SSSSS t TTTTTTTTTT kk SSSSSSS tt TTTTTTTTTT kk SS SSS tt TT kk SS SS ttttt aaaaa rr rr TT rr rr aaaaa kk kk sssss :: SSSS ttttt aaaaaaa rrrrr TT rrrrr aaaaaaa kk kk sssssss :: SSSSSS tt aa aa rrr TT rrr aa aa kk kk ss ss SSSSS tt aaaa rr TT rr aaaa kkkkk ssss SSS tt aaaaaa rr TT rr aaaaaa kkkkk sssss SS SS tt aaa aa rr TT rr aaa aa kkk kk ssss SSS SSS tt aa aa rr TT rr aa aa kk kk ss ss SSSSSSS tttt aaaaaaa rr TT rr aaaaaaa kk kk sssssss :: SSSSS ttt aaaa aa rr TT rr aaaa aa kk kk sssss :: MMM MMM ll t ii MMM MMM ll tt ii MMMM MMMM ll tt MMMM MMMM eee ll ttttt ii nn nnnn ggg gg MM M M MM eeeee ll ttttt ii nnnnnnnn ggggggg MM MM MM MM ee ee ll tt ii nnn nn ggg ggg MM MM MM MM eeeeeee ll tt ii nn nn gg gg MM MM MM MM eeeeeee ll tt ii nn nn gg gg MM MMM MM ee ll tt ii nn nn gg gg MM MMM MM eee ee ll tt ii nn nn ggg ggg MM MMM MM eeeee ll tttt ii nn nn ggggggg MM M MM eee ll ttt ii nn nn ggg gg gg gg gggggggg gggggg PPPPPPP t PPPPPPPP tt PP PPP tt PP PP oooo ttttt PP PPP oooooo ttttt PPPPPPPP ooo ooo tt PPPPPPP oo oo tt PP oo oo tt PP oo oo tt PP ooo ooo tt PP oooooo tttt PP oooo ttt Star Traks: Melting Pot is based on Alan Decker's Star Traks, which in turn is based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry, may he rest in peace. Welcome to the Second Season of Melting Pot - who'da thunkit? Copyright 2005. "Xenophobia: Part 2" by Paul Cloutier (The character of Alex Thorne suggested by Cpt Sullivan) His hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. Genesis 16:12 In the vacuum of space, without any sort of transmission media, there is no sound. Which is just as well, because the sound of a full dozen high-powered phasers arcing out from the four ships of the Tactical Warfare, Investigations and Testing Sub-Division would have produced a Hellish scream. Of course the sound of them tearing through a lone ship's shields and doing who knows how much damage to that ship, itself, would likely have been even worse. So it was fortunate, from a noise- reduction point of view, at least, that the target of this assault was the USS Menagerie. For, not only was the Menagerie's Ablative Armor reinforced with polyiridi- chromnium, but nearly all of her important internal energy conduits had been replaced by this miracle metal. Her shields glowed a little bit and the ship bounced like a tennis ball, but the sounds of her being ripped apart were noticeably absent. Of course, they would have been absent in any event, (that whole 'vacuum' thing) but in this event, they were absent because they weren't happening. Inside the ship, where the air would conduct sound just fine, thank you, there were the sounds of a well-trained crew responding to a threat. "Captain Thorne," Admiral Sontak, who currently sat in the Menagerie's center seat, intoned emotionlessly to the image on the ship's main viewscreen, "we have matters under control, here. Your oath requires that you serve to protect the Federation from threats both internal and external, does it not?" On board the USS Aikido, Captain Adrian Thorne was working as hard as he could just to make /any/ sound come out of his mouth. In the last few seconds he had just witnessed the unexpected arrival of the Federation's most wanted ship. He and five other ships had come to arrest the vessel, whose crew had been accused of kidnapping an Admiral and attacking a Federation member world. He had established communications with the fugitives only to find the allegedly kidnapped Admiral, sitting calmly on the Bridge of the ship. Before he could overcome his surprise at this turn of events, four of his companion ships had opened fire on the Menagerie, completely without provocation or warning. Somehow, the comm channel had remained open during the barrage and Thorne had fully expected his next look at the Menagerie's Bridge to show him a smoking mess. When it had shown, instead, a perfectly calm and orderly scene, he had been left speechless. Admiral Sontak's mention of his Starfleet Oath, brought him back to his senses, "Yes, Sir!" he answered with enthusiasm. "Very well, Captain. As you may have concluded by what is currently happening, Starfleet's Tactical Warfare, Investigations and Testing Sub-Division has come under alien control. These new aliens were the result of some strange mutation that occurred during the experiments on Trill to combine Bracktian Symbiont genetic material with that of the Trill Symbionts. In the name of Federation security, I order you to proceed to the Agratha Scientific Institute on Trill and contain any of these new mutations. Shoot to kill, if you must, but none of the creatures must be allowed off-planet. Stop any ship which you can determine to have any of these creatures on board. We are transmitting what data we have on them to you, now. Captain Thorne, I cannot stress the urgency of this mission enough. If these creatures are allowed to spread throughout the Sector, it may very well mean the end of the Federation and of life as we know it." "But, Sir," protested Thorne, "you're under attack!" "That is not an issue, Captain. Take the USS Wing Chun with you and leave the other four to us. Quickly now, time is definitely an issue." The anguish on Thorne's face was obvious as he struggled with deciding which set of orders he should follow; should he proceed with the previously issued but apparently incorrect order to destroy the Menagerie on sight, or should he follow the orders from the possibly fugitive ship and act to possibly save the Federation? Finally deciding that he could always just say that he had received new orders from a recognized Starfleet Admiral, he ordered the other, non-T.W.I.T.S. ship to join him as he set course for Trill. As Thorne was searching his conscience, M'Dral, Sperr and H'uee were trying to avoid destroying the T.W.I.T.S. ships. They knew that each was being commanded by a captain who was under the control of a Black Princess. If they could take down their opponents' shields, they could beam over and destroy the Princesses. While this would also kill their Thralls, the majority of the ships' crews were only following orders and were decent Starfleet officers. The crew of the Menagerie hoped to spare them, if at all possible. "Ensign H'uee, focus all of our weaponry on one opponent at a time. This should allow us to take advantage of our superior firepower to overwhelm them, one at a time. With each ship we can overcome, the odds against us drop considerably." M'Dral and Sperr shared a look that said - <> Down in Main Engineering, newly promoted Commander Ustrano monitored the ship's status with satisfaction. The new conduit was performing even better than expected. It was running power to the phasers at 120% of normal levels. While there was an increased risk of burning out the phaser arrays, the higher than normal output was crippling to enemy shields. With standard plasma conduit, the strain would have been too great to attempt such a tactic, but the polyiridichromnium, which the OverMind had taught them how to create, handled the higher loads with no problem. Now if they could just survive the bombardment long enough to actually /use/ the phasers... In a small, incredibly tidy house, approximately three quarters of a mile from Starfleet Headquarters, a trim, middle-aged woman was knitting. It had gone past ten o'clock and, normally, she would be safely tucked away in bed at this hour, but something was troubling her. Mrs. Rosenthal was deeply concerned. She had worked closely with Admiral Sontak since practically the inception of Project 'Open Arms' and she knew, with a certainty harder than granite, that he was safe on the Menagerie. She knew Seetamyn nearly as well as she knew Sontak. Mrs. Rosenthal had worked for dozens of Admirals, Commodores and other high-ranking Starfleet officials. She honestly believed that most of them did not deserve to wear the uniform. Sontak and Seetamyn were among the exceedingly small number that she did think deserved such an honor. No, if the two of them had decided to go off together, there must be a very good reason. Not like the so called 'president' gallivanting off last year doing who knew what. The fact that the president had disappeared for a year wasn't public knowledge, but Mrs. Rosenthal had been too intimately involved in the daily workings of Starfleet to not be privy to that kind of information. She sniffed a particularly disdainful sniff to show her disapproval with /that/ sort of behavior. In the background, more for the noise than anything else, Mrs. Rosenthal had her holovision turned on. The inconsequential show that she was watching was suddenly interrupted by a horrible squeal before a calm voice started speaking. Wait a minute! She knew that voice! "People of the Federation. I come to you this evening to report a grave danger that has infiltrated us to disrupt and destroy our peaceful way of life," Admiral Sontak's calm, measured voice rang out. "A new alien presence has made its way to Earth and taken over the leadership of most of Starfleet's Tactical Warfare, Investigations and Testing Sub-Division. This insidious monster has subverted the minds of many of the captains assigned to this Division and turned them against the Federation. I am Admiral Sontak of Project 'Open Arms'. One of my ships uncovered this menace and the enemy has moved to declare them outlaws. As you can plainly see I am not a hostage on this ship, neither has there been any damage done to the planet Bouffant. These charges are completely false. Furthermore, every time we have made an attempt to communicate with officials to clear this matter up, we have been fired upon by the ships of the Tactical Warfare, Investigations and Testing Sub-Division, without provocation. We have come now, to Earth, to confront this evil head on. We ask all loyal Federation citizens for their support and for their prayers." Mrs. Rosenthal carefully folded her knitting and placed it on the table next to her chair. In her experience, prayers generally made the person saying them feel a little better, but produced negligible concrete results. On the other hand, a few well-placed phaser shots could do wonders for a situation. Now if she could just remember where she had put that phaser rifle... Dil Mantron closed his eyes as the six Thralls fired their phaser rifles at him. Even if the Black Queen's control adversely affected their aim, there was no way that all six could miss him from the range at which they were firing from. Well, he had cheated Death several times, being transferred away from ships just before they were destroyed, so he supposed that his time was, actually, overdue. As his body prepared itself for the searing pain of high-powered phaser blasts hitting it, he found his ears assaulted instead by the sounds of exploding phaser rifles! Snapping his eyes open, he stared in amazement at the smoking bodies of the six Thralls and the smoking remains of their phaser rifles. What the...? Throwing her head up, the Black Queen laughed at the carnage before her. The loss of her Thralls seemed not to bother her at all. As she brought her laughter under control, her beautiful but evil voice rang out, triumphantly, "I knew it! I jussssst knew it!" she clapped her hands together in her dark glee. Noticing Mantron's white face and trembling limbs, she turned to Seetamyn, "He doesssssn't know!?" Seetamyn just shook his head, slightly. With this revelation, the Black Queen threw back her head and let loose an unholy laughter. The sound was as though all the demons of Hell had just seen an angel slip on a banana peel and fall on its posterior. Imagine 1000 fingernails on 1000 blackboards accompanied by 1000 pianos falling down 1000 staircases and you'll begin to get the idea. She scurried on her multiple legs over to the suspended Betazoid, "Poor, poor, little humanoid," she mocked. "All that potential and no idea of what you really are! Ssssstupid fool!" "Yeah, but at least I can pronounce the letter "S"," threw back Mantron. "Take care, worm, lessssst I put your ssssskillsssss to the tessssst!" Mantron was drenched from the Black Queen's sibilant speech. The ridiculousness of the situation began to get to him. Here he was, hanging by his wrists while being taunted by the most hideous threat that the Federation might have ever known, and that threat couldn't even speak properly. He couldn't help it. Mantron came down with a severe case of the giggles. In rage, the Black Queen backhanded the giggling Helmsman, causing his chains to twist around each other as he was spun around by the force of the slap. As the chains wound tighter and tighter, one of the links suddenly snapped and Mantron brought his arm around, swinging the dangling chain right into the Black Queen's face! With a snarling hiss, the Black Queen slid back to the pile of weapons in the center of the training room. The pile contained the assault team's phaser rifles and hand weapons that they had brought down to Earth for this very confrontation. Reaching into the stack, the Black Queen retrieved Seetamyn's sword. Although he had carried a mace during their Quest for the Sixth Sphere of Power, Commander Ustrano had convinced the Captain that a sword would be more appropriate in these circumstances. Something about the urgency with which Ustrano had urged the weapon on him had convinced the Vulcan to take it. Whirling back towards the Betazoid, the Black Queen twisted her arm back to deliver a death blow, as Mantron gamely readied the chain dangling from his arm for what he knew would be a futile attempt to block the blow... That never came! Instead, the zzzzzssst of a high-power phaser beam buzzed through the room, connecting with the Black Queen's sword hand. The beam didn't do any damage (as has been previously mentioned, Black Queens are, more or less, impervious to energy weapons), but the surprise and minor sting did cause her to loose her grip and send the sword flying through the air... right into Seetamyn's hand! The reason that Ustrano had wanted his captain to take the new weapon became apparent as Seetamyn swung the weapon at the chains holding him off the ground. The sword cleaved the steel links like a hot knife passing through butter - Ustrano had made the sword out of polyiridichromnium! While Seetamyn was freeing himself, more phaser beams were lancing through the training room, freeing Mantron and Thog, and then blasting a hole in Banjo's bubble. The Changeling flowed out of the hole, reached into his own body and withdrew two pistols. Throwing one to Mantron, he quickly headed after Admiral Windgarde, who had vacated the scene when things started to go wrong. Mantron hit the floor, rolling, and quickly flipped over to where their mystery savior was hiding, behind some equipment on the far side of the training room. When he saw who was there, his stopped in shock as his mouth dropped open. "Get down you young fool!" Mrs. Rosenthal hissed, grabbing the insensate Betazoid and pulling him down with her. "Mrs. Rosenthal? Admiral Sontak's secretary?" Mantron forced out. "I prefer the term 'Administrative Assistant', young man," she corrected. "Yes, ma'am!" Dil silently vowed to NEVER make Mrs. Rosenthal angry at him. "Here, make yourself useful," she said, tossing him a phaser rifle. "It won't help," Dil explained. "People under the control of a Black Queen are highly resistant to phaser fire. That's why we brought these!" Dil triumphantly held up his pistol. "I really don't care what you use, but you should really try to do something about those things!" Mantron peeked around the equipment that the pair were currently using as cover and saw the six remaining Thralls fast approaching. With a confident shout he rolled out of hiding and brought his pistol into firing position. With a look of mixed sadness and satisfaction, he pulled the trigger. The look turned into consternation and horror as a stream of high-speed bullets failed to emerge from the pistol's other end! Meanwhile, Banjo had pursued the fleeing Windgarde through various corridors and hallways. Windgarde actually had a bit of an advantage here, since Banjo had never visited this section of Starfleet Headquarters before. Coming around a corner, Banjo found Windgarde frantically pushing at the solid wall. It was as though he had expected to find a door there, where one obviously was absent. With a cry, he flung himself back away from the wall and turned to face the approaching Changeling. As Banjo drew his pistol and took aim at the admiral he noticed something, "Your eyes aren't yellow!" "Oh course not," panted the obviously winded Windgarde. "I fully approved of the Black Queen's plan!" "What? You wanted to subjugate the entire Federation?" "Well of course not! It would never have gotten that far, you fool! I only went along with her plan to destroy the Menagerie! I would have gotten rid of her after that was accomplished!" "You really are insane, aren't you?" Banjo asked incredulously. "With nearly all of the captains in your division under her control, not to mention who knows how many others do you really think you would have been able to kill her?" "Idiot Founder! I'm a Starfleet Admiral! I'm a Human Being! Of course I would have been able to kill her. Its you damn aliens that have been watering down Starfleet for years now. With all of you out of the way, we Humans would have been able to put things right. We would have ruled the Sector and then moved into the other Sectors and taken them over, too!" "You really are nuts!" said Banjo in disbelief. "What? Its not like that hasn't been tried before, you know," Windgarde responded. "No. I meant that you would call someone with a gun trained on you an idiot!" Banjo retorted as he pulled the trigger. His action was met with exactly the same lack of response as Mantron's had been, earlier. This sent Admiral Windgarde into a paroxysm of laughter. When he managed to regain his composure, somewhat, he managed to get out, "Perfect proof! Damn stupid alien is too dumb to even load the gun!" "Actually, that isn't the problem, although I believe I know what is. And, when you get right down to it, this will work out better, anyway. I just remembered that there is someone who wants to have a few words with you!" As Banjo finished speaking, he shot out his now elongated arms and wrapped them around Windgarde's head. Then, lifting the admiral off of the ground he bashed that head against the wall. Windgarde went limp. Banjo wrapped an arm around the crumpled form and started to drag him down the hall, back the way he had come. Ustrano had genetically coded each of the guns individually to Banjo and Mantron. If the gun that Banjo held wouldn't fire, that probably meant that he had kept Mantron's gun by mistake. Of course that meant that Dil had Banjo's gun... ... which also wouldn't fire... ... and he had six Thralls and the Queen to deal with! Banjo began moving faster back down the corridors. Mantron's problems with the Thralls actually came to a rather sudden end as Thog sprang up behind the Thralls and dispatched them with a flurry of blows from her bat'leth, their single-minded focus on Mantron making the job that much easier. She stood over the fallen Thralls with her bat'leth held vertically, off to her side and a huge grin on her face. Her delight was short-lived, however as a huge stinger suddenly burst through her chest, throwing the Klingon to the floor, across the room. The Black Queen turned from the twisted body of the Menagerie's First Officer towards her Captain. Seetamyn stood his ground, with his sword held in front of him, in both hands. Laughing at the puny spectacle in front of her, she whipped her tail around at the Vulcan who neatly parried the blow. When the Queen's flesh met the miracle-metal blade, the results were spectacular - the Queen's stinger was completely severed and flew off. Unfortunately, it landed on Seetamyn's face, spewing ichor and venom into his right eye! Struggling to maintain his composure through the intense pain, Seetamyn found himself in the grip of the furious, sinuous monster. With a wicked grin on her face, she began to squeeze the life out of the injured Vulcan. His sword dropped from his now be-numbed hand. It was a question of scale, Ustrano thought to itself, as it watched the Menagerie's shield generators start to fail. Phasers could take as much energy as you could pass to them. True, there was an upper limit, but it was quite high. Most starships rated their phaser output as a function of how much energy their plasma conduits could deliver to a phaser, which, even at 'full power' was nowhere near the phaser's top capacity. Shields, on the other hand, could only take so much energy. Their basic design just wouldn't handle any more. As components burnt out, inside the shield generators, the amount of power that could be delivered to the generators became irrelevant - the generators themselves were failing, not the energy delivery systems. Of course, with the shield generators failing, there would be plenty of energy for the phasers. The polyiridichromnium conduit could handle the additional plasma load easily. "Ustrano to H'uee," the Engineer activated his commbadge to let the Bridge crew know what he was about to do. "I'm going to supercharge the phasers. The shields are at 20% and failing, fast. Try to make all the phaser shots count." On the Bridge, H'uee switched over to the high-energy phaser layout that he and Banjo had programmed into the Weapons Console before the ship had been shot through space by the OverMind from Foreena Four. The new configuration allowed the phasers to be fired at up to 300% of 'normal' levels. Figuring that there was no reason to hold back at this point, H'uee set all the arrays to the full 300%. While it was true that the phasers could, theoretically, handle as much energy as was pumped into them, no one had ever been able to test that theory under combat conditions. <> the Klingon ensign thought as he targeted each of the four remaining T.W.I.T.S. ships with three phasers. Muttering a quick prayer to Kahless, he triggered the phasers. The results were, to say the least, spectacular. Not, necessarily, good, mind you, but spectacular nonetheless. First of all, the massively powerful, fully polychromatic phaser beams blazed out from the Prometheus class starship much like the stolen fire that the Greek Titan that the ship's class had been named for. When these beams contacted the already weakened shields of the enemy ships, it instantly overloaded the ship's defenses and plowed straight through the now helpless hulls of those ships. H'uee had selected a six-second burst and the relative motion of all the players caused the super-phasers to literally, rip the Menagerie's opponents to pieces. Plasma, atmosphere and other things that really should have stayed inside of the ships were cruelly vented into the vacuum. The battle was finished just that quickly. However, the war raged on. The Menagerie blew out three phaser arrays, which had, apparently, been damaged during the ship's flight from Bouffant. The phaser arrays failed so violently that they shunted overloaded plasma energy directly onto the ship's hull. Normally this would have resulted in massive hull damage as the super-hot plasma melted its way back inside, but the Menagerie's hull had been reinforced with polyiridichromnium. The plasma, hot as it was, couldn't melt that miracle metal. Unfortunately, the combination of super- hot plasma, frigid vacuum and adamantine metal had an unexpected result. The massive amounts of plasma energy hit the super-cooled, extra hard metal and created a super- conducting magnetic field. The Menagerie became a giant electromagnet! Now, in the interstellar vastness that comprises most space, this wouldn't have been much of a problem. In the gulf between the stars there is so little matter that, magnetized or not, a starship is unlikely to come into contact with anything, anyway. The speeds that ships travel at, however, make even this highly remote chance a deadly possibility, so ships run with deflectors active. Unfortunately, the Menagerie wasn't in interstellar space, in fact, she was smack dab in the middle of a battle with four other ships. Four other ships which had just had massive holes punched in their hulls, spewing all sorts of material into space. Material which suddenly decided that the Menagerie was the most interesting thing ever seen, and so, decided to come on over for a closer look. Ping! Pop! Tinkle! Bop! Scrape! Plunk! Thunk! Crash! Clunk! Splat! The Menagerie's sleek lines and clean design were concealed by the detritus of battle. She suddenly looked like some sort of bizarre creature that had evolved a sort of protective mimicry ability and then decided to hide out in a junkyard. Unfortunately, the chunks of debris weren't the only objects that suddenly found the Menagerie irresistible, those aforementioned ships began drifting her way, too! WHACK! SMASH! BANG! WHOMP! The junkyard disguise was now more effective than ever. Admiral Sontak, watching the chaotic debacle on the Bridge's main viewscreen, sat in stoic silence as the Menagerie was engulfed by the disabled ships. "Can you determine the locations of the Black Princesses on those ships, Lieutenant?" he asked, turning to the Bynars. Quickly accessing the various sensors at their disposal, the two ran through their entire inventory of options before responding, "Sorry, Sir, our sensors can't seem to penetrate the magnetic field surrounding the ship. External communications are out, too. That means that we can't transport the Assault Team back up from Starfleet HQ, either!" "Sir, that means we can't send over boarding parties to deal with the Princesses!" Ensign H'uee realized. "Lieutenant Sperr," Sontak turned next to the ship's Shuttlebay Chief, now acting as Helmsman with Lieutenant Mantron down on Earth, "are any of the shuttlebays sufficiently clear of debris to allow a shuttle launch?" Sperr's hands flew over his console, reconfiguring it for shuttlebay operations and then the ship shuttered as the Saurian tried to activate the shuttlebay doors. After several seconds, he turned back towards the Admiral, shaking his head, "Sir, Bays One, Two and Four are all completely blocked and their doors jammed. Bay Three's doors are accessible, but atmospheric discharge sensors show the doorway is 30% blocked. We would have to cut away a good deal of debris before we could get a shuttle out." "But there is sufficient room for personnel to exit there?" "Yes, Sir, there is plenty of room for personnel," Sperr confirmed. "Excellent. Ensign H'uee, assemble eight, two-man teams in Shuttlebay Three. Equip them with phaser rifles and bat'leths as well as tricorders programmed with Black Princess lifesigns and EVA suits. We must gain access to those ships and remove the threat of the Princesses before it is too late." H'uee turned back to his Security Console, transmitting the Admiral's orders. A spacewalk! Forced entry into enemy ships! Combat with who knew how many enemy forces and then a duel to the death against a powerful, evil adversary! Man! He missed all the fun! Ensign D'uee stood in Shuttlebay Three with fifteen other members of what Commander Banjo had dubbed his 'Alien Assault Squad'. While other ships bemoaned the inclusion of the Federation's most violent members in their crew rosters, Banjo had turned them into an asset. Very few enemies cared to stand and face a rampaging horde of Klingons and Andorians. Banjo had included several Velvattians amongst his 'Squad', not because they were violent, but because they were just so darned effective. Even the rare opponent who could find the suicidal courage to face that horde of, admittedly humanoid, assailants, would think twice about facing several multi-tentacled, huge, slug-like monsters. D'uee had thought that he wouldn't be able to include the Velvattians on this mission as there were no EVA suits for them. He was soon informed that Velvattians could function quite well for a brief time in space. They, apparently, could increase the thickness of the slime around their bodies allowing the outermost coat to freeze, providing a solid, protective armour which was proof against the cold, lack of pressure and lack of oxygen. Movement was a bit difficult as it required a Velvattian to constantly reproduce the slime- armour as it moved, but jumping across a short distance to another ship and blowing a hole in its hull required only minimal bodily movement, anyway. Not that they would need to actually blow any holes on this mission. Holes were plentiful in this patch of space, just now. Ensign L'uee came over to report that all was ready, so D'uee opened the shuttlebay doors. A forcefield automatically snapped into place which would keep atmosphere in the shuttlebay. D'uee manipulated another control to bleed off the atmosphere and then lowered the forcefield. This close to the magnetic field their EVA suit radios were useless, so D'uee motioned the first team to go with his hands. The first pair, (an Andorian and another Klingon) jumped away from the ship... and were immediately slammed back to the outer hull by the magnetic field latching onto their bat'leths and to the metal plates in the soles of their EVA suit boots. D'uee, quickly analyzing the situation, did the only thing he could do - he closed the shuttlebay doors, regenerated the bay's atmosphere and called the Bridge. "Umm, Bridge? We have a little problem..." Commander Ustrano was a bit irritated. It squished through the Jefferies tube heading for phaser array eight, one of the arrays that had overloaded and spilled plasma onto the hull, creating their current predicament. <> the annoyed Velvattian thought to itself as it hurried towards it's destination. <> Had Ustrano been consulted before the doomed boarding party escapade, it would have told everyone to just hold tight and it would have sensors, ship-to-ship communications and the debris problem resolved in thirty minutes. But, no, they had to rush it. <> Now if it could just come up with a way to tactfully explain that to Admiral Sontak... Ustrano reached it's destination and began manipulating the plasma regulating circuitry leading to the destroyed array. The Engineer finished its task quickly and contacted the other two teams who were similarly engaged at the other two burnt out arrays. Receiving confirmation that they had also completed their work, Ustrano moved back down the tube a bit and re-activated the plasma flow. The other teams would be doing the same. Consulting the engineering tricorder that it had brought along for just that reason, Ustrano watched as the magnetic field around the ship slowly decreased. Unfortunately, as the magnetic field dispersed, it took along with it the polyiridichromnium. Apparently, the electroplating method that had applied the super metal could be reversed. <> Ustrano thought, philosophically, <>. When the magnetism (and the polyiridichromnium) had finally vanished altogether, he shut off the plasma flow and headed back to Main Engineering. <> "Admiral! Emergency message coming from the USS Calibos!" M'Dral suddenly called out. "On screen," came the measured response. On the main viewscreen a panicked woman appeared. Judging by her rank insignia, she must have been the ship's first officer. Her uniform was charred in several places and blood flowed freely from a wound on her left shoulder. These seemed to be the least of her worries, however, "Menagerie! You were right! Our captain is under some sort of alien control! He and our chief engineer have barricaded themselves in Main Engineering and set our warp core to breach! Please help us!" "We are on our way. Menagerie, out." Sontak turned to H'uee, "Ensign, are your people back inside?" "Yes, Sir! We just retrieved them!" Very well. Lieutenant Sperr, maneuver us into position to extract that warp core." "Umm, how, exactly, Sir?" "Move us into position above their engineering section. Blow a hole in their hull with phasers and tractor the core out," Sontak explained. M'Dral and Sperr shared a look as they coordinated their efforts to follow the admiral's orders. "Sir, sensors indicate less than three minutes until warp core breach!" "Then let us make sure that we get it right the first time," Sontak replied. Sperr sent targeting information to H'uee's console and the Klingon let loose a carefully calculated phaser burst. Now was not the time to err on the side of too much energy. After all, it would really stink to cause a breach while you were trying to prevent one! As the Calibos' hull was peeled away, Lieutenant M'Dral readied a tractor beam. Soon, she was able to nudge the overloaded warp core out of the Calibos. Sperr quickly spun the ship around, using the centripetal motion to fling the core far away from the still clustered ships. It exploded harmlessly, if spectacularly, several kilometers away. "Lieutenant Commanders B1 & B2," Sontak said, not missing a beat, "locate the Princesses on those ships and send targeting data to Ensign H'uee. Ensign, when you have the data, target those coordinates with sufficient power to punch through the hull and kill the Princesses." This time B1 and B2, H'uee, M'Dral and Sperr shared the look, before M'Dral, being the senior officer (except for Sontak), spoke up, "Sir, verify that you are ordering us to fire on defenseless ships?" "Lieutenant, I understand and share your distaste for this action, but while the Princesses still live, we face the threat of more warp core breaches as well as attacks from those ships. Apparently, the Black Princesses believe that killing us by any means necessary is their primary concern. Rather than risk any more of my people, I am quite willing to finish this in the most expeditious manner possible. I will take full responsibility for these actions, but I urge you to act before the Princesses decide to take further advantage of our apparent squeamishness." "Aye, Sir," the five Bridge officers responded and set to work. When it came down to a question of protecting their crewmates or playing nice, they would choose their crewmates every time. Several minutes later, it was all over, well, almost... "Sir, we are picking up lifesigns from two of the ejected Princesses," M'Dral announced, now covered in a small cloud of respirator mist. It appeared that the extra air circulating devices that Ustrano and Mantron had worked on installing over the last several months were finally doing their job. A small cloud around the Ops officer was considerably better than having the whole Bridge fogbound. "The others must have been killed during the explosive decompression," Sontak mused. "Make sure you capture some images of the monsters, Lieutenant. I'm sure Starfleet Sciences will want to study them. When you have enough, target the two remaining Princesses and fire at will." "Umm, will that work, Sir? They are supposed to be mostly immune to energy weapons." "I remember, and while I am prepared to entertain the thought that a being might be immune to a hand-held energy weapon, I do not believe that that immunity can extend to ship-based phasers." "Aye, Sir," H'uee replied and targeted the closest Black Princess. Fortunately, he had a lifesign to target on, trying to hit a Black Princess with optical focusing would have been extremely difficult, due to them being, well, Black and all. Setting the phasers for a medium power burst, he triggered the phasers... and watched the Black Princess spin away from the beam. Firing again, he upped the power level, but only succeeded in pushing her away from the ship. "Fascinating," Sontak offered as Sperr nudged the ship after their target. "Lieutenant, may I use your console?" H'uee asked M'Dral. Quickly nodding her head, the Benzite made room for the Klingon. H'uee activated the tractor controls again and captured the Princess in the grasp of the main tractor beam. Quickly refocusing the beam he caused the Princess to quickly zip towards the ship. So quickly, in fact, that she smashed into the saucer hull and splattered. M'Dral turned her head away from the viewscreen, which had tracked the target to it's gruesome demise. H'uee repeated the process with the second Princess, making an even bigger mess on the saucer, which, after the debris from earlier and the new addition of Black Princess guts, was beginning to look like the windshield of a car, speeding through a swarm of locusts. A blinking light on her console brought M'Dral's attention back. It was an another message from the USS Calibos. She put it on the main viewscreen. "Menagerie, thank you for your help. Exactly what we needed was more holes in our hull. If you are through cutting us to pieces, do you think that we could get a tow back to spacedock?" "But of course," Sontak answered graciously. "We will take care of it, directly. Menagerie out." "Lieutenant M'Dral, if you would be so kind as to make some more use of your tractor beam?" "Yes, Sir!" M'Dral agreed, glad that all of this violence against other Starfleet ships seemed to be over." "Oh, just one thing, Lieutenant," Sontak added. "Yes, Sir?" M'Dral asked, surprised. "Tow the Calibos back, last, if you would." "Aye, aye, Sir!" Speeding through one of those previously mentioned interstellar gulfs were two starships. The lead vessel was an evil-looking, squat warship. It was followed by a much more graceful looking, four-nacelle'd ship. These two were on a mission to save the Federation. The lead ship, the Akira Class USS Aikido, and its partner the Cheyenne Class USS Wing Chun were on their way to the planet Trill. They had been tasked with containing the accidentally created monsters known as the Black Queens. On board the lead ship, there was, currently, an important meeting taking place between Captain Adrian Thorne, his Security Chief, Lieutenant Ivor Matalon and his Chief Science Officer, Dr. Preston Stewart and their counterparts from the USS Wing Chun, Captain Michelle Trufant, Security Chief Emmanuelle Gemser and Vulcan Science Officer Sayoch. While this meeting was taking place, Captain Thorne had left his First Officer, Commander Justine Monserrat and his Helmsman, Lieutenant Marcus Sheridan under the command of his six year old son, Alex, much to the dis- pleasure of both officers. For some unfathomable reason, the captain though that his son was some sort of prodigy, possessing super-human abilities. He was, in a way, correct - Alex possessed the ability to absolutely infuriate the rest of the crew, without even trying. Case in point: Alex was seated in his father's Captain's chair, spinning around making 'wheeeeee' noises of delight, when he happened to notice that the arm of the chair had some pretty buttons on it. So he decided to push one of them. Ooooooh! It made a pretty blue light come on! What did /this/ one do? Ooooooh! It made a little red light come on AND lit up this little white grid! Wow! This was fun! Let's see what happens when I tap on the grid! The ship shuddered as it performed a loop-de-loop at over Warp 9. Inertial dampeners burnt out throughout the vessel as the structural integrity field dropped to 20%. Alarm klaxons began to wail as Lieutenant Sheridan fought to transfer Helm control back to his station. Alex, deciding that the pretty lights were actually kinda boring, hopped off the chair and headed towards the Ready Room. Maybe he could find something in there to play with. As the doors shut behind him, Commander Monserrat's commbadge activated, "What's going on up there, Commander?" asked Captain Thorne. "Nothing, sir. Your son just decided to play with the Helm controls... again!" "Ah, that's my boy! I tell you he's going to be the next Wesley Crusher!" "Sir, if you mean that he's going to be taken away by some sort of extra- dimensional being, the crew can't have it happen soon enough!" "Well, give him time," Thorne replied, completely missing the point, "Crusher was a teenager. Alex is only six!" "Sir, I can say without any fear of contradiction that the crew is all for crushing Alex." "That's CRUSHER, Commander!" "Oh, sorry, the klaxons must be interfering with internal communications. I'll have to get back to you, sir," Monserrat closed the channel. Back in the briefing, Captain Thorne frowned slightly. He was beginning to sense some sort of friction between Alex and Commander Monserrat. Oh well, he'd just have to schedule more time for the boy to be on the Bridge. Then everyone could come to understand what a wonderful lad he really was. Yep, that was the answer! "Captain, if we could continue," Captain Michelle Trufant interrupted Thorne's musings. "Of course, Captain," he acknowledged. "We have already reviewed the data sent over by the Menagerie and, based on the actions of the Tactical Warfare, Investigations and Testing Sub-Division ships back at Earth, I have to conclude that this menace is real. Now the question is - have they managed to infiltrate the Trill Defense Fleet? "Iv zey have, ve vill have a weal vight on our hands," chimed in the Aikido's Security Chief, Ivor Matalon. Ivor came from the Siberian Protectorate portion of Earth and spoke perfect Federation Standard. For some reason, Thorne had always expected him to have a Russian accent so, Ivor had fun pretending that that was the case. At one point he had convinced the entire Command Staff to affect odd speech impediments but it had fallen apart when Doctor Stewart had gone for an uncannily accurate portrayal of Tourette's Syndrome and almost destroyed a diplomatic mission. Now only Ivor played the game. "Tvill has vour Excelsior Class ships and a vull dozen Peregwin Class Vighters. Ve Vill have to equip all ov our available wunabouts vith torpedo launchers and set up wemote controls vor the shuttles to have any chance." "Agreed," added the Wing Chun's Security Chief, Lieutenant Emmanuelle Gemser. "Alright then, we have about twelve hours before we reach Tvill, er Trill, so let's get busy!" Thorne ended the meeting and the three women from the Wing Chun beamed back to their ship to start their preparations as the crew of Aikido started theirs. Banjo was lost. As he walked along the corridors of the T.W.I.T.S. section of Starfleet Headquarters, idly bashing Admiral Windgarde's head against the floor and walls from time to time, he mused that, perhaps, he should have taken that last left, instead of the right. Of course, if he had had his tricorder with him, there wouldn't have been any problems, but, since that, along with all of the rest of his carried equipment had been confiscated when he and the rest of the Assault Team had been captured, he didn't have any way of negotiating the corridors other than trial and error. Of course he DID carry a pistol, but, since it was the wrong pistol and wouldn't fire, that wasn't particularly helpful. Suddenly his ears detected the sounds of shouting in the distance. Figuring that was a good sign, he hurried in that direction. Rounding a corner, he found himself in front of the double doors that the Team had used to gain access to the training room on their initial assault. Bursting through, he came across a horrific tableau. Mrs. Rosenthal knelt over the apparently lifeless body of Commander Thog as Dil fired ineffectually at the Black Queen with a phaser rifle. The Queen, for her part, simply ignored the phaser blasts as she thrashed about the limp body of Captain Seetamyn like a rag doll. Spying a handgun on the floor next to Dil, Banjo reasoned that must be his. Tossing Windgarde into a rack of equipment, he dove into a roll and came up with the pistol in his hands. Squeezing the trigger, he fired a three-shot burst into the body of the Queen. The Queen let out a screaming roar like a demon who had just had its favorite TV show canceled and flung Seetamyn at the crouching Changeling. Free of her burden, she scrambled up the wall and into the shadowed ceiling. Banjo flattened himself into a blob and caught Seetamyn. Reverting to his humanoid form, he lay Seetamyn's still form down next to Thog's. As Seetamyn hit the floor, he roused back to consciousness and began to sing; Aye, yii, yii, yiiii, I am the Frito Bandito. I like Frito's Corn Chips, I love them I do. I want Frito's Corn Chips, I'll get them from you. Aye, yii, yii, yiiii, Oh, I am the Frito Bandito. Give me Frito Corn chips And I'll be your friend. The Frito Bandito You must not offend. Banjo, surreptitiously knocked him on the head, and the singing stopped. He really wasn't in any mood at the moment to deal with the fragment of human awareness that had gotten accidentally lodged in the Vulcan's mind during a mind-meld with a Yynsian, years ago. Rushing over to the pile of confiscated equipment, the Security Officer grabbed several hypos of anti-venom that the Team had carried down with them, along with his scythe and Mantron's katana and a commbadge. Quickly making his way to the crew's fallen leaders, he injected the two with the anti-venom as Dil tried to contact the Menagerie. To everyone's great relief, the ship answered, "Menagerie to Assault Team, what is your status?" came the preternaturally calm voice of Admiral Sontak. "Not very good," Mantron replied. "Beam up the two human lifesigns as well Seetamyn and Thog from this position. Transport Thog and Seetamyn directly to Sickbay and have a Security detail standing by since one of the humans is Admiral Windgarde. Banjo and I still have to deal with the Black Queen. We will contact you after she has been disposed of. Mantron out!" The Betazoid and the Changeling stood aside as their companions and their captive were beamed away. Banjo handed Mantron his pistol and loaded a fresh clip into his own. Then the two went hunting. First they retrieved two tricorders from the equipment and set about determining the location of their adversary. "Next time we do something like this, remind me to bring a flashlight," Mantron quipped. "Why don't you just turn on the lights?" Banjo asked. "I never thought of that!" Mantron exclaimed, whacking himself on the forehead. He hurried back to the double doors and activated the light console. As the lights came on, he noticed a odd shadow, covering him, as well as a small puddle of extremely pungent liquid, just to his right. Thinking quickly, he threw himself to the side as he brought up his katana. The sword was jarred from his hand as it met the bullrush of the Black Queen swinging down on him. Snapping her three-fingered hand into a sharp spike, she reared back to impale the Helmsman when a fusillade of bullets slammed into her. Mantron, using the respite to best advantage, spun away and brought his own gun to bear, firing at the monster before him. He and Banjo continued firing until they had used the bullets in their weapons before quickly reloading. As they retrained their guns on the Black Queen, it became obvious that no more gunplay would be necessary - the fearsome beast was dead. Wearily calling for beamout, the two warriors returned to the Menagerie. Thorne was seated in his Captain's chair on the Bridge of the USS Aikido as the pair of ships entered the Trill system. They had been in contact with the planetary administration regarding their mission and they had been granted full cooperation by the Trill authorities. Apparently, the mess with the Menagerie had also been cleared up, because Starfleet Command had sent them further instructions emphasizing the importance of their mission. In fact, Starfleet was sending several other ships to help surround the system, but the Aikido and the Wing Chun had been ordered to proceed before the other ships could arrive. It appeared that Admiral Sontak hadn't inflated the danger of the situation, not that that would have been likely for a Vulcan, anyway. The Aikido's Engineers had worked overtime getting the ship's two runabouts ready for combat and her Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Tetsuo Ifukube, had even loaded some anti-matter onto the ship's four shuttles and linked remote controls for the ships up to the Ops panel on the Bridge. Thorne fervently hoped that all of this preparation wouldn't needed. One of the reasons that he had been glad to be posted to the Earth Defense Force was the low likelihood of having to engage in combat. Who in their right mind would attack Earth? Now it was possible that he would be facing a superior force commanded by a remorseless, purely evil alien menace! It wasn't that Thorne was a coward, exactly, but he had come up through the ranks of Starfleet Statecraft - in short he was a career diplomat. True, he wasn't a particularly successful diplomat, but that's where his training and, more importantly, his heart was. Hmmm, he wondered what the odds of talking their way out of this were? On Thorne's knee sat his young son, Alex, reading a Young Reader's selection on a PADD. Thorne loved these stories, probably moreso than Alex, especially the ones that featured Doris Duckie. Doris had been one of Thorne's very favorite characters when he had been a child and he had been trying, without much success, to get Alex interested in her for some time now. Alex, for his part, tried to follow the stories featuring Doris, but they were just so boring! No explosions! No monsters! Nothing even remotely interesting... like this loose thread on his shirt. Now THIS was cool! The Thornes' internal monologues were cut off by Ivor's faux-Russian, "Sir! zix contacts coming vrom ze back side of the planet! Vour Pewegwins and two Excelsiors!" "Friendly?" Thorne asked, tentatively. "Not likely! Zey have zeir shields up and zeir veapons hot!" "Trill Defense Command is ordering them to stand down but they're not responding!" broke in Ensign Virgil Cordwainer, the Aikido's Ops Officer. "Guess that answers that question," Commander Monserrat commented dryly. "Launch runabouts and shuttles. Coordinate with the Wing Chun. Lets take them down and take them down quick!" "Trill Defense Command reports sabotage on the rest of the Defense Fleet. We're on our own!" Ensign Cordwainer reported. "Wirgil! Target ze lead Excelsior with tvo of ze shuttles!" The two shuttles were deftly maneuvered closer to the ship in question which seemed to ignore them. When they were just outside of the Excelsior's shields, they were detonated. The resultant shockwave jostled all the combatants, but, more importantly knocked their target's shields offline. Ivor quickly disabled the ship with several well-targeted phaser blasts. With the ship's shields down, it was a simple matter to locate a Black Princess lifesign and target it with more concentrated phaser power. Starfleet had issued orders that explicitly stated that any Black Princesses or Queens be dealt with in this manner, realizing that it was easier to patch up a few holes than to rebuild a ship after a warp core breach. Sensors verified that the Princess had, in fact, been terminated and the Aikido swung around to help the Wing Chun deal with the remaining threats. Seeing that the runabouts were keeping the Peregrins occupied, the Aikido added her firepower to the assault against the other Excelsior. As the nimble Akira class ship swung around, three tiny sensor blips appeared suddenly on the screen. "Sir, three Saber class vessels leaving orbit at high warp!" called out Ensign Cordwainer. "What!? Where did they come from?" asked Thorne, jumping to his feet and inadvertently dumping Alex on his bottom, where he began to cry, piteously. "Who cares?" shouted Commander Monserrat. "Target those ships!" Lieutenant Sheridan spun the ship around, again to bring the brunt of their weapons to bear on the fleeing Sabers. Lieutenant Matalon let loose with the ship's full firepower, but having to split their attack against three opponents meant that no single target would receive the full brunt of their attack. Seeing this, Commander Monserrat quickly spoke up, "Target only one of them, you fool! We need to reduce the odds!" "Vhat odds? Zey are vleeing?" Ivor muttered as he re-targeted the phasers to fire at a single target. As he loosed the next volley, Lieutenant Sheridan called out from the Helm, "We've got a situation over here!" The tactical display was quickly transferred to the main viewscreen. What it showed didn't look any better at that size. Two of the Peregrin class fighters had broken off from the fight and were headed straight for the Aikido. "I think our suicide shuttles have given them some new ideas!" Ensign Cordwainer called out shakily. Alex, seeing that no one was paying any attention to his crying, decided that other measures were required. Standing up he swung his right leg back and targeted Commander Monserrat's shin. Swinging his leg forward, he hit her shin with a perfectly executed kick. Letting out an anguished scream, she reached down and grabbed her leg, hopping on her other leg as she reached for the evil tot. Unfortunately, she reached too far and fell over, knocking Thorne into Sheridan. The three sprawled across the Helm console hitting who knows how many buttons. The ship, trying to interpret several conflicting commands simultaneously, ended up going into a slow roll. This was the time the two attacking Peregrins blew their warp cores in an attempt to scuttle the Aikido. Since the ship was already spinning, most of the blast blew right by her. What did hit only resulted in the ship spinning faster, throwing everyone to the deck as the inertial dampeners fought to overcome the terrible spinning. Thorne was noisily sick, along with Sheridan and Cordwainer. Alex clapped his hands joyously. Slowly the ship's systems brought them back under control. The three Sabers were nowhere to be seen. The Wing Chun, although damaged, seemed about to finish off the last of the Trill Defense Fleet. Two runabouts were assisting the Cheyenne class ship. "Sir! That last ship is about to blow!" Ivor shouted, forgetting his fake accent in his haste. "Cordwainer! Open a channel to the Wing Chun!" commanded Thorne. "Trufant! Get out of there! That ship is about to blow!" yelled Thorne when the channel was opened. Trufant quickly issued orders to her Helmsman, Ensign Renee Ramirez. The young Ensign, fighting to retain her hold on consciousness from the pounding the whole Bridge crew had taken during combat, quickly activated a random evasive pattern. Unfortunately for the Wing Chun, the pattern was selected by a truly random method and the one selected actually caused the ship to spin /closer/ to the danger. Too close, it turned out as the Excelsior class ship exploded, taking the Wing Chun with it. On the Bridge of the Aikido, the shaken crew could only watch in horror as their friends were blown up. Cordwainer began to quietly weep as Thorne picked up Alex and headed back to his quarters. "Crazy women drivers," he muttered, then looked up to see his first officer staring at him. "Umm, no offense meant!" he said as he quickly scurried into the turbolift. Commander Monserrat just looked at the closed 'lift for a moment, before turning to Matalon, "He's supposed to be a diplomat, right?" "That's what I've been told," The, now accentless, Security Chief affirmed. "Nice to see the Federation's in such good hands," she said, bending down to rub the sizable bump that was forming on her shin. She sat down in her seat, suddenly realizing where a good deal of the vomit had ended up. Tapping her commbadge she placed a call to Ship's Services, "Yeoman Humphries, cleanup on the Bridge! "I'll have someone there as soon as possible. Just keep your pants on! "Humphries! That's not funny! "What? What'd I say?" "Close channel!" Monserrat grunted. What a crappy day. The Wing Chun lost. Three Black Princess ships escaped. Her uniform ruined. She vented her frustrations by voicing the thought that was on nearly everyone's mind, "What do we do now?" Mantron and Banjo made their way to Sickbay where Doctor Pish Jantoo was hard at work on Commander Thog and Captain Seetamyn. Actually, she had stabilized Seetamyn's condition, so she was only focused on Commander Thog, now. The Klingon had suffered severe thoracic damage when she had been stung by the Black Queen. Fortunately, Banjo had administered the anti-venom in time to save her life. Now it was only a matter of repairing the physical trauma. Fortunately again, Klingons were notoriously hardy creatures. It was likely that Thog would make a full recovery. Sontak joined them in Sickbay. "We are currently being supplied with a fresh load of dilithium crystals. As soon as they are installed, you will be assigned a mission that only you can perform." "You want us to hunt down any more Queens!" guessed Mantron. "Not at all. You are to proceed back to the Omega Configuration and retrieve those ships that we left adrift there." "But what about the Queens?" persisted Mantron. "I will be meeting with the heads of the Federation and Starfleet in a few hours to discuss that very question. Right now, I want the Menagerie as far away from Earth as I can get her." "I don't understand..." Mantron protested. "And I don't have time to explain," Sontak replied. "Mrs. Rosenthal and I are beaming back to Headquarters immediately. I just wanted to make sure that things were settled here before I left." With that, the Admiral left Sickbay on his way to Transporter Room One, leaving Mantron and Banjo confused in his wake. They turned around at the sound of the operating theater door opening. Jantoo emerged, stretching. "Thog's out of the woods. Now its just a matter of waiting for the tissues to fully heal. She should be up and around in a few days and back to old self in eight to ten. Right now I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed." "Shall I escort you?" Banjo asked. "I thought you'd never ask," Jantoo replied impishly. The pair walked away, leaving Mantron alone with his thoughts. Trying to clear his mind, he voiced his main question out loud, "What do we do now?"