comfortably fit in anything bigger then a crewbot outside of the drone bay, and certain, very warm portions of the engine assembly.

There was only a momentary glimmer of surprise on the other man's face before he jumped to calling my 'bluff', "I will not warn you aga-"

"You would stand here posturing while your allies suffer below you?" I asked suddenly. "Perhaps my praise earlier was misnamed."

"And have my ship lower it's shields to join their fate?" He challenged back. "I am no fool."

And it was honestly hard to say his posture was foolish. Unknowns were tricky after all, and I wasn't exactly being cooperative.

Damn, hard call. If the Klingon was corrupt and the source of the attack, leaving now would be leaving any survivors to their mercy. On the other hand, if they were legit, they were much better able to render aid then I was.

If I stayed, and we ended up fighting, nothing of major value would really be lost. The star would still be there to act as key to the next ships of the fleet to arrive. I'd only be sacrificing my current instance, which, while terrifying, wasn't nearly as frightening as it had been before.

But fighting could also play into whatever game whoever was behind this was playing. I needed to consider the long term risks, and I was having a hard time grasping them just because of how little of the situation I really understood, and that scared me a hell of a lot more.

I opted for the safe bet, and hoped to any god listening that I was dealing with actual honorable Klingons, rather then merely 'honorable' ones.

"...very well. In respect to your ties to the Federation, I will entrust you with this matter. We will withdraw, and make contact with the Klingons... on another day."

Hyperdrives charged, initiating jump to hyperspace.

Three windows to a deeper layer of reality opened, and pulled back over my hulls even as the Klingons gave a garbled reply of their own.

I didn't need to hear it to realize things were about to get complicated.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 23

(Mothership: Space Roc)

Things had gotten busy in the Bajoran sector.

After a not insignificant amount of delay, and a considerable bit of haggling, I'd finally secured rights to mine the plasma belt. I was raking in only a token amount of income from it. Five percent of what I was actually mining, enough to cover the 'expense' of producing the Workers, Processors, and Transports needed to accomplish the actual project in a reasonable time frame.

Slowing matters considerably was the fact I was being 'thorough' about it. Gathering and processing mineral elements that were typically useless to my normal production means but the Bajorans still made considerable use of, as well as taking pains to actually help 'clean' up the ring shaped pseudo nebula in the system, with the goal of eventually clearing out the notable navigational hazard.

That little effort would bring me in a lot of good PR. Which was important, because my growing fleet was making some of the locals uneasy. Particularly right after they realized that yes, those were fighters strapped onto each transport, and yes, my Processors had some very large guns on them by the local standards.

Big guns, big engines, big ships. Everything about The Roc's fleet, or rather now 'The Kushan' was big. I'd singlehandedly re-sparked an entire line of overcompensation jokes. Though a complete lack of biological components to compensate for took pretty much all the personal bite out of them for me.

Still if they thought the guns I had now were oversized, I really needed to rethink just what I put the information Frigate Group hound just brought me.

...Or maybe not. Mutibeam frigates might be one big gun, but from the outside, they were just a frigate sized vessel with five relatively large openings on them. If you'd never seen one in action and couldn't identify the magnetic lensing arrays at the apertures, you'd never guess at their real purpose. Compared to local designs, most would probably assume that they were torpedo bays. Which combined with the defensive arrangement, a design legitimately better suited to rapid wide area coverage rather than focused fire, probably made them a lot less intimidating then the Hives and various swarms of small craft.

Even if they did identify the function of the apertures. Frigates with heavy beam weapons were something inside their context. They might just take it better overall.

I'd still need to watch my production count. Particularly if this whole new Klingon mess blew over in an unpleasant way.

And speaking of guns and potential political situations.

"Quark," my mobile, remote interaction platform intoned.

To lead off I'd picked something delightfully alien. Or at least very divorced from the local humanoids. The design had actually been rather challenging. I needed something that could move through the reduced crawlspace of my current vessels easily, but also be large enough to both contain a high fidelity subspace communications system without to drastically of compromised maneuverability. There were also concerns in aesthetics and general presentation. I couldn't afford to look too intimidating, but at the same time I also wanted something that could be taken seriously.

So naturally, rather then try and strike some careful balance, I decided to take option C, with something that was just plain weird.

The end result was best described as 'robo-tentacle-ghost-kitty-person', that I called a 'Jaspers' unit. Or perhaps Robo-tentacle-snake-kitty-person if you didn't get the reference and were just trying to describe one.

The main body was a single relatively wide, and smooth structure slowly tapering down like a particularly short and plump snake, suspended entirely by locally derived counter gravity units. In around where the typical shoulder assembly should be, there was instead, two very long, retractable, primary manipulator tentacles sprouted out directly from the torso in a manner much more akin to what you'd normally see in invertebrates. There was no flaring of the torso, nothing to really help facilitate movements. Two holes that could suddenly sprout long flexible tentacles terminating in three much smaller, finer manipulator tentacles.

Attached to this strange torso was a wide fat head with large, flared, cat like cheeks, on the tip of which were a pair of large, folding audio arrays again distinctly feline in origin. But that was not the most distinctive feature.

But not exclusively cat. There were of course, more tentacles, because once you get one of those things you can't resist the urge to add more of them. In this case a quartet roughly framing the mouth. Two 'larger' though still small manipulators popping out to either side of the kitty cat like noise in a manner akin to whiskers, framing the mouth like a large fancy mustache. Below, on the jawline there was a smaller, more vestigial set, forming a basic 'beard' that could never the less provide a handy support base for use with the above set as an actual manipulator set in a pinch.

I'd gone with four eyes. Two large wide ones with obvious camera like irises, and two smaller dark ones of similar structure above and together, on the brow line.

The end result was... very alien, but just familiar enough not to be overly off putting. Different enough to appear strange and foreign, and keep well away from the uncanny valley reflex, but at the same time just familiar enough that it didn't seem inapproachably alien either.

Amusingly, I was pretty sure that I'd convinced the Feds that my original species was aquatic when I deployed the thing.

Quark just seemed content that I used it to take the occasional spin on the dabo wheel, and to use his facility as much as a non-eating, non-drinking, non-humanoid really could.

"Mr. Roc," the Ferengi greeted. "Come to book another holosuite? I have a wonderful recreation of the City of Latnatis on Xindus. Maybe give you a feel of home?" he tried fishing a little.

"The aquatic city?" I mused. "That does sound pleasant."

No hard confirmation for you I fear. That game is far too amusing to let end so swiftly.

"I've got a suite free right now," he offered.

"Another time perhaps," I declined. "I've mostly come to discuss the arrangement you set up for me and your cousin."

The bartender suddenly seemed much less happy to see me.

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 24

"Relax Quark," I intoned floating slightly to the side of him, "I have not reached out to this place to cause you problems. Much the opposite," I intoned in my normal tranquil tone.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that," he replied in a tone that was anything but relieved, casually moving behind the counter of his bar. Eyes discretely scanning around to make sure no one was listening in too closely.

"As you should be. The deal went well Quark," I stated, upper facial tentacles rippling in a smooth motion. "Better, in truth, then I had expected that it could have, and I now have gained both the samples I desired, and many more. You selected the perfect provider of all I sought."

"And I'm very glad I could serve your interests," The Ferengi replied head tilting as he followed my slow movements, "But... if you've gotten all you want? What do you still need me for?" He asked, clearly hoping it was not to tie up loose ends.

"You misunderstand," I replied stopping my slow glide to the side. "A regrettable, but understandable mistake. You have not yet realized the truth of my nature... or rather, all that it implies."

I took small delight in the minor irritation he showed alongside his growing fear.

"Quark. I am Unbound," I intoned with the full arrogance and pomp worthy of the phrase. "My existence is stretched across dozens of simultaneous instances. My mind conceiving millions of thoughts in tandem or independence. I am individual, but am at the same time a nation. One who's economic power outstrips most of the contemporary regimes in the Alpha Quadrant."

And by most I meant all. Heck by raw production I outstripped Starfleet, even if they had me well beaten out of the ballpark on raw resources for now.

Quark didn't really seem sure how to react to that, and as a well trained businessman, immediately started babbling to gain the time needed to do so, "So... you must really get around like that."

"Yes," I replied in some amusement, beginning to drift in my floating again. "To simplify things Quark. I am a person, but you can also view me as the leader of an entire sub-political entity. One who has been very impressed with the first piece of work he offered to a cunning aspirant who approached him."

Something clicked into place for him at once, "The weapons deal was a test."

"In part," I admitted. "Understanding the tools the Alpha Quadrant uses to wage conflict was, and still remains a priority to me. Regrettable as it is, violence is not uncommon among travelers of the void, and while lost vessels are replaceable, such losses are also undesirable."

"But that wasn't everything you're after," He continued, reading between the lines.

"Correct," I commented switching direction of my slow drift. "While my resources and production capacity are both considerable and ever growing, I remain a new power. I have no local contacts, little trust, and only publicly available data on both the local powers and their politics."

"And so you reach out to the best known traders in the Alpha Quadrant," Quark followed along, perking up as he caught the opening to launch his opening pitch. "Well, for a modest fee, I may be able to get you directlyin touch with the Grand Nagus himself!"

"An excellent example of just what I was looking for," I mused, facial tentacles warbling slightly.

Quark raised a finger, "I'll get right on the coms-"

"That is not necessary," I dismissed.

And once again I watched Quark's entire train of thought crash, "It isn't?"

"Dealing with Grand Nagus Zek is certainly something I will begin doing in time," I admitted. "However, for the moment I would much prefer to utilize your vast network of contacts on a more base level," I commented. "To begin with, thanks to my recent efforts here in the Bajoran system I will very shortly have available a large assortment of extremely high speed long range transport..."

 

[Mizuki_Stone]

Part 25

At the same time that I was subtly informing Quark of his new status as minor business partner to a budding economic nation, I was funneling resources, beginning production of my first batch of Multi-beam frigates, talking to Starfleet about what had happened at their outpost, and researching both how to integrate local weaponry, and make further use of my own newly regained technologies.

Namely by reinventing the traditional Ion Cannon Frigate. Or more accurately, a variation of the Ion Cannon Array frigate since I somewhat preferred the design, and knew that with some only minor adaptations it could be rendered cloak capable.

And I really, really liked the idea of having a ship design that was simultaneously, a hundred and fifty meters plus of big fucking gun, and also stealth capable. It just brought all kinds of happy thoughts to mind involving Borg Cubes.

In terms of more immediate threats, Quark's cousin Gaila had come through big time in terms of local weaponry. Not only did they have state of the art Klingon and Cardassian kit, but they had Federation 'inspired' phaser designs equivalent to previous generation Starfleet standard issue and a number of more exotic weapons and defenses. Including entire sets of powered armor and combat drones, which weren't even something I thought had a lot of use locally.

And a good many of those designs had potential. Originally I mostly picked up the weapons themselves to gather data. Test them against my defenses, adapt new ones, compare them to my own arsenal, and adapt in any traits that might be useful. However, I'd discovered a number of useful things.

Explosive wise, the local antimatter bombs outdid my own missile designs by a small margin. Antimatter had an awful lot of boom to it after all, and the locals had a lot of experience handling it. That said, even with that experience, it was very hazardous stuff, which meant that while carrying a more volatile payload, there needed to be a great amount of safety and containment measures needed to utilize that material destructively in anything approaching a safe manner. Meaning that in spite of your typical photon torpedo being big enough to fit a full grown Klingon with a decent amount of breathing room, the same munition's actual payload was only a few grams of the stuff.

Which again, was very dangerous to handle properly, particularly in combat conditions.

My more 'traditional' fusion bombs, by comparison, were about twice as large for near equivalent yield, but were supremely stable, only risking detonation on activation, and could be easily mass produced even in the middle of a fight, refilling magazines even as they emptied, making them a much more practical design in my mind. Though I did shamelessly integrate a number of drive and targeting systems from the local weaponry.

Defensively the weapons were a moderate threat. The explosive yield was definitely enough to bash through the armor of even my heaviest craft in enough numbers, but this was somewhat mitigated by their own design. The locals used proximity warheads rather than contact charges. Which was ironic since antimatter bombs like these were actually much easier to make into contact explosives. A fusion bomb needed to be intact enough to initiate to go boom. All an antimatter bomb needed to do was lose containment.

Still, even that 'flaw' was likely to be short lived in the face of any competent enemy, and would still play merry hell with my strike craft. Acolytes and Swarmers were tough enough to be bathed in that kind of fire once or twice. But a group detonation would wipe out entire wings of them.

Quantum torpedoes reportedly were an entirely different matter, and might actually have had enough added 'bang' to be worth shifting over, or at least developing a dedicated craft to their use. Unfortunately at this stage in time Starfleet was keeping the design of such explosives tight to its chest. Even less fortunately this meant I couldn't effectively test my defenses against them. A moderate concern.

Phasers and Disruptors on the other hand, had proven a little more interesting. Both weapons were pretty closely related. Particle throwers that used nadions to disrupt the atomic structure of a bombarded area 'burning away' material in its path by dismantling any molecular bond they could cancel out, causing instant vaporization without significant bleedout to the targeted area. A very elegant approach to utter destruction all things told.

The main difference between the two was mostly a matter of design philosophy. Phasers used a complicated modulating system, typically crystal based, to better regulate which part of the wave spectrum they affected, providing even greater precision, both in what portion of a thing they would be affecting, and just how they would affect it. Disruptors used far less complex systems providing much more room for... basically everything, as well as greatly easing production and maintenance. A good analogy would be to compare a sniper rifle to a carbine. A trade-off between precision and practicality.

Of course, both still had the same issue of running into things too stable to properly disrupt. Either due to some aspect of the molecule's structure resisting the disruption or simply being too dense to affect in an energy effective manner.

Lucky for me, my hull armor fell into that category, meaning that nadion weapons were not likely to be very effective on my ships. At least outside of extreme levels of bombardment.

Nadion guns did have one major advantage however, in that due to their nature of being a particle gun that relied on the properties of the particles to do the damage rather than their mass, the 'projectile' portion of of either variant was actually very light, and hence took very little energy to accelerate to combat viable speeds. Charging them up took a big chunk of power, enough so that using such weapons required a 'capacitor' of nadion particles that could be replaced or recharged between conflicts. Still, when it came to actually shooting the things, the weapons systems were remarkably efficient in terms of in combat energy taxation.

And while they did not scale up all that well, it also meant that the smaller designs of these weapons had a disproportionately high bite.

Adding all these things together, I immediately came to the realization that while unsuitable as a primary weapons system. Nadion guns might be exactly what I was looking for in terms of a point defense system.

"Beginning research into point defense array," I announced to myself, eager for the finalized result.

However, more pressing was my current discussion with Commander Sisko...