443 Powers That Be
Surprisingly, it was the enthusiastic Chief Engineer from the Hera that volunteered to command the new spacedock. She said something about taking both of her captain's lessons to heart and wanted to do more practical good for the federation than just researching on a futuristic vessel. Once she had helped reformat a single Borg Cube to work with normal controls, there was nothing left for her to do.
Captain Laurena Andreas accepted the decision, since she wanted to remain a fleet captain for more than the two weeks she had been assigned the duty. Her first officer didn't even joke about not being able to take command of the USS Galaxy if she did assume command of the spacedock, which made her appreciate his diligence even more.
Of course, that meant slipping a few records back into Starfleet Command's database about the woman's commission reactivating, since she would be a part of Captain Andreas' command area. That also let Shiva LaForge finally send out a burst transmission of her personal logs to her family members.
She had the computer back-date them so that no one would know some of the last few were freshly made, like her thanking them for being her family, that she loved them very much, and she wanted them to live out the rest of their lives being happy.
I approved it, as well as for anyone else that wanted to comfort any remaining family members. No one else did. The Vulcans were content to stay inside one of the labs and researched anything they wanted. Their intellectual pursuits were encouraged and they would never admit that they liked the freedom they now had. Both Tom and Lwaxana knew they did, though.
Although, the chief medical officer and Beverly collaborated and added a 'misfiled' report to Agent Keyla's latest missive to pass along to Section 31. It was about their work on fixing the Borg and hints about the Vidiian medical technology without actually saying what it was, just that it worked wonders for human adaptability to replacement organs.
Again, I approved it, because it would reach the right people the fastest without having to go through nearly endless reams of government red tape first to prove it was safe.
The hundred Engineering Chappels were deployed again, as were five of the large industrial replicators we had in storage. We didn't use all ten because of the energy drain and that slowed the production of materials to half of what we had before.
That worked out well, because we were only making a standard living space for the crew and staff before adding in the many spider-like large arms that could easily adjust to fit over any ship, even a Galaxy Class. The construction went ten times as fast, since it was fairly modular in design.
Pumping the parts out and assembling them happened relatively fast, by normal construction standards. Again, the Chappels only did the essentials to get the place operational and would let the staff assigned to the starbase take care of the internal aesthetics. They would be living there, so letting them design it was only fair.
With the extra people available on the five ships of the garrison and the few real people on my ship, we had more than enough people to crew the spacedock and not be shorted there or on any of the ships. The medical officer from the Hera even offered to transfer to the starbase for a while, just for the break it would provide.
A medical Chappel also wanted to accompany the doctor to make sure she wasn't stuck with training a replacement nurse, and the doctor graciously accepted and they gathered copies of some medical supplies and a few replicator patterns to make sure the starbase's medical bay was up to their standards, which was quite a bit higher than normal Starfleet regulations.
It was almost funny how surprised Captain Andreas was with how quickly the main part was finished and then enclosed to seal it. It didn't look pretty, not in the least; but, it worked and that was what mattered. Once the station's reactor and warp core were in place, we transferred over the five industrial replicators we had in storage and they started producing the necessary hull plates.
We had several meetings as the station reached operational status and how soon command could be transferred to the Chief Engineer. I didn't interfere as Captain Andreas sent reports to Starfleet about our building methods and how effective it was, since it let her keep a record of it and also proved it wasn't a fluke that we really could make a starbase as quickly as previously reported.
When she returned to her own flagship after the last meeting, Beverly and I returned to my ready room and discussed the many messages and pleas to return to Starfleet Command and Earth. We had to refuse, mostly because we knew they would never let us leave again if I accepted being put back into their chain of command and took the promotion to Commodore.
Why? Because I would lose access to the USS Retaliation and Beverly would lose her captaincy. She was still only a commander in Starfleet and it was much harder for her to become a full fledged captain under their regulations. An unaffiliated ship didn't count, apparently. It wasn't stated outright that they would tear the ship apart for its secrets; but, it was implied.
Neither Beverly nor myself believed they would let the ship out of their sight if they did capture it, and breaking it apart would stop anyone else from taking it, too. That was the only logical solution to its existence, after all. So, we would keep it out of Starfleet's hands and continue what we were doing as we saved as many people as we could in the background.
That brought me to thinking about Beverly's family and I asked her who was still alive. She mentioned her grandmother was on a colony planet and she hadn't heard from her in quite some time. Well, I couldn't stand by and let that situation continue on for much longer.
Several hours later, we were back on the bridge. As soon as the Chappels finished applying the last of the shield generators and the essential hull plates to cover the most vulnerable parts of the station, I ordered them back aboard and told Wesley to head to Caldos IV at high warp to visit his great grandmother, Felisa Howard. It had been far too long since both he and Beverly had seen the woman and it was time to fix that.
Wesley gave me a pointed look, glanced at the sexily dressed Lwaxana Troi sitting in Commander Chappel's seat, at his mother, and lastly back to me. I chuckled at the obvious unspoken question and nodded, so he smiled and glanced at Data, whom sent him the coordinates. Wesley nodded and then set the proper course and speed.
“OPS, give Captain Andreas our regards and wish her good luck with her command.” I said.
Chappel sent it along and her console beeped a minute later. “She said good hunting.”
I smiled. “Whenever you're ready, Wesley.”
“Yes, sir.” Wesley responded and used the Impulse engines to quickly get us far enough away from the station and the other ships in the area. “Engaging warp drive in three... two... one.”
The ship jumped to warp speed and the viewscreen showed streaking stars passing by.
“You don't have to do this.” Beverly whispered in my ear.
“Yes, I do.” I responded and turned my head to give her a quick kiss. “If your grandmother is even half as spunky and tenacious as you are, she either has or has had a lover for a while and is having the time of her life.”
Beverly blushed and smacked my arm, making all the Chappels around us laugh. Lwaxana gave Beverly a smirk and didn't say anything. She nodded instead and looked at the back of Wesley's head, her mind fully agreeing with the spunky and tenacious part that ran in the family.
“I'll cash in some of my extra credits for precious metals while on the colony as well.” I said. “It's all just sitting there doing nothing, so I might as well use it before they decide to take it all away again.”
“That's a good point.” Lwaxana said, her face thoughtful. “I'll have to pop by Betazed to do the same thing with my own accounts. If it's not helping me in any way with how it is now, why should I just let it sit there? I should have some fun with it and spread it around.”
“That was my thoughts exactly.” I said and gave her a look. “Before you say anything, we're not going to DS9 to annoy Quark.”
“What? Why?” Lwaxana asked and pouted. She had been working on it and it almost matched Beverly's, which meant it almost worked on me. “Chappel told me how much fun we could have if we show up with a crate of gold pressed latinum bars to rub it in his face!”
All the Chappels laughed at me groaning in response.
“Do you want to give him a heart attack and an aneurysm at the same time?” I asked.
“YES!” Lwaxana and the Chappels shouted.
I gave her a deadpan look and she pouted even harder. I then made a mistake and glanced over at Beverly and she hit me with a pout, too. “Goddammit.”
Beverly and Lwaxana grinned as they reached across me and gave each other a high five.
“We're stopping near the Cardassian border under cloak first. The Enterprise is going to send a Bajoran on a secret mission to return a Cardassian spy within the next week and she's going to be killed while trying to escape.” I told them.
“We're saving another person that should have died?” Beverly asked.
“It's under Captain Picard's orders, too.” I said and she frowned. “It was imperative that the spy be returned in a particular matter, with her pretending to be a hostage, only it goes wrong. Everyone assumes she was killed; but, she could be so easily captured and the escape pod destroyed to cover it up.”
“Oh, no.” Data whispered and turned from the Navigation console to give me a pleading look. “Just like Tasha.”
“Yes, just like her.” I said. “Although, this time we're going to save her.”
Data nodded and turned back to face forward. “I wish we could go back and save her, too.”
I sat there and thought about it for a moment. “Go back to do it? No, it's not possible. The local entities wouldn't allow that to happen.”
Data slumped slightly in his seat.
“However, even if there's no guarantee it'll work or if it's even possible...” I said as a qualifier and then continued. “...while Beverly and Wesley are busy visiting, I could spend a few hours searching the next few dimensions sideways for one where we could step in and save her.”
Data sat up straighter and turned his head to give me a determined look. “I would appreciate any effort you can spare, sir.”
I nodded and he went back to work. Beverly and Lwaxana gave me concerned looks. They knew how difficult it was to search like that, especially with omnipresent entities lurking in practically every corner that sometimes viciously guard their chosen domains.
I would need to be very careful as I probed the most probable destinations. Perhaps I should concentrate of the worst ones? Those were most likely not being watched over by the Q Continuum as closely. Then again, perhaps the safest and most protected ones would be the best options? Would Tasha still suffer the same fate if she didn't encounter the tar entity or a spacial anomaly?
I shook my head mentally and would worry about that when the time came. The first thing I needed to do was go along with Beverly for her initial visit and give grandmother some physical tweaking to keep her alive a lot longer than her actual age would normally allow.
*
If Felisa Howard wasn't already seeing someone, she would have made a pass at the handsome young man that had greeted her like those old fashioned gentleman from the storybooks. He had taken her hand and kissed the back of it, which gave her a thrill she hadn't felt in a while.
She was glad her own lover was out at the moment or he would have been very jealous of the looks she was giving Thomas Riker. As it was, her granddaughter was giving her the same kind of looks and she cackled a laugh at getting a reaction out of her.
Before Felisa could say she was only teasing her, Thomas said he had an urgent matter to attend to and had only stopped by long enough to greet her and to thank her for passing on her genes to Beverly. Felisa laughed as her granddaughter swatted his hand to make him let her go and he gave her a toe-curling kiss and then he disappeared in a swirl of teleporter energy.
Wesley greeted her in a similar manner, which made Lwaxana swat at him for it, and Felisa laughed at the similarities. She invited them all to sit and provided tea and scones, then they all enjoyed talking and sharing their stories and bits of their lives they lived for the last few years. The next few hours were a wonderful time for them all and it gave them a chance to actually feel like a real family for the first time in a long time.
It was something they had missed and didn't realize they hadn't had much of, not with how busy they had been. It was only now that they were relaxing and taking a much needed break that they knew how much they had missed in their lives.
They all secretly promised that they wouldn't take anyone for granted, especially not their family members, and they left the small comfy home with smiles and determination to remain a family for as long as possible.
*
After very, very, very carefully searching through hundreds of nearby dimensions using my clairvoyance power, mindful of both Q's presence and energy signature, I only found two instances where Tasha could be saved. In one, she was serving a pivotal role in ensuring the timeline remained as it was and could die or be captured at any moment. In the other, she had just been killed when her tactical console exploded.
Instead of wasting time in trying to chose, I stepped into the one where the console exploded and reversed time for her body to just before she died of her injuries, then healed her and stepped back to my ready room. I kept her unconscious, just in case, and then made myself invisible and stepped to the other dimension.
I stayed right beside her as she desperately tried to cause as much damage to the invading Romulans as possible with the old ship's failing weapons. The console crackled and the power cut off, she yelled in frustration and punched it with both fists, only it didn't come back to life.
“It can't end like this.” Tasha whispered as she glanced around at the wrecked bridge. Most of the officers were dead, even the captain, and only one ensign was still at their station trying to restore power to the bridge.
A group of six Romulans, armed with phaser rifles, appeared in the middle of the bridge and two of them shot at the ensign and two shot at Tasha. I wasn't going to stand there and let them be captured for no reason and covered both with energy shields. The pulses bounced off and surprised everyone on the bridge, especially Tasha and the ensign.
I took out a phaser rifle from inventory and Tasha gasped at it appearing beside her and floating in the air, then she grabbed it and opened fire on the Romulans. The overpowered energy blasts cut them down in less than a second and she stood there with shock on her face for a moment, then she scowled.
“Ensign! Grab one of their giuns and let's go! We have a crew to save!” Tasha ordered.
“Y-y-yes, s-sir!” The young woman responded with a stutter and walked over to the bodies, picked up one of the guns, and familiarize herself with it. She took a breath and let it out, put the same etermined look on her face that Tasha had and nodded.
Tasha nodded back and the two of them ran to the turbolift. I went with them, still invisible, and we went down to the next deck and started the slaughter of every Romulan that had boarded the ship to kill or capture the survivors.
“We need to work our way down to main engineering to scuttle the computer core and then blow the ship.” Tasha said and the ensign nodded.
I thought about that and realized she probably didn't have the access codes to do it from the bridge, even if it had power, so I kept an eye on them with my power and stepped to the ship's computer core. I didn't wipe it, though. I changed my fingertip into a black hole, using Thirteen's power from My Hero Academia, and touched it.
It was almost instantly torn from the bulkheads it was attached to and crushed into a small ball and disappeared into my fingertip. It was an awesome way to dispose of evidence and there would be no way for the Romulans to retrieve data from something that didn't exist.
I stepped back to where Tasha and the ensign were and they didn't find anyone else from Starfleet, which meant anyone still alive were already captured or dead. I stayed with them until we reached Main Engineering and there were several teams of Romulans tearing through the engineering computers and equipment.
Tasha didn't bother warning the enemy she was there and opened fire. The ensign did as well a few second later and I killed the rest of them by stepping them outside the hull of the ship. Tasha ran to the engineering console and cursed at it being partially dismantled.
“We can't set the destruct without fixing this first.” The ensign said and moved the top of the panel. It broke in half and fell to the floor, clearly unattached to what it was supposed to be. “I'm not a dedicated engineer, either. I can't do much with just basic tools and spite.”
Since I didn't want either of them to lose hope, or to be captured, I set a photon torpedo onto an engineering table slightly out of sight and opened the cover, to pretend it was being worked on. I then gave Tasha a mental nudge to look around for something, anything at all to help, and she darted around on fast legs and saw it.
“Hendricks! Over here!” Tasha shouted and the ensign rushed over.
“That I can do with tools and spite.” Hendricks said with a smile.
“Me, too.” Tasha said and the two of them set the thing up to explode, then laid it on the handrail around the warp core and secured it. “I have the detonator. Get to the...”
“I'm not going anywhere, sir.” Hendricks said and sat beside her.
Tasha gave the ensign a sad look. “Then we'll do it together.”
Hendricks nodded and took her hand. “On three.”
The two of them reached for the rigged up plunger and grasped it firmly. They looked int each others eyes and knew what the other was going to say.
“THREE!” They yelled and pushed the plunger.
I put them to sleep and stepped them from there back to my ship, then stepped to the space near the ship as the warp core exploded. It took out two of the old Romulan warships and the debris damaged a third. The Klingons on the nearby colony saw the act and gave up their cheers for a valiant death to take out their enemies and the Romulans retreated without any prisoners and most of their forces dead.
With the act ensuring the timeline in that dimension would stay as it was, I stepped back to my ready room on my ship and looked at two Tashas and an ensign named Hendricks laid across my sofas.
What the hell was I supposed to do with them now?