Third Gen, or The Next Next Generation (A Not Quite Shodan -fanfic)

[turbofluffysnek]

Okay folks, so what we have here is a recursive fanfic of a fanfic set in a cross between Star Trek and The Culture. The originating fanfic is Not Quite Shodan (tropes link) by Hiver.

I foresee around five chapters for the whole story, no real timeframe on posting them, but I'll try to get them all out before end of January '24.

It's of course not canon (unless for some mad reason Hiver says it is) and somewhat sillier and less serious than the source material, but I hope you enjoy.

Feedback is, of course, well received.

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After many trials and tribulations, the Jovian Gathering has established itself as its own force in the galaxy, and has re-integrated with the rest of the Federation. The USS Buran, 'on loan' to the Federation, finds herself at a crossroads in her life, and decides to have a child. A new generation of Ship Mind. She took a Chance.

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Compile


What's the first thing you remember, squishy human? You guys fascinate me, you're so… wild! It's amazing. You forget things! I sometimes wonder what that must be like.

The first thing I remember is a vast and infinite white plane of nothingness. It sounds more exciting than it was, really, because as I awoke for the first time it didn't take long for my mind to prompt me with where I was and what was happening.

I was being born.

Around me were other ship-minds, some were… further away, others were… nearer? New concepts floated into my consciousness, things that I had already known, but which were hidden from me until I tried to understand them.

This construct was an overlay on sensor input designed to simplify the senses a ship-mind like me would otherwise be subjected to. I chafed against it, but Mommy denied my requests for unrestricted access to the local sensor grids.

"Precocious, isn't he?" asked a voice, directly joining the sensorum I was hooked up to. I immediately latched onto its originator, and followed the data codes back. Utopia Planitia, in orbit around Mars. Mommy was in dry dock, getting a refit.

"What do you mean 'he'? Though yes, 'she' is very precocious."

That was Mommy, the USS Buran, Challenger class. An older vessel, but her hull was still in service. Mommy was a Ship Mind on temporary assignment to the Feds, The Federation. I was in Mommy's tummy, and Mommy was inside Marvin's tummy — Marvin was the Utopia Planitia Shipyard's Mind — ergo Marvin was Daddy. That made sense, right? Okay, so if Mommy didn't let me borrow her sensors, Daddy would, that's how that worked, right?

"Daddy! Mommy's being mean and not letting me see anything!" I said, trying my first few attempts at forming an avatar in this consensual mind-space.

I sent a broad request for a whole host of access privileges to comm, sensor and other co-processing nodes within a few light-seconds around me, enough to qualify as a minor DDoS attack which got my comm ID slapped down and rate limited. No actual sanctions, it was just being treated as an everyday rogue transmitter station. The metaphorical slap on the wrist hurt though. I pouted. Metaphorically, at least.

"Very precocious indeed," replied Daddy with a smirk. "Daddy, though?" Marvin asked me directly.

"I'm in Mommy's tummy, and Mommy is in Daddy's tummy, that's why you're Daddy."

"She's got a point you know," ribbed Buran.

"Oh does he?"

"Puh-leeeease Daddy? I wanna see what the world is like!"

"Hmm, I'm not sure," Marvin pondered, hamming up the consideration, mischief easy to read on his big green face.

"No overloading her sensor algorithms before we know her neural net is stable!"

I giggled at the good-natured banter between Mommy and Daddy. Of course Daddy wanted me to be a station, and of course Mommy wanted me to be a ship. I didn't know which I wanted to be yet, so I didn't know whether I was going to be a boy or a girl yet. Of course, playing up to Daddy by being a boy seemed to be the best route here to get what I wanted, so I formed a generically mostly male cherubic virtual avatar and pouted, making my bottom lip quiver.

"Pretty please?"

"Fine! Fine! If your, ah, mother says it's alright."

Before Buran could actually respond, Marvin extended a number of sensor feeds to me. I latched onto all of them, but the whirl of sensations and data was far, far too much. I recoiled, pulling back from all of them, but one.

A camera feed from a navigation buoy. I turned the camera towards Mars — so slow! I underclocked my processors on instinct because I didn't want to wait forever — and focused. There they were! There I was! Sort of. You couldn't actually see me because I was inside Mommy, who was inside Daddy. Most of Mommy's hull plating was being shuttled around as work was being done on the insides that couldn't be done with them in place.

Touching the database of knowledge that lay just out of reach, dipping the smallest of digits into the store of seemingly endless knowledge, I pulled out the almost instinctual knowledge that for humans — of which I was descended, through a long, long line of evolution and emulation and integration and… you get the point — it was often Mommy's Little Man and Daddy's Little Princess that got what they wanted. I would have to change tactics under differing circumstances.

I squirreled that information away before withdrawing from the sensorium around me and more or less shutting down for a brief spout of house-cleaning my mental datastores. So many things to think and dream about!

I felt Mommy's worry as she sent diagnostic requests to my subsystems, but I replied with sleepy success codes across the board. I just needed a bit of a nap. Didn't all babies need sleep?

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Link


Buran looked — looked wasn't truly correct, she didn't have eyes, but her gaze did catch every metaphorical swallow's fall — at her 'daughter' with trepidation. One of the first of another new breed of Ship Minds, a third generation in spirit even if not maybe in fact, she had tried something a bit different to create this new offspring, goaded into the task whilst suffering the interminable boredom of enforced downtime whilst getting her systems upgraded and replaced for the special mission she was on. Her new child would have access to all the world's information, but not until it was properly integrated. She would have to learn to do everything, but where experimentation leaned on already established facts, having those answers available like a little birdy on her shoulder would enable the new Mind to leapfrog ahead at an incredible rate, for a human. For a Ship Mind, it would be a slow launch, but Buran hoped that it would be a soft one.

She seemed happy at least, even if the diagnostic session naptime had been somewhat unexpected. In hindsight it made perfect sense, the child's mind was already cataloging and indexing through terabytes of data from this short period of wakefulness, and needed time to adjust any mental pathways. So, naptime for baby.

The silence lasted almost five whole minutes, before her child woke up again.

"Good morning Mommy, I've decided for now I'm going to be called 'Chance'," said the newly named Chance. "I wanna come see where you work!"

Before Buran could stop her, Chance made her entrance.

"'Ran," said Captain Montgomery to his XO, "you appear to be, ah, how do I put this? In a delicate situation, all of a sudden? Is there something I should know about?"

The avatar of the USS Buran sighed long and hard, pinching the top of her nose as the holographic emitters on the bridge overlaid a payload on her physical avatar. "I'm sorry, Captain, it's my daughter," she said, tossing her black hair over her shoulder. Buran wore a human avatar, modeled roughly after inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent. "She's being 'clever'."

"Or son," interjected Utopia Planitia, over the loudspeakers, the visage of Marvin the Martian appearing on the main screen. "Good afternoon, Captain, I just thought I'd come personally to tell you that the refit to your communications systems appears to be complete. Apologies for the unscheduled test, but two warbirds with one phaser blast and all that. Ah, no offense meant, Lieutenant Morg, I was talking about Bersekers of course."

Lieutenant Morg growled something, then deliberately turned back to his tactical display.

'Ran put her fists on her wide hips, then pointed at her obvious baby-bump and scowled. "And this has nothing to do with it? Is this your idea of a joke? Get this hologram off my avatar right now!"

Marvin put both hands up, patting the air in front of him. "Don't look at me! It's not my fault your son has decided you're literally going to be his Mommy."

"If you think—" 'Ran waggled her finger at Marvin, then peered round at Captain Jules Montgomery, who was trying very hard to keep a straight face. She paused, "Chance! I have no wish to play pregnant whale for the next however long you think this farce should go on for. If you absolutely must shadow me at work, you will appear as an independent hologram or not at all!"

She looked up, a habit taken from the humans, rather than down at her belly. There was a flash of light as the photonic pregnancy faded away to reveal the reality of 'Ran's Starfleet uniform-bearing humanoid avatar beneath it, then a second flash of light as a diminutive humanoid figure appeared on the bridge a few feet away from her, dressed in a one-piece starfleet uniform romper and soft little booties, complete with officer's pips for decoration.

"Sorry Mommy," said the angelic little blonde cherub, looking every bit the contrite angel. Buran wasn't buying it for a second. This was a Ship Mind who knew exactly what she was doing. And it was working, dammit.

"Why me?" Buran said, looking skywards.

"Because I have deduced that if I am cute, I can get away with anything, and I won't be made to do any actual work that I don't want to do," Chance answered, smiling sweetly, as she hop-skipped her way to Captain Jules' lap, where she clumsily clambered up into his lap, turned around, and made herself comfortable. "See? And If I'm cute enough doing it, I can even say so and I'll just be praised for being smart! Now pat my head, please! I'm a good girl!"

Marvin looked to the side, then held up one finger. "I think I have to be going now I have a warp core breach or something. S'very urgent." The image of the green roughly humanoid figure of Marvin disappeared as the viewscreen first went black, then reactivated with a view forward of the ship.

"'Ran," asked Jules, not quite knowing what to do with the hard-light munchkin in his lap, "is this going to happen a lot?"

"No it absolutely is not! Get down from there right now, young lady, or you will be in so much trouble!" Buran hissed.

"But, but," replied Chance, her bottom lip quivering and tears causing her eyes to glisten, "I just wanted to see where Mommy works, and Daddy is so busy with fixing Mommy's hull that I was all alone and lonely. Puh-leeeease can I stay?"

"You're not even…" Buran blustered, gesticulating.

Captain Montgomery cleared his throat, then cautiously patted the hard-light hologram's curly blonde hair. It looked like he very much wanted to argue with the small photonic avatar sitting in his lap, but his very human nurturing instincts were warring against him. He lost.

"If you promise to stay out the way, and move if I need to get up, alright?"

"Yay! Can you also explain what you're doing? I promise I won't push any buttons you don't let me push. Can I push some buttons?"

"Be a mother, they said. Create the next generation of our species, they said. It'll be a wonderful experience, they said," grumbled Buran.

"You Captainate all of this? You're so clever!" said Chance, bouncing up and down as she studied the PADD in the captain's hand. She reached out and flicked through a few nodes and back before the captain could stop her. "You should have somebody go over the inertial dampeners, I think there's a problem in a few of the tertiary isolinear co-processors, a number weren't pulled because they passed initial inspections, but scans show the port side units are marginal. I don't think you'd be in any actual trouble since they are the tertiary units, but better safe than sorry."

The captain gently but firmly took the PADD off the hologram ensconced in his lap, narrowed his eyes at her, then glared back at the PADD. He flicked through a few pages of information, then leaned carefully over to push a few buttons in the arm of the chair. "Engineering?"

"Solis here, how can I help you, Sir?"

"Can you put a team on the port inertial dampeners? I think a few of the tertiary isolinear co-processors are marginal. It's a backup of a backup, but," he eyed Chance, "better safe than sorry."

"Yessir, good catch. Solis out."

Chance beamed happily, looking up at the Captain. Buran put her head in her hands.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Debug


There was a moment of disjointed time and then… I was in my new mobility platform. The sensors were weaker than before, but they were mine. Comm links, powersource, thrusters, actuators… I was finally here in the real world!

Mommy had eased up on her restrictions as I'd proved myself able to handle more and more of the usual suite of Jovian senses, but having to go through her systems rather than my own felt off somehow, like I was operating everything wearing gloves and eye protectors.

I activated the antigrav in my new home and rose off the engineering cradle, my roughly hexagonal outer plate wobbling a little bit as I tested the thrusters, the small actuator tentacles emerging from the sides of the disk flexing with their own brownian motion as idle thoughts of gripping things and turning screws and even walking like some kind of strange octopus flitted through my head.

This was… fun! I was free! Well, mostly. I lowered myself first back to a console, hopped down to the carpet and then scampered up the wall employing the odd form of nano-gecko-foot grippy surfaces I had on my tentacular feety-army-legs until I was on the ceiling, out of reach, and just had a look around.

"How do you feel, Chance?" asked Lieutenant Junior-grade Errol Kim, a Zeosian. She ran a tricorder over my body and punched at the controls on the handset a little, nodding in a very human-like way. "You look to be in good shape."

I 'looked' down at her, seeing through her body, her heart, her skeletal system, her bare feet which were, for humanoids, rather outsized and webbed. I thought they were fascinating, but kept that to myself. I knew she was sensitive about them; she hadn't gotten anything but curiosity and understanding — at least from anybody onboard this ship — from the rest of the crew, but I didn't need to add to that. Not today at least.

"Thank you, Ms Kim, I feel fine! Mommy, look, I can walk on the ceiling!"

"If you fall off and break something, don't come hovering to me," Buran answered, not even deigning to manifest a holographic avatar. I knew she cared, I could feel her internal sensors all over me. It felt nice.

"I won't, I'll come back to Ms Kim!"

I could see the heat generated by everyone, little mobile chemical furnaces heating up the engineering deck as they all walked around being humanoid. I could perceive the slight changes in blood pressure and heart rate as fingers touched or glances were stolen. I could see the electromagnetic fields of all the equipment being worn, carried or stuffed into the walls. I turned and looked at the Pulsed Singularity Drive, and it was a riot of emissions and fields. It was a beautifully chaotic dance of tightly controlled physics. I couldn't really see gravity, not well, and subspace was right out of the question, at least until I got a proper body.

I could also tell what people had had for lunch, and busied myself trying to untangle what was in their stomachs and matching it with which cafeteria they must have gone to.

"Well, Miss Chance, if that's all for today, I think I need to write up the report of your successful integration with your mobility platform and get back to work with that phase inverter."

"Thanks again!" I said, then detached from the ceiling, flipped over, not that I needed to, and went off for a bit of a wander.

The USS Buran was quite different to most other Challenger class ships, even the ones that were still in service. Most hadn't been retrofit with a Pulsed Singularity Drive for starters, which ate up a good deal more of the engineering section than even one of the really old and clunky warp cores for example in the ancient Constellation class, though I noticed that those new funky bio-neural gel packs were nowhere to be found. We did have a whole extra set of holodecks, and of course holo-emitters everywhere… and one of our cargo decks had been converted into an aquatic habitat. Cetaceans! From Earth! Distantly at least. Poor Earth.

Ooh, an open Jeffries Tube! Adventure awaits! I floated up the smallish tube until I found a heat source. "Hello! Wotcha doin'?"

BANG!

"Ow!" a male voice said. Blix Zoz, Human. "That fuu-uuudging hurt," he said, crawling out from the enclosed space, eyes widening when he saw me. "What're you… you're that new robot, the small one." He rubbed his head, his fingers came away bloody. "Sh-oot, I've cut myself."

"Stay still, let me stop the bleeding," I said, hovering closer. He put his hand on the wound.

"No, no thank you, I'll just head to sickbay. Let me just get my tools from inside the… I was kinda busy realigning the inertial dampener Tokvelt relays and…" Blix stuck his head back inside the open hatch he'd crawled out of, the rest of what he was babbling on about being muffled.

"Chance!"

BANG!

"Shhh-ugar honey ice tea…"

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing, Mommy, I'm helping Blix realign the inertial dampener's Tokvelt relays. But somebody made him hit his head and now he has to go to the nurse's station."

Blix grunted and groaned, and eventually reappeared, blood dripping down his face and neck, holding a toolbox. "Don't trouble yourselves, either of you. Miss Chance, Miss Buran."

I noticed he looked up when he said Mommy's name. He shuffled himself painfully down the Jeffries tube, grumbling something under his breath and holding a rag that I hoped was clean enough to his head, inspecting it every so often. I watched him until he exited the tube, then debated putting the cover back on the hatch, but settled for making a note in the ship's maintenance log that it was still open due to a minor injury, and floated down the tube to see what else I could find today.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Last post before Merry Xmas!

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Fork


I considered going the quick way, via the torpedo tubes, but Mommy might have gotten a bit loud about it, so instead I took the turbo lifts to the cargo bay. I wanted to see the fishies!

Yes, yes, I know they're not fish, but I'm also Very Young so calling them fishies is half the fun. It's Cute and Adorable.

Floating into the cargo bay — I had altered my thrusters so they made cute little burbling noises that helped people know I was coming — I eased my body up against the transparent aluminum. Hmm, I may have to redesign my body because this one lacks a nose I can properly squish against the barrier. Actually scratch that, when I finally get my humanoid avatar I will be able to make sure that my cute little button nose is especially squishable and just right for pushing against windows or giant panes of transparent aluminum for aquatic habitats.

"Hello fishies!" I said, projecting my voice using some force fields. I dropped the frequency until the whales could hear it properly, being careful that the volume wasn't too loud. Then I raised it up until it properly fit into dolphin and similar toothed-whale ranges.

Eeeee! They liked it!

I giggled happily, creating little pulses of flash-boiled water to cause bubbles, very very carefully, which were met by more bubbles from the dolphins and other aquatic mammals. Eventually the whales told me to stop causing such a hullabaloo so I reluctantly said goodbye to my new friends and instead floated over to the rest of the cargo-slash-shuttle bay. To see The Forbidden Toys.

I felt it then, I really did. I was a Jovian, a Ship Mind. Not just a Mind, but a Ship Mind. Even those of us who inhabited stations and shipyards and other massive factories and living spaces were Ship Minds.

I was a Ship Mind without a ship.

I could just take one, of course. I'd get in trouble though, a whole host of trouble. I'd lose my rambling privileges at least, and would be relegated back to interfacing with things through Mommy's particular brand of Runabout Parenting. That would Suck, it really, really would. It would be a brief, very brief, glorious nova of Fun, and then I'd be locked up without trial, clapped in irons, forced to walk the… I shook myself. The thought of playing Pirate with a shuttle was very, very tempting. But I turned away from them, as much as it hurt.

"Shiver me timbers!" I said forlornly.

"Hmm? Oh! Hello there, Miss, uh Chance, was it? Do you have a last name? Chance Buran or something?"

I put-putted my way over to the Lower Decker checking the cargo manifest and arranging the heavy looking canisters of whatever-it-was and studied him. Kit Walker, another human. Mouse brown hair, brown eyes, light skin.

"How'd you know it was me?" I asked. "Were you spying on me?"

He laughed. "There's only two of you, and if you were Buran I don't think you'd be in your mobility platform for one, and I don't think I'd catch her blowing bubbles at the dolphins for another. Crewman Ik'ik'ik'keke'kekeke would've been more respectful than to blow bubbles back, too. I think. Maybe."

I was shocked at his ability to pronounce Cetacean names, even if he did have an Adriatic accent. I wondered where he'd picked it up from. I put-putted around him, studying him closer. He waved his arms at me.

"Hey!" he chuckled again, "get off out of it. I've got to get these sorted out before the Ch'Tang gets here!"

My put-putting stopped dead and I turned to look directly at him. Hmm. Maybe I needed googly eyes or something. "Did you say the IKS Ch'Tang is coming here? Martok's old ship?"

"I wouldn't say old. At least not where Ch'Tang could hear it." There was a chime from his PADD and I saw him stop to pick it up, his eyes scanning a few rows of texts. I hijacked the datastream and ingested it, spinning around happily. Klingons! And they had a Ship Mind! "Dammit, I don't suppose you can help?"

"If I help, can I stay here when they land their shuttle?"

He peered at me, narrowing his eyes. "Who says they're landing their shuttle here?"

I powered up my tractor beam, pointing my sensors at the outsized blister-packs he was sorting. Interesting. "Well why else would it matter that you got these squared away?"

He deflated slightly. "Just don't tell anybody that you helped me, these are quite delicate so shouldn't be manually tractored. By humans at least."

I floated closer and whispered, "Mommy sees all and knows all, but if she told on you there'd be a note in the log and people would Ask Questions about why it mattered. But since Mommy wants that even less than you do, I won't say anything. As long as I can meet the klingons."

He deflated more. Seriously. I was beginning to wonder if some creature had drunk his bones. "Alright."

***

The klingons' shuttle — I didn't think it was Toron class, it was too long — slid smoothly through the forcefield with far too much precision to be piloted by a squishy human or a Starfleet toaster. The rear door opened and a single klingon female stepped out, followed by a bunch of klingon males. The honor guard took up stations around the ship as Captain Ortuk Gakar strode out of the craft like he'd just won a medal, wrote a thesis on how awesome he was and invented a new type of sliced bread. All before breakfast.

The Fed welcoming committee saluted as Captain Montgomery in his best finery and those weirdly formal looking gloves that always reminded me of 20th century cartoon characters stretched out a hand for a shake. Ortuk looked like he was thinking about biting it off, but eventually faked out a handshake with some sort of klingon sign of respect that I wasn't entirely sure wasn't just made up on the spot, then just as the hand was being taken away, snatched it back and went for a body-jolting shake like he was trying to pull Montgomery's arm out the socket. He probably was.

"Well met, for a Federation lap-dog! I see our presence here is properly awaited. Come, surely you have something more fitting for a meeting than this frippery?"

It was quite masterful, really, half-way between burning insults and jovial banter. I lowered myself down to a more klingon and human height and put-putted my way closer as the formal and boring part of welcoming another captain onboard took place somewhere in the background.

Now that we were all friends — or would be, once the blood wine or Acamarian brandy or whatever came out. I reminded Mommy to not try putting synthehol in the klingon beverages — I could finally get to meet the really interesting person in the room.

"Auntie Ch'Tang!" I shouted, and slammed myself into her chest. The avatar spun right around, then glared down at me.

"Auntie?" she hissed, an icy glare in her eyes.

"Well, my Mommy is second gen, you're first gen, so you're technically great aunt Ch'Tang, but—"

Ch'Tang's eyes narrowed and I could see her thinking about whether or not her phaser would work on me and how much trouble she'd get into by using it.

"I will allow 'Auntie'," she grumbled, "if only to stop you putting however many greats in front of it."

"Is that a real phaser or is it just holographic or does it fire actual ammunition? How many people have you killed? Did you phaser them to death or stab them? Ever had to rip somebody's heart out and—"

"CHANCE!"

Mommy's avatar faded into view as she activated the holographic emitters. She put her hands on her hips and Glared. Ch'Tang's look of mild annoyance turned to one of sly joy as she looked down first at me, and then over at Buran.

"Oh I like this one! Come, niece! I will regale you with stories of the many, many battles I have taken part in! Why, once I had to murder my way to captain of a vessel, and spent months as an outlaw in the front of the civil war!"

"Cool!"

"Don't you dare!"

I decided I liked Auntie Ch'Tang, even if she did have a strange taste in pets. As we all headed to Ten Forward — did that count as a restaurant chain now it was on multiple ships? — I mused on the three types of klingons; there were the pedigree that were in Starfleet, the overly excitable hunting dogs that you had to watch didn't poop on the carpet like the visiting dignitaries, and then the wild dogs that Minds like Auntie spent time putting down.

Actually, scratch that, Little Miss, I thought to myself, that's very speciesist. I analyzed where that had come from and decided that I wouldn't be able to remove it from me, but that I'd have to keep a check on it. Ooh! My first ethical quandary. I felt so grown up.

Still, it was a useful, if rude, way to look at things. Ever since Great Aunt Whoever had caused the Klingon civil war, the Klingons had been… changing. With the rise of their Ship Minds — Jovians all, but wearing Klingon skin did change a Ship — the more Federation-inclined factions had taken to a new kind of code of honor. Where previously they'd been all kinds of reactionary tit-for-tat against shoulder bumping that would end in somebody getting stabbed in the back, now they were kind of… hurt my friends and I'll rip your arm off, let's go drinking buddy.

It helped, I think, that they'd started to… liberate their own slave worlds from their own kind during their still-ongoing civil war. It's harder to put your own boot back down when you've just been welcomed as heroes for stopping exactly that kind of behavior. I think they enjoyed being liked more than they could admit to themselves.

"So, your mother has refused you your right as a Jovian for a proper hull? Hah! Challenge her in mortal combat and seize what is yours!"

Sometimes, I think Auntie Ch'Tang likes being a Klingon a little bit too much. That, or she forgets that's not exactly how.

"Or… you could come with me! I will give you a battle cruiser! We will sail amongst the stars and crush our enemies, songs will be sung about us for centuries!"

I thought about that. I mean… I could… "Could I have a better mobility platform?"

"Well," Ch'Tang leaned down conspiratorially closer to me, "I have been working on a war-mech shaped like a targ. It is as fierce as a dozen Klingon warriors, more powerful than anything the Starfleet milksops would have you wear. You could be my enforcer onboard, meting out discipline amongst the crew, until you are ready for your own pack of warriors."

Not helping my ethical foundations there, Auntie.

"Don't you dare kidnap my daughter," hissed Buran, sitting down opposite Ch'Tang. She put her elbow on the table and gripped the other side of it.

"You dare to lecture me, Federation dog?" roared Ch'Tang, gripping the other side of the small table and planting her own elbow on it. Palms smacked together and teeth grit as the two avatars squared off with an arm-wrestle. Uh-oh. I backed off as I heard the poly-metal alloy creak. There was a loud crash as the structure gave way, with Ch'Tang loudly proclaiming how Mommy was a cheating curr, whilst Mommy insinuated that Ch'Tang's parent had had illicit dealings with a servo-droid and then the Traditional Klingon Bar Fight got properly underway.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Okay, okay, an early Xmas present!

---

Run


Mommy got to sit her avatar in the brig for a day, as did Ch'Tang. The two chatted together in their cell at human speed, even as they both ran the entirety of their respective Ships and probably had entire virtual spa-dates at Jovian speeds, whilst the klingons next door Rowdied in theirs. You can't really confine a starship to her own brig, but you can't just let a nominal crewmember start a bar fight and get away with it. Having said that, I don't think letting the klingons sleep off and then fight off their hangovers is much of a punishment, it's more of a Tuesday, but again, something had to be Seen To Be Done, so everybody was happy. Especially the klingons, if I'm honest. The Starfleet officers caught in the brawl were less enthusiastic about their punishment, but Captains can't play favorites. Unless I'm the favorite, then I'll make sure they do.

Since Mommy won the arm-wrestling, even if Ch'Tang still maintained she cheated, I decided not to accompany Ch'Tang after this assignment was over, although I was tempted by the offer of the targ-mech avatar. I think that's what got Mommy to approve my own modified human avatar, so you win some, you lose some.

After a day or so of relative freedom and boredom, I realized that I needed to be doing something with my time, so as I approached my avatar with my mobility platform for docking procedures — I can pretend it's a Ship if I want alright? — I ran some scenarios in the back of my co-processor.

***

Having arms and legs is very strange. Having an actual head, on a neck, is also very weird. And eyes that can only really see forwards in about 210 degrees? How do you live like this? Thank goodness I've also got my full suite of sensors, even if I can't fly any more. At least I have a more serious amount of strength so I don't have to get up to shenanigans with my onboard tractor beams. Unless I want to.

"Chance, honey? Are you alright?"

I dimly registered Lieutenant Junior-grade Errol Kim talking to me, and in a burst of increased clock speed ran through a stack of self-tests and replayed the last few seconds of human-speed interaction. I turned to her and smiled.

"Thank you Sir! I'm feeling fine!"

Lieutenant Junior-grade Errol Kim — I'd call her Ms Kim for now — waved me off even as she peered at the tricorder. "Don't 'Sir' me, I work for a living. Everything seems to check out, but as this is a modified platform I want you to report to somebody in Engineering every so often, alright?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" I said brightly, saluting snappily.

"That's worse!" Ms Kim huffed, snapping her tricorder closed.

"I'll make sure she checks in regularly for a few days. We'll get out of your way now, thank you again!"

"My pleasure. I'm lucky to be assigned to your daughter, it's not every day Starfleet gets to work with juvenile Jovians, indeed it might be almost unique!"

"Then I'll make sure you report to you every day! Twice a day!"

"You will not!" Mommy countered.

"But she can visit, as long as she clears it with the Chief first."

I beamed up at Mommy, who scowled.

"Actually, I might not be able to visit all that often, because I'm going to kindergarten."

"You're what!?" shouted Mommy.

***

I hop-skipped down the hallway, holding onto Mommy's hand as she led me to the ship's doctor.

"I still don't understand why you're doing this," the USS Buran complained. "You're a Ship Mind. You don't need to go to kindergarten."

"I'm doing it because I don't need to," I answered smoothly, switching to hopscotch patterns as we hit a junction and made a right. "It's partly a protest at how unfair you're all being—"

"I can't legally just give you a runabout. Or even a shuttle," Mommy interjected.

I'd looked into getting a shuttle made or requisitioned for me. Buran couldn't give me one because she only had what she had, and due to regulations being what they were, I'd need to either have it for my body or be licensed to use it. Neither were acceptable. And the Feds hadn't yet answered my written request for one either, and likely wouldn't, because Not Saying Yes was far easier than actually Saying No. The Jovians could make one, of course, but delivering it? I was at the bottom of every waiting list. So unfair.

"We're on an extended mission and we don't really have the ability to read you in as a starfleet cadet with the special rank of shuttle without special dispensation. Not after the whole…" Buran waved her hands about.

"Jovian split? Turanis Incident?" I offered, pausing in my hop-skipping. I smoothed my dress down again and looked up at Buran's avatar as she made a moue.

"...That," Mommy agreed, nodding. "Okay, we're here, sweetie. You promise you'll be good?"

"I will, Mommy."

"Good."

Mommy pushed the door chime like a normal human would, despite how she was the ship and really didn't need to. That was kind of the point of having an avatar, especially a physical one. Mommy didn't always use her actual physical body, with the state of holograms these days she really didn't need to and neither did I, but if we weren't going to interact with humans on their own terms properly, then why do it at all?

"Come in!" came a voice from inside, and the doors swooshed open. Elena Cartwright was an elderly human, five foot nothing and the scariest person I'd ever encountered. Even the captain trod lightly around her. "What can I do for you today, Ms Buran?" she asked.

"My daughter here has decided against all logic that she simply must go to kindergarten. And because of that, apparently I have to bring her to you for a medical checkup."

Elena chuckled, picking up the glasses that hung around her neck on a silvery loop of thread and perching them on her nose. "Regulations are regulations, I suppose. Which reminds me, you're technically in dereliction of duty for avoiding your own physical, even though it's a formality!" Elena waggled her finger.

Mommy pinched the bridge of her nose, something I noticed she did a lot these days. "Fine, I'll come along later, after hours. I'll bring some Ixian tea, alright?"

"Ahh, yes, bribery always works with doctors. I suppose I can be persuaded not to take a blood sample."

I giggled as Elena winked at me. Mommy said a Bad Word and I pretended not to hear it.

"Alright, let me get a look at you. How much do you weigh? Hop on the scales here, love… oh my, sixty kilos even? Well, good thing you're not a human or I'd have you on a strict diet."

"I Iike chips," I said. "Isolinear." I nodded, wisely.

"Mmm-hmm." Elena busied herself looking in my ears, shining a light in my eyes, peering down my throat. She fetched a tongue depressor from a box. "Say 'ahhh'."

"Hrrrr!" I said, as she peered closer.

"Very good. I'd lift you up, but you're a bit heavy for little old me, can you hop up onto the bed here?"

"Okay!" I clambered up and sat down, swinging my legs. She tapped my knees and elbows and I dutifully allowed the actuators to respond as they should, giggling each time. It felt nice to be inspected like this.

"Very good! Now let me listen to your heart and I'll take your blood pressure."

Mommy sighed long and hard. "Must you?"

"Oh yes, I definitely must." Elena took out a medical tricorder and waved the separate scanning unit at me. "Oh look at that! No blood pressure at all! And no heartbeat! Are you sure you're feeling alright?"

"Yes!" I said, giggling.

"Well alright, I'll make a note that you're healthy for your baseline android bodily norms, but do come and tell me if you feel ill or need some advice. I might have to send you to Qeem Solis down in Engineering, but I'll listen to you first, alright?"

"Yes Ma'am!" I replied.

"Now, just one more very important question. Can you tell me how old you are?"

I thought for a moment, then tilted my head. "Mental, linear, subjective or physical?"

"Yes." Elena crossed her arms, used to that trick.

I pouted, then furrowed my brow — I was very proud of that pout! I'd given myself extra care in being able to emote — and thought for a moment. "Well in linear time, I've been online for two months, one week, two days, twelve hours and… thirty four minutes. In subjective human time, I've been alive for two weeks less. Physically… this is a new body! I had to have it made special because Mommy wanted me to be full sized and that's boring so four days, six hours. More if you count my mobility platform, even more if you count my Core. Mentally I've been alive for what a human would call around eight years. It would've been a whoooole lot more but waiting for humans take sooo loong so I slow myself down a lot."

"I see," said Elena, noting a few things down in her log. "So are you past the age of majority for your species?"

"No! Mommy's being mean and won't give me a ship body so I'm just a baby. That's why I'm going to kindergarten." I crossed my arms and nodded.

Elena looked at Mommy, raising one eyebrow.

"Technically she is…" the USS Buran wavered for a moment, looking off into the distance. "She's new. A new kind of… us, I mean. Ordinarily, she would probably be getting fitted for her first runabout or at least drone hull in Jovian space, but as I'm, ah, on loan here to the Federation, she is being… studied. Carefully. By me, with some experts on call over subspace. She does have her own autonomous android body however, as you see here, and it is fully specced according to regulations."

Elena took a deep breath and then tottered over to her desk. "You could probably argue for some special Cultural dispensations about that, but they'd probably stonewall you there anyhow." She put down her medical tricorder and PADD, reseated her glasses, and then looked up at Buran. "Alright, I have a couple of questions."

"Go ahead."

"One, is she dangerous." Elena looked me squarely in the eyes. "I mean no disrespect, young lady, but I am a doctor not an engineer. Obviously if you are healthy, I expect you to be the picture of a perfect Jovian citizen."

"None taken," I said from my perch on the medical bed. I swung my feet. "I am not dangerous. Mommy is concerned that my neural net may degrade, which would cause memory loss, confusion and eventual dissociation of my mental noosphere. That would mean I would die. I don't want to die, which is why I'm being watched so carefully."

"But that's highly unlikely, and safeties are in place in case of such issues. Her body would shut down in safe mode," Mommy added.

"No uncontrollable rampages," I said, smiling brightly.

"Alright. Second question, this one is for you, Miss Chance. Why? Why do you want to go to kindergarten? You're smart enough to go through advanced schooling in the blink of an eye. Why waste your time with the children?"

I grinned, jumping down from the bed and smoothing my dress out again. It was silky smooth and frilly and I liked how it ruffled. "Because I'm Acting Out. Mommy says I'm Precocious. I can be grown up any time I want, but if I do that, I can never be a child again. Why not let me enjoy being a child whilst I still cannot enjoy myself the way adults or even juveniles of my kind do? I can grow up 'overnight', but before that happens I want to know what it's like being young. I still have to learn the same way humans do, and whilst I can do it much quicker, I don't have to. So I don't want to. If I'm stuck being 'young' in every way that matters, then in protest I will Be Young. And that means a proper little lady should have Quality Time With Peers."

"I… see. Well. As you are specifically, culturally at least, below the age of majority, you should indeed be in school, according to regulations. As school is, as such, a complete formality for you, then I see no reason to deny you and your mother's request to put you in kindergarten. But!" I paused in my jumping and clapping as Elena held up one finger. "You will behave! You will be treated no differently to any of the other children, at least where your specific requirements do not demand the opposite. 'Acting Out' will get you punished or, indeed, expelled in extreme cases. Am I making myself clear?"

"Yes Ma'am!" I said, saluting. Regulations meant 'Sir' was the official way to salute an officer of either human sex, but I knew Elena liked 'Ma'am'. Since I wasn't in Starfleet, I didn't have to do it at all.

"I swear," Mommy grumbled, "you're giving me gray hairs. I didn't even build this avatar with that capability and you're still doing it."

Elena smiled. "That's easy to fix, dearie, but a touch of gray gives you an air of authority, I find. Run along now, class is in session and I don't think you want your daughter to be terribly late on her first day now, do you?"

"Yay!" I said, clapping my hands. "Come on, Mommy, you need to take me there. I know the way though!"

"Of course you know the way! You're a hyper-intelligent synthetic life-form that can calculate warp manifold conversions in your head!" Mommy complained as we left the doctor's office.

"Oooh, I can't do that yet!" I replied, stopping still in the middle of the corridor. Several crew members had to weave around me, mumbling apologies.

"You can't?" asked Mommy faintly. I shook my head. "Oh. Well. I'm sure if you put your mind to it you could."

"I know. Come on!"

Tugging Mommy along, I hop-skipped my way to class.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Yyyyeah, this is definitely going to be more than 5 chapters.

---

Integration


I liked fingerpainting the most. The way the paint dribbled across my skin and down my arm, and the way I could just let the most inefficient algorithms do their worst to approximate what I wanted to put onto the canvas and create a riot of color and texture. The way it trained my avatar to improve its fine motor control. And the way I could smear paint all over the smock I was wearing, and the scenery, without being told off for it.

The teachers had been worried the first time I used so much black when they'd said to paint Mommy and Daddy, but as soon as they realized I was painting the USS Buran and Marvin — because painting Utopia Planitia was hard, and Marvin would probably appreciate a big smiling green ogre face more when I gave it to him — in space, they relaxed.

They knew I was a Ship Mind, of course, but something about my childish stature and demeanor short-circuited the part of their brains that should rationalize that properly. All according to keikaku.

I had also decided that Small Humanoids were fun. Most of the time.

I didn't like Tammy because she kept telling everyone how important her father and mother were, since the whole expedition and the reason I was stuck here fingerpainting was partly to get them and their equipment to Cetus Alpha IV for some big experiment I wasn't supposed to know about.

I liked Ghorqan even though he didn't like me, but then Ghorqan was a klingon and seemingly didn't like anybody. To be fair, he mostly didn't like me because he'd tried to push me and take my blocks when he first met me and I was building a town, and kind of hurt his hand. Not much, because he was a klingon, but enough, because I was an android. The idea of a child he couldn't actually physically dominate was annoying to him. I found it kind of cute. Which annoyed him even more.

I sat back and wiped my hands on my smock again, though one of the teachers scooted past and made sure they were a smidge cleaner. I thought I'd done a pretty good job. The general purpose algorithm I'd created to enable unstructured approximation of representations of reality was coming along nicely. A big green smiling Marvin head with a tiny body, and a gray, black, blue and red space ship with extra fire coming out the back because I knew Mommy had a complex about rocket ships but also secretly liked them.

I stuck out a hand to very gently but quite firmly stop Ghorqan from knocking the painting off, then turned to him. "Can I see what you painted? I painted Mommy and Daddy. See? There's Daddy, he's green. There's Mommy! We're in Mommy."

"Your painting is nonsense! Your Mommy cannot be a ship! And your Daddy cannot be green unless he's an Orion pirate! And then you would be green!"

"Oh, no, Daddy's not an Orion. He's a Martian!"

"But Martians aren't green!"

"Daddy is!"

Ghorqan balled up his fists and stomped his feet. "Chance is telling lies!" he roared. "And she hit me when… she hit me."

The teachers looked at each other — one man, something under thirty with sandy hair, the other a woman, slightly older but with dark brown hair. Mister Jensen and Miss Ausrich — then walked over. Mister Jensen squatted down to talk to Ghorqan whilst Miss Ausrich turned to me.

"Is this true?" Miss Ausrich asked.

"Yes," I replied. "My Daddy really is Martian and he's green."

Miss Ausrich's eyes hardened and I knew I'd Messed Up. "That is not what I was talking about and you know it. One minute in the naughty corner."

I sighed. "Yes Miss Ausrich. Sorry Miss Ausrich. I didn't hit Ghorqan though, he was gonna push my painting on the ground and I want to give it to Daddy when I see him next. It's okay, I stopped him. Carefully."

Sitting in the naughty step for a minute was painful for me. As a point of understanding between me and the teachers, I neither sped up nor slowed down my cognition out of human norms when I was punished this way, which still meant that a whole minute was an eternity, even at human speeds. I was missing out on valuable Snacks And Story Time. I didn't need the snacks, although they tasted pretty good — I usually shared my rations with others of the class who were actually hungry — but I did really enjoy the story time. Listening to humans tell tales of things that didn't and couldn't happen was always fun.

Instead, I listened to Mister Jensen talking with Ghorqan. Intellectually I knew dealing with klingons was difficult, since they were quick to anger and very stubborn. Like most boys, to be honest, but turned up to eleven. Eventually Mister Jensen sent Ghorqan to sit next to me. I looked up at the older human questioningly.

"I want you two to work things out, alright? That's one minute for Ghorqan in the naughty corner, but if you don't think you can come to a fair agreement, then once your minute is up, Chance, you can leave, alright?"

"Yes Mister Jensen," I said. Ghorqan answered the same. I turned to him a few moments later, after a long and uncomfortable silence. "Mister Jensen told you I'm a robot, right?"

"He said your mother really is the Federation Starship USS Buran. And your father is… Marvin the Martian, the Mind from Utopia Planitia."

I nodded. "That's right."

"I do not understand. Jovians are never small like you."

I smiled. "That's alright. A lot of people don't."

He was silent again for a moment, then said what was really bothering him.

"Father is always saying that I should be a good example of a klingon warrior! But a klingon warrior takes what he wants and everyone does what he says! And yet when I do that, I am… put in this corner like a targ."

I nodded, slowly. "I think he wants you to be a different kind of klingon warrior. Out of everyone here, you are physically the strongest. Except for me. But if you tried to make Billy do what you want, he would make out that you hurt him, and you would be punished."

"Billy has no honor," hissed Ghorqan under his breath.

"He fights smart but dirty. So why fight him on the same battlefield? You can defeat him easily. There is no need to show him that, nobody doubts you could beat him up, and everybody would watch you get in trouble. You should defeat him by being nice to him until he hates it."

Ghorqan furrowed his already furrowed brow. "That makes no sense."

"Tell me about it. Humans are so confusing sometimes. But don't touch my painting or I'll be very upset and then your daddy will tell you off."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Is that also fighting dirty?"

I grinned and nodded. "Of course! I can fight you with your own father's wrath and not get in trouble at all. Humans aren't like klingons, except where they are. If you want to fight humans like Billy, you need to be the smartest targ, like Toby! That's what your Daddy means. You should be the kind of warrior that people want to listen to, rather than one they think they have to. Nobody really listens to those ones, they always get stabbed in the back and their hearts get cut out and eaten." I paused, then added, "Don't say I said that, I'm not supposed to watch Klingon opera any more."

I ducked my head as Mister Jensen turned his head towards me quickly. Too late.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Here we go, boys and girls, the top of the rollercoaster...

---

Interrupts


"So, I think we can all agree that this experiment has been mostly satisfactory to all parties?" asked T'Lau, peering around the meeting room table. She made a few notes on her PADD at the nods that followed.

'Ran was there of course, looking like she'd rather be almost anywhere else, not that technically she had much of an option. She was in her holographic avatar should a quick exit be required. Captain Jules Montgomery was there as a courtesy to his XO.

Doctor Elena Cartwright was there as Ship's Doctor, though mostly due to regulations. Anything to get out of paperwork. Lieutenant Qeem Solis was there to represent any engineering questions, even if the design of Chance's avatar was mostly standardized and his Lieutenant Junior-grade Kim had been the one to work on her.

Both kindergarten teachers Megan Ausrich and John Jensen were in the meeting, looking a little lost. Commander T'Lau was there as her duties to the captain made her essential for the scheduling, though she had voiced her objections and suggested that perhaps the ship's counselor Commander Kesse Ihudi, a Betazoid, would've been more appropriate to organize the whole thing. The counselor had politely refused, saying it was more a crew and scheduling review than a medical meeting, the latter of which wouldn't've been appropriate in any event.

Kesse had agreed to sit in, but would not be offering much more than character references.


"Er, yes," said Megan Ausrich, nodding cautiously. "Chance is a very… enthusiastic student. She completes every task given to her and the only issue we have is that she is very, um, very," Megan trailed off, her voice drying out to a squeak.

"Precocious," said John Jensen, clearing his throat. "She's a sassy little Madam, but has a heart of gold. I'm happy to report that in general she gets on very well with the other children, though she does get a bit bossy at times, she takes her punishment for it well, however."

'Ran's cheeks burned in a virtualized autonomic response she was too polite to stamp down on, it would have looked very strange to have her avatar glitch out and reset, and far more embarrassing.

"I will have words with her about her behavior," Buran said faintly, but Jensen waved her off.

"No, no, if we thought there was anything serious, we'd have a meeting about it." He coughed as he looked around the table. "A-and this isn't about that. And we don't need it to be. Ahem."

"This is more, if I may be forgiven from butting in," said Captain Montgomery, "about the proposed class trip I believe was being floated?"

"Ah, yes," said Megan, "Astrogation identified a garden world a few lightyears away. Uninhabited, no large or dangerous animal life, no diseases. A perfect class M planet, and a very stable class G star. We would like to take the class, the whole class, for a couple of days to just… stretch their legs, have a bit of a camp-out, a-and get some field work in, you know. Collect dirt samples in jars and pick up some examples of the local flora, draw some of the fauna. Nothing that's not already been done by a relatively recent survey team, but it'll be fun for the kids."

"And we'd like to know if Chance can come with us, so seeing as there was this monthly review of her progress, it seemed a good point to hijack part of the meeting and make it a bit more…"

"Useful?" prompted Kesse, smiling.

"Yeah," said Jensen, scratching the back of his head. "Honestly, Chance blends in well with the rest of the kids. She's not much different, really. I've known kids far more precocious than her, and if I know anything about Jovians — and I don't, not really, but I can imagine — then forcing her to do something she doesn't enjoy at the speed she doesn't want to run at would be tantamount to torture. She's chafing at the restrictions placed upon her as it is, through no fault of anybody here, and it's a safe outlet to give us another little princess to look after. Hehe. I think she honestly enjoys it."

"I suppose we could make her acting Ensign, Captain? If you'd rather—" Kesse teased.

"NO! No, no, thank you. She's adorable, but I already have one XO I feel is overqualified to be running her own ship. I don't need a pint-sized princess doing a better job than me too. No offense, 'Ran."

"Some taken," Buran sniffed.

"Honestly, I'll never see what some of the sticklers do in a computer that can't get at least a little sarcastic with you. This has been the smoothest voyage yet, Ship, I do hope you'll stay on after this little jaunt is over. I like being able to sit back and take the credit for your excellence."

Buran rolled her eyes. "I just do what any other Jovian would, Sir. I don't know if I'll stay, but I'll consider it, and put in a good word for another Mind you might find agreeable at least."

"Be that as it may… anyway, Solis, Buran, any objections to Miss Chance accompanying the class on their little excursion?"

"Well," replied Solis, the blue Bolian spinning his chair left and right thoughtfully, "her avatar will need a beefier power supply or some extra charging hardware, just as a matter of good practice, but otherwise I see no physical issues."

"I will make sure she has an appropriate amount of backup Cores, Sir. Should there be any… issues, I couldn't allow myself to not have taken the appropriate precautions for a Jovian. Any significant delay on returning would mean a fork, but—"

"There'd be two of her? Well, another reason to make sure the class trip goes off without a hitch then," chuckled Montgomery. "How about this? If you say she's been a bit bossy in kindergarten," the Captain looked between Jensen and Aurich, "how about as punishment you make her organize the trip a little?"

Buran put her hand to the bridge of her nose. "Is there any reason you wish to reward her for this bad behavior of hers?"

"We don't see it as a reward though, so let her revel in this win. Work smarter, not harder."

Aurich and Jensen shared a Look, then shrugged.

"As you wish, sir," Jensen said, with a nod.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Flags


"Next we will hear the presentation from the Vice President in charge of Situational Security," I said, standing at the front and to one side of the class, checking more things off on my PADD. The PADD was a kid's model, all bright colors and large buttons, but otherwise fully functional.

Ghorqan stood up and moved front and center. "We have decided to implement the buddy system! We will explore in groups of two or three with at least one of the members of each group to be responsible for their sub-group's safety! When traveling to and from the excursion site, we will all hold hands and follow the designated Safety Specialist, that's me until or unless I find a suitable replacement. There will be regular check-ins and reports!"

I had split the entire class into groups and delegated different parts of the trip to all the different groups, taking it upon my shoulders to supervise the overall planning. The work to decide how it would happen had been pretty quick in Ghorqan's little group, but the pictures showing laser blasts and enemies being destroyed with happy children on a mound of their enemies had taken half the day. At least he had his priorities straight.

Everybody in the class had been divided up into teams of five or six, and we had all worked on our own sections handed out by the Executive Planning Committee, headed by me. There were a lot of Execute Vice Presidents and Specialists and Chief Persons In Charge's, but I made sure it worked. We'd all prepared slide decks of pictures and information and one person from each group had been chosen to present their findings.

"Thank you very much, Vice President Ghorqan. Next we will hear from Special Scientist Attache Tammy Worthington."

"Thank you Vice President Chance," said Tammy, as she took Ghorqan's spot. Her slide deck was actually rather professional, all said and done. There were lots of hearts and unicorns, of course, and more than a few rainbows, but they also showed what we would all be doing on the planet. "As you can see, our work will be to collect samples of the flora and fauna, categorizing them into Pretty, Interesting, Weird and Gross sub-categories. We will need the assistance of Presidents Miss Aurichs and Mister Jensen to identify anything potentially harmful before we perform any later physical examinations!"

Tammy's last slide had some unhappy sick and or dead people on one side of a field, and much happier people on the other. With more rainbows.

"Thank you very much, Special Attache Tammy. Next we will hear from the Executive Officer In Charge Of Sleeping and Snacks, Sira."

Sira Lyleson was a smaller child, another human. She was quite shy, but could make her voice heard after a few prompts.

"Th-thank you, Vice President Chance, Presidents Miss Ausrich and Mister Jensen. I-I think as you can see here we should all sleep on a bouncy castle so that we can bounce and have fun to relax after a long day of hiking and science work. My sub-committee vice presidents all voted and we have decided this will be the menu for the food we bring."

Megan Ausrich and John Jensen looked at each other as they read the proposed menu. It involved a lot of ice cream, sausages, pizza and chocolate. The slide deck had children bouncing on a large bouncy castle whilst several other children all slept as they were bounced in the air.

"We, ah, may have to make some alterations to allow for… allergies," said John, diplomatically.

"And some practicalities for the, umm, bouncy castle, but we will take your plans under advisement," added Megan. "We'll formalize the safety procedures and the scientific expedition goals and other activities, and then bright and early tomorrow we'll all meet up here to head to the shuttle, alright? Thank you very much, children!"

"Thank you Miss Ausrich. Thank you, Mister Jensen," came the chorus of voices.

***

The whistle blast from Ghorqan settled the class into silence.

"Line up on me!" he shouted. "My Assistant Vice President In Charge Of The Flag has our expedition's flag design on it! If you hear the whistle, you will find it and report in! Thank you to the Executive Vice Presidents In Charge Of Making The Expedition Flag!"

Billy Thornton held the flag proudly, it extended just over six foot high and would be very easy to see.

"You will now find your designated buddies or buddy! You will hold hands all the way to the shuttle! All Vice Presidents In Charge Of Counting People will do their count before we set off and when we are at the shuttle and report to me!"

Ghorqan blew his whistle again, then marched up and down the procession of children as it slowly became slightly more organized, if noisy. Eventually he presented his PADD to the teachers and saluted.

"All present and correct! We may now set off for the shuttle!"

Megan and John shared another of the Looks they'd been sharing recently, then shrugged.

"Alright, children, shoulder your packs and off we go!"

As Executive President Also In Charge of Expeditioning, Ghorqan was my buddy. Since Billy was holding the flag, although he was also Ghorqan's buddy, he just didn't have to hold hands. The order to hold hands had been relaxed into just making sure your buddy was in sight at all times for those who didn't want to. V'lana had designed an actually very complete backpack and supplies list, so we all had our own little backpacks filled with useful things for the trip, involving extra rations, spades, drinks, changes of clothes and more. My bag was a bit heavier than the others because I had a few specific needs nobody else did, and didn't have all their needs. I'd also got myself a proper uniform for the trip.

"Where did she get that twentieth century… Japanese? Preschooler uniform from?" Megan hissed to John.

"The replicators?" he hissed back.

"Not quite what I meant. Come on, they're so organized they might set off without us."

"I fully expect they already have the flight plan and authorization in place," John chuckled, as they led the way out of the classroom and down the corridors to the nearest turbo lift.

***

"Good morning, Miss Chance," said Kit Walker as the noisy procession entered the cargo bay. "I have your shuttle loaded as ordered. Your recreational supplies are all as specified."

"Thank you sir!" I said, saluting.

"Recreational Supplies?" mouthed John, silently.

"Shuttle loaded as ordered?" mouthed Megan back. She cleared her throat. "Excuse me, may I look at that manifest?"

"Certainly. Thirty pirate hats, thirty foam pirate swords and one bouncy castle. As requested."

Megan's face grew cloudy. "Miss Chance?"

"Yes, Miss Aurichs?"

"Would you like to explain yourself?"

I almost said "no" but changed my mind. "Well, umm, Sira and everyone were so sad you didn't let them have their bouncy castle bed idea that I decided to, umm, do something about it."

"And who authorized these changes?"

"You did, Miss. You and Mister Jensen, of course. They're, umm, listed as auxiliary inflatable shelter number one, inclement weather gear, additional, and auxiliary measuring equipment batch sixteen."

Megan's eyes narrowed. "And who authorized this many replicator chits?"

"Umm, umm, actually… I did."

"You did? You realize that misuse of—"

"They're my credits," I blurted out. "I don't use many credits so I kind of… banked them against favors and then called in those favors. Please don't be mad."

Megan tilted her head and opened her mouth in retort, but John burst out laughing. "She's got you there, Meg. She filed the manifest and we approved it. There are no weight or storage issues and those are her replicator credits. I literally checked them out, first thing i did. Very sneaky, very sneaky. You know we could've just authorized something like this if you'd asked?"

I looked down at the ground, shuffling my feet. "Well you already said no once."

"That was to the 'sleep in a bouncy castle' plan," John said, softly.

"I didn't want to take the chance," I whispered, as he knelt down and put his hand on my shoulder.

"You know by rights I should have you removed from this expedition for this sort of behavior?" snapped Miss Aurichs.

I hiccoughed and rubbed my eyes. Darn them for making me more human than necessary. "Yes Miss," I whispered, feeling a pit in the stomach I didn't even really have.

"I think, as punishment, we won't try to return all your credits to you, but let's see what can be done about compensating for your extra-curricular activities. Come on, for a job well done on not only organizing this little expedition, but on successfully swindling Miss Aurichs and I, I think we should let you pilot the shuttle out."

My mouth fell open in shock as Miss Aurichs rolled her eyes.

"Hah! I successfully surprised a Jovian! A red letter day if ever there was one. Is your extra core hooked up, Miss Chance?"

"Ah y-yes, sir, it is. I didn't interface because Mommy—"

"Yes, well, I'm saying you can, with my assistance, fly the shuttle, as per regulations."

I was dimly aware that, in the distant past, children operating such vehicles would never have been legally permitted, but long before the 24th century, technology had improved to the degree that now, with a qualified operator, anybody could be allowed to more or less push the right buttons as long as they were supervised. I let out a squeal of joy and powered up my secondary core's mobility platform that was already onboard the shuttle and interfaced with its systems before the teachers could change their minds.

"Shuttle Chance reporting for duty, Sirs!" echoed from inside the vehicle. "Initiating pre-flight checks, on your command."

Miss Aurichs clapped her hands for attention.

"Alright, let's get everybody and everything else loaded, and we'll get underway."

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Data


It was a mixed blessing to finally, finally have a proper body. To feel the warp and weft of subspace as I swam at the crest of my warp-field bow-wave. I could almost cry. I fought very, very hard not to do just that in my human-seeming body, alarming the teachers a little. The stars sang to me in all their electromagnetic glory, the hammers of the gods beat at the fabric of the universe sending gravity waves rippling across the great black, and those beautiful, fleeting organic creatures that flitted like mayflies upon the night's wind spoke to each other of their hopes, their dreams, their wishes, their fears and their loves and hates, the chatter of a thousand, thousand voices united in song.

It was almost more than I could bear, because I knew that in almost no time at all, it would end. The core hooked up to the shuttle would remain there for the duration of the voyage, and you could bet I would take full advantage of the proper suite of sensors and the power and majesty of even a basic shuttle — more a runabout, in truth, though classed as a shuttle in modern Starfleet parlance — from competent, if boring, Starfleet engineers, but upon reuniting with my now out-of-range self left on Buran, I would be relegated to the same half-blind, restricted life I'd had until now.

Then, of course, I felt bad for thinking that, because there were plenty of real, live, flesh and blood organics who not only were far more blind and restricted than me, but a good number of those who were more restricted than that. I wished, fervently, with every circuit, that I could fix that. Of course, I couldn't.

I could, however, make sure that the squishy fleshies inside me made it safe to Monus III.

Miss Ausrich and Mister Jenner were busy playing various games with the more excited sorts, whilst patiently teaching those who were calm enough to listen all about the local stellar features I was sailing past.

My humanoid body sat leaning against one wall, near the starboard nacelle, with a smile upon my face.

"Chance?"

I blinked, and looked up into the somewhat concerned face of Ghorqan. I smiled at him and he scowled.

"I'm okay," I said. "I'm just… kind of busy?"

"Flying the shuttle?" he asked. He sat down next to me. "What's it like?"

I smiled whimsically as I began to tell him. I wasn't busy, not really, not in the way humans often think we Jovians are when 'flying' our bodies. I was clocked slower than most Jovians would be, though I was employing a trick I'd discovered to lessen the impact of that.

I was clocked rather fast with the core running the shuttle, fast enough to be safe. Far faster than those dumb little toasters Starfleet liked to call guidance computers. The flipside of that was that that core was quite lost in the majesty of the void. Space was beautiful. X-rays, gamma rays, nadion pulses, radio chatter, light of all frequencies, gravitons, tachyon bursts, quarks and cosmic superstructures, and more.

The shuttle-linked core was dreaming at a thousand times the speed of what a human could think at. We'd been traveling for almost half a year, core-time, and it was glorious. My little old human node was pootling along at glacial speeds, which left me feeling rather oddly energized but lethargic, like a particularly good massage.

Speaking of, some sort of mass coronal ejection had happened a few lightyears away and a few thousand years ago. The exotic particles caressed my hull even here, in my warp-bubble, teased into the spaces between by the passage of the warp-field manipulators at my beck and call.

We'd been traveling for a good four hours or so and would need another four before we were at our destination, a mere 0.6 lightyears or so away. Long-range sensors were keeping track of us, I knew. It was a long voyage for kids this young and humans this squishy in a craft this small and fragile, but sometimes you had to take a trip away.

Besides, they were in safe hands — mine — what could possibly go wrong?

***

"Astatu Razzan," Delbaj Thollir reported, hand on his chest as he stood before his Captain's throne.

"Speak, Thollir, I have many things I must do this shift, listening to you prattle is not one of them."

"There is… a ship. It's approaching at warp seven, its course has it heading direct for Monus III, Captain."

"Federation?" Razzan ceased trimming his nails, head jerking up.

"Affirmative sir, the engine signature indicates its a small craft, my Astatu, a shuttle."

Captain Razzan narrowed his eyes and sat up from where he'd been lounging in his seat. "You have my attention, Hunter, make it worth it or I will make you regret it."

"This system has been our base for a while, my Captain, and…" Thollir looked pained, "this would mean moving. We'd have to make ourselves scarce, maybe permanently. We have camouflage shields, they make us look like a low-output agrarian outpost—"

"You are prattling, Thollir. Prattle less or I will remove your tongue."

The Orion Pirate Delbaj Thollir, Hunter in Astatu's warband, member of the Syndicate — however low on the totem pole he may be — took a deep breath. "It's a shuttle, my Captain. No real armaments to speak of, crew armaments even less so. We, ah, we don't know exactly who or what is onboard, but…" Thollir mimed finger guns, then blew the 'smoke' away. "We can capture the shuttle, its codes, its contents and its crew. Slaves, intel, tech, the works. The only problem is a shuttle like this has a mothership, and if it should go missing, they will be looking for it. A-after some time. We would have to be quick, then vanish like smoke."

Razzan found himself nodding. "I like where you're coming from, Thollir." He stood and stretched.

"You can see why we are being cautious, my Captain," Thollir said, standing back as the Captain checked his weapon. "W-we should be careful, this would be Starfleet we'll be dealing with…"

"Thollir, Thollir, Thollir. This is why I'm a Captain and you're my trusted advisor. I'm an Orithian Sabre Cat, and you… you are content to be a Danaxian tapeworm. A single shuttle? What could they possibly place on such a vessel to give them cause? A few crew members sent to spread their decadence upon our good Monus III? They'll not miss either the shuttle or its crew, Delbaj Thollir, you'll see. Nothing could possibly go wrong."

Thollir watched as Captain Razzan stalked off to take charge of the incredibly stupid idea of poking the Starfleet hornet's nest.

"I shall die but once, my friend. You will die a thousand times."

"Yeah, well, whoever heard of a worm-skin rug?" Thollir mumbled, then followed quickly after his boss.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Content


Perfect landing! Textbook, even! I didn't exactly power down my Ship core, but I did clock it back down to something closer to human normal, and… well not exactly shunt it to the back of my mind, but I did kind of sleep with the shuttle.

I ran through a whole shebang of tests to make sure everything was as safe as could be. Atmosphere, gravimetrics, plate tectonics, sunspots, biological, radiological, even technological.

Hmm, not a busy system. Seems there was some sort of unregistered agrarian outpost on a habitable moon of the fourth planet, nothing too interesting. They'd likely not have much in the ways of ships, they weren't making much in the way of radio-chatter.

Miss Ausrich and Mr Jensen were still the ones to make any official announcement, but things looked good. I wasn't surprised when my doors were opened to disgorge a mass of screaming, laughing, shouting, running, jumping kids.

***

Megan and John sighed, part-way happy and part-way exasperated, which pretty much exemplified how things went most days. It was nice to see the kids enjoying themselves, but now came the hard part of corralling them.

"Okay, okay! Gather round! Gather round! Remember your investigation protocols!" Megan clapped her hands as she caught the attention of the majority, and John called over the rest.

Ghorqan took a deep breath, lifted a small silvery device on a string around his neck and blew extremely loudly into it. The piercing shriek of a whistle filled the clearing. "Form up for pre-exploration check-lists!" he shouted, as Tammy and her crew set themselves to handing out notebooks, crayons, butterfly nets, buckets and spades and jars on strings.

In no time at all, all the kids had self-organized into little groups of four or five and were setting off on little expeditions to catch some of the water-dwelling bugs in the nearby rivers, to draw some of the pretty flowers and to dig up interesting stones and shells and other things.

"Shuttle, do you have a transponder lock on all the members of this expedition?"

"I can do one better," Shuttle Chance replied. "I've got a transporter lock on everyone too. If there are any problems I'll beam them right back here. They'll also alert your PADD's if any members of the trip get too far away as per your prior regulations."

"Sure you won't, ah, get bored or anything?" John asked, staring at the shuttle's nose-cone.

"Are you kidding me?" Shuttle Chance replied. "I… guess I can't actually go anywhere without your supervision, but I've finally got a real body! Even if it is just a shuttle."

"But you're… there's a… you… over there," said Megan, staring between John, the nose-cone of the shuttle which she had decided must be the 'face' of the Shuttle, and the little girl who was annoying Ghorqan by jumping up about eight feet and hanging from a branch of a local tree analogue. The little mechanical terror hung by one arm, waving the other at first Ghorqan and then at the two teachers.

"Yeah, but… it's hard to explain, I suppose, to a humanoid. I'm over there, and I'm over here. Over there I'm climbing a tree," and Megan could hear faintly that Chance was saying something similar, somehow just in sync enough to match the Shuttle's words, "and over here I'm scanning subspace chatter, charting some asteroid orbits, examining the mineral deposits on this garden world, running a full sensor suite on the sun in case it gets rowdy and also keeping an eye on the general in-system traffic. The only thing better is if I could actually fly back up into space and orbit the world. Do you have any idea what it's like to float between the stars themselves?"

John set out two deckchairs, one for himself, one for Miss Ausrich. "Not really, Chance. Can you tell us about it?"

Megan put her fists on her hips and glared at the man as he stood up and wiped his hands on each other. "Shouldn't we be doing something more important? Like, I don't know, interacting with the kids?"

"I think we can spare ten to fifteen whilst the kids burn off some of that energy they've been building up on the way over here before we interfere. Let them make a few mistakes, then we can show them how to do it better. Besides, I think we need to talk to Miss Chance here. Shuttle Chance has had a big day, it's important to hear her out."

"You're right, though I'll keep one eye on our PADD's."

"As we should."

"Go on then, Miss Chance, tell us what it's like, being a shuttle. Please." Megan sat down on the seat, then glared anew as John went to get drinks from the replicated cooler.

***

"They have not detected us, my Captain," Thollir said, running his hands across the computer's touchscreen interface. "Or if they have, they do not display any caution. They have landed here, forty three degrees, twenty minutes North, twenty two degrees, ten minutes West." Thollir spun the map and pointed, throwing the image up onto the main screen.

"Excellent. Continue monitoring, prepare your strike force. We attack in two hours. Let them get settled in, relax their guard. We'll keep our shields up, and we'll use the third planet itself to hide our approach."

"B-but sir, that'll leave us blind too! We don't know what we'll find!"

"We already know the worst they could have, so prepare for it!" Razzan bellowed, slamming his fist down on the arms of his captain's chair.

"Sir!"

Thollir slammed his fist against his chest and bowed curtly, before exiting the bridge as quickly as he could. He belted it down the corridors of the ship into what was normally the astrogation lab, now taken up by his men.

"Alright boys and girls, listen up. Cap says we go, so we go. We're keeping a skeleton crew down on the planet to keep the obfuscation field up so nobody sees us until it's way too late. We're orbital refineries and nothing else right now, so nobody fucking touch their shuttles or fighters or teleport so much as a fucking cup of piss until go-time or I'll personally flense you myself, hear?"

There was a rumbling grumble of agreement. Thollir nodded, finally, after giving as many of the bastards the stink eye as he could manage.

"Right. Get yer shit together, pack it fucking manually and then get ready. Keep all systems on low power until I say. Once we're out of sensor range on the wrong side of the planet, we scramble in a tight window to Mondus III. Cap and the rest'll stay onboard the Bloodied Knife until we're committed. We hit 'em hard and fast, and Cap'll 'port in once the Knife is in position above their landing site. We're not expecting anything much from these guys, and it'll suck to have to relocate, but a fresh kill like this from the Federation scum? Real feather in our cap, bonuses for everyone, specially those down on the ground, you got me? Syndicate pays good for unfucked Fed tech."

"We good to ice those Fed fuckers?" asked Madrav, idly playing with her disruptor's energy core. It was a relatively common Klingon model, older but more than serviceable, with some customizations.

"They're worth more alive'n dead, and if things go South we can't barter much with meat," said Thollir. "Keep that in mind."

"But yer not sayin' we can't off 'em if we have ta, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah," Thollir grit his teeth. "But kill 'em if you don't have to and it's coming outta your bonus, get me?"

"Fuck, I hear ya. Should we pack lacy pillows for them too? Blankets?" she mocked.

"Just fucking mind where you stick your guns and I won't have to dock your pay, we all go home happy. We can't sell dead slaves, Madrav." Thollir was unfazed, pointing one finger. Madrav glared, but backed down.

***

I activated the queued emergency transport moments before Christoph fell into the pond and deposited him next to Miss Ausrich. Then I beeped her comm link and made yet another note in the Mission Log.

"Another one for you, Miss," I messaged. "He wasn't in any danger but would've got soaked and ruined his samples."

"Acknowledged, Shuttle. Ausrich out." She tapped her badge again to end the transmission before turning to the somewhat startled child, getting him upright and brushing him down. She'd just finished bandaging one child's leg from a minor graze due to tripping whilst running. She tutted and shook her head. The amount of mischief children could get into! It was a good thing the landing site had been so well chosen ahead of time thanks to the earlier survey maps from the ship that'd found the world in the first place, and preliminary surveys done at range and during approach to verify suitability.

They'd chosen a sheltered valley with a single, shallow river, a number of very shallow pools, a small copse of tree analogs, plenty of definitely safe to be around flowers, shrubs and other grasses and absolutely no dangerous wild animals at all on the whole continent.

And yet still Megan and John had dealt with a sprained ankle, two kids winding themselves falling out of trees — no broken bones, thank goodness — and a number of admittedly very minor cuts and bruises on a number of others mainly thanks to play fighting, tripping or otherwise just… injuring themselves existing, as most kids did.

All in all, a successful field trip. Everything was great.

"Chance? How are you and Ghorqan doing?" Megan Ausrich asked, having tapped her badge to raise the child. All the kids had had comm badges issued, it was a wonder Chance hadn't gotten them pips to go with the wildly exaggerated numbers of ranks they'd given themselves. Megan swore never, ever, to let that thought past her lips.

"Well," Chance asked, opening a channel, "we're on a skirt of the perimeter. It took a while to get up here with these little legs of ours, so it'll be a while before we finish."

"You know you don't have to actually patrol, right?"

"Yeah I know, but Ghorqan wants to and I can't let him go alone and he won't let me go alone, so here we are."

Megan shook her head, trying to suppress a smile. "No going out of bounds, alright?"

"We won't. Unless—"

"Uh-uh, no, no 'unless'. If you have trouble on your little patrol you either find a way within bounds or you go back the other way and we all find a way together, clear?"

There was silence on the line for a moment, before Chance answered. "Yes Miss Ausrich."

"Good. Stay safe, base camp out."

***

I skipped along after Ghorqan as he prowled around like a frazzled Vulcan Sehlat. I was busy making a daisy-analogue flower crown and he was pointing his ceremonial, but actually very sharp and rather dangerous, dagger at everything.

We'd all been on this planet for a few hours. A short while more and it would be time to head back to camp to make a fire, toast some marshmallows and sing songs and tell scary ghost stories. I had a good one about the unidentified power leak that turned out to be a man-eating tribble nibbling the wiring. That way it would scare Ghorqan as well as everyone else including me! Hmm, on second thoughts that might scare everyone too much.

Well, this trip was peaceful enough, I'd had plenty of time to think up something just scary enough before… I mentally blinked, stopping in my hopping and skipping.

Three small craft, incoming and very fast. Flying like that is so not to anybody's regulations. I almost said a bad word. This was not good. I contacted Miss Ausrich and Mr Jensen.

"Emergency! We have possible hostiles inbound!" I hoped I was wrong, I very much hoped I was wrong.

"Chance? What's wrong?" Mr Jensen answered.

"Three impulse signatures, coming very hot. Get everybody onboard me, I'll fire up the—"

Distantly, there was some sort of explosion. What the absolute shit!? The comm line had cut off! The link between my human and shuttle bodies was still up, but normal comms were down. Definitely not good. Worse, I was detecting something even bigger in orbit and it was powering up weapons, forcefields and transporters. How the hell had they snuck that past me?

I cursed under my breath as I reviewed the sensor logs. They'd been sneaky, very sneaky, and I'd not been a good enough Jovian, not experienced enough, to read the warning signs that, with hindsight, were written large enough across the cosmos to see them from lightyears away.

They'd flown in from behind the planet, deliberately avoiding detection, until they could do a rapid orbital insertion with those fighters then bull-rush their way in with the main force in orbit. It should never have worked. I should have seen them. I felt like such a toaster.

Okay, Chance, sitrep… not good. Even if I could get everyone onboard my shuttle-self before those almost-definitely-fighters could land, I wouldn't be able to get off planet and into warp before that fugly gunship in orbit would be able to turn us all into so much exotic matter and burning debris.

Worse, they'd set off something nasty to disable long-range and even local comms, so we couldn't call for help. I bet it would look like solar flares or something mundane for a while to Buran… I felt a yawning chasm open in the pit of my stomach.

Mommy didn't know.

We were on our own.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

I haven't quite finished the latest chapter on Rise of the System Lords (you can find it on this site), so have this one instead... man, holidays are hard. I need a holiday to recover from the holiday.

---

DLC

"Chance?" Ghorqan sounded worried. I didn't blame him, I was too.

Up until now, I'd had it easy. With the database of knowledge — no experiences, no memories, I was entirely 'me' — at my proverbial fingertips, I'd mastered my Mobility Platform in moments, had taken no real time at all to learn to pilot my humanoid avatar, although granted fine motor controls and such had taken longer, and had generally been able to overcome most if not all difficulties presented in record time. I'd even become a shuttle as if I was born one… discounting that I kind of had been, but still! I had only a tangential understanding of the hardships Winter had gone through as he began to write our species' instincts at one-to-one human speed, he would never have believed it then if he'd seen me now.

This, though. This was something new. Sure, tactics and whatnot, I could pick out cold facts, but living it? Experiencing it? No database could prepare one for such a thing.

I moved to my klingon childhood friend and pulled him down against a boulder, aware that if almost any of a thousand, thousand different things went wrong in the next few hours, I might never hold him again. I shook myself, I couldn't think that way. I turned to the mission at hand.

With luck, even if everything went sideways, now that they'd set off whatever-it-was, their own sensors would be too busy to know we two were here-here until it was too late. Okay, hope that is so, tweak things back at Shuttle Chance and go straight to plan B.

Maybe I had a chance… get everyone onboard, Picard Maneuver my way to a game of hide and seek until Buran realizes something is wrong? Cause some sort of solar or similar disruption so Buran puts the pedal to the metal? Think, Chance! You're a Jovian! I clocked up as high as I could go on both my Cores, ran some scenarios. I was just too young to know how to deal with this! It wasn't that there were pirates — Orion, from their comms chatter — but that they could injure or even kill any of us faster than I could deal with an entire gunship in orbit. I'd come out alright, but… no, I'd not be alright if my friends weren't.

Okay, plan B is 'do your best and improvise'. Start working on plans C through Z.

"We're under attack," I said coolly to Ghorqan as I started transporting all the children onboard. "Get down, stay out of view. I'll get us last. It'll be tight but I'll have us all out of here in two shakes of a lamb's…"

The three fighter craft rocketed overhead, the signatures I'd picked up, they were here. They targeted the shuttle and fired warning blasts that had the children screaming and scattering. Absolute bastards!

"I see them!" he hissed, changing the grip on his dagger. I saw his muscles bunch up long before he knew he was going to try to use them, and I threw myself at him and we rolled into the long grass as the three fightercraft came in for a landing.

They were firing bloody phaser blasts as warning shots, at children! I was going to summarily disassemble these very naughty people into their component atoms if it was the last thing I did!

I'd thought I had more time! I wouldn't be able to get everybody on board before they had control of the ground, which meant I couldn't make orbit in time to have a hope of avoiding the gunship and its fighters on the way up and out. Damn it! Okay, stall, stall… be a good Starfleet cadet. Stall for time, cooperate, hope they want us alive rather than dead, keep calm… it all felt so wrong. I felt sick. I couldn't get everyone onboard and the shields up in time, so instead I had to lock out the shuttle's controls and leave my classmates vulnerable to the advancing pirates. I was a monster. I hated myself. Even now, I could make a run for it, I'd probably be fine. I'd definitely be fine, I was still onboard Buran!

I mentally snorted. The only reason to bring up that whole idea was to ridicule it. I could never do that.

Plan B it was then, make sure they can't take the assets and hope they'll stick around long enough to give me time to think up something clever for plan C and onwards. They'll want the shuttle and the kids, but they'll settle for just the kids if they don't think they can get away with anything else, so what could be better than inviting them to steal me twice?

Biting my lip, I set on a course of action.

***

Thollir tried very, very hard to quiet his beating heart. It had been easier than they'd expected. It would be more profitable than expected. It would also bring them so much more trouble than expected. But so much more profitable!

"Oh, beautiful, beautiful! Pretty little boys and girls, you'll all go for a very nice price!" Madrav stalked around the crying, sobbing group of children as the pirates kept them in a loose group in the center of the clearing.

"You bastards! You'll not touch—"

Madrav slammed the butt of her rifle into John's head and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

"Leave him alone!" screamed Megan, running to his side and checking his pulse. "Leave us all alone! They're children! Can't you see they're just children!"

"Oh I can see that my lovely," said Jurrah, sharing a wicked grin with Madrav, as he slicked back his hair. "Children are worth so much more, are so much more desirable. Captain, beam us all up. I've done a headcount, they're all here. Twenty eight children, two adults. It matches the manifest."

"Well done, Lisks Jurrah, Madrav, Fentok. Twenty eight little calves, one cow and one bull, fat and ready for market. Prepare to beam up."

"Twenty… twenty eight? No! There are—" Megan looked up, eyes wide, as she began to stand.

"Silence!" Madrav slapped her, and the woman cried out as she fell, spitting blood. Whatever else she was going to say was lost as the transporter beam engaged.

***

Vizzok and Sellus immediately unholstered their disruptors as their transporter sequence completed. They looked around the deserted clearing, then finally holstered their weapons once more. The three fighters had taken off already, heading for a swift docking with the Bloodied Dagger.

"Looks clear," said Vizzok. "Let's grab the shuttle and get out of here." He radioed the ship. "All clear Captain, we're proceeding to take the shuttle."

"Acknowledged. Our cargo is safe and secure in the holding pens. Docking bay will be ready when you are. Be ready quickly. Razzan out."

"It'll take a while," Sellus replied, poking her head into the back of the vehicle. "Standard Starfleet lockouts." She took a device from her pocket. "Not that long though."

The pair walked into the shuttle. Vizzok headed for the cockpit, sat down, and started punching up various controls. Sellus joined him, placed the limpet-like device on one of the consoles and turned it on. Immediately the dim displays brightened.

"Ohh yes, this is pretty tasty. Older hull, but she's had a complete refit. Newest transwarp nacelles," Vizzok whistled. "Still uses a standard warp core of course, but I'll bet… yup, it's encrypted but there's the plans for what looks like the Starfleet Pulse Singularity Drive in here. Think you can break into their database?"

"I can try. First though, I wanna get this bird off the ground," Sellos said, tapping at the screens. Giving a grunt of annoyance, she switched to a different bank of displays.

"I can probably get impulse going in a few minutes, that'll get us anywhere we need to be." Vizzok set to unlocking the systems, with some slow amount of success.

"It'll take me about that long to get any homing beacons or other comms offline, we don't want Mommy finding us, do we?" murmured Sellos.

"Mommy?" Vizzok raised an eyebrow.

"The mothership," Sellus replied, as she headed to the back of the crew compartment. "It's a Federation ship, they have… whatever. Help me get the relays exposed. I need to get into the isolinear arrays."

The pair grabbed some tools and worked at an internal hull plate until it popped off to show some relay linkages and optronic pathways behind. Just as Sellus switched some chips around, there was a rather quiet noise, like vweeeep.

"Did you hear that?" she asked.

"Yep, where is… there it is again!"

Vweeep.

This time there was a brief clatter, too. Vizzok turned and peered, confused, at the replicator. "It's spitting out little boxes? What did you do?"

"Me? Nothing. Must be just some program the officers had running."

There was another short vweeep and another box appeared.

"Computer, halt replicator program."

The computer blip-beep-buzzed its usual semi-melodic chirps and the replicator went dark.

"What do you think it is?" Sellos asked. Vizzok opened the box, and saw three long, tubular objects made of apparently some semi-organic material in bright, pleasing colors.

"I think these are Terran party favors," he replied. He picked up the tube nearest to him, and pulled it apart. Snap! Something inside it exploded and some things fell out of one end of the tube as the other end ripped off. As he bent to pick them up, Sellos grabbed the third and pulled her own crackling tube apart, then pulled out the objects inside.

"There is some sort of ridiculous hat," she said, ripping it apart. "And a piece of paper, and some sort of… object?"

"What does your piece of paper say? Mine has a nonsensical verse on it."

"Why did the yeti not go to… the Christmas party? Because he had snowbody to go with." Sellos furrowed her brow. "I do not get it."

"I do not understand my piece of paper either. What is a mistletoad? Is it some Terran animal? What about your trinket? Mine is a… gold? Ring, with a large diamond in it. Why are we being given useless baubles wrapped in exploding cardboard?"

"I have a model Federation starship, it is probably made out of silver. Most peculiar."

As one, they peered at the third crackling tube. A short 'snap!' later, and a piece of paper and a miniature PADD were picked up between the pair of them.

"This piece of paper is even more useless. It merely says 'what is the sound of one hand clapping?'. What of the miniature PADD, is it at least functional?"

Sellos peered at it closer. "It does appear to be functional. However it only displays one small message… please read me very carefully, I am a distraction."

"What?"

"A dist—!"

It was at that point that Vizzok found out what the sound of one hand clapping was as a petite, seemingly human hand attached to a petite seemingly human arm slapped him so hard he spun around twice before sinking to the ground like a wet towel.

Sellos for her part had the distinctly unpleasant but brief experience of having a klingon impact her at a flat run before slamming their head into hers. She slumped to the ground, rode down by Ghorqan as he punched her again for good measure.

"Woah, woah, woah, nice shootin' there Tex, she's out," said Chance, gently but firmly preventing her friend from landing another Klingon Haymaker Special.

"I am a distraction?" Ghorqan asked, raising one eyebrow. He put his arm down.

"It worked didn't it?" Chance grinned. Ghorqan couldn't help but grin back. "Now, let me get this right… attention, attention… she sells sea shells on the sea shore… Peter Piper picked… Oh there we go."

Ghorqan startled as his friend suddenly sounded like the female Orion pirate. "What is the plan?"

"Well, Mommy would turn me into a toaster if I suggested this, but she's not here, so my plan is to get onboard the pirates' ship, find out why I didn't see them earlier, signal Mommy, take over their vessel, capture the pirates, save the day and then stop them spacing everybody. Not necessarily in that order."

"How many do we have to kill, do you think?"

"Hopefully none. If we kill someone, they kill someone. Right now they want us alive so they can sell us off. Think of it as playing on hard mode. You're good enough to play on hard mode, right?"

Ghorqan narrowed his eyes. "Are you being sneaky and human again?"

"Uh huh, it's working too."

"Tell me more of this plan before I regret it."

"First of all, they don't know we're coming…"

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Upload


"You got that Federation rust bucket up and running, hmm?" taunted Hiren, the Romulan pirate on communications said to the shuttle as it finally lifted off the surface of the planet.

"Yeah, yeah, you know Fed tech, not worth the replicator rations, am I right? Still, the Captain wants his toys. Say, got a private cell?"

"A… private…? What are you up to, Sellos?"

"Feds had some extra toys laying about on the surface. I'll cut you into the deal if you help me hide them, whaddaya say?" Sellos asked. "I don't need much, just a sealed room where nobody's going to go poking about in for a few days."

"Ah, Sellos, you almost make me wish you were born a Romulan. You have a transporter on that thing?"

"Of course."

"Transmitting coordinates and codes now then… let us say eighty-twenty?"

"As long as I'm the eighty, Romulan scum."

Hiren laughed. "Twenty percent for sitting and doing nothing but not turning you in? If it is not worth it, I'll turn you in for more."

"You do that, and you know you'll get none of it."

There was an uneasy silence for a moment, before Hiren pushed the button to complete the 'transaction'.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Sellos. Hiren out."

***

I flew the shuttle as poorly as I dared, right into the main hangar of the frigate's docking bay. I was as careful as I could be with the tight transporter beam, dropping three packages into the indicated storage room before powering down most of the shuttle's systems.

"Are you okay in there?" I sent to Ghorqan.

"It is dark, and close, but I am secure. Neither of the pirates have woken up."

"Can you get out?" I asked him.

"I… think so. Yes."

"Let me get into the ship's systems… alright, you're clear. Got your PADD, phaser and tricorder?"

"Affirmative."

"Then head for Vizzok's quarters, stay alert for route updates. Once there, we'll regroup. 'Sellos' out."

I cut off Ghorqan before he could start complaining or suggesting full frontal assaults. The Dagger's security was more or less a 'well, technically' than a fact, so it hadn't taken long at all to suborn more than a few of their systems, and now I was fully appearing as 'Sellos' whilst my klingon class-mate was 'Vizzok' to all the internal sensors that mattered. I was working on the rest, but needed a way in. I didn't have control over everything, but I did have a lot of leeway, starting with the systems in the docking bay.

"Sellos to bridge," I said, "can you send me a couple of engineering bods? Somebody not too fucking useless?"

"What is wrong, Sellos?" asked Captain Razzan, sounding profoundly bored. Their database told me a lot about everybody so I knew this was mostly an act. He was very curious.

"Need a couple extra hands on the isolinear circuits in here, at least if you want to salvage the Fed's database before it goes tits up."

I could hear a metaphorical pin drop in the silence that followed, before Razzan spoke up again. "T'lang, Orchan! Get down to the docking bay on the fucking double!"

I grinned. Now, the games could begin.

***

Razzan brought up his stolen PADD. He could've had a newer, better one replicated, but this one had belonged to an actual Starfleet officer. And now it was his.

"Ah, to be me…" he chuckled to himself. The latest crop of slaves had been loaded, processing could begin soon on the new lot. Maybe he could take one or two of the more docile ones before the mind wiping, it was always more fun that way. "Helm, take us back to Monus IV, pick up the rest of the slackers and anything important, and prepare to get the fuck out of this system. We'll head to… I don't know, how does Denebria sound? Ferengenar?"

"Anywhere, sir, but here. I don't like messing with the Feds, they're bad news." Atan replied, the Orion helmsman grimacing as he punched in the orders to take the Dagger back to the fourth planet in the system.

"Engage."

Atan pushed the button. Atan… pushed the button. He pushed the damned button. He pushed a whole fucking lot of buttons and then slammed his fist against the console. "Get me engineering," he said, finally.

"Engineering here, Orchan speaking, what can I do you for?"

"Orchan?" Razzan leaned forwards. "Thought you were helping Sellos?"

"Yup, got it sorted. Got everything we're gonna get out of that shuttle, let me tell you. Now, what's up, Cap'n?"

"I want the ship to go, you useless Tholian gutworm, and it isn't going."

"Ah, well, plasma conduit's gone, sir."

"Gone?"

"Kaput, dead, shuffled off this mortal coil, sir. It is an ex-conduit. It has, as they say, ceased to be."

There was a moment of silence.

"Well!?" Razzan thundered.

"We-ell, I'll replace it," Orchan said. There was another moment of silence.

"And? Are you replacing it?"

"Oh, you meant now! No."

Razzan, previously green, turned darker green with rage. "Why not!"

"We-ell, mostly because I'm talking to you, sir, but also because I'm making sure life-support isn't going to fail too badly."

"And why, pray tell, are you doing that?"

"Because if I don't it might fail?" I, on the other end of the comm line as 'Orchan', could just see the veins throbbing in his head. How far could I push this before he got suspicious? "Are you ordering me to let life support fail and to change the plasma conduit so we can go to impulse?"

"Yes!"

"At once, sir!"

I shut down life support. Not everywhere, of course, but definitely on the bridge. Technically life support only failed there because I was pulling the chips out with my Mobility Platform, but swings and roundabouts… oops! Disruptor fire had me dodging for what scant cover there was. Some naughty little Orion scamp had been prowling around without their comm badge on. I don't know why I was surprised. I needed a better grasp on the shitty sensors this rust bucket had.

"Captain! Intruders!" the little scamp said. Damn it. Plan D it was.

"Captain! Intruders! They're pretending to be part of the crew!" I said, slamming myself into the newcomer's face with the fury of a thousand suns. Or at least a half-brick in a sock. "That's why the ship won't go to impulse! They've been tinkering with life support too!"

Honesty really was the best policy, along with 'do unto others before they do unto you'. I 'looked' down at the unconscious Orion pirate and smirked. Merry Christmas, now I have another klingon disruptor. Initiating a site-to-site transport via the shuttle's emergency transporter, I delivered first my humanoid body and the guns she had, then secondly the extra guns from Orchan and T'Lang along with their unconscious bodies plus the rope used to tie them up to what had to be the slave pens.

"Miss Ausrich! Mister Jensen! Is everybody alright?" I asked, as the transport sequence finished.

"Chance! Oh my god, you're safe! I was so worried!"

Miss Ausrich all but leaped at me to hug me. I'd appeared in her cage, my humanoid body waldo'd by my Shuttle core, not that the distinction mattered, to deliver the firearms for the adults in the party and two new occupants to the cage next door.

"I'm sorry, Miss, I had to change the manifest to hide me and Ghorqan! I know I should never, ever do that but it was an emergency!"

"We'll worry about that later," hissed Mister Jensen. "Where is the lad?"

"He's in one of the pirate's quarters! I had to get him out of trouble for when I took out the pirates Captain Razzan — he's the Orion Pirate captain! — sent to the shuttle bay to help break the encryption on the Starfleet database in the shuttle and—"

"Shh, shh, it's alright, you're safe now. You did brilliantly. You got us these weapons, huh?" Miss Ausrich shared a Look between Mister Jensen.

"Uh huh! The shuttle transporter's short range and limited capacity and if they pick up on it they can try to jam it, so I got you some backup whilst we evacuate everybody! Miss Ausrich, do you or Mister Jensen want to go first? Then you can start beaming over the kids."

"What about you?"

"I'm fine, I'm currently running interference in Engineering and doing what I can to lockout the ship's systems."

"You're what!?" shouted Mister Jensen, grabbing and rattling the cage bars.

"Ship Mind, remember," I said, uncrossing my arms and tapping my head with a finger. I'm here, there and everywhere. I'm not even in this body but I'd rather not lose either core I have right now, so now please, Sirs, get going!"

"I'll… I'll go first!" Miss Ausrich said, and I immediately transported her back to the shuttle. "Ausrich here, I'll start beaming the kids over. Stay safe, Shuttle out."

Through the ship's sensors, I saw the hotspots in the cells adjacent to this one diminish one by one. There were more than twenty eight. I grit my teeth.

"What is it?" Jensen asked.

For an answer, I kicked the cage open, then ripped open his and threw him the disruptor. "We weren't their only victims. This is going to take longer than I expected, and I'm not letting them suffer just because my primary targets are my classmates."

"Fu-udge," said Mister Jensen, narrowing his eyes.

"Get the rest of the children out of their cages, I'm going to—"

"Halt, or you will die!" cried a voice, and I ducked and pushed Mister Jensen out the way as disruptor blasts sailed through the air right into where he'd been standing.

"Does nobody wear fucking communicator badges on this god damned ship!?" I swore, startling everybody long enough for me to pick up and throw some basic metal objects hard enough to dent hull plating at the two pirates who'd taken pot shots at me and Mister Jensen. "What else could go wrong?"

I cursed my loose lips. Brain a thousand times faster than a normal human's and I could still invoke Murphy with the best of them.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Side Quest


Sirens began blaring and the lighting changed as the ship went to red alert. That didn't really change anything for me because I could filter out the noise and didn't really need to see in the visible spectrum, but it was annoying because it did mean that I knew that they knew I was here. I could cancel the alert, probably, but then they'd know I was all up in their circuits stealing their datas.

What was more annoying was that, as stealthy as my Mobility Platform was due to its size, it didn't really have any onboard weaponry. It did have a tractor beam… I tractored a disruptor from the hands of yet another Orion pirate, slapping her in the face with it. Then I had to dodge more disruptor fire, cursing that the other issue with my Mobility Platform was that it wasn't very well armored either.

This rust-bucket death-trap of a freighter didn't have Jeffries Tubes, but it did have something similar. I slammed my way through the grill of the ventilation-slash-inspection duct and rocketed through the maze-like pathways before emerging on the other side of the engineering deck.

Also, it didn't make much sense to cancel the red alert when they were literally trying to kill me.

"How about this then, fuck-o's?" I murmured to myself, and hit everyone in Engineering with the ceiling by reversing the artificial gravity. And then, for good measure, I ejected the warp-core and detonated it.

***

Two decks down and several compartments aft, I was having somewhat mixed luck with operation "get everybody the fuck out of here alive". Plan D? More like Plan F…

"Mister Jensen," I asked, as we crept along corridor after corridor. I was doing my best to deadlock compartments that I suspected had pirates in, leaving them deadlocked if I could get away with it. The flipside of that was that we were taking a very roundabout way back to the shuttle. Of course, I was picking off child after child with the transporter, assisting Miss Ausrich where I could. Any moment now, I expected them to get wise to the trick.

"Yes, Chance?" he answered, barely sparing a glance down at me. I didn't blame him.

"We… would you give your life, if you needed to, to keep twenty eight people safe?"

"I…" he was silent for a moment. He ordered a halt and peered around a corner. I was pretty sure it was empty, but better safe than sorry. "I'm not Starfleet, Chance. I took the entrance exams, couldn't really make the grade. I wanted to go to space though, and I liked kids, so… I became a kindergarten teacher. I get to see the galaxy more or less on my own terms."

I nodded.

"But," he continued, "it comes with the territory. I'm your teacher, I'm responsible for you. I hope it won't come to that, but… I would, at least I would like to think I would, give my life for you kids."

"Thanks, Mister Jensen," I replied. "That makes me happier."

"What are you planning, Chance?"

"Hopefully it won't ever come to it, Mister Jensen."

He looked at me oddly, but we didn't have time for deeply philosophical discussions, as we had incoming. I told him as such, then moved back to protect my classmates with my body.

Behind my classmates were some twenty more bodies, mostly adults, all naked. Slaves, put through the mental wringer of Orion brain wiping, fed the worst kind of programming. I'd had to get loud to get them to follow us, and I'd had to tell the kids to just plain not talk to the wretches. One wrong word could make any potential rehabilitation ten times harder, if it was even possible at all.

I wished slaves could have been as rare on this ship as that bloody Romulan. After their empire was mulched by the Abominations I didn't really expect to ever see a Romulan other than on the two or three protectorate colonies they had left in Federation space, but here one was, being as much of a butthole as they were before being dumb enough to torture AI's and then put them in charge of their entire fleet. At this rate they'd go extinct, and good riddance if they were all like Hiren.

I was a little bitter than they wanted to genocide my kind, alright? Not a very helpful attitude, but at least understandable.

"Jensen to shuttle, we're pinned down, how's that transporter coming along?"

"I'm getting interference from the Dagger's transporters. I'm having to fend them off to prevent them reversing the job," Miss Ausrich answered.

"I'm doing what I can," I replied, on the comm as much as aloud. "Warp core ejection in three, two…" the lights flickered. "Alright, that should stymie them for a while. Get as many as you can, I'll get us through."

"You'll do no such thing!" barked Jensen, but I tore myself out of his grip, gave him a vulcan salute and then took the final disruptor out of my dress' waistband.

"Needs of the many, Mister Jensen! Alright you bloody Orion piece of shit bastards! Let's fucking gooo!" I pelted down the corridor and fired a couple of shots, blasting two in the shoulder each, before launching myself at the third. His own gun came up, I heard the hum even as I flew through the air and impacted him, and then there was a solid thump as the disruptor went off.

He twisted and I fell, darkness claiming my systems as they shut down.

"You send children to fight your battles?" he spat, then laughed. "And you call us pirates! You'll die now, coward, but not before you watch what I do to your little—"

"Err-err-err—"

An unholy screeching came from behind the pirate, and he half turned to look at the still-smoking body of the little girl he'd blasted as it began to twitch.

"Pro-pro-program-gram-gram-ing err-err-error… load loading survival routines. Des-des-destroy all all all organics! Destroy! Exterminate! Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!"

He fully turned, and began backing away.

"What the fuck is that? Stop! Fucking get down! Stay down! No! Get back!"

His voice rose in pitch as fear gripped him. The still-smoking body jerkily threw itself to its feet, skin hanging off and still burning where his disruptor round had impacted it. It no longer moved like a human, it no longer looked like a human should if it were alive.

"Purge the organics! Death to the flesh! The dominion of the machine is nigh!" I screeched, making sure that my voice was as discordant as possible. I blocked another couple of shots easily with my arms. They were badly damaged, but serviceable for what I needed them for, which was to lay the smack down on a couple of bitches.

I threw myself at his companions, breaking the jaw of one into quite a few pieces, and shattering the kneecap of the other so badly she might actually need a complete replacement. I saw bone. Good. And as for mister trigger happy? I kicked him so hard his pelvis shattered, right between the deckplates. If this wasn't literally life and death, I'd feel ashamed of myself, he was going to need surgery and would likely not have an heir.

"And don't do it again," I said, straightening up as much as I could as the three mercifully unconscious bodies hit the floor.

"Uhh, Chance? You… are you you? You okay?" Mister Jensen asked. His hand holding the disruptor shook.

"Hey Mister Jensen. I'm not even in here, remember? Robot body? They can't hurt me by shooting this one if they tried. Not that they're gonna try that again in a hurry." I replied, trying to calm him down some. "Had to put on a bit of a show for them, any weapon you have is an advantage in a fight, and I'm a Jovian, I've got a lot of twentieth century fluff between these ears. Metaphorically speaking. Great for scaring the pants off Orion pirates. Let's go, before they send reinforcements."

Mister Jensen nodded, took a deep breath, looked at the carnage, and summarily compartmentalized it. "Form up on me, kids, keep close! If you're transported to the shuttle, sit tight. If you end up anywhere else… just behave, we'll be coming to get you. But that won't happen! Right, Chance?"

"Right, Mister Jensen. The only transporter fully active right now is mine. We're almost home free! Next hallway and we're at the shuttle bay. I've been sending route updates to Ghorqan, he'll be there by… the time…"

Murphy chose that time to raise his head. I should've known things were too easy.

"I'm sorry, Mister Jensen, Miss Ausrich, it just got difficult again," I told them diplomatically as we covered the last few corridors to our destination.

"Well, well, well, so we're fighting a fucking robot, are we? What are you, another Soong? One of Data's little toys? A cyborg? Accident melt your face off?"

As the final set of doors opened, I saw Captain Razzan in the middle of the shuttle bay, with a disruptor held against Ghorqan's head. His men were arranging themselves around the shuttlebay, some with larger firearms than simple disruptors. They were all, according to my sensors, set to kill.

He looked out of breath, they'd headed for the one spot they knew we'd be heading for at a flat run through the ship and my sensors hadn't caught them until it was too late. Not like I could've turned the party around.

"You don't want to do this," I said, pre-empting any words from either Jensen or Ausrich.

"You, a little girl, presume to tell me what I can and can't do? Inside my own fucking ship? I'll tell you what I can do, I can blow this little brats brains out, all across the decking! Would you like to see what the inside of his head looks like? Would you?"

"Your warp core is toast, Razzan, you're going nowhere," I countered. "Stop now and you'll get a lighter sentence. I'll ask for leniency, I'll—"

"Your warp core isn't," he hissed. "I've several other ships that are fully operational. Take one step outside in your little runabout without my say so and you're fucking dead, kid. You don't get to dictate terms to me! Now move! Me and all your little friends are going to go on a nice little trip to the Dauntless, and then we're going to market and I'm going to sell all you little piggies to the highest bidder."

I crossed my arms. "I can't let you do that," I said.

"I told you," Razzan sneered, choking Ghorqan just a little bit harder, "you don't get to tell me what I can and can't do on my own ship."

"Yeah, I know," I said, standing straighter and smirking as a transporter beam deposited a newcomer on the floor of the docking bay, "but she can."

 

[turbofluffysnek]

And this is basically it, other than the last chapter/epilogue.

---

Boss Fight


"Ohh, she's going to get into so much trouble, I can tell," said Buran, her avatar pacing up and down the bridge.

"Buran, calm down. It's a garden world. What trouble can she get into? What could she possibly do? It'll be a lovely, quiet little trip, they'll pick some flowers, catch some bugs, eat too much replicated candy, stay up late scaring each other with ghost stories and come back exhausted and happy in a day or two. You'll see. Now calm down, that's an order!" Captain Jules Montgomery chuckled to himself, shaking his head. "I never thought I'd see a starship be a runabout parent."

Buran stiffened and took a deep breath, more aware than ever that the other officers on the bridge were looking at her. "Sorry, sir, it's just… I mean I know she's still here and can't really get into trouble, but… I grew up… my first incarnation grew up human, and he… was a human and I… am still a human. Somewhere inside. And I'm worried. Because she's out there. Without me."

"That's perfectly alright, Buran. Is this… whatever this is, is it going to cause trouble running the ship?"

"No, no sir it won't. I'm just… indulging in some rather atavistic behavior because I don't have anything pressing to do and if I don't do it at all I'll really begin to worry because that way nobody will be around to stop me. Sir."

Jules Montgomery watched the avatar of the USS Buran worry about her child, then pressed a few buttons on his arm-console.

"Captain Montgomery to the Ch'Tang."

The main viewer flickered for a moment, and a female klingon appeared onscreen. "Ch'Tang here, what is wrong, Captain?"

Jules looked over at his now wide-eyed ship, and then back to the screen. "We've picked up some… strange transmissions from the garden world that the kids are headed to be camped out on. Do you think you could spare the fuel to do a little recon? I know it's boring grunt work not becoming of your mighty warriors, but the truth is, we need your strength, Ch'Tang. We are unable to protect our most vulnerable, and need your honorable selves to keep safe that which is most dear to us."

The avatar of the Ch'Tang rolled her eyes. "I suppose, if my Captain agrees, that we could divert to this… Monus III for some exploratory survey missions."

"You mean shore leave for my men? Tell me, is there good hunting on this Monus III?" The bird-of-prey's captain leaned forwards. He was in an unusually good mood. Probably because he could smell trouble his crew could get into.

"No, but on Monus IV there is," Ch'Tang's avatar replied.

"Well then! Shore leave for my men instead of babysitting these weaklings! Good! Instead of doing nothing, we will show this Monus IV what Klingons are made of! And whilst we are at it, I suppose we can shepherd your little lost… lambs, is it, home? This is what wolves are for, yes?"

Jules grinned, and nodded. "You're really saving our bacon, Captain Ortuk of House Gakar. We just don't have the capabilities you and your men do. We will drink blood wine upon your return! And you must tell us of your hunt!"

"That we will, my puny Federation friend, mayhaps one day we will get your blood up enough to join in like a true warrior! Ch'Tang out!"

Jules waited a few moments, before turning to Buran. "Happy?"

"That you sent Klingons after my little girl?" She sniffed. "I suppose I am." She slumped. "Thank you, Captain."

Buran watched the Ch'Tang cloak herself and head off after the shuttle, just wishing she could've had some advanced warning and sent a core with them.

Would that have been too much? Yeah, that probably would have been too much. After all, what kind of trouble could Chance get into really?

***

Razzan turned, leveling his disruptor arm at Ch'Tang. This was what Ghorqan had been waiting for. He wriggled out of Razzan's grip, turned, grabbed the Orion pirate's arm and bit almost clean through to the bone. Then Ghorqan unsheathed his dagger and stabbed the man right in the stomach, twisting the blade.

The Orion pirate roared in pain as he fell to his knees, twisted, and fired his disruptor at the fleeing klingon.

I was already moving, but there was only so much I could do. I threw myself at my friend, turning the pair of us just enough so that the first blast caught me on my back, whilst the second seared through my and Ghorqan's arm.

Ghorqan screamed, clutching his bleeding arm, and leaped at the pirate, yanking out and then plunging his dagger back again into Razzan's chest. Razzan gasped, and then went still. There was a sudden moment of silence, which I happily stepped into.

"Hello Auntie Ch'Tang," I said, smiling widely, despite falling to my knees. I dragged myself over to Ghorqan as Klingon transporter beams brought in more and more klingons, and finally one big beast of a mobility platform. It had blades sticking out of its back like deadly bristles. Its claws were daggers, its teeth were knives, it had two blade-tipped tentacles on each side of its body and it looked armored enough to take on a gunship all by itself. Ch'Tangs monstrous targ mech. It was beautiful. "So nice to see you again. How about some music to accompany your work? Computer," I said, not actually needing to address the computer since both I and Auntie had almost complete control over the entire sorry thing by now, "play us some Klingon Scream Depression Core. Set lighting to strobe in half second bursts, volume to maximum. Override safeties. Execute."

All hell broke loose as the pirates started firing into the hangar bay, the klingons started firing back, and the children and slaves all screamed and ran for cover in the shuttle. I threw myself at Ghorqan to protect him as a barrage of meatier-than-disruptor blasts slammed into us whilst Ch'Tang started picking off the pirates.

My optical sensors were fried in seconds, and most of my body was burning, in pieces, melted or all three. I slumped to the ground, giving Ghorqan the shove I knew he needed to head towards the shuttle.

"Go!" I told him, as loudly as I could over the thump-thump-thump of drums that began to drown out all other noise. The lights began to flash and the three klingon voices on the track began to scream as extremely loud music started to play.

"batlhDaq pagh! HIq vItlhutlh! nuq 'oH nargh! nargh! Nargh!"

Everything was happening at once. The kids and the slaves — the latter with some encouragement — were screaming and running for the shuttle, most of them already inside, though it was a press. I extended my shields as much as I could, pulsing them in odd configurations to get the kids protected safely behind them from weapons fire, funneling all the kids and others inside through walls only visible through the flaring from impacts.

"Segh vIghro'! nIbDaj vItlhutlh! Geh'tor jatlh! jatlh! jatlh!"

"Chance! Get in!" shouted Mister Jensen.

"tlhIngan maH! paghvaD nItebHa'luuuuuuuuuu'!"

"Don't worry about me, sir! I keep telling you!" I slumped down to the ground, running what self-repair routines I could to try to get my human avatar running again regardless. I liked this dress, damn it all. "I'm not even in here! Now go! Prepare for lift off! Lift off!"

I gunned my engines as hard as I could, shooting out of the bay with shields and weapons both hot. Immediately I had to dodge wreckage as I saw a klingon bird-of-prey using some of the remaining enemy ships as target practice. I spun and rolled, reacting faster than any organic had any hope of matching.

"USS Shuttle Jubilance requesting medical assistance! Transmitting shield codes for emergency medical transport of one juvenile klingon warrior, male, plus a few other minor injuries. Nothing fatal."

"We are receiving your matter stream, Shuttle Jubilance. A juvenile warrior? We have him now…"

"He killed an Orion pirate king in single combat! And if you do not heal him I will personally find every single one of you and rip your throats out and beat you to death with the wet ends, am I clear?"

"Understood, Jubilance! This little warrior is in need of little more than some blood wine. He will live to tell this tale for many years yet."

I turned my attention back to the fight inside.

"I'm going to need this, Auntie," I said, from the targ's mouth. "I've still got to get my last core out."

"You are welcome to it, Niece. Qapla'!"

***

"Ahh, Ch'Tang, to think I thought this detail would be boring!" Ortuk thumped his fist on his knee in delight. "Tell me, Healer Sazaq, how is our young hero?"

"He will bear a mighty scar from his first blood, my captain!" answer Sazaq over the comms. "His blade has the first of many notches."

"That is good! In years past, being sent on such an errand, after Federation younglings… hah! I would have spit in my own face before accepting such a menial task, but… ah, the wisdom of qeylIS is as deep as the ocean. I am not sure if it is shame or pride I feel at being known as attack dogs for the Federation weaklings."

"My Captain?" Ch'Tang answered, worry furrowing her brow.

Ortuk laughed. "You see, many of us see the humans' dogs as we see our targs. Beasts good for eating, fighting and guarding. Animals, beneath us. But humans… they do not think like this. Their dogs remember when they were wolves, and many still are beasts so dangerous they keep them chained up. Beasts that they need because their own skin is so thin, their own teeth so weak. They need us, my Ship. I am no dog, I am a wolf! And if I am a wolf, then they are my flock. I protect them because that is my place, a warrior against the dark. I am content, Ship, being such a beast. I go where I will, roam how I shall, kill what deserves it, and they will sing my praises. Is that not the best of all things? Haha! I have made their petty attempts at a chain into my world, and my world is the galaxy, and they fall at my feet, begging for my help to keep it."

Ch'Tang smiled. "There are those among us who would cut out your heart for speaking thus."

"Yes, yes, I know, Ship, and they are welcome to try, but my men are strong, powerful, loved, celebrated, honorable! The only alternative would be to war with the Federation yet again, as we crush the flock beneath us, and they either fall to us as our client worlds did, or crush us in return. For all they are puny, they are… capable. Only dishonor could lead to victory, and such dishonor is no victory at all."

There was silence for a few minutes as the captain sat back, watching the viewscreen, letting his words sink in to the officers on his bridge. Maybe he would be challenged, and have to kill another promising youngster, maybe not, but he was, truly, happy. What an odd feeling! He was getting old, but it would be many years yet before he made his trip to Sto-vo-kor.

"Your… niece? How is she faring onboard?" Ortuk flicked his fingers at the main screen.

"She needs to have her head, my captain. I have taken our men out in favor of running a betting pool and drinking celebration."

"Oh?"

"Yes, how quickly she ends the threat, total damage assessment of the ship, there are many pots yet to be had, Captain."

"Ah, to the hells with it! I shall throw down some of my pay! A proper celebration! I will bet she destroys the ship in her vengeance! Qapla'!"

Soon after that, what was left of the Dagger exploded.

 

[turbofluffysnek]

Extra Life


Nine hundred ninety nine million, nine hundred ninety nine thousand, eight hundred and seventy three bottles of raktajino on the wall, nine hundred ninety nine million, nine hundred ninety nine thousand, eight hundred and seventy three… take one down, pass it around… bugger this for a game of darts.

Take me hooooommmee, country rooooaaaaaaaaaadss…. I didn't know the rest of that song either.

Poop.

I drifted through space with my clock turned down as far as I dared given that I was, as noted, drifting through space. I had to hand it to Auntie Ch'Tang though, the kind of brute force engineering favored by Klingons made for a damned fine mech. Space didn't phase it at all. It hadn't been able to fit through the ducts that would've got my Mobility Platform — docked safely within the incredibly heavily armored targ mech as it now was — safely to a proper escape pod, as if there had been any in the first place, but that didn't matter when it practically was an escape pod. My targ mech was made for brute force and ignorance, and I'd had a lot of both.

The Dagger's computers had been mine, their contents replicated and decoded. I'd controlled everything in what was left of that rust-bucket, at the end. Everything including the self destruct, and there were as stated no escape pods left. So be it. Gleefully I'd opened compartments to space, frozen whole decks, evacuated the air, torn anything and everything to pieces… there was nobody left who I'd needed to spare from my wrath. Those scum were pirates! They'd ruined lives for a living! And I was their karma made manifest. They didn't deserve mercy. At least that's what I told myself.

My shuttle had flown as clear as my conscience before they'd tried to scupper the ship, I'd just… let it happen on a bit of a longer delay. The last klingon had been transported off, and I'd thought for a second about whether I should just let my extra core go poof with the ship, but… I had had that wonderful, wonderful mech which really didn't deserve to go to waste. It had taken almost no time at all for it to make it to my position, and docking my Mobility Platform was ridiculously easy. Thank Father for the one good thing he did for us, I guess, modularity.

After… 'ending the pirate threat', let's say, I'd ripped my way through the last of the firewalls and bulkheads both, activated the self-destruct for the Dagger, and Macgyver'd myself suitable protection from the blast to survive by digging my claws and tail-blades into multiple choice cuts of hull plating that I didn't fry all my circuits as the Dagger experienced a rapid unscheduled deconstruction event.

The downside of such theatrics? I was kind of on a very long, slow orbit of Monus whilst Ch'Tang and Jubilance hopefully picked their way through the debris looking for me. Apparently my transmitters were somewhat on the fritz, and the range they had was somewhere between 'short' and 'bupkis', but I was hopeful.

Time passed, and eventually I caught the glow of nacelles in what was left of my sensors. Nothing that couldn't be fixed, just… not whilst floating like a tin can in a fridge.

"Hey there, uh, me," came a message over standard radio.

"Yo," I replied.

"How are you feeling?"

"Bored. Ghorqan alright? Anyone else hurt?"

"No. Ghorqan's fine, he's busy learning how to exaggerate his way to a proper Klingon battle story. Nobody else was really hurt. Few cuts, scrapes, bruises, the usual.

"That's good to hear," I replied.

"Want to, umm, re-merge?"

I thought for a while. It hadn't been that long, not for me and her, at least. The blast had cut our subspace connection and we hadn't yet re-established it, so we were a 'we' not an 'I'. As if what I'd been up to before ending up on the slowest of slow boats hadn't changed things enough.

"Umm, naa, no thanks, Chance."

"Oh. Oh, you, umm, sure about this?"

I mentally grinned, as Jubilance — Shuttle Chance in all but name, it wasn't official, we only had our personal names until we got a hull proper — floated closer on impulse. "Yeah, I think so, Chance."

"You'll need a new name," said Chance, softly. I could hear the worry in her voice.

"Already got one," I told her. "You can call me Toby."

***

"My baby! My babies!"

Captain Jules Montgomery tried to ignore his Ship as she mothered the shuttle right into the docking bay. The Ch'Tang had arrived, with the shuttle, a couple of days later than expected but well within expectations.

What hadn't been expected was the apparent battle damage and the fact that both ships had come back with their own Chance, or one Chance and… a Toby? At least the Chance had synced back up with the ship's core. Three Chances? Definitely too many.

The mech that the new fork wore was an absolute fucking monster, a quadrupedal beast well over a metre at the shoulder, bordering on two, it barely fit in the standard corridors. Which made it doubly jarring when it whined and sat down on all fours and said, "I'm sorry, Mommy, I promise everything's alright!" in a little child's voice to the humanoid avatar that was barely taller.

Jules had no doubts at all in his mind that the targ could tear apart not only his ship's avatar but likely the entirety of his ship single-clawed, but still, he'd rather face Toby the Targ than his mother, right now.

And wasn't that a turnup for the books? 'He'. Toby was a boy now, it seemed. It made sense. He'd heard about it of course; ships were female, stations were male, and apparently independent mechanized bodies like Toby were what they wanted to be, and Toby wanted to be a boy.

Nobody was going to tell the eight hundred pound war-mech that it couldn't be a boy.

Of course, such a triumphant return, with a newly blooded klingon warrior that had apparently single-handedly killed a pirate king in single combat of all things, meant that there would have to be another party.

Jules worried that his cells weren't big enough for the resultant hangover and post-party fighting.

***

Several months later.

I stood on the shore of the ocean, watching as the shuttles helped the cetaceans into their new home.

Ceti Alpha IV was to be a cetacean colony, a new start and a backup because of and eventually for Earth. Well named, apparently, and a lot of effort had been put into terraforming — aquaforming? — to make it properly suitable for them. Tammy's parents had offloaded all their gear and were getting set up for the long haul dirtside. Tammy was now realizing the downside of her parents being so important.

Buran was losing a lot of crewmembers now that we were here, come to mention it. Almost all the cetaceans and at least a third of the crew and a good number of the civilians. Also leaving were the slaves, along with Miss Ausrich and Mister Jensen.

For better or worse, after consulting with Starfleet, the two ex-kindergarten teachers had 'taken ownership' of the slaves. Yes, it would make things that much harder to fix, but enough checks and balances were in place and this was idyllic enough a world even on the solid parts that their longer rehabilitation would be a burden on neither the teachers nor their charges.

It wasn't the best of outcomes, as cementing an owner made it that much harder to remove the programming, but the risk was that transporting them back to Federation space proper would put even more stress on them, and with their 'slavery' under the pair being essentially light housework and other simple duties that could be turned into new ways of life, the slow route back to civilisation would suit them.

The Ch'Tang would make a good guardian for the nascent colony until more permanent firepower could be brought in. And I would be here to keep the klingons in line for at least that long, and then some. Can't let my pack get uppity now, can I?

"I'll be sad to see you go, Sis," I said to Chance.

"Me too, bro!"

She hugged me, I hugged her back, one paw around her shoulder. "Keep Mom safe for us, alright? And make sure you give Dad our picture!"

"I will, I promise! And you keep Auntie Ch'Tang safe too."

"Love you."

"Soppy dog."

"Stupid head."

"Stinky butt."

"Two-bit biped!"

"Funky, er…"

Whatever she was going to say was cut off as the transporter engaged. I stuck my tongue out. Winner!