Work Text:
Mortal Memory
The War College held its 100th anniversary the same year the Federation started discussing bringing back Starfleet Academy.
Nahla hadn’t watched any of speeches from Bajor. Hadn’t watched the retrospectives, or read the histories. Why would she? Nahla was there when the War College was founded in the wake of the Burn.
The simple truth was that the War College was founded to make Starfleet officers smaller. The number of creative solutions in the years after the Burn were without count, and well, they threatened to undermine the Federation. The academy produced more of the same; until Earth pulled out of the Federation and it was lost to Starfleet. No-one suggested rebuilding it in space.
And now a hundred years later, both the Federation and her enemies had forgotten that truth.
Fairy Gifts
“Nahla, if you—“
“Signal lost,” Lieutenant Reno said from where she’s obviously cut it. Kelrec and Ya boggled as Nahla gave her next set of orders.
“Arm torpedoes, transfer control to my chair, and get the Venari Ral on the comm.”
“That was Admiral Vance!” Kelrec shouted, “you can’t—”
“Get him off my bridge.”
Thok did, just as Braka appeared on the viewscreen.
“Don’t trust me with a holo, Nahla dear?”
“Nus Braka,” she replied, “this is your last chance to stand down.”
“And if I don’t? What’s your little floating academy going to do to me and all of my friends? You don’t have the firepower and you know it. Perhaps you’d like to parlay? Beam over as a gesture of good will?”
“Do you speak for the Venari Ral in this?”
“Do I speak for the Venari Ral? I am the Venari Ral.”
“Your decision to continue hostilities is noted. Ake out.” The Athena offered Nahla up the transferred controls.
“Lt. Ya, prepare to jump to warp one-point-two on my mark.”
“But sir—“
“We’ll fall right back out. Can you do it?”
“Yessir, standing by.”
Nahla fired the torpedoes. Five actual ones, and two dozen shells spewing programmable matter as inert as most of the Athena’s systems. Braka was right, Nahla and the Athena didn’t have the firepower. The Venari Ral easily shot down most of the shells. But he never stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, Captain Ake of Starfleet didn’t need it.
“Mark.”
The Athena went to warp for a glorious second before shuddering back to impulse, but it was enough. Their warp bubble had supercharged the programmable matter and it was rocketing through the Archeron Nebula behind them to coat and the Venari Ral ships as they’d once coated hers.
The lift doors re-opened and a disheveled Kelrec all but fell onto her bridge followed by an impeccable Thok.
“What did you do?” Kelrec demanded.
“Cadet Mir, do you have the readings?” Nahla asked, redirecting everyone’s attention to the three cadets at the hands-on-science station.
“The programmable matter has attached itself to every ship and started self replication. They’re dead in space until it finishes, at least two hours.”
“And after that?” Kelrec asked.
“And after that?” Caleb grinned and Nahla could feel herself grinning back, “After their exterior hulls will be nothing but isodromalite crystallization plates. Impossible to cloak, knock at least 20% off your top warp speed, leave a blazing trail when you try to run, and by the end of a month every member of their crew is going to glow in the dark.”
“Their enemies will rip them apart,” Kelrec said, with a sort of raw horror at the scale of what was just done.
“Then they should have made some friends,” Nahla told him, “or stood down. Engineering! How long before we have stable warp?”
Real Consequences
SAM and Caleb’s proposal to adapt Kasqian isodromalite crystallization plates to use transwarp energy instead of solar was a complete success. Early readings before the Venari Ral had fled showed almost twice the projected growth rate when exposed to low-level warp distortions.
It was ingenious, really. As long as the plates were positioned where ships arrived and left from, and not on the ships themselves, it had real potential to address the on-going isodromalite shortages. But Caleb! He’d seen the other five sides of the solution and noted that while most trade fleets would give up a limb to produce isodromalite, for the Venari Ral it was going to go the other way.
Man, these kids were gonna be great.