The first time I saw Wesley was two days later on the bridge and he had a huge smile on his face. It was a little unnerving, because he talked normally to his mother and the smile didn't disappear. I greeted Beverly with a light peck on the lips and she introduced us.
Surprisingly, Wesley didn't flinch at seeing his mother showing me affection and he greeted me back as if we had known each other for a while and were only just meeting casually. Beverly looked a little worried at that, then Wesley laughed and said his Lieutenant Chappel explained everything he needed to know and he was happy to be included in the great prank we were pulling on Starfleet.
I had to bark a laugh at that and he grinned at me, then he went right back to talking to his mother about how he was passing everything easily at Stafleet Academy and none of it meant anything, because he couldn't stand out among everyone else or prove his intelligence was an asset like he did back on the Enterprise.
Beverly responded by saying he could do that here, especially with how much there was to learn and experiment with, then she launched into her own efforts after boarding the USS Retaliation and how she hadn't realized how routine her old life had become until it was behind her.
I went into my ready room and a Chappel followed me. I gave her a pointed look and she didn't need any other prompts to spill what had happened between one of her sisters and Wesley. I stood there and listened to it all and let out a sigh.
“I thought I warned you not to do anything like that.” I said and rubbed a hand on my face.
“You told me not to flash him and then told me it would be easy to tease him because he thought I was Lwaxana.” Chappel responded. “All I did was lead him on a little and he took it way too personally.”
“Chappel...” I said and was about to reprimand her.
“I found out why, though!” Chappel said and cut me off.
“All right, tell me why he reacted like that.” I said and crossed my arms.
“He remembers how the real Lwaxana acted amorously for Captain Picard and how she chased him all over the Enterprise every time she came to visit.” Chappel said. “Wesley's mannerisms were mimicking his, even with his walking and uniform straightening, and he was flattered that a younger version of a mature woman was doing the same thing to him, whom sees himself as a younger version of Picard.”
I stood there and looked at her with a blank face. “He sees himself as a younger Picard and still had sex with you?”
Chappel smirked and posed as she put a hand on her hip, that just so happened to make her chest jiggle. “His exact words were, and I quote, 'I'm not an idiot like him and had to take the chance to be with a woman as beautiful as you are', end quote.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Okay, okay. I'll stop giving you grief over it.” I said and nodded at her waist. “Did you warn him about that before you went to far?”
“There's a reason he's calling Lieutenant Chappel from Engineering 'his Chappel'. She had hers removed temporarily.” Chappel chuckled. “After they had sex a few times, she warned him to not approach anyone but her because of it.”
I opened my mouth to say that wasn't much of a deterrent, then closed it. If Wesley was curious about it, he could always have his Chappel have it reattached. As it was, I didn't want to know if he did, since that was none of my business.
“I don't want to know.” I said out loud and she smirked at me again as she reached for her pants. “No.” I ordered. “Just no.”
Chappel laughed and let her hands drop to her sides. “Is there anything else I can help you with, Admiral?”
“What's the ETA to the Devolin System?” I asked.
Chappel tilted her head slightly. “Navigation says about three hours at warp, then another hour using Impulse engines to reach the asteroid belt from the system's edge.”
I nodded. “Call me to the bridge when we drop out of warp.”
“Yes, sir.” Chappel said and saluted.
I returned it and she left my ready room as she swayed her ass for me. I shook my head at her and sat down at my desk. The skirted Secretary Chappel came in and prepared a coffee and a croissant with creme this time. She brought over that and a datapad to hand to me, then fumbled the datapad to drop it to the floor.
“Oops! Clumsy me!” Chappel said and did an about face and folded herself in half to pick the thing up and it flipped her skirt up and out of the way to show herself almost completely.
I looked of course, because who wouldn't. She wore red see-through panties today and a stylish garter belt that matched her stockings. She had also added a tuft of hair above her mound to conceal the rest of what she was packing and I appreciated it. She stood up after a moment and turned around to give me a huge smile, handed me the datapad, and almost skipped across my ready room to the door.
The time seemed to pass quickly and I was called to the bridge when we dropped out of warp. Beverly gave me a nod when I came out of my ready room and I smiled and nodded back. Helmsman Chappel had given up her seat for Wesley to sit and he looked almost giddy as he flew the swift and capable ship.
I sat in the middle chair and waited a moment. “Status report.”
“All systems functioning, Admiral.” Chappel said from Tactical.
“Ops? Anything on the long range scanners?” I asked.
“No, sir. The Romulan Neutral Zone is surprisingly quiet.” Chappel responded.
Beverly gave me a searching look. “I suppose that's probably because of what you warned Commander Riker about?”
“You remembered that?” I asked and she nodded. “Yes, a Romulan Warbird has problems with its warp core and they send out a distress call. If the Enterprise responds, they'll be caught up in several subspace distortions that seemingly stop, accelerate, and also reverse time.”
“How do you know that, sir?” Wesley asked and looked back at me.
“Temporal Prime Directive.” I answered with a straight face.
Both Beverly and Wesley had wide eyes for several seconds, then all the Chappels on the bridge started softly laughing.
“What's so funny?” Beverly and Wesley asked at the same time.
“Admiral Riker is joking.” Commander Chappel said. “The both of you are part of the crew now and are included in that as well.”
Wesley relaxed slightly and nodded to turn back and focused on flying the ship.
“We have full records of what the Enterprise and every other ship in Starfleet has gone through for the next hundred or so years.” I said and both Beverly and Wesley caught their breaths. “Yes, we'll be stepping in and altering a few things. Not much, because we all know that if we change too much, a certain being will take exception to our actions and will interfere with our interference.”
Wesley sat up straight and looked around, then looked a little disappointed that Q hadn't appeared.
“Like I said, we can only do things that won't affect the timeline too much.” I said. “Retrieving the phasing cloak device is barely a blip in the history of the Enterprise.”
“So they do come searching for it?” Beverly asked.
“Yes, Admiral Pressman visits the Enterprise next month on a secret mission to come here and risks an incident with the Romulans to retrieve it. There's a confrontation with a Warbird and the ship gets sealed inside the asteroid where the USS Pegasus is melded into it. They use the experimental device to escape and sets off a round of talks and concessions that Starfleet has to suffer the embarrassment for.”
“Why are we stopping that?” Wesley asked. “Maybe a little humbling would be good for them.”
“Because the Romulans benefit immensely over it and the device is destroyed, along with all the research materials and experiments.” I said. “The technology is lost and could have saved so many people and ships in the future, including the Enterprise about two years from now.”
Beverly and Wesley's head snapped around to stare at me.
“I'll tell you about that later.” I said and motioned towards the main viewscreen. “Wesley, take us into the asteroid field and be mindful of the drifting asteroids. Tactical, ready phasers to guide them away from us if they are only going to be near or possibly graze our shields.”
“Aye, sir.” Wesley and Chappel said together.
“Yellow Alert.” Beverly ordered as the ship neared the asteroids. “Deploy ablative armor.”
“Aye, sir.” Ops and Tactical responded.
The ship was covered in a thick protective armor and Wesley flew into the dangerous space with confidence. It had been a while since he had been in control of a powerful ship and he felt the thrill as he deftly avoided a larger asteroid and then dipped the ship below the smaller one that was behind it in a skewed orbit.
“Nice one, Wes.” Chappel at the Navigation console whispered to him.
Wesley grinned at the praise and continued to fly them into the main part of the huge field.
“Sir, the background radiation is distorting other energy signatures.” Ops said and hit a few commands. “I suggest bring us about to heading 150 mark 45 to mitigate the overlapping echoes.”
“Helm, bring us onto the new heading.” Beverly ordered. “Ops, don't waste this chance. We don't know how long we'll be alone out here.”
“On it, sir. Adjusting signal strength to match the known warp core signature of the USS Pegasus.” Chappel said.
“Try adding in an array protocol.” I suggested.
“Aye, sir. Adding in array protocol beta one, federation class designations.” Chappel said and there were several beeps. “Sir! It's working! Signal interference has dropped to 30%. Adjust heading to 125 mark 30.”
“Adjusting.” Wesley said and the ship turned slightly and rose a little.
*BEEP! BEEP!*
“We've got it!” Ops exclaimed and changed the viewscreen to a partial wireframe view. “It's inside the huge asteroid off to the right about 10 degrees.”
“Wesley, bring us in.” Beverly ordered. “According to the scans, there's a fissure that's wide enough for us to easily slip inside to stay out of sight of even the best scanners.”
“I'm heading to the transporter room.” I said and stood. “Get us into a stable position and hold us there. Use tractor beams as anchors if you have to.”
“That's a great idea, Admiral.” Tactical said. “I'll add that condition to standard procedures when using ships in tight or confining spaces.”
I nodded to her, pat Beverly on the shoulder, and made my way around the chairs and up the ramp to the turbolift. “Let me know when it's safe to transport over.”
“Aye, sir. I'll keep you updated.” The Chappel at Ops promised.
I rode the turbolift down to the closest deck with a transporter room and walked over to enter it. Chappel there gave me a knowing smile and motioned to the transporter pad. I chuckled and stood on it to wait for the proper signal to step over to the engine room. I checked with my clairvoyance power to make sure it was still clear and nodded at Chappel.
“Ops to Admiral Riker. We're in position and secured to the walls of the fissure.”
“Thank you, Chappel. Riker out.” I said and tapped my comm badge. “I'll call when I secure the device and materials.”
Chappel nodded. “Energizing.”
I used the illusion of actually teleporting and stepped from there to the engine room on the USS Pegasus. It was surprisingly clean, considering half of the thing was covered and merged with space rock. I went over to the closest console and pulled out a portable power generator and hooked it up, then copied over all the data available onto a datapad.
The computer was surprisingly intact when I did a diagnostic and figured the main part of the ship must have been lucky to materialize inside the fissure and kept it mostly intact. Once I had the information, I disconnected the power source and stored that and the datapad, then walked around a large piece of rock and saw the device hooked up to part of the warp core.
Again, it was quite fortunate that materializing in the rock had stabilized the matter and antimatter reaction instead of destabilizing it, because the ship and then asteroid exploding with partial phasing would have caused a lot of damage to the asteroid field and let everyone in the nearby sectors that something had happened here, namely the Romulans.
I spent the next half an hour carefully disengaging the device, careful of any spark or latent energy inside the device or the engineering system it was attached to. Any activation could set the thing off and my life in this timeline would be snuffed out as I became part of the rock and the ship.
I let out a sigh at getting it detached without a problem and tapped my comm badge. “Riker to Retaliation. I'm finally finished here.”
Beverly sighed with relief. “That's great to hear, Tom. Transporter room? Lock on and energize.”
“Aye, captain. Energizing.” Chappel said.
I dropped a huge black sword of dissolving energy into the deck of the ship and stepped from the ship to the transporter room.
Chief Chappel nodded to me. “Captain Crusher, the valuable package is safely aboard.” She said over the open comm signal. “As is the device.”
I barely held in my laugh at the joke. Chappel saw my face and gave me happy smile.
“Thank you for making my son cringe, Chappel.” Beverly said with a flat voice. “Tom, I assume you'll be busy for a while?”
“I will be, as will Chief Engineer Chappel... and Wesley if he's up for it.”
“Yes!” Wesley gasped and then coughed a couple of times. “Uh, I'd be happy to help, Admiral.”
“Then meet us in Lab Two on deck four.” I said and paused for a moment. “You can bring your Chappel as well.”
“Y-yes, sir. Th-thank you, sir.” Wesley said and ended the call.
Both I and Chappel laughed at his reaction.
“Have fun, sir.” Chappel said and put her console into standby mode.
“I will.” I said and left the transporter room and went to the closest turbolift.
I waited for a few seconds and checked with a touch of clairvoyance power, smiled, and hit the attention button to call a turbolift to my location. It opened and Chief Chappel was there.
“We need to stop meeting like this, Admiral.” Chappel said with a smile. “People might think we're up to something.”
I chuckled and stepped inside. “Resume path to deck four.”
Chappel gave the large device in my arms a curious look. “It doesn't look like much, does it?”
“No, and those are the most dangerous things to work on.” I said and handed her a copy of the datapad. “Take a look at the specs and the failed tests.”
Chappel eagerly started going through the information at a speed only an android or myself could go through it. “How in the world did they hide this expansive testing from the rest of Starfleet and still have it installed onto a ship without anyone else finding out about it?”
“A few of the higher ups were tired of being behind both our allies the Klingons and our enemies the Romulans.” I said as the turbolift came to a stop and we stepped out. “I can understand where they are coming from, too. How many decades have we been sharing things with the Klingons and they still won't let the Federation borrow a cloaking device? Not even one of their old birds of prey scouts? It's frustrating and infuriating, especially for R&D to not be allowed to play with it.”
Chappel let out a laugh and handed me the datapad back as we walked towards where wesley and Lieutenant Chappel stood. “It's a good thing we're not in this version of Starfleet, isn't it?”
“Beverly said almost the same thing.” I said and nodded at Wesley and handed him the datapad. “Give that a look and tell me what you think.”
“Yessir!” Wesley said and dove into it.
His Chappel softly laughed and took his arm to lead him into the lab. I motioned for Chief Engineer Chappel to go in before me and she nodded and did so. I followed them inside and brought the device over to the holographic table in the middle of the room.
“All right, people. Grab the tricorders and let's scan this thing down to its component atoms and figure out how it works.” I ordered and the two Chappels did as I said.
Wesley was only immersed in the datapad for a few more seconds as he finished skimming the information, then he put it down and gave me a huge grin as he picked up a tricorder as well. “Let's do this!” He said and lifted the tricorder above his head. “For science!”
“For science!” The Chappels and I repeated and lifted our tricorders like him, then we all laughed.
“I'll concentrate on the connectors.” Lieutenant Chappel said and opened her tricroder.
“I'll check the base and superstructure.” Chief Engineer Chappel said and opened hers.
“I'll go over the computer pathways and check the programming!” Wesley said, enthusiastically.
“I'll examine the power converters and their interactions with the main part of the device.” I said and we all went to work.
*
Beverly watched them have fun for a few minutes, then changed the viewscreen to show the fissure they were parked in. “Helm, take us out of here. Tactical, a spread of transphasic quantum torpedoes should reduce the asteroid to a smaller size to let Tom's power consume it faster.”
Chappel at the Tactical console smiled. “Aye, captain. It will be my pleasure.”
Beverly nodded and watched the screen as the nimble ship turned around and flew out of the fissure, then a spread of torpedoes impacted the asteroid's surface and blew out several large chunks into its component atoms. It did significantly reduce the size of the asteroid and they all saw the black energy spread out to quickly cover the remains of the asteroid, then it faded away and there was no more asteroid.
“Good work, everyone.” Beverly said and sat back in her chair. “Input the coordinates Tom said is the location of a transwarp conduit near the Ohniaka System in the Beta Quadrant. We have several holes into Federation space to close up.”
“Aye, sir. Inputting.” The Chappel at the Navigation console said. “Destination set, captain.”
“Helm, bring us to the right heading and take us out of this system at full Impulse. As soon as we're clear, take us to Warp 9.” Beverly ordered. “We are not hanging around here to be found by the Romulans.”
“Aye, sir. Coming about and going to full Impulse.” The Chappel at the helm said and the ship changed course and accelerated out of the system.