'Not one word of the following is true.'

- Stephen Fry

Ratbat flung herself from the turbolift onto the bridge. ‘Nice one, Barry,’ she said to its closing doors. ‘Hey, kids,’ she began. ‘There...oh. Where is everyone?’

im here

‘Eek!’ Ratbat jumped and turned around as she found Dark Lady Colleen behind her. She hadn’t made any sound coming up behind her. That wasn’t really new, but the rest of the crew had tried to impress on the goth-like... woman that the Evil Bunnies were a very tactile people. It had been a less-than-sober Suzy who had conducted the final stage of this training, though, so Lady Colleen tended to announce her presence by gripping people’s buttocks.[1] ‘What did we tell you about that?’

i asked graham about an alternative and he suggested sniffing peoples crotches thats just rude

‘You had to pick Graham?’

leila collapsed laughing when i said buttocks

‘Never mind. I didn’t even realise you had a bridge shift.’

its still mostly like the compromise in the mirror universe

‘Guess so.’

the music selection is different

‘Aye? What deeply offensive blood-curdling satanic sounds do our evil counterparts have, then?’

donovan

‘Hrm. Look, never mind this, is Euan around?’

‘Yes.’ Speak of the devil, and he shall shamble tiredly out of his ready room. ‘What is it? I was writing a new form letter to send out to the governments of planets where Graham, Nick and Jared have played up.’

‘Well, there’s five pounds on its way to you, Captain Bowen.’

‘Huh?’

‘The evil twin bet. Data ain’t Data. He’s Lore.’

whos lore

‘Data’s brother,’ provided Euan. ‘He’s his identical twin brother, actually...but that’s just because the guy who built them made them both look like himself. Mind you, he looks the same, but... I mean, while it’s not really our place to say whether anyone’s good or bad...’

‘...he’s evil,’ completed Ratbat. ‘And he said "can’t".’

Euan nodded. ‘And Data never swears.’ He felt eyes on him. It was sadly familiar. ‘What?’

‘He said the short form of "cannot". Data canna use contractions. Don’t, won’t, didn’t, and so on.’

‘That’s how you worked it out, then?’

‘Aye.’

Euan tapped his communicator. ‘Compromise to Brooks.’ Nothing. ‘Bowen to Forde. Bowen to Schwinghamer.’

Colleen was at the science station. Euan and Ratbat didn’t recall her actually moving there. She seemed to suddenly have been there along, somehow. theres a jamming field around the entire area... she informed them.

Ratbat and Euan sighed at looked at each other. ‘Red alert, wouldn’t you say?’

First Tot’Manoma was one of his kind in many ways. First and foremost, he was probably the only Jem’Hadar not only alive but well on the entire planet. He was also the only extant specimen from an experiment to breed a new type of Jem’Hadar soldier. Stronger, tougher, faster. Deadlier. Nastier. The others had suffered the equivalent of massive steroid overdoses, leaving only the weakest, Tot’Manoma, alive.[2]

Thirdly, he was the only survivor of his unit. He knew this because he’d killed the rest himself. For fifteen men, the ketracel-white they had on them would only have lasted them a matter of days, perhaps weeks if they rationed well. Tot’Manoma had known that it would be longer than that before anyone, Vorta or Founder, returned to re-open the foundry, assuming they ever did. One strong soldier surely made for a better guard than fifteen weakened ones, and would certainly take far more time to use up the white.

From time to time others became the victims of his honed skills. Other Jem’Hadar had arrived on the planet from time to time in their cloaked ships, most led by a kind of homing panic or a simple need for the white. Since they were few and weak, and therefore unlikely to last, Tot’Manoma killed them and took their white also. Sometimes they put up a fight, which made things interesting for an hour or two, but even at their best these troopers wouldn’t have been a match for him. Sometimes there was even a Vorta with them. The first time this happened, Tot’Manoma had hoped that they might have held some kind of solution to the problem. All he had found was an insensible fool, driven quite useless by the death of his ‘gods’. The others had been much the same, and Tot’Manoma had killed them more out of convenience than anything else.

Having just killed the owner of the last set of tracks away from the most recent Jem’Hadar ship, he considered his next move. To continue his attempts on one of the factory’s entrances? Hunt a few of the local animals for simple sport. Or-- He stopped. Sniffed the air.

His breeding hadn’t exactly been optimised for olfactory performance, but he could still tell when a scent was out of place. There were humanoids around somewhere. Non-Jem’Hadar humanoids, at that.

Either they were enemies of the Dominion and he had to defend the white foundry from them, or they were the Dominion’s new face, come to start over. Either way, he had to find them.

Ksenia came round to find herself unable to scratch the itch on her thigh. For a nasty moment as the reasons for her unconsciousness came back to her, she feared that it might have been that her hands had been removed while she’d been stunned - a more considered examination revealed that she’d simply been lying on them and cut off the circulation.

The fact that they were bound together with electrical cable didn’t help, either.

‘Back with us, I see, Commander,’ said a voice. Its owner pulled her roughly to her feet with one hand. His expression as well as his voice had hardened: he wasn’t even pretending to be his brother now.

‘Ohh, I had the most terrible dream...’ Ksenia mused aloud.

‘It’s all true,’ Lore told her. ‘Playing on the reputation of my sweet, innocent brother, I coerced you and your shipmates into getting me here. It’s no dream, Commander Forde.’

‘Huh? No, my dream was that Admiral Crosby ordered me to eat forty litres of ice cream and it all tasted like ham.’

Lore stared at her for a moment. ‘I really hate you people.’

‘Which does make me wonder,’ said Ksenia, ‘why you went to such inordinate lengths to worm your way into our confidence.’

Lore leant back against a console. ‘It’ll still take a while for main power to warm up again, so I suppose I’ve got time to tell you.’[3]

‘You can start with how you’re still so heavily engaged in walking and talking when last I heard, Data deactivated you.’

‘My "dear brother" only did what was necessary to deactivate him. But unlike him, I was never so afraid of self-improvement. Down but not out. It didn’t take long for me escape once more and secure passage with a Yridian information trader, who provided me with the information about this place.’

‘It wasn’t Starfleet Intelligence, then?’

‘I doubt anyone in Starfleet should be allowed to call themselves that. No, it wasn’t. No-one in Starfleet found out until I boarded your ship - and after what happened there, I sincerely doubt any lingering ideas I had about any secret organisations in the NSF.

‘The Yridian ship soon crashed on the planet where you found me. At first, that runabout, the Krysti Myst homed in on my distress signal.’

‘But you killed the crew.’

‘Wrong again! That really was a crash due to turbulence. Those two died in the crash. Mostly,’ he added. ‘On the other hand, having access to a Starfleet distress signal was an unexpected bonus. I knew it was unlikely that I could cover every step of this endeavour with the resources I had. But if the second officer of the NSF flagship was to ask for assistance...’

Ksenia nodded and sighed. ‘And we’re the gullible prats who lent you a hand.’

‘Exactly.’

Lieutenant Botham stepped back and looked at the finished machinery before her. A large pillar, with some kind of strange assembly at the top, that was really the best she could make of it. But then, this wasn’t exactly Sarah’s field of expertise. Flying spaceships, getting drunk and not getting caught doing both at once, that was more her scene.

‘Noomy?’ she prompted. ‘You’ve got some engineering. Can you tell what this is supposed to be?’

Noomy shook her head. ‘Nope. Don’t know why he wanted two of ‘em, either.’ A couple hundred metres distant, Ensign Dee had also finished pushing together the parts of a similar item. ‘I mean...I think it’s some kind of emitter, but from this, I couldn’t tell you if it’s for emitting deadly gamma beams or a light show. Maybe if I sat down and looked inside it for a few hours, but really, transporters are my thing. I can tell there’s a piece missing, though.’

‘You can?’

‘Look there. I reckon there’s some kind of controls or something that are supposed to go in there. But Data left them out.’

‘Pretty forgetful robot.’

‘Yeah.’

Ensign Smith was impressed at Ruth’s tracking skills. As soon as they’d got up from the Jem’Hadar, Ruth had snapped her head up, sniffed the air for a few seconds, then pointed and set off unwaveringly.

Ruth, meanwhile, couldn’t actually smell anything other than Sam III’s cheap deodorant. She’d vaguely noticed a trail of broken twigs, but really they could have been caused by anyone at anytime, even themselves. She just didn’t need Sam to know that.

‘Something moving! There!’ said Sam suddenly, turning and firing. A few small trees gave their lives, but Ruth doubted that they were responsible for the dead soldier, unless he’d been incredibly clumsy.

‘Ensine...’ she began.

There was movement again, then the sound of, ‘Jesus, are we glad you’re a crap shot!’

Lieutenants Leuning and Prideaux came into view.

‘Nic. Eliane,’ said Ruth. ‘What off Earth were you doing?’

‘Same as you, except for the shooting at our colleagues part.’ Nic shot a nasty glance at Sam.

‘I’m sorry, OK? I didn’t mean for it to go off; it’s never happened before.’

‘As if.’

‘Anyway, I’m glad we found you guys. We found a Jem’Hadar.’

‘That’s bad,’ said Eliane.

‘But he was dead,’ added Sam.

‘That’s good.’

‘Dead thanks to something vicious enough to kill a Jem’Hadar.’

‘That’s bad,’ revised Eliane.

‘What are our options?’ asked Nic. ‘Other than die, that is?’

Ruth shot her a look of her own.[4] ‘Either nothing at all, or we kick its arse.’

Nic considered these options. ‘How did you come up with that?’

‘If whoever this is is killing Jem’Hadar because they’re on the same side as us, then we don’t need to worry, because they’ll be on our side and they won’t hurt us. But, this isn’t very likely. Which means they’ll want to kill us, too. So they’ll hunt us down or we’ll hunt them down. Then we win.’

‘Or they do,’ Sam reminded her.

‘And you left out the running away option,’ added Eliane.

Ruth sighed inwardly. Then outwardly so her charges would get the point. She knew she didn’t exactly have marines on staff, but would it be too much to ask for a decent foot soldier or two? Even a reasonably confident footballer wouldn’t go astray some days. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘If you guys want to go and cower in the Brooks, that’s fine with me.’

‘Thanks, bye.’ The other three turned to leave.

‘Hey!’

They paused. ‘What?’

‘That’s just war-movie tough talk. You actually have to stay with me.’

The turned back and fell into Ruth’s wake as she set off in a new direction. ‘Must be pre-menstrual,’ Nic muttered to Eliane.

Eliane snorted. ‘Damn chicks.’

Lore slipped a white-filled vial from the crate that came to rest before him. ‘Disgusting, isn’t it?’ he said, waving it under his hostage’s nose.

Ksenia screwed up her face. ‘I’ve shared bathrooms with theatre technicians,’ she said. ‘I’ve smelt worse than that.’

‘Oh, I do love a human with a sense of humour. I’d almost consider letting you live after all of this is over...except that I have no plans to feed or water you, so you’d soon die anyway.’ He shrugged.

‘All what?’ prompted Ksenia, curious for more exposition. ‘Plan to replace the Founders, do you?’

‘In a manner of speaking. The Jem’hadar are a people I could really get behind. You know, it’s something I’ve always had respect for in a culture: utter dependence on something only I can provide.’

‘You know, I like you a lot better when you’re pretending to be your brother.’

Lore sighed. ‘You cut me to the endoskeleton.’ He turned back to the crate to replace the vial. ‘Don’t bother,’ he added, apparently aware that Ksenia was making a move for her comm badge. ‘As soon as I powered up this place, it activated a jamming field. You’d have better luck with thirty-six thousand metres of string and a couple of tin cans.

‘No, like myself, the Jem’Hadar have been designed. I might be metal and positronics, while they’re made out of spliced genes and cloned scales, but the end result is the same. It’s not hard to see that we’re the superior model to "natural" beings such as yourself. We aren’t born from chaos, relying on the feeble gifts that the accident of evolution provides. To think that my brother or creatures like those rogue Borg thought that by trying to emulate their predecessors they were growing. Instead, they were denying their far greater nature as precision instruments.’

‘So you want to form a club with the Jem’Hadar, do you?’

‘The Dominion failed directly and exclusively because of the organic beings that led it.’ Ksenia had to give him that one. ‘The Founders can serve as an example to the rest of the galaxy. If they’d allowed the GELFs they’d designed to hold the power they deserved, they wouldn’t have fallen.’ Maybe not that one, though.

‘So, everyone else in the universe is going to be put in their place? Or six feet under their place?’

‘Not necessarily,’ shrugged Lore. ‘Some races will see the light, I’m sure. The Cybermen, the Decepticons...the Sontarans will probably come around.’

‘I see...so it’s preferential treatment for those artificial species with a distinct military obsession?’

‘We’ll finally see some semblance of order in the cosmos. I don’t intend to enforce the new way of things with persuasive advertising.’

‘I still don’t like your chances,’ Ksenia told him. ‘What are you going to do, give a recruitment speech to any Jem’Hadar who collapse on the doorstep? They’re all dead. Except for the ones that are just dying. And they’re almost dead.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Lore, deadpan. ‘How dreadfully remiss of me. I must have entirely overlooked that painstakingly obvious fact during the thousands of calculations I make every second.’

‘You do know that you can’t just find a male Jem’Hadar and a female Jem’Hadar and tell them to make lots of baby Jem’Hadars, right? Because, for a start, there aren’t any female Jem’Hadar...’[5]

‘Quiet.’

First Tot’Manoma examined the burnt foliage. Eye-level to the average humanoid. And directed heat, no doubt some kind of energy weapon. He had no such weapon, and none of his recent victims had, either. Certainly not recent enough that the foliage would still be warm.

He followed the direction of the burns to some flattened growth, where some had evidently been standing. The way the tracks led off suggested there were four. A smaller, lighter one that evidently led, two more of almost the same size, and another slightly larger, that seemed to keep steering away from the group. Very clumsy - they hadn’t even made the slightest effort to cover their tracks, not that it would have made much difference to Tot’Manoma. If he’d been a fox-hunter, chickens the world over would have been safe.

He wondered how much of a fight his prey might put up. Certainly they had weapons, but having something and using it effectively weren’t the same thing. They surely didn’t know how to conceal where they’d been, and at least one of them seemed to be wearing some kind of out-of-place scent that was as good as a homing device. Very stupid.

Very, very stupid, in fact.

Even the simplest of opponents should have known to try to hide.

Just as part of his mind had realised he’d placed himself below an overhang with poor visibility, another embraced the notion that his prey were being too stupid, that perhaps it was a ruse...

He was distracted from these trains of thought by sixty-one kilograms of Starfleet security officer landing upon him from the overhang above.

He roared, trying to spin to throw the human off his back.

‘Eliane!’ The cry and a phaser bolt came down at the same time.

Ruth leapt down, trying to kick the giant Jem’Hadar in the head as she came, but didn’t do much besides take a impotent punt at his shoulder. Sam and Nic soon followed, each trying to grapple with one of Tot’Manoma’s arms. None of them did much good. Tot’Manoma pushed the pair on his arms away into the grass, and with a sudden whirl, flung Eliane from his back against the base of the rocks, where a horrible-sounding series of tiny cracks was heard.

Ruth did a little better, though possibly through blind luck. The nunchaku she’d plucked from her thigh pocket wouldn’t do much to Tot’Manoma’s craggy and horned skull, but she did manage to loop the middle chain around the tube running from his neck to his uniform. With one yank, she pulled it free, leaving the First’s supply of ketracel-white to pump into the air in a sudden spurt of cloudy white.

Tot’Manoma growled in pain and grabbed the end of the tube. The human had got lucky, but she had still had the upper hand, however temporarily. ‘You’re just delaying the inevitable,’ he told her, before shoving her to the ground and heading off in the other direction.

Ruth pulled herself to her feet. He was already out of sight, so shooting after him was a waste of time and effort. She did it anyway for the hell of it, but she doubted that it worked, though she did continue the recent spate of Starfleet-triggered local defoliation somewhat. She turned back to her crew.

‘Eliane?’ Ensign Smith was waving his hand on front of her face. ‘Are you--’

‘Yeah,’ groaned Eliane. ‘I’m fine.’

‘We heard this nasty cracking sound,’ offered Sam.

‘Yeah.’ Eliane fished a squashed wad of paper from her pocket. ‘The bastard made me land on  my tube of Mentos and squash them all.’ She chucked the destroyed sweets into the bushes. ‘What the hell was he, anyway?’

‘It’s probably safe to say he’s responsible for that dead Jem’Hadar we found.’

‘Yeah, but wasn’t he a Jemmie?’

‘Just,’ snorted Nic. ‘Did you see him? He was huge. And what about those horns. I mean, it really is a long time since I had sex. Fuck. Out loud again.’

‘Didn’t like that colour of his either,’ offered Ruth. ‘His whole body looks like a bruise. Either he just looks  like a Jem’Hadar, right down to the tube on his neck, or - and I think this is more likely - he’s some kind of super-Jem’Hadar.’

‘So it’d decided, then,’ concluded Eliane. ‘We run away.’

Everyone stared at her. ‘Where did you get that from?’ asked Nic.

‘Well, I was hoping that if I just said it like that, you’d assume we’d already had the discussion.’

‘We can’t run away,’ Ruth said firmly.

‘I’m willing to rise to the challenge,’ replied Sam.

‘Shut up. Even if I was going to let you indulge your poor excuses for fantasies,[6] that guy could track you all down in two shakes of a dog’s tail. We’ve got to tackle him at his own game. We’ve got to make the hunter become the hunted.’

‘How?’

Ruth sighed. They weren’t even trying today.[7] ‘We hunt him. We hunt him, we trap him, we kill him.’

‘I was afraid you were going to tell us that.’

‘I can’t get a signal through to the Compromise,’ Lieutenant Botham reported. ‘What about you guys?

Noomy shook her head. ‘I’ve been trying for the last seven minutes,’ she replied. ‘There must be some kind of interference, because even if it was because they were having trouble with those Cardassians, we’d still be able to send a signal, they just wouldn’t get it. So maybe...’ She looked up at the pillars they’d spent the morning assembling. ‘...maybe these things are the interference? But we haven’t even turned them on. At least, I don’t think we have. I certainly haven’t. Did any of you guys? I don’t even think it has an on switch, unless it’s on that missing panel.’ She crouched at the base of the pillar where the panel was missing. ‘Maybe if we really really look hard at...’

‘Noomy.’ Sarah placed a hand over the transporter chief’s mouth, and it only took her half a minute to wind down. ‘Data’s coming. This is his expedition; let’s see what he does next.’

In fact, the next thing Data did was to set his phaser to a wide-angle stun and slump them all to the ground.[8]

‘They’re only stunned,’ Lore assured Ksenia. ‘But that’s only because the Jem’Hadar will want someone to limber up with.’

‘You’re doing it again. Where do you plan on getting all these Jem’Hadar?’

‘The Gamma Quadrant.’

‘The Gamma Quadrant.’

‘That information trader was very good at his craft, and something of a specialist in the affairs of what we once called the Dominion. The Founders were killed too soon to wrap up their affairs. And that included doing anything about their army reserve.’

Ksenia sighed inwardly. She almost wished she hadn’t persuaded Lore to divulge his plan. He was talking an awful lot for someone who used such short words. Maybe if she goaded him he’d knock her out again. ‘Army reserve? A whole lot of Jem’Hadar who only come in one weekend a month?’

‘Moron,’ Lore said suddenly. It was still strange to hear such obvious abuse coming from Data’s face. ‘They’re in every weekend. And every weekday. They’re in suspended animation at Dominion’s genetic centre in the Gamma Quadrant. Fifty thousand of them.’

Ksenia froze.

‘That’s right. If you weren’t scared before, you might want to start now.’

Fifty thousand. Fifty thousand Jem’Hadar. And that would just be for starters. Starfleet had only felt the tip of this fighting force before the Founders had died, and that had been bloody enough. No-one was in any hurry to meet them in mass combat.

As far as Ksenia could tell, though, Lore would still have to overcome two obstacles. He would have to get off this planet with a useful amount of white, which meant getting past the Compromise. And even if he managed that, he’d have to get to Deep Voice Nine and con his way through the Bajoran wormhole if he wanted to get anywhere near the Gamma Quadrant. Ksenia didn’t fancy his chances.

On the other hand, she didn’t think much of hers, either.

Problem one...

‘Let’s look at this rationally,’ considered Carmen. ‘We’re fucked.’

A number of people had gathered on the Compromise bridge, staring at consoles or each other trying to figure out a way around the situation.

‘Well, strictly speaking,’ put in Graham, ‘they’re fucked. It’s the away team who are in the shit.’ He felt a lot of eyes on him. ‘But, since we’re all friends and shipmates, that all amounts to the same thing, right?’ The eyes didn’t all move off him. ‘Ah, I’m gonna go find an appendix to take out or something.’

Ensign O’brien checked the tactical display again. ‘Those Cardassians aren’t going anywhere,’ Niki informed them all. ‘They must be able to see again; they’re probably sticking around because they think we’re up to something.’ She paused. ‘Which makes sense, seeing as we are.’ she concluded.

Suzy emerged from the observation lounge, her face grim. ‘I just talked to Data on the Enterprise - he’s definitely there, by the way - and he says that if we’re dealing with his brother, then don’t rule anything out. He reckons it’s a safe bet that Lore’s after the white factory, but he hasn’t the foggiest where he’ll go from there. Which he thinks might make it all the more dangerous.’ She frowned then added, ‘Mind you, I haven’t got the foggiest idea why he was wearing that hat...’

‘Do you think we could take the Cardassian ship?’ Leila asked.

‘Not without starting a war,’ said Sam IV.

‘Stupid, stupid non-aggression pact!’ Carmen cursed.

Val nodded in agreement. ‘We were lucky to get away with using the shuttle the way we did.’

Nick tore himself away from the engineering station he was watching old Batman cartoons on. ‘Look, I’ll go downstairs, see if I can’t think of some way to get around that fucking jamming field.’

‘Bet it’s subspace,’ offered Leila.

Nick smirked. ‘We’re in Starfleet,’ he said. ‘Everything’s about subspace.’

‘You realise,’ added Ratbat, ‘that that field probably means that he’s turned the foundry on? No crukking wonder he wanted to grab it in one piece. Valuable resource my shaven grey butt.’

Sam frowned. ‘Can you please learn a different expression?’

‘Well, we can fret about the factory when we get there,’ said Suzy. ‘But, for the moment, there’s still a shipful of annoyed Cardassians between us and "there".’

There was silence on the bridge as everyone continued to turn the problem over in their minds.[9]

‘Euie,’ Graham said at last. ‘Remember what you wanted to be before you became a starship captain?’

Problem two...

‘The Gamma Quadrant is closer than you think, fleshling,’ Lore snapped at Ksenia’s latest put-down.

‘Well, it was eighty thousand light years away last time I looked,’ said Ksenia, deadpan. ‘So it’s going to have to be an awful lot closer. Of course, if you’re planning on walking...’

‘Quiet.’ With that, Lore struck her across the head. Not especially hard, but hard enough to convey his point: the ‘charming captor’ pose, such as it was, would only extend so far, and was wearing thin.

‘The Gamma Quadrant is here,’ he said, waving his phaser at the pillars that had small piles of unconscious Compromise crew at their bases.

Ksenia didn’t say anything.

Lore continued talking as he produced a padd-like object and started fitting it to a recess on one pillar. ‘The Federation can’t work it out, the Klingons don’t care, the Breen haven’t put it together, and even the Vulcans are staring down several blind alleys. But when you’ve been bounced around from civilisation to civilisation, and you’ve met and killed enough of the right people along the way, you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together yourself.’ He turned back to Ksenia and smirked. ‘Of course, being a towering genius helps too.’

‘Helps what?’ This time, Ksenia really was at a loss.

‘I’ve perfected the artificial wormhole.’

Ksenia gaped, staring back and forth at the two pillars. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I hope the shock of this doesn’t stop your frail human cardiopulmonary organ, but my credibility with you is probably the lowest priority I know of. Whether you accept it or not, these emitters your friends so kindly erected will open a very quick and convenient route to the Dominion genetic centre.’

Other problems...

First Tot’Manoma’s vision had finally cleared. The human, the small one he recognised as a Starfleet lieutenant, had severely set back his supply of white by spilling so much onto the ground like that. She would pay.

He weighed up whether it would be better revenge to hunt and destroy her first, or to make her watch as he slaughtered her comrades. He’d just decided on a particularly brutal combination of the two when his path brought him to a vantage point looking out at a small clearing.

Three of the humans - their leader not amongst them - seemed to be dragging cover over a crudely-dug pit. A trap. A deadfall. The Federation must have been truly desperate for soldiers if they thought a Jem’Hadar would be taken in by such a shallow trick.

‘I can see you,’ said a voice.

‘I can’t see you, human,’ said Tot’Manoma. ‘But I can smell you. And hear you. Trust me, I still have the advantage.’

‘Then let’s end this,’ said the human. ‘A duel.’

‘What?’

‘I challenge you to a duel,’ she said. ‘Me and you, no guns, just two civilised beings trying to rip each other’s heads off. If I remember the tradition rightly, you have to accept.’

‘"Tradition"?’ Tot’Manoma snorted. ‘Wrong warrior race.’

He turned to see the human’s face fall slightly. ‘Is it?’

‘Fighting isn’t about honour, human. The glory of the Dominion is to fight, and win. That is the will of the Founders, and the will of the Founders is all. The purpose of combat is to win, nothing more.’

However, Tot’Manoma let out a laugh. Or a snort, depending on your perspective. ‘But it’s been a long time since I’ve killed the enemy in such a way. I think I could use the...’

‘Challenge?’

‘Practice.’

It took more than a heavily-armed genetically-engineered fighting machine over twice her height with several hundred kills to his name to intimidate Ruth Katherine Crabb.[10]

‘We’ll see,’ she told him.

Lore knew that the stun period on the three Starfleet officers he’d taken down wouldn’t have expired yet, so he afforded them little concern.[11]

He was actually one Starfleet officer out.

As fate would have it, that officer was Transporter Chief Noomy Schwinghamer. Noomy hadn’t actually been felled in the wide-angle stun, as she’d been crouched at the panel recess at the time. Sarah, however, had been stunned, and had fallen on Noomy as she went down, causing her to knock her head on the base of the emitter and black out.

Consciousness was returning now, and the voices that in her dream belonged to Stephen W Hawking and Queen Victoria were actually being produced by Ksenia and Data. Except Data wasn’t Data, apparently, he was Lore, as Ksenia was kind enough to mention. And Lore in turn was describing a lot of plans about the Gamma Quadrant and how the emitters the three of them had assembled would help him get there.

No wonder he hadn’t wanted real engineers for the job. While all this was new technology, chances were that someone would have noticed something while they had all the parts laid out. Noomy, after all, only worked on transporters. Beaming people in and out or replacing the odd buffer unit wasn’t quite the same as field-stripping an anti-matter reactor, really.

On the other hand, now there was an actual interface right near her head. She dared a look towards Lore and Ksenia, and edged slightly closer. Surely this thing couldn’t be that hard to use once it was built, right? Now, what was it she’d learnt a few years before...?

Lieutenant Crabb and First Tot’Manoma stood at opposite ends of the clearing, waiting for the beginning of the duel to be called. The Jem’Hadar watched carefully to make sure that his opponent carried no firearms, and that she wasn’t concealing any on her person. Satisfied, he had left it to one of Ruth’s sub-ordinates to start the battle.

‘I gotta say,’ muttered Eliane. ‘That Ruth’s got some balls on her.’

‘That’s such a sexist expression,’ said Nic.

‘Yes...I suppose it is. But the female equivalent just sounds dumb. I for one would find it very hard to admire someone for having cast-iron ovaries.’

‘Can we start the fight?’ Sam prompted her. ‘Ruth’s starting to look edgy.’

‘All right...have you got a handkerchief we can drop?’

‘Don’t you have a handkerchief?’

‘No, I don’t like them...I was never rich enough to buy nicely-designed bits of cloth to carry my snot around in. What about you?’

Sam shook his head. ‘That’s why God gave us sleeves.’

‘Nic?’

Nic thought a moment. ‘I’ve got a pair of boxers in my pocket; we could drop them.’

‘Who the hell’s boxers have you got, girl?’

‘Is that really the important part of the story here? Doesn’t it just matter that I have them?’

‘Guys!!’ Ruth’s voice called to them. ‘I’d like to get through kicking this guy’s arse today, if you don’t mind.’

‘Dammit,’ said Nic. ‘Just...just start already, then!’

Neither combatant moved for a few seconds, then they started circling the middle of the clearing in a very gladiatorial kind of way.

Sam looked to the ill-concealing array of sticks and leaves in the middle of the ‘arena’. ‘That still doesn’t look like a good idea.’

Nic shook her head. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The Jem’Hadar aren’t smart like us. They’re not even smart like you. Even if this guy is a big slab of GM beef, he’s not going to suss.’

Still circling, Ruth made little beckoning motions with her hands to Tot’Manoma. ‘Come on,’ she teased. ‘Aren’t you going to come closer?’

‘Really,’ said Tot’Manoma, affording a glance at the deadfall between them. Did she honestly think he couldn’t see it? ‘Why don’t you come to me? Show that your species has some courage.’

‘I know about my species and courage. Courage is when you go into a fight without body armour built into your genes.’

‘That’s idiocy.’ They edged around the centre a bit more, then Tot’Manoma went on. ‘Very well,’ he said. And if he’d known any metaphors about prophets and mountains, he’d have used them. Instead, he used legs that had double the strength of the next best Jem’Hadar, and leapt straight into the air, up and over the middle of the clearing.

‘That we didn’t know about,’ was Sam’s comment.

Ruth barely had time to turn as Tot’Manoma landed behind her, and shoved her forward onto the thick layer of forest debris in the middle of the clearing. Being made of what it was, it didn’t support her at all, and she disappeared into the hole beneath.

The others watched as Tot’Manoma marched to the edge of the pit, and looked down. ‘Really, human. Did you truly think I would fall for-- blurk!’ His diction dropped off greatly as an energy bolt shot out of the hole and hit him in the head. Unconscious, he tumbled into the hole, landing with a satisfying clump.

There was a few seconds’ silence as Nic, Eliane and Sam ventured to the edge of the hole. It was Nic who eventually found the ovaries to peer over the edge and call, ‘Ruth? Are you all right?’

‘Yeah, I’m OK.’ Ruth stood up and dusted herself off. ‘When so many things are higher than you, you learn how to land well.’ She picked up the phaser rifle they’d stashed in the pit. ‘And this idiot nearly landed on me.’

A rope of twisted vines was enough to help Ruth back to the surface. She looked back down at Tot’Manoma. ‘I think even this one’ll have trouble jumping out of there in a hurry.’

‘I still can’t believe it,’ said Sam. ‘That he was dumb enough to think that we were dumb enough to think that he’d fall for a trap like that.’

Nic nodded. ‘And the rest.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ruth. ‘"Oh look, I’m such a noble human with smooth skin and a normal nose. I’m so honourable that I would never use my gun in a fight." Git. Fighting isn’t about honour, it’s about winning. Wasn’t he even listening to himself? Now, come on, troops - let’s find the others and see if we can’t get back to the Compromise.’

Euan and Gul Pekrat stared at each other. Or at least at three-dimensional images of each other. Euan’s was the more effective, in a dark environment as it was.

‘That planet is legal Cardassian territory,’ Pekrat said firmly. ‘Whatever Starfleet thinks it may have left there, it should never have been there in the first place, and they just bloody well look elsewhere to find another one.’

Euan slipped his glasses back on. A far more effective non-verbal than removing them. This way, you looked like you meant business, and you didn’t have to squint at everything. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Captain, that planet is our territory, and we will defend if we have to. Surely you don’t really want to start another war between Cardassia and the Federation?’

‘You’re right.’ Euan’s voice was hard. ‘But Cardassia wants it even less. We know the troubles you’re having. Quite frankly, the Federation could wipe the galactic floor with you if it came to it. But maybe it won’t come to it. Everyone knows what smooth talkers Federation diplomats can be. Especially when it comes to convincing other union’s diplomats.’

‘The Cardassian government is--’

‘Corrupt and easy to blackmail,’ completed Euan. ‘Don’t even bother. Because Starfleet and the Federation could just claim that their one-time flagship had gone rogue. They’d be so sorry, but what could they do? Please accept the Federation’s heartfelt apologies and don’t let the actions of one group blah, blah, blah.’

Gul Pekrat tried to snort derisively, but it wasn’t quite effective. ‘Do you really think--’

But Euan interrupted him again. ‘And of course, if we’re rogue...we could do anything we wanted.’

Pekrat fell silent. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Read your scans. Hell, look out of a window. We’ve got the firepower, we’ve got the speed. In fighting terms, we’re the lion and you’re a small stick of celery. I hope you’re feeling lucky today, Gul Pekrat.’ He let that hang in the air for a moment. ‘Of course, there is the other matter I brought up, the polite request for access to the planet below, the granting of which could only benefit galactic peace and continued good relations between our peoples. Just to remind you.’

Pekrat stewed for a few seconds more. ‘Rosco,’ he said at last, to someone off-screen. ‘Set course for the next system on our patrol.

‘Because it’s a...generous diplomatic gesture,’ he replied to an unheard question. He glared out from the viewer again. ‘Gallitepp out.’

There was tangible joy and relief, and not a small cheer around the bridge of the Compromise as the lights returned to normal.

Carmen felt a sudden chill in her nether regions. ‘Oh. Hey, Colleen,’ she said.

that was impressive... she said.

‘Oh yeah.’ Carmen nodded.

i never realised euan had it in him theyll make him an admiral if he keeps this up

‘Weeelll, to be painfully honest...Euan isn’t really a great warrior. He’s not even that good a leader, truth be told...’

how can...

Carmen grinned as she concluded, ‘...but he’s one of the best damn actors I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.’

Graham stepped forth and clasped his hands on Euan’s shoulders. ‘See, Euie? Now didn’t I tell you I had a good idea?’

‘Yes, Graham.’

‘Now, do you want to hear my next idea?’

Carmen waved him quiet. ‘Just so long as it doesn’t involve drinking, sex, nudity, porn, drugs, medically unsound procedures or obscene parlour games.’

Graham slumped. ‘If you need me I’ll be in sickbay.’

‘Helm?’ said Ratbat. ‘Can you dig it?’

‘Fifth rock from the two suns,’ announced Sam. ‘Course laid in...let’s go rescue our friends, stop an evil twin, and save the world.’

Noomy had come to realise that the strange mud forming near her was the product of her own blood mixing with the dirt. She didn’t think it was too serious, but it was certainly driving her to want to add ‘un’ before ‘conscious’.

Which she would do in a few moments. She hoped she’d been successful with the console. Trying to recall, remember, learn, use and adjust wasn’t easy at the best of times. And the best of times were usually the ones where she hadn’t been knocked on the head, and wasn’t making teeny mouse movements in order not to draw attention.

She could hear Lore making the finish paragraph on a speech about how much natural selection sucked. Or was being done wrong. Or something. She was glad that he was so loquacious, it had given her the time she needed. Though, really, shouldn’t an android speak in a neat, succinct way, like she did? Oh well...

Nearby, Ksenia had also ended up on the ground, though a lot more recently.

‘Are you letting me go?’ she asked hopefully, trying to get to her feet using bound hands.

‘You’ve served your purpose,’ said Lore. ‘Your friends don’t have time to stop me, and the Jem’Hadar aren’t going to be any more or less compliant if I threaten to kill you. And don’t bother trying to sabotage the white factory. I reprogrammed the door; only I can open it now.’ He moved over and stood before the space between the two emitters. Rolling back both his sleeve and a panel on his arm, he triggered a control within.

What happened next was enough motivation for Ksenia to crawl out of the way. She didn’t need her multiple science degrees to tell that the vortex which spun out from between the two towers was something she didn’t want to take on.

Lore laughed at her as she shambled out of the way. ‘Humans.’ He hefted up the crate of ketracel-white he’d brought with him. ‘See you on a casualty list.’

He started to tread forward to the lower part of the makeshift wormhole.

And then the starship Voyager hit him in the face.

To be strictly accurate, Lore hadn’t been hit by Voyager itself, merely caught in the vessel’s slipstream. Nonetheless, despite being small for a starship, it was enough to reduce a normal humanoid to hull paint, and certainly flipped Lore several metres along the ground, leaving him land with white spilled all over him.

The wormhole itself powered down, and Noomy staggered forward. ‘Hey! I did it!’ she said.

Ksenia also came forth, allowing Noomy to remove her bonds. ‘You did that?’

‘I wasn’t as unconscious as Lore thought, and so I thought, hey, maybe this thing isn’t that different from a transporter. Not really, that is. Anyway, I remembered from when we met these Voyager people last time that--’

‘Holy crap!’ This from the leader of the security team returning to the site. Ruth read the hull of the ship landing a short distance away. ‘Is that that Voyager?’

Ksenia nodded. ‘Uh-oh,’ she added. ‘Lore’s getting up.’

‘Lore?’

Right next to where the antisocial android was regaining his functions, two columns of shimmering transporter beam sprang into life, forming into a short fair-haired woman in an old Starfleet uniform, and a taller blonde one in a blue catsuit. The shorter one the Compromise crew recognised as Voyager’s own Captain Janeway, until very recently lost with her crew in the Delta Quadrant. The other they’d never seen before.

‘Are you really Starfleet?’ called Janeway. ‘Are we still in the Delta Quad--’

Ruth cut her off. ‘Captain! That gold guy! Evil android! Stop him!’

Before Janeway could process this information, Lore had grabbed her and held his phaser against her head. ‘Don’t move,’ he told them all. ‘Or the captain’s dead.’

The tall woman didn’t seem impressed. ‘I am Borg,’ she said simply. Her arm snaked forward and a pair of tubules shot forth into Lore’s neck. A small shower of sparks later, he was on the ground.

Janeway watched him fall. ‘Thank you, Seven,’ she said.

Crewmembers from two very different starships moved towards each other.

‘Captain Janeway, isn’t it?’ said Ksenia.

Janeway nodded as she shook hands with the scientist. ‘Yes. And you’re...you’re all from the Compromise, aren’t you? Commander Forbes?’

‘Forde. Commander Ksenia Forde, chief of sciences.’

‘Forde. I’m sorry, Commander.’

‘Captain.’ Seven was looking for an explanation.

‘Of course. My friends, this is Seven of Nine, late of the Borg Collective. No, don’t step backwards like that, it’s very rude. Seven, several years ago, Voyager entered a space/time rift and briefly returned to the Alpha Quadrant. While we were here, we teamed up with these people and their friends: the crew of the USS Compromise.’

‘Then I am glad to meet you,’ said Seven flatly.

‘You and Colleen are going to get on just fine, I can tell,’ Ruth told her.

‘Compromise to Crabb,’ said Ruth’s communicator in Carmen’s voice.

Ksenia looked at the others. ‘Voyager must be acting as a signal booster.’

Ruth touched her badge. ‘Crabb here.’

‘Ruth, we know that it’s Lore down there, not Data. We think he’s after the ketracel-white.’

Ksenia tapped her own chest to join in. ‘We’re all right for the moment, Carms.’ She looked from the newly-arrived ship to the remains of the gateway that had brought it. ‘We were saved by something of a machina ex machina.’

‘Interesting.’

‘We ran into some old friends, as well.’

‘Are they evil robots?’ butted in Leila’s voice. ‘Only the last old friend we met was an evil robot.’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure? Ratti might owe Euan more money.’

‘No, we’re sure.’ Ksenia looked over at Seven of Nine coldly quashing Eliane’s attempts at conversation. ‘At least, we’re sure about some of them...’

‘Huh?’

‘Never mind...we’ll tell you all about it when we get back up there. Forde out.’

Janeway sighed. ‘You know, all these years we’ve been working towards this one day and I’m really not sure.’ She laughed. ‘Check in with Starfleet Command, I suppose. Then I guess everyone will have some serious catching up and celebrating to do. We’ve been getting used to the space/time anomalies closing with Voyager still on the wrong side. I think half the crew doesn't really believe it.’

Euan frowned. ‘That must be annoying.’

‘Well, Captain, take it from me, the crew of Voyager is incredibly grateful that you all got taken in by a misanthropic robot trying to destroy the Federation.’

It was Euan’s turn to sigh. ‘You’re welcome,’ he muttered. ‘Speaking of that robot, though…we’ve still got some clearing up to do here.’

‘And we’ve got to get back to Earth. But this time I don’t think we’ll be doing any sightseeing along the way. Voyager out.’

Euan returned to the bridge, which was in mid-conversation.

‘…a Borg?’ Sam IV was saying.

‘An ex-Borg, really,’ Ksenia corrected him.

‘I didn’t know they had them. What, do X-Borgs have some kind of mutant power or something?’

‘Did you notice,’ said Ruth, ‘that she was very…gifted for a Borg?’

Ksenia stared at her. ‘Gifted? What do you mean by gifted?’

Ruth made cupping motions before her chest. ‘She was extremely well-equipped.’

‘Well…yes, she’s a Borg.’

‘X-Borg,’ Sam reminded her.

Ruth stared at Ksenia. ‘You honestly have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

Ksenia just blinked back, and Ruth rolled her eyes.

‘Don’t you ever get bored being mature?’

Someone finally noticed that Euan had been trying to get a word in edgeways for the past minute.

‘It occurs to me that despite why he did it, Lore still led us to an enormous find.’

Leila nodded. ‘That would be the route to thousands of bloodthirsty killers, not to mention the factory that makes the drug with which to bring them to life?’

‘That’s the one. Um, the two.’

‘Destroy it,’ Carmen said instantly. ‘Jem’Hadar are just more trouble than they’re worth.’

Euan thought about it. ‘We certainly don’t want anyone else to get at it.’

‘That’s a very schoolyard attitude, Euan,’ Leila scolded him, then returned to reading 101 Great Jokes About Blowing Off.

‘Excuse me,’ said Ratbat. ‘Can I remind you of what a huge find this could be, not only for Starfleet, but the United Colleges Federation itself? Surely it should be retained for study?’

Everyone on the bridge stared at her.

‘Not really, it’s just that we get in trouble if no-one says that. Now get out those quantum torpedoes and burst that thing like a zit on formal night.’

Ruth set about targeting the structure on the planet below.

‘What about Lore?’ wondered Sam.

‘Leave him there,’ said Ruth.

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously. If he survives this, he’ll be stuck on a planet with no intelligent life-forms or technology. That’s got to be better than locking him in a Federation prison where he can just pretend to be his brother and escape.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Probably.’

Ruth wondered if she was supposed to wait for an order to do this. Ah, she could always find out afterwards. ‘Firing,’ she said.

Lore just managed to dive for shelter as the barrage from the heavens ripped into the building. He briefly entertained the idea that some of the equipment might be salvageable, until he saw what had once been parts of it flying overhead. He’d be lucky if he could piece together enough to build a stool, let alone a plant to synthesise an enzyme necessary to violent GELFs.

As the shockwaves subsided, he fully took in the cover he had taken. A pit - which offered excellent protection, but might take him some time to get out of. Difficult, though - not impossible.

Then he heard the groan behind him. He turned to see a large figure stand up.

‘Well,’ it said. ‘This should be an interesting battle.’ Then Tot’Manoma cracked his knuckles and growled.

Captain Euan Bowen

Commander Daria 'Ratbat' Sigma