Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

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Praeothmin
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Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Just a Fanfic I started writing about mixing Shadowrun (a roleplaying game) with a couple of different universes...
The main character is my creation, based on some characters I've played in the past...

Let me know what you think...

The Long Journey

Chapter 1

March 22nd, 2058
It was rainy that day in Seattle.
It was rainy every day in Seattle at that time of year.
But the rain didn’t bother James Reynolds, as he stood, perched over the edge of a rooftop across from his target.
He welcomed it, as even the best security systems in town would be affected by the rain, whether it was the cameras which would be almost blind, even in infra-red or low-light mode, to the thermal sensors which would become blinded by the cold rain lowering the temperature of everything it hit, including human bodies.
Yes, all this rain was going to be of great help to James when he would be ready to penetrate the highly secured magical laboratory across the street from him.
James took his time in observing the movements of the guards below; making sure the guard that emerged under the light of one lamp was the same one he had seen disappear in the shadows of the building not long before.
He had to take his time, because while the rain was a boon to him, it also hindered his ability to scan his target.
He wasn’t worried about being spotted though, for although he was a mountain of a man, around six and a half feet tall with broad, muscular shoulders, he was standing at the roof’s edge of a six story building, two stories taller than his target, and he wasn’t under any light.
No one walking in the street could hope to see him, and on the off chance someone did, he had taken the precaution of wearing dark blue clothing and a mask, so his face would not be seen.
Only his steel grey eyes were peering through the mask, their thermal and low-light capabilities being used to the max by James.
His costume was woven of ballistic fiber, offering him limited protection from small arms, which he reinforced by wearing a full form-fitting body armor under it.
While both layers offered him good ballistic protection, they would not hamper his movements or stealth abilities.
He was going in light, having only brought his collapsible baton and his silenced Colt Manhunter heavy pistol as weapons.
He didn’t plan on heavy fire being exchanged, and if it did, his mission was hosed anyways.

James wasn’t worried though, for he’d been doing this kind of work in the shadows for many years, and was one of the best of a new generation of Shadowrunners.
James preferred stealthy missions to big fights, but he had the tools to do both.
Like all top Shadowrunners, he had had augmentations done to his body to enable him to compete in the big leagues, where the big money was.
But unlike most Shadowrunners, all of James augmentations had been from Bioware, not Cyberware.
When he had started thinking about his first mod, James had also looked at Cyberware, because Cyber augmentations were usually cheaper and more powerful then their Bioware equivalent.
With Cyberware, you could go faster, become tougher, and hit targets a lot easier than with Bioware.
But you also ended up less human for it.
He’d seen many Street Samurais so disconnected from reality that they could witness a murder, or worse, kill, without even the least bit of remorse, as if what they did wasn’t happening in reality, but only in some remote part of their mind.
James had decided he didn’t want to end up like that.
Another advantage was that for infiltration jobs, he would be better off with the more subtle, less artificial Bioware, which no scanner could detect.
Even astrally ascensing Mages or Shamans, his friend had told him, could not pick up the presence of Bioware in a man, while they had no problems recognizing a heavily Cybered being.
Only advanced medical scans - the type that no security force could do on site - would be able to show the modifications done to his body.
So that’s the way he went.
Every part of his body that could be enhanced was, so that he gradually went from a big, competent man, to a big scary shadow running beast that backed off from no job or backed down from no one.

The building he was planning on infiltrating seemed like a very normal, very regular office building.
It was, according to public records, the property of a small insurance firm.
But thorough research through the Matrix by Carkass, the team’s expert Decker, had revealed otherwise.
In reality, under a load of shell companies, the building was owned by Aztechnology, and was used for magical research, nicely explaining the presence of elementals patrolling the Astral plane at night.
These elementals reported to a Mage named Peter Lorne, who resided in Downtown Seattle.
While Peter was on location during the day, at night, he simply left his three biggest elementals to stand guard, while he went back home.
The SOP for such security was that the elementals stayed to fight, and then the Mage who conjured them would be advised of trouble once they got destroyed or banished.
He could then respond accordingly.
Such a building also had electronic security, Carkass had discovered, and this security was some of the best money could buy.
But it had a weakness, like all security systems.
This site’s weakness was its external Matrix access.
Most Megacorps protected their sites by prohibiting remote work being done by their personnel.
Unfortunately for most of them, most magically active workers were very capricious by nature, as James had discovered working with the team’s Mage.
And since good Mages or even good Shamans were a rarity, companies, even Megacorps, had to agree to some compromises in order to sway these talented people to work for them.
In this case, the compromise was that the main researcher had an external link to the building’s mainframe.
While the security was tough to crack for someone trying to go in the building directly, going through the phone lines was slightly easier, and thus Carkass had succeeded in infiltrating the building’s system through the main researcher’s access, and had taken over the external security features, such as the doors’ electronic locks and silent alarms.
While the cameras seemed to be linked to a completely internal system, they wouldn’t really matter, since once inside, James would clip a modified Blue-Tooth transmitter to the first camera he would see, allowing Carkass to communicate with the system and take it over as well.

Looking at his watch, James noticed it was almost 1 am.
“Time to go to work”, he thought, as he adjusted the grapple gun on his shoulder, and steadied himself, ready to fire right above the roof access door of their target.
He activated his Comm-Link, made sure the Crypto-Circuit was running, and asked:

“Managuy, this is Shadowmaster, do you copy?”

“Managuy here, reading you loud and clear. Ready for action! Copy!”

James couldn’t help but smile every time he used, or heard, his Mage’s street handle.
It sounded like the name a kid playing out an episode of “Joe Shadowrunner” would use.
He remembered the first time he met Managuy, or Daniel Bouchard, so many years ago.
The young Mage, the image of a high-class wage-Mage, wore a Mortimer of London coat for a “meet” in the Barrens, walking with the help of a cane, topped with a golden handle.
James was surprised he had even made through the front door of the bar unmolested.
But as the door closed, he had caught a glimpse of the dozen or so people laying on the ground, apparently unconscious, and the bar’s meanest bouncer looking at the young Mage with fear in his eyes.
That the Orc Bouncer who usually threw any trouble maker out, sometimes through the windows, seemed afraid of the small man – barely above five and half feet tall – made most of the patrons suddenly less interested at the young man’s riches, and a lot more at their drinks.
James had learned during the following years how capable the Mage was.
A high level Initiate, powerful beyond the dreams of most street Mages, Daniel was a force to be reckoned with.
He always went into a mission as prepared as can be, always with at least four powerful elementals bound to him.
He was capable of using his most powerful spells over and over again, and seemed like nothing could ever tax him.
So hearing he was ready for action once more made James as confident as one could ever get on such missions.

He contacted Carkass:

“Shadowmaster to Carkass, ready for move one. Copy!”

“Carkass reading you loud and clear”, came the response. “Ready to rumble. Copy!”

With the acknowledgement of his team, James took aim and fired the grappling hook at the top of the roof access door, his enhanced hearing picking up a satisfying “schtunk”, indicating the hook had sunk in the wall above the door.
Pulling the Nylon-Kevlar rope taught, he made sure it was securely fastened on his side, and then, hooking his rappelling handle over the rope, he uttered:

“Go! Go! Go!”

The signal was given, and now everything was a question of timing.
Calling upon his augmented reflexes and reaction, James jumped up and forward and let gravity take him down at high speeds towards the other roof.
Once over the lip of the other building’s roof, James activated the brakes on his gear, and once sufficiently slowed down, he let go, and landed in a tuck and roll that brought him directly in front of the roof access door as he was getting up.
As his hand went for the handle, he saw the electronic lock LED change from red to green, and he got in.
Once inside the building, he stopped and listened for a sound in the stairwell.
Not hearing one, he immediately searched for a camera, found it, and went to work on it, attaching the Blue-Tooth device as Carkass had shown him.
The Decker sure knew his work.
While physically Carkass was pretty much everything James despised in human beings –he was fat, lazy, never exercised and ate junk food like his life depended on it – he was certainly the best Decker James had ever worked with.
He was as talented a Decker as Daniel was a Mage.
The fact he rarely found the time to bathe, or that he wore his old “Space Jam” t-shirt all the time didn’t diminish his usefulness for the team.
He was also one of the most generous persons James had ever encountered.
James knew for a fact that Carkass gave up half his net earnings to local charities to help improve people’s lives, something James admired greatly.
This had inspired James, and he had started doing the same, although he couldn’t donate as much as Carkass since James still had his parents to provide for.

As Carkass’s device took over the internal security system, James started down the stairs at breakneck speeds.
His augmented muscles and enhanced articulations allowed him to navigate the stairs like a world-class athlete, while his improved heart pumped ever more oxygenated blood down his arteries.
Once he arrived at ground floor, he stopped and looked through the small emergency door window.
Seeing no guards, he called Carkass:

“Shadowmaster to Carkass, the mouse is in the house. See any cats around? Copy!”

“Go ahead, little mousy, no cats around, they are all taking a catnip break. Go straight out 10 meters, then turn right for another 5 meters. The elevators shaft will be free and ready for your descent into hell. Copy!”

James opened the door, and dashed through the lobby, across the hall, and then turned right for the elevators.
And came face to face with a guard.
The guard had been leaning against the wall, sipping his coffee, right under the security camera that should have revealed him.
The guard, although surprised, reacted quickly - too quickly for a normal human, showing he had had some reaction enhancements done on him – and went for the panic button at his belt.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
James’s left hand shot out to deflect the guard’s right hand, while his right hand, fingers straightened, impacted with the guard’s right shoulder, hitting the guard’s shoulder articulation.
After that paralyzing blow, James’s left hand rolled over his right, thumb and index forming a “V” to smash the guard’s larynx, hard enough to silence him, yet not hard enough to kill.
James knew that sometimes, killing was part of his way of life, yet he never killed without cause, and never when he could avoid it.
He had also learned a long time ago that companies invested less time and effort hunting you down if you didn’t cost them and arm and a leg in replacing personnel and material.
Most of the time, in order not to lose face to the public, they wouldn’t even call the police, taking care of the matter internally.
A back-handed fist to the guard’s right temple finished him off.
As he started crumbling to the ground, James caught him, then whispered in the Comm-Link:

“Carkass, I need a cat litter now, I’ve run into a stray. Copy!”

“Cat house coming up to your left. Copy!”

Looking around to make sure no one had seen him or heard the commotion, James picked up the guard and brought him to the open elevator door, where he laid him gently on the floor.
As soon as he exited the elevator, the doors closed behind him, while on the opposite side of the corridor, the doors to another elevator opened on the empty shaft.
Suddenly, in the elevator shaft , the air started shimmering as if it was being heated up.
The air elemental Managuy had conjured was at his post, ready to take James down the shaft to the lower levels of the complex.
James stepped in the shaft, and felt as if his body became lighter than air.
He drifted down quickly, the elemental completely in control of the whole operation.
As he was about to land on top of the elevator car, the elemental started wavering, and let him go.
He landed softly on his feet, the 10 feet drop not fazing him at all.
He immediately knew the elemental was under attack, or it would not have dropped him so.
The top hatch of the elevator car was opened in seconds, and then, letting his head drop slightly in the hole, he peered through the opened elevator doors to see barely lit corridor leading to a double door at the end.
Between him and the doors were two guards at the ready, kneeling in the corridor, keeping close to the walls, weapons at the ready and aiming at the elevator.
James stood up on the car, took his gun out, then dropped through the hole to the floor, leaned right and rolled to the side wall, out of the doorway.
Gunfire erupted as bullets impacted on the back wall of the elevator, one bullet even hitting James left flank.
James felt the impact, noticed no pain and judged by the sound of the impact that his plates and Kevlar clothing had deflected the bullet.
Not wanting to serve as a target for much longer, knowing time was limited, he dove through the doorway, crossing from right to left, and rolled up on one knee and fired 4 times.
The silencer tried its best to muffle the big gun’s report, but in the narrow corridor, the gun still sounded like distant thunder claps.
He hit each guard twice, and almost got hit in return.
One bullet even whistled past his right ear, but he had been moving so fast the guards could not adjust their aim properly.
He quickly made sure the Gel bullets he’d used in his gun had simply knocked the guards out and not killed them, and then went to the doors.
As he got to them, they unlocked, and he opened them slowly, always alert for attacks.
He perceived no immediate threats, so he moved into the room.
There, in the middle of the room, seated on a dais, was the biggest piece of Orichalcum James had ever seen.
The size of a Troll’s fist, weighing at least 20 pounds, it was encased in some sort of field, and strange drawings were scribbled around it.
He was about to call Carkass when he heard a noise behind him.
He immediately plunged and rolled forward, barely escaping the immense rock-like fist that swung right where his head was.
Getting up, he saw a hulking monster, Troll-like in size, yet not fully formed, as if it was made out of solid putty.
The creature’s head turned towards James, and it started to advance, lifting its arms in a boxing-like stance.
James didn’t know where to run, as the creature was wide enough that it covered the room left and right, and James had the dais at his back.
He jumped back on the top of the dais, which seemed to spur the creature on.
From the corner of his eyes, James saw the outline of Managuy appearing, a ghostlike figure in the background of the eerie light coming from the dais.
Managuy made intricate hand movements, and something leaped at the creature, just as it was catching James’s left leg in a vice grip.
The creature howled when Managuy’s spell hit, and it tightened its grip on James’s leg.
The pressure was incredible, and James feared his leg was going to get crushed into paste.
While Managuy started enacting the movements of another spell, James took hold of the Orichalcum piece using both hands, and hefting it over his head, struck the creature’s head as Managuy’s second spell hit home.
There was a deafening explosion, bright flashes of searing multicoloured lights, all of it so powerful they overwhelmed James’s flare compensation and hearing dampeners.
James felt as if a huge Troll was sitting on his stomach, as if his limbs were attached to horses that were trying to pull his body apart, as if all the blood in his body was boiling inside him.
His pain compensators had long ago been overwhelmed, and all his senses were blind.
He kept hearing a high pitched noise in his hears that his dampeners could not stop, and it took some time to realize the noise was him screaming in pain.
The pain was unbearable, and James passed out.
The truth always depends on which side of the fence you're standing... ;)
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

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I've locked the other thread to concentrate all comments/updates/etc in one.
Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Sorry, I didn't realize I posted it twice... :(
The truth always depends on which side of the fence you're standing... ;)
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Captain Seafort »

No worries. We've had the occasional quintuple before now.
Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Chapter 2

Then, as suddenly as all of it had begun, it stopped.
In a bright flash of light, James regained consciousness, found his sight again, and felt all the pain he had receding, his compensators working once more.
It took a few seconds for James to regain his senses, and he realized at once he was no longer in the magical laboratory.
He was in a corridor, with calm white lights, touch panels evenly spaced all along the walls, and a sterilized scent filling his nostrils.
It reminded him of the shadow Delta clinics where he had gotten his implants and augmentations.
He was quickly inspecting himself, making sure he was not injured, when he heard the hiss of an automatic door to his right, and someone walking his way.
Looking to his left, he saw another corridor bisecting his to the left, and headed that way quickly, all the while trying to make as little sound as possible.
That’s when he noticed the floor was covered with carpet, making his stealthy retreat easier.
He noticed some doors on the right side of the corridor he was in, and when he turned in the bisecting corridor, he noticed more doors.
What was very strange was that the doors had no names to identify them, only numbers.
As he examined them, he used one of the doors’ alcoves in the new corridor as a hiding place, putting his back to it, wondering where to go, what to do, when the doors behind him hissed open.
He spun around, stepping back in the corridor in the blink of an eye to find himself facing a man wearing a black uniform with golden shoulder pads.
The man started to lift his left hand across his stomach, most likely reaching for the golden triangle pin on his chest, while his right went to his waist to what looked like a taser gun in a holster.
The man clearly had no reaction augmentations, so when James’s reflexes revved up into overdrive, he punched the guard hard in the stomach before any defence could even be attempted.
The punch lifted the man off his feet, throwing him back in the room where he lay in a heap on the floor, 6 feet away from James.
That’s when James noticed the second man in the room, standing to the left of the entrance.
His hands were almost upon their targets when James’s side kick caught him mid-torso.
He was propelled up and back, hitting the wall behind him with sufficient force to crack the translucent panel on the wall, and crumpled to the floor like a ragdoll.
The room looked like a luxury hotel room, yet it was sparsely furnished.
It was rather small, the sleeping area and eating area sharing the same space, with only an alcove to separate them.
He saw no kitchenware, no stove or refrigerator, and no trideo set.
As he was searching the room for another opponent, all senses fully alert, James’s augmented hearing made him aware of what he feared the most in his current situation: a cry for help.

“Intruder alert!” James heard coming from the corridor he had just left.

The call for help had been issued with barely a whisper, with a soft, obviously female, voice.
He exited the room , bringing his pistol to bear on a small woman wearing an aquamarine jacket over what looked like a similar uniform to the security personnel he had just taken down.
She was unarmed, except for a beautiful mouth, perfect features and short blond hair.
Her delicate frame showed through the tight-fitting uniform, and almost distracted James.
The first rule of any such situation as James was in was always to gather information about one’s situation and surroundings, so he ran to the woman at full speed, which made her gasp in surprise.
To her, James would have looked like a blur, and as if he had somehow teleported from the entrance in the bisecting corridor to her position, a distance of 8 meters, in less than a second.
The fact that the masked, immensely fast stranger had appeared next to her pointing a big gun in her face had also startled her greatly.
Still, she remained calmer and more composed than most people would, which made James respect her, but also fear her a bit.
No one stayed that composed unless they had an ace up their sleeve, as James had come to learn in his “active” life.
Still, if he showed her how dangerous he was, he could still jar her a bit, and probably get at least basic information.
He pulled her along with him forcefully, showing her she could not hope to resist.
He remained silent – hoping it would instil fear in her - until they reached the room where the two guards lay out on the floor, and only after the doors had closed again did he talk.

“I am going to ask you some questions”, he growled menacingly at her, “And if I don’t like the answers, I’ll have to use this gun to make very big holes in you. Understood?”

He had no intention of hurting her anymore than necessary, and his gun was still loaded with gel bullets, but James knew the act he was putting on would unnerve her as it had many people in the past.
He saw her flinch, and she seemed a bit more scared of him now, which made James slightly more comfortable.
As he was about to ask his first question, there came a voice over hidden speakers in the room.

“This is Lt. Cmd. Teramak, there is an intruder alert on deck 6, section 9. Seal all corridors and Turbolifts, and lock down Transporter room 4.”

Then the badges on the two unconscious men in the room chirped, and a voice, the same as in the speaker announcement, called to them.

“Security team 7, come in.” There was a pause, then the message resumed.
“Security team 7, respond.”

And then there was silence.
James knew he didn’t have much time, as he was sure the security team of the place he was in could track the whereabouts of their men through what James now knew were like Comm-Links.
So he asked the only question he thought he had time for:

“Where’s the nearest exit to get out of here?”
“That would be airlock 5, in section 8. But all the corridors and accesses will be locked down, you can’t…”
“Shut the frag up, or I’ll make you another nostril!” James said. “Just tell me where I need to go, and don’t worry about the rest!”

She was about to reply, when James heard some sort of humming behind him.
Keeping his gun pointed at the woman, he turned slightly to his left to see two columns of shimmering blue light appear out of thin air.
These columns quickly coalesced into human form, although James was surprised that one of those humans was blue with white hair and antennas coming out of his head.
But what had really caught James’s attention was the two tasers held by these new arrivals.
James had no clue as to how these invisible people had succeeded in entering the room without opening the door, but his momentarily distraction allowed the women to strike.
With a well placed kick, she hit James’s wrist, snapping his hand sideways and sending his pistol in a corner of the room to his left.
James used the momentum from the impact to spin to his left, take a step closer to the human next to him.
With his right hand, he grabbed the newcomer’s wrist and pulled, all the while continuing his spinning motion, bringing the man between him and the blue humanoid.
His movement brought his quarry to James’s right side, so he side kicked the man at the same time he released his wrist, propelling him at his blue skinned colleague.
The blue skinned man skilfully sidestepped his flying colleague to his right, all the while bringing his arm up to fire at James.
Had James not been so fast, the blue skinned man might have succeeded in shooting him.
As the man was about to press the fire button, James’s right fist impacted inside his opponent’s right wrist and made his taser fly away.
But just as James had used the woman’s strike to advance on his opponents, the blue man used James’s to launch a left cross at his face.
James’s short punch to his opponent’s wrist allowed him to bring his right hand back up for a forearm block while he stepped forward for a left punch to his opponent’s sternum.
He finished his move with a short, but powerful jab at the blue skinned man’s jaw, which knocked him down, dazed.
If the man hadn’t rolled with the punch, showing just how good he was, he would have been knocked out by the blow.
He was still falling when James turned around and headed for his gun.
Only the woman was also trying to retrieve it, and she was closing her hand on it when James hit her with an atemi to the neck.
While the blow did not knock her out, she did fall heavily on the floor in great pain, unable to put up any more resistance, which was what James wanted.
He picked up his gun, and sped to the door.
It hissed open, and James quickly looked into the corridor, first to his left, then to his right.
There was nothing to his left, but as he turned right, he saw two more men – obviously security officers – who fired at him.
He barely succeeded in ducking the first shot, but the second officer hit him in the left arm.
He felt a shock that went up to his neck, and felt numb in his arm.
His pain compensators rapidly took over and he felt his fingers again.
He shot out, shot only twice – the silenced gun still making a loud sound -, one bullet per guard since they weren’t wearing any armor, and stood in the doorway, half concealed, while they fell down.
As he ventured out and started to go right, he was hit in the left shoulder by another beam, and another hit him in the lower back.
James fell to one knee, his whole body starting to feel numb, his compensators overloaded, and half turned to fire at the new arrivals.
His first bullet hit the mark, but his second splattered against a bulkhead next to his target’s head, forcing the female security officer to take cover.
As he was struggling to get up to take cover on the other side of the door, he was shot in the back, pitched forward and, for the second time that day, lost consciousness.
The truth always depends on which side of the fence you're standing... ;)
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

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Chapter 3

James slowly came to, feeling constricted and oppressed.
Not wanting to let his captors know he was awake, he did not move, and tried to keep his breathing slow with yoga techniques.
He then listened, hoping to glean useful information, such as what his captors planned to do with him.
If they were from the same company as the medical laboratory he had penetrated, things might get nasty indeed.
He heard voices close by, and used his hearing amplification to eavesdrop and learn as much as he could.

“Argh, dat ‘urts. Do ghou habe to press dat ‘ard?”

James recognized the voice as the one over the speakers, the voice of Lt. Cmd. Teramak, whom James had identified as the Security Chief.
The voice was haughty, aristocratic in its inflections, but slightly grave, though higher pitched than James’s.
The man was also speaking with a broken jaw, which immediately let James know that Lt. Cmd. Teramak, the Security Chief for this facility, was the blue skinned man James had fought with.

“Yes, I have to! He broke three of your ribs when he punched you, in addition to your broken jaw. It’s a good thing you know how to fight so well and roll with punches, or you would be in worse condition than you actually are.
Just ask your two officers who’ve been mule kicked by that man.
And since you do not want me to use an anaesthetic, being a Warrior, this means you will have to endure all the pain that comes from the insertion method of the bone bonding compound we use.
Now sit still, shut up, and you’ll be back in your quarters in two hours, and ready to work for your next shift.”

With that final comment, Lt. Cmd. Teramak became silent, except for the occasional grunt of pain.
James was satisfied with his eavesdropping, as it was very informative.
The voice of the Doctor working on the Security Chief was the same one he had heard uttering “Intruder alert”, the same one he’d taken hostage and had interrogated, the woman dressed in blue, and it had a nice British accent to it that he liked.
The previous encounter also told him that Medical personnel wore black uniforms with blue shoulder pads, while security wore black uniforms with golden shoulder pads.
He knew that the standard security forces at his present location weren’t any better than standard Corp security, and that for some very bizarre reason, they did not wear any armor.
He had learned that the Doctor knew how to fight, that the head of security was of a new Metahuman variant he’d never heard about, and that he was a tough man.
And since Lt. Cmd. Teramak wasn’t knocked out, he was more then certain he was the one who had shot James in the back.
Most importantly, he had learned that they had the technology to heal broken bones in a few hours, and wondered what other incredible medical technologies this Corp possessed.
It would more than likely be worth making a run or two against it, if he ever got out.
He was still listening when he heard the recognizable hiss of automated doors.

“So Doctor, how is everyone?” A commanding voice asked.
“I see our Security Chief is as solid as ever.”

It wasn’t hard for James to ascertain that this voice, a voice full of authority, belonged to the head honcho of the operations at the facility.

“Everyone if fine, Captain. The worst cases have been successfully stabilized, which was easy because our “guest” only hit them hard enough to neutralize them. I’m positive if he’d wanted them dead, they would be.
The same goes for the other guards, the ones he fired at.
The ammunition he used is akin to the stun setting on our Phasers, designed to incapacitate, not to kill.
Although I suspect that, as is the case with Phasers, too many shots can be fatal as well.” The Doctor finished.

“How about our “guest”? According to Ensign Jonen, he was hit 4 times at Light Stun before he went down. Even Klingons have trouble taking three and keep fighting.” The Captain finished, his voice getting stronger, indicating he was coming in for a closer look.

“Well, Captain, the last hit injured him, if ever so slightly, and it took barely 1 minute under the dermal regenerator to heal him completely. After he was healed, I performed a full medical scan, and found a few interesting things about our friend.
One, he his 100% human.
Two, if he hadn’t already been previously injured, I suspect he would have been able to take that 4th hit and still take down security guards.
Three, his body was almost completely reworked, augmented biologically, to superhuman extents.
And four, he has more scars and battle wounds than even our fearless Security Chief.”

“What type of modifications are we talking about here, Doctor? Eugenics?”

“Well Captain, have you heard of one Roga Danar? He was a genetically altered human who was transformed into the perfect war machine. Our “guest’s” augmentations resemble those of Danar, and also those of Doctor Julian Bashir, of Deep Space 9.
They are cruder, though, less advanced then the ones we’ve seen, but he has many more than we’ve ever seen in one being before.
This man was bred for battle.
And he is extremely resilient naturally. If anyone here had as many augmentations as he did, our body would cease to function because of the biological overload.”

“How much more?” The Captain asked with genuine curiosity, as well as some shock.

“Well, if these modifications were cybernetic in origin, we would be looking at a Borg drone.”

The last sentence hung in the air for a bit, before the Captain asked:
“What modifications did he have?”

“Captain, it would be quicker for me to tell you what organs weren’t modified: the tongue and the liver.”

“Who would do such a thing? The Federation has outlawed such inhumane practices, and here we have the perfect example of mad science pushed to the limit.” The Captain said, contempt filling his voice.
“Doctor, were you able to recognize the type of Bio-engineering, or find out where he comes from?”

“No, but you may ask him yourself, our guest has been awake ever since I started treating Lt. Teramak.”
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Chapter 4

Oh Frag!, James thought.
He knew there was only one way she could have known he was awake: magic.
That meant the good Doctor was a Mage.
James discarded the possibility of the Doctor being a Shaman because her actions were too composed, to formal, to be those of a Shaman, who tended to act emotionally instead of logically, and who tended to act more like their totem’s spirits.
Knowing there was no reason for him to fake it anymore, James opened his eyes, let them get adjusted to his surroundings, and looked at the room he was in.
It looked like no room he had ever been into, unlike the earlier one where the fight had taken place.
He was lying on some sort of bed, or table, and had restraints across his wrists and torso, as well as his legs and waist.
There were at least 6 other beds like his, except the occupants of the other beds, all of them James’s victims, were not restrained like he was, which showed the restraints were not there for his security, but theirs.
All these beds had some sort of computer display or console, and while most were raised to the side of the beds, like his, a few were switched down, and hovered over the bed’s occupants, held aloof by a mechanical arm attached to the bed.
The room had soft lighting, except over the beds, and he saw many consoles and displays on the walls, just like he had seen many times in the Shadow Clinic he went to.
But these displays were many, many times more advanced and detailed than any he’d seen before.
There were even displays above each individual bed, clearly referring to the bed’s resident.
Craning his neck, he was able to get a glimpse of his own display.
He quickly tested the strength of his bonds, moving in such a way as to seem to only adjust his body for a better view.

“Don’t waste your time trying, these restraints are strong enough to hold a Borg. You can’t get out.”

Mother Fragger!, he thought, staring right at the Mage, stop assenssing me you slitch.
He received some gratification in the fact that his anger had not gone unnoticed, and had even unnerved the woman a bit.
Having no immediate way of escaping, James tried to relax, and decided to study the people who were in the room with him.
The first people he noticed were the three security guards at the door.
They were of average height and built, and James wondered what they would hope to accomplish against him were he loose, but then, remembering the Mage, he knew that all they needed to do was to stall him for one second and he’d be fried.
Their tasers, or Phasers as the Mage had called them, were in their holsters, and they stood guard ceremonially at the door.
One of them was of another new Metahuman type James had never seen, with its pig-like face, three fingered hands and hairy body.
One, he did recognize: the female security officer who’d shot him in the back, the one he had missed, one Ensign Jonen.
He glared at her, and though she knew he was restrained, though she had been cool-headed in the earlier fight, he took satisfaction in seeing her flinch ever so slightly under his glare.

His eyes moved to a man he had never seen, but recognized from his posture and the way people looked at him to be the Captain.
Close to 6 feet tall, athletically built with short salt and pepper hair and brown eyes, the Captain radiated authority.
His angular features made him attractive, though not like the trideo actors and models people saw every day.
This was a man who was used to having his orders followed, like many other corporate types James had met before.
James noticed his uniform had red shoulder pads, another different color for another different function.
He wondered if there were any color-blind employees working for them, and how they coped with the colour-coding.
He also noticed that each person had, in addition to their Comm-Link badge –and Phasers for the guards – small round pins worn on their right neck collar.
The Captain had four gold ones, while the Mage and Security Chief – a Lt Cmdr – both had two gold ones and one black one.
The Ensign had one black one, and the pig-like guard had one gold and one black.
James came to the conclusion these were rank insignia, and that the pig-like guard was probably a Lt second-class, or junior grade.
These ranks screamed of a navy crew to him, and so he concluded he was held by some country or company’s Navy department, but since he felt no rolling and weaving like he should on a boat, he was in one of their land facilities.
He assumed the continuous vibrations he felt and low thrumming he heard were some sort of power generator, so he was most likely in an underground high-security facility.
Then he remembered what the Mage had said about an airlock, and so glumly came to the realization he was under water, which seriously complicated any escape attempts he could try.

“I am Captain Damien Kirkinger , and I would like to know who you are, and what the hell you were doing on my ship.” The Captain said with a hint of anger in his voice.

The anger was a ruse, just like James’s threats to the Mage earlier.
But his message also conveyed something else: James wasn’t in an immobile under water base, he was in a very big, and very silent submarine, this Captain’s ship.
He first thought of lying to them, of trying to mislead them, but then thought about the Mage, her ability to “read” him like a book, and in barely contained anger, he told them the truth – well, most of it.

“My name is James Reynolds, and my arrival on your “ship” was accidental. I was… working, when there was an accident. I lost consciousness, and when I woke up, here I was.”
He decided he’d let them work for their information, and see how forthcoming they would be with the answers he would eventually want.

“He is telling the truth, Captain, but he is also hiding something.” The Mage said with a smug look on her face.

“Captain, if your slitch Mage doesn’t get out of my head this instant, I will kill her, the first chance I get, and she can tell you that’s the truth too.” James said through gritted teeth, pulling at his bindings, as if he was going to rip them apart.
He didn’t mean it, of course, but he was so angry, felt so much rage at being held like he was, impotent, with no backup, no possibility of escape, that the empty boast helped him compose himself a bit.
It also revealed that the Mage could not read him perfectly, because she had reacted to his threat, if only momentarily, before appearing relieved to find out the threat was empty.
It was James’s turn to show her a smug look, quickly, just to let her know he had pierced her, and knew she couldn’t read him perfectly.

“You are in no position to make any kind of threats here, and I don’t take kindly to having my officers threatened. If you want this conversation to remain civil, I advise you to remain polite and to reign you temper in. You are the intruder here, so we ask the questions, and you answer. Understood?” The Captain asked with a steel edge in his voice, this time real, not feigned.

James was surprised to see real care from the Captain for his crew, which made him re-assess his situation and believe he was in the “care” of some country’s Navy, not a corporate one, as he had never met a corporate Captain consider his crew as anything else than cannon fodder.
This made James re-assess his strategy.
Real military men were usually more honourable, and while James was indeed an intruder, perhaps by playing it a bit more straight with the Captain, he’d have a better chance of getting out of his predicament unscathed.

“I apologize, Captain! I simply don’t like being probed like a test experiment. But you are correct, I am the intruder here, and so I am at your mercy.” He said, with all the honesty and sincerity he could muster.
“I will tell you as much as I can, but first, I would like to corroborate your Mage’s assessment of my… intervention. I try to kill only when I have no other choice, and had I wanted, I could have killed each and every one of these people, including her.” He said, nodding at the Mage.
“I was doing a mission, as I said, and was in a special location, when there was this flash of light, and I found myself in great pain, which made me pass out. I woke up on your ship, disoriented, and I acted as I had been thaught: find an exit, and try not to be seen.
I have no idea where we currently are, but I can tell you my point of origin: Seattle.”

All the members of the ship’s crew raised their eyebrows at this statement, and kept looking at James with incredulity, even after their Mage had nodded to indicate he told the truth.

“Seattle, as in: on Earth?” the Captain asked, incredulous.

That question, for some odd reason, did not reassure James, in fact it did the exact opposite.

“Where else?” He said, fearing the answer.
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Chapter 5

The Captain looked at James, seemingly unsure if he truly trusted his Mage’s assessment on whether James was telling the truth or not.

“Where else indeed?” asked the Captain. “Where do you think we are, James?”
The Captain had a strange look in his eyes, as if he wasn’t sure if the man he was addressing was sane, which did not reassure James in the least.

“I know I’m no longer in Seattle, that the “Doctor” and the Security Chiefs are Lt. Cmdrs as their rank pips indicate, which makes one of your guards, the Metahuman one, a Lt., probably second class or some such.
I know you separate security, medical and command structures by uniform shoulder colors.
I know, from the airlock comment the “Doctor” gave me that I am not on dry land in any secure building.
I had thought I was under water, not above, since there was no rolling action, but now, by your reactions, I have to surmise we might be in Earth orbit.
You are not working for any Corp, because you treat me way too well for that, and are too honest with me.
This leaves a Government Navy or space agency.
Your lack of discernable accent –except for a slight German undertone - and your Doctor’s British accent makes me think the British space agency, although I had no clue they already had ships in orbit.
Clearly they are better than originally thought at hiding secrets.”
James looked at each of them, taking in every reaction, every movement of an eyebrow, slight twitching of the mouth, and saw that he was on the mark, or very close to it.

“You are good.” The Captain said, truly impressed.
“But you don’t even know the half of it.” He said with a grin.
“Allow me to fill in the blanks.
Indeed, we do not work for a “Corp”, we work for a Governmental body: The United Federation of Planets.” Captain Kirkinger looked closely at James’s face for his reaction at that statement, and seemed very satisfied with the incredulous look that had appeared on it.
“Yes, James, I said “Planets”. You were right, we’re not on Earth, and we are in high orbit around a world.
That world is called Bajor, and is located 50 light years from Earth.
At our maximum sustainable speeds, this is half a day’s trip for us.
Our Doctor, or Mage as you called her earlier, is from a planet called Betazed, and her ability to “read” you has nothing to do with magic, they are simply a race of telepathic people.
My Security Chief is from Andoria, and the Lt. guarding the door is from Tellar, both founding members of the Federation.
The Federation comprises 150 member worlds, plus a few protectorates.
Human colonies alone cover over 1000 worlds, and each member has its own colonies.
We’re all part of the exploration and defence branch of the UFP, Starfleet.
While in the good old days, Starfleet was mostly exploration, some unfortunate events lately have made us become much more of a military.”
Captain Kirkinger seemed genuinely sad when he uttered the last sentence, a sadness James saw reflected in the eyes of most of the crew in the room.
“And now for the kicker, James. This is Stardate 51996.5, or in your case, June 24th, 2374.”

There was no way for James to hide his complete surprise.
The statement, apparently true, had taken him completely unprepared.
He had thought of many far-fetched explanations, for after all the original accident had dealt with magic, and James knew how unpredictable magic was, but the thought of having been transported not only far from Earth, but also in the future, had never crossed his mind.
He laid his head on the bed, not knowing how to react, or what to do.
He barely registered the restraints coming off of him, and the Captain helping him sit.
He didn’t know if it was the news, or remnant effects of the Phasers, but he almost fell off the bed, and only the Captain’s grip held him there.
The Doctor was quick to give him something, using what looked like a DSMO injector.
Whatever the Doctor had given him, it cleared his head and made him feel much better very quickly.

“I don’t think we need those anymore.” The Captain said, looking at the restraints.
“I think it’s safe to say you no longer represent a threat to anyone here, including our “Mage”.”
The Captain’s smile was genuine, warm, and honest.
“When are you from, James?”

“2058.” He replied half-heartedly.

“That would explain the references to “Corps” and Mages. History wasn’t well documented after the end of the third world war in 2053…”

“There was never a third World War in 2053!” James interrupted the Captain.
“Sure, there were many conflicts, but never such a war”.

“Hhmm… A parallel reality then?” Mused the Captain.

“That would concur with our findings, Captain.” Said a cold, dispassionate voice.
“Detailed scans of his intrusion area show high concentration of decaying Verteron and Chronoton particles. Thus, he apparently came onboard through a time-vortex of some sort.”
The new arrival was a woman, beautiful, yet severe looking. Her olive skin, dark hair and green eyes would have held anyone’s attention wherever she went, James was certain.
Then he noticed the ears: she was an Elf.
An Elf in space, he thought.
Which would also explain the haughtiness in her voice, James mused, thinking how much Elves held themselves above mere humans.
“But more importantly,” she continued, “His Quantum Resonance frequency doesn’t match ours.”
She looked at the Captain as if her last sentence explained everything, and perhaps it did for these people, James thought, but it truly did not shed any light for him.

“You have instruments that can tell you I’m not from your century, or even stranger, that I’m not even from your… reality?”
James still had a hard time accepting all this, as it was far too incredible to be believed.

The Elf explained:
“Of course, Starfleet, with the help of the Vulcan Science counsel, developed a means to measure the resonance of particles’ quantum fields nearly 30 years ago. We learned that all particles in this reality had the same resonance frequency, which led to the proof, due to different resonance frequencies of certain objects – or people – that there were indeed multiple realities co-existing together in what one would call a “multiverse”.”
The Elf looked at James expectantly, leading him to the conclusion she wanted some sort of response.

“Ok,” he said, “I have to accept it because I have no proof to the contrary, and can find no logical reason for such a setup to be faked. I gather the Chronoton particles, due to the name similarity with Chronos, have to deal with time, but what are Verterons?
Do they have something to do with that “vortex” you mentioned?
Are they used to open some sort of tunnels… In space?”

“In space, or simply in what we call “reality”. You have an amazing understanding of advanced Quantum Physics for someone coming from such a primitive society.” The Elf said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, well, I catch on fast, and your explanations were actually simple. I’m pretty sure the moment you try to explain the underlying principles, you’ll lose me.”

“Perhaps you are right.”

Captain Kirkinger looked at James and the Elf with a small smile, and said:
“I think I’ve never seen the Cmdr so happy. Cmdr T’Len, perhaps when our guest feels better, you can explain to him how we plan to get him home.”

“Captain, you know that happiness comes from emotions, which I do not have. I have performed my work diligently, as always. Please do not insult me in front of the intruder.” The Cmdr said dispassionately.
“As for a way home, I do not that answer at the moment. I barely had the time to run these tests with all the mission preparations we have to perform.”

“Ah, that is true.”
Addressing James, Captain Kirkinger continued:
“I’m afraid your voyage home will have to wait for some time. We have a critical mission to undertake, and we cannot be delayed.
Doctor, if our crewmembers are fine and don’t require your attention, please take care of our guest.
Find him some quarters, and get him some food.
I believe the Star Lounge would be the perfect place.” The Captain finished with a knowing smile.

James didn’t know what to say.
He’d come aboard these people’s vessel - still not sure if he should truly believe all their stories – as an intruder, had hurt many of them, and still he was being treated extremely well, as if he were a friend.
What a strange culture this is, he told himself, so caring, so very nice. What would I be today if I had lived here, instead of my timeline?
The Doctor’s voice brought him out of his reverie.

“Come!” She said, “Let’s get you some food, and then we’ll see about your quarters.”
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Chapter 6

James could see the Captain’s decision did not please everyone, at least not the Security Chief, as the look he shot James as he left the room seemed deadly.
He’d have to watch his back around that one, he figured, but he was also happy that he was dealing with something he was used to: a dangerous opponent with a grudge.
As they started towards what James assumed was the “Star Lounge”, he looked at the Doctor and, in an embarrassed tone, said:

“I wanted to apologize for what I did to you. Where I come from, pretty much the only response to any kind of danger is to hit it hard and fast, else you die hard and fast.
I’d rather we started over on the right foot.” He said, extending his hand.
“Hi, I’m James Reynolds! The few friends I have call me James”

“Hello James,” she replied, taking his hand and flashing him a smile that made his knees want to go weak. He only then noticed how utterly beautiful she was, with her thin body, bronzed skin and short blond hair, her pouty lips, pert nose and enrapturing icy blue eyes.
“My name is Valis Numorr, of the Fifth House of the Bearers of Light, Heir to the throne of KelenThurk.”

She held his hand for some time, James feeling as if she was holding his soul as well, before snapping out of it and wondering, the paranoia returning somewhat, if she had perhaps used her powers to enthral him.

“Wow, impressive title,” he said, “Does this mean I have to call you Princess, or your Majesty?”

“Well, most of my colleagues call me Cmdr Numorr, but my friends call me Valis. I’d love for you to call me Valis.” She finished with a smile.
After which, she turned and resumed her walk to the “Star Lounge”.
James followed, unsure what to make of the events that had just transpired, but certain that this wasn’t the end of it.
This was fine by him.

They crossed corridors familiar to James, as he realized he had “appeared” very close to the medical room.
After walking around bending corridors, and travelling perhaps 35 meters, they arrived to automated doors that were wider than the standard room doors.
Valis stopped in front of them, and gestured to James to go through first, which he did.
He entered the room to find a mix between a lounge, restaurant and a club, with a section to the left filled with tables where patrons sat with food and drinks, to rows of what looked like sofas lining the far walls, and two bars straight down the middle, each one facing an entrance, as the room seemed the perfect example of symmetry.
It was big, almost 40 meters across, by 30 meters deep, filled with all kinds of plants and flowers, some he recognized from Earth and others the origins of which he had no idea.
But the one thing that really captured his gaze once he entered was the view.
The rooms’ far wall, the exterior wall from what he could tell, had windows 3 meters tall, and at least 30 meters wide, and through those windows, James saw a sight no one he had known in Seattle had ever seen: a planet’s curved surface as seen from high orbit.
To the left of the windows, he could see the stars, bright and crisp, and to the right, the blue and green surface of Bajor, with white, pure, unpolluted clouds lazily moving across the sky.

James stood there, transfixed, until he felt the hand of the Doctor touch his arm gently.
He was halfway into a pivot, his right hand coming up to the Doctor’s face, when he stopped cold, realising where he was, and who it was he had almost hit.
Years of living on the fringe of society, where violence was a normal way of life for all, had honed his reflexes to the point few could take him by surprise, but the downside was also that any lapse in vigilance could result in unfortunates accidents for friends and allies when one was surprised.
The startled look on Valis’s face horrified him to no end, and so he blurted out:

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” over and over, heedless to the many stares he was receiving, to the hushed voices he was hearing, even to the few officers who had gotten up once they had seen his posture, and were currently making their way towards Valis and him, determination in their eyes.
These were Starfleet officers, the finest people the UFP had to offer, and they would never let anyone threaten one of their own.

“Step away from her!” A threatening voice said.

James barely looked at the person who had spoken, solely intent on Valis and her reaction.
She seemed to compose herself, then looked around and, noticing the crowd approaching, said with as much composure as she could muster:
“Everybody, at ease! I am fine, nothing happened here. Our friend overreacted a bit,” she said, “But he’s fine now, and so am I. You must excuse him, for he is not from around here.”
She looked at the officers who had been coming to her help, and added:
“But I am happy to know I can count on such good officers to help any colleague in need. You make me proud to work with this crew.” She finished with a smile.

While to James, the compliment had seemed heavy handed, he noticed it had had the effect Valis had most likely striven for: everyone was going back to their seats, almost as relaxed as before the incident, smiling, and happy that their efforts had been appreciated.
This also meant that they would not stare at James as much as they normally would, and lunch – or dinner or breakfast, James didn’t really know – would be more relaxed.
She’s good, real good, he thought.
He also realized that one of the reasons people might look at him, even had he not almost attacked the Doctor, was that he was still wearing his dark blue combat fatigues with his form-fitting armour underneath.
And also realized something else: he was hungry, as if he had not eaten for a whole day.
For all I know, the last time I ate really was a day ago.
His augmentations placed high protein and carbohydrate demands on his body for everything to run efficiently, and so he hoped that this advanced society also was advanced nutritionally.
And he hoped above all else that they had no soy food.

“Valis,” he said tentatively, watching her reaction, “I think it would be safest for everyone if I sat with my back to a wall.”

“Agreed!” She said with a smile that had returned with full force, “As I’m not sure you’d restrain yourself as much if it were anyone else who surprised you.”

He knew he must have blushed, for her smile to over her entire face, and when she turned to lead him to a seat, her gait was almost bouncing.
After taking them to a table located in the corner of the room, next to the window, Valis indicated a seat to James that would place the wall at his back, but where he could also look out the window while he was eating.
He understood the intention, but thought he’d rather just be looking at her, when her smile reminded him she was a telepath.
Blushing once more, he looked out the window, trying his hardest to appear entranced by the view, knowing full well she was reading him plain as day.
And he didn’t mind.

“What would you like to eat?”

“Well, I’d like to see a menu first, to see what they have. Unless, of course, we only have rations since this is supposed to be a military ship.” he said, nodding towards the plants and the bars, a smile on his face.

“It is,” she said, “Except I’m certain it is like no military you’ve ever known.
As for the menu, there is none. You say what you want, and we’ll have it replicated.”

“Repli-what?”
“Replicated, as in, made with the Replicators.”
It was very clear to James she was toying with him, knowing full well he had no idea what she was talking about, but he didn’t mind, and decided that he’d like for her to toy a lot more with him.
This time, she was the one to blush, which made James proud of himself.

“Ok, let me guess,” he said, “These Replicators are life automated food dispensers, right?”

“Sort of. They actually used stored organic material to create any food you want, with the same nutritional value as the original dish or meal.”

“Yeah, sure they do. Come on, matter cannot be created, nor can it appear out of thin air.” he said incredulously.

“James, we could argue all day, but you wouldn’t believe me anyways. Just order, and let me know what you think.”
She looked at a waiter, who noticed and came to their table.

“What can I serve you?” he said with a genuine smile, even when looking at James.

“I’ll have a Chef Salad, no dressing, with lemonade, and my friend will have?” she left the question hanging.

“Ok,” he said, looking at her with a wry smile, “Let’s play it your way.”
He looked up at the waiter “I’ll have a 12 ounce sirloin steak, medium, with basmati rice and steamed broccoli.
And I’ll have lemonade as well.”

“Right away sir. Doctor.” The waiter replied, and he left to get their orders.

“Valis, I still have some questions for you about… well, everything!” James said.

“Go ahead, I’m all ears.” She said, laying her head on her hands, looking right into his eyes.
James had some trouble concentrating, but he shook it off, and asked.

“Earlier, in the medical room…”

“It’s called SickBay.” Valis interrupted.

“Ah! In SickBay then, the Captain and the Elf…”

“Lt. Cmdr T’Len, and she is Vulcan.”

“Thanks! Anyways, they mentioned a possible way home for me, and while they didn’t have it yet, they didn’t say or infer in any way it was impossible. Is Time Travel something you have experience with?”

“James, here at Starfleet, time travel is a way of life.” She said with a smile.
Noticing his surprised expression, she quickly added:
“Seriously, it’s not something we deal with often, which is why we can’t just send you home right now, but it’s a common enough occurrence that we had to create the Temporal Integrity Commission to monitor Time Travel and its effects on our timeline.
Don’t worry, if there’s a way to send you home, Cmdr T’Len will find it.
She’s as talented as she is persevering.” She ended, taking James hand in hers to reassure him.

The waiter arrived with their food and drinks, so Valis let go of his hand, and made James wish a vortex would appear and take the waiter away.
The loud growling of his stomach reminded him that he truly needed to eat though, and so he did.
The food tasted great, everything seemed fresh, as if just prepared by a cook, and best of all there was no under taste of soy permeating the food.
James felt as close to paradise as any man from his lifestyle could be, with great company, great food and the best view one could ever hope for.

They ate mostly in silence, James almost sucking his food in his mouth because he was so hungry, a few times remembering he was not alone, and that he was not eating in the company of Trolls, and so he slowed down, wiped his mouth clean with a napkin, and resumed at a more normal pace.
But his eating habits had not seemed to daunt the Doctor, who smiled all through the meal, sometimes looking straight into James eyes, as if she were trying to see his soul.
After the meal, she got up, and beckoned James to follow her.

“We need to find you some quarters. I believe there are some that will do nicely.”
As they were walking, in silence, she hit her Comm-Badge and said:
“This is Cmdr Numorr to security. Please bring our guest’s belongings in quarters 95B. Numorr out.”
She turned and smiled again at James as her badge let out a “Security here, understood.”

They arrived at the end of a corridor, and as the doors hissed open, James noticed they were entering a small cabin.
Most likely an elevator, James thought.

“How big is the ship?” he enquired.

“440 meters long, 300 meters wide and 82 meters high. It has 22 decks, some small, some big. Deck 7.” She said, and James was so entranced by her eyes it took him a full second for him to understand she was speaking not to him, but to the elevator.

“It’s a big ship.” He said with admiration. “I guess it must be one of your biggest, right?”

“Hardly, the longest ship class we have is the Sovereign-class, a Heavy Explorer, at 685 meters, but our most voluminous is the Galaxy-class ship, at 640 meters long, with a mass of 4.6 million tons.
What makes the Akira-class special is that it is the first Starfleet Gunboat/Fighter carrier.”

James couldn’t believe this, but then, in a society with over 150 member worlds, 600 meter ships should not be surprising, he figured.
The lift stopped softly and the doors opened on another corridor which resembled the one they had just left.
James knew if he had been alone he would more than likely have gotten loss.
The Doctor led him through another corridor, and they finally stopped in front of a door.

“Here you are. Let me show you in and, more importantly, show you how everything works.”
They entered the small, but comfortable looking room, and James noticed his equipment had been laid on the bed.
The room resembled the first one James had seen after he had woken up, and so this room also reminded him of a small hotel room, with a sleeping corner, and a work desk complete with personal computer.
While listening to Valis explain how things worked, he absentmindedly went to his gun and checked if everything was secure.
He froze in his track when the Valis said:
“And here’s where you can get more 12 ounce steaks, if you wish.”
He looked up, and saw a small recess in the wall, about 2 feet wide, by 1 foot tall and 1 foot deep.
There was a control panel above it, and he expected the Doctor to hit a button as she went up to it, but she simply told it:
“Sirloin steak, medium”.
A woman’s voice replied, stating:
“Please state the type of animal meat you wish to consume, and the type of cooking.”
The voice even had a semblance of emotion.
It sounded nothing like the voice-recognition software James had seen in corporate enclaves.
“Cow, Earth animal, on the grill.” Valis answered.
And in a golden-yellow light show, a plate appeared out of thin air, with a grilled steak sizzling on it.
Valis noticed James’s surprised look, his gaping mouth, and smiled smugly.
“When you’re done, you put the empty plate back in and order: Return.”
In the same golden-yellow light show, the entire plate vanished.

“What the Frag? You have matter converters?” James asked, almost disbelieving what his eyes had shown him.

“Oh, we have much, much more.” She replied in a tantalizing way.
She pointed to a small doorway at the back of the room, and explained that it was the bathroom, with a sonic shower, another piece of technology James couldn’t believe, and the basin where he could brush his teeth and wash his face.
Everything came out of the wall as needed, and went back in when you were done.
The water, Valis explained, was purified using extremely powerful filters, and returned to the system.
Then she showed him the crapper, and explained how it worked, including the three seashells situated on the right side of it.

They exited the bathroom, and she showed him the computer, explained it too was voice activated, and that James was free to peruse the contents of all historical, scientific or even alien databases.
All he had to do was ask, and the computer would show him.
And whenever something was restricted, it would let him know.
Looking at all these wonders, James had a question pop up in his mind.

“Tell me,” he asked Valis, “With all your technology and gadgets, life must be so easy. But does everyone have equal access, or do the poor wait in line while the rich take what they want?”

“There hasn’t been poverty, pollution or famine on Earth in over 250 years. Or even on any Federation member planets. There are no “poor” in the Federation.”
She had stated it proudly, as someone who profoundly believed in what she was doing, what her leaders were doing.
And standing there, as proud as she was, James thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
He was completely enraptured by her eyes, her lips, her skin, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“What about work, then?” he said, almost absentmindedly, slowly getting closer to her, “Do people still work since they don`t need to?”
She didn’t back away, simply looked up into his eyes when she answered:
“People work to better themselves, they do what they like, and never feel the pressure of having to, but simply of wanting to.”

For a long moment, there was silence.
James had so many other questions he had wanted to ask, but at the moment all he could think of, all he wanted was to touch her, to feel her body against his, to kiss her passionately.
He was looking in her eyes, she was looking in his, slowly getting closer, their lips seemingly drawn together by some unknown force.
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

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Chapter 7

The alarm sounded, a deafening klaxon reverberating all over the ship, which was followed by a message over the Comm system:
“Red Alert! Red Alert! This is not a drill, everyone to their battle stations. I repeat, everyone to their battle stations!”

Valis snapped out of the moment, looked at James, spun around and sprinted to the door as she said:
“Come with me!”

He instinctively grabbed his gun holster and collapsible stick, strapping his shoulder holster across his back, tucking the collapsible stick in its special pouch on his right pant leg.
He followed the Doctor through many corridors – corridors he now recognized -, going back to the Sickbay, crossing many people hurrying, getting to their posts.
He was careful not to go too fast, having learned years ago that not everyone in the shadows could run as fast as he could - especially Mages who could not have Cybernetics or Bioware implanted without losing magical prowess – and so you always had to learn to run only as fast as your slowest team member.
And so he paced himself on the Doctor’s speed, and wasn’t even breathing hard when they got to Sickbay.
As soon as Valis crossed the doors, she became business-like, showing only her Doctor persona.
She made sure that all the remaining patients received the necessary treatments, and sent those she could back to their posts.
James was unsure of what to do, so he followed the Doctor around, hoping to find a way to help.
He noticed the Security Chief was no longer there, and he figured he had run to his post as soon as the alarm had sounded, no matter how injured he was.
He didn’t have to muse much longer before a call came in.

“Captain Kirkinger to Cmdr Valis, come in.”

“Cmdr Valis here, Captain.”

“Is our guest with you?”

“Yes he is!” Valis replied, fully concentrated on preparing the Sickbay for possible injuries, not knowing if the ship was going into combat or not.

“Send him to the bridge, I have a feeling we may need his help very soon.” With that, silence came back.

James sent a questioning look to the Doctor, who simply nodded towards the doors, and sent him off with a “The guard outside will accompany you to the Bridge.”
He went out of the room, and followed the guard waiting for him next to the door.
They walked at a brisk pace, as if the guard was in a hurry to get rid of him, but as James looked around him, all the while memorizing the path they were taking, he noticed that everyone was as in a hurry as the security officer guiding him.
He could see the determination, excitement and, in some people, a hint of fear, but all were busy going about their tasks with diligence, as if this was just one more work shift.
The security officer accompanying him, a middle-aged man in excellent shape, was calm though, the sign of a man who’d seen action before, and who didn’t let his emotions show, or control his actions.
James was sure the man felt the same thing as all the people they had come across, except his experience allowed him the luxury of not showing it.
They entered what he had learned was called a “turbolift”, and seconds later, after a smooth ride, the doors opened up on the bridge.

As James stepped out, he was greeted with the sight of many people bustling about around the bridge.
But what captured his attention were all the displays, beeping and bleeping, and rearranging themselves as people’s fingers flew over them.
None had standard buttons or switches, all the displays changed depending on the user’s needs and wishes.
James admired the fluidity and adaptability of the system, but had to wonder how long it took for one to master this type of work flow.
His attention then went to the main viewscreen, directly at the front of the bridge.
It was more than two meters tall and at least four meters wide, and was currently showing the outline of the planet they were orbiting, Bajor.
He allowed himself a fraction of a second of contemplation, before his training took over and he resumed his scanning of the bridge.
The Captain was sitting in his chair, near the back of the bridge, slightly to the right, with a matching seat to his left that James attributed to the XO.
They were separated in the middle by a display the Captain was currently studying.
Both seats overlooked the front of the bridge, where a station with a single seat, most likely the pilot’s seat, was located directly in front of the display screen, less than two meters away.
The bridge had three levels, each about twelve inches lower than the previous one.
His level, the one with the turbolifts – he had noticed a symmetrical lift opposite his – was the highest one, then the Captain’s chair level, and finally the pilot’s level.
Only the walls of his level were covered with displays and seats, the lowest level having only the pilot’s station.
At the pilot’s station was sitting a blue alien, bald, with what looked like a small dermal slit separating the right side of his head with the left side.
A couple of humans were manning the wall stations, with an Auburn-haired woman touring these stations, checking everything up and noting it all on what looked like an IPad.
She struck James because she had the same aura of command the Captain had, and moved about the bridge as someone whom all should fear and respect.
I think I found the XO, James thought as he noticed how beautiful she was.
While the Doctor was petite, with a compact frame, the XO had broader shoulders, was almost as tall as the Captain, and was evidently muscular.
She walked with the grace of a dancer, but the purpose of a fighter.
As with the Doctor, James was stricken.
Don’t they have ugly women here? He thought, as he kept looking at the XO.
James was pulled out of his examination by the security guard that had brought him there.

“Captain, our guest as arrived.” He said.
He then took up guard behind James, awaiting orders.
It was the XO who responded:

“Good, you may return to your post, Ensign. Thank you!”
Her voice was rich, of a lower pitch then James expected, with the undertone of one who expected to be obeyed instantly.
“So you’re the one who beats up our crew and makes our Tactical Officer unfit for duty.” She said.
She looked at James intently, giving him a thorough once over.
Her expression was difficult to read, but James was under the impression she liked what she saw.

“He would have been seating at that station there.”
Looking at the station she was pointing, he saw it was manned by a human officer.
While he felt some remorse over the incident, he knew he had acted only as he had been thought, and so did not feel the need to apologize.
He simply looked at her and shrugged in reply.

“Let him be, Number One!” the Captain said, smiling.
“Mr. Reynolds acted as any of us would have… Had we had his training and augmentations.”

“Number One, is the ship ready?” the Captain asked his XO.

“Yes Sir, all systems are fully operational, all stations report ready.”

“Mr. Thromken!” called the Captain, turning towards the pilot, “set a course bearing 693 mark 327, and engage at my command, maximum Warp.”

“Course laid in Sir!” the alien replied.

“Engage! And turn that damn klaxon off… Helm, ETA to target?”

“At current speed, 63 minutes Sir.” The alien said.

The viewscreen showed the planet veering to the right of the ship, the starry night filling the screen, when suddenly the ship was blanketed by what looked like tracer rounds, as if someone was firing full-auto all around the ship, never coming close to hitting it.
James felt a slight tremor, and a gradual increase in the thrumming sound he kept hearing since he had awoken earlier meant these were engines, and they were increasing their power output.
The Captain got up, and started towards a recess in the wall next to the viewscreen, motioning for James to follow.
He did, noticing there was a door in that recess, one that was invisible from the turbolift he had come out of.

The Captain looked at the XO, and said:
“You’re with me, and have Cmdr Teramak join us in the Ready Room. We will need his tactical input for this.”

“Eye, Sir!” she said, before hitting her Comm-badge and calling out to the Cmdr.
Then, before she followed, she passed command of the bridge to Lt. Garner, and entered the room on their heels.
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

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Chapter 8

The room they entered looked like many conference rooms James had seen in Corp offices, except that, as most rooms on the ship, it was sparsely furnished.
One plant decorated the room, and a plaque was hanging on the wall, at the center of the conference table.
It was the ship’s dedication plaque, as James could see, and right above it, attached to wall supports, was a replica of what he assumed was the ship, the USS Musashi.
It was 2 feet long, almost 1 and a half wide, and from the side, the ship’s prow looked a bit like a baleen whale, but when you looked at it from below, it looked like a thick Frisbee disk with catamaran like pylons attached to it.
James like the aesthetics of the ship, and found the curves of the hull graceful, yet powerful at the same time.
Looking at the raised pod at the back, remembering the Akira-class ship was a gunboat, he deduced it must be the torpedo pod, and noted, if the openings we indeed torpedo launchers, an impressive sixteen such launchers all around the ship, eleven of which were located in the pod itself, seven facing forward, and four facing aft.

“Take a seat.” Captain Kirkinger said to James.
“Do you want anything to drink?”

“Yeah, sure, I’d like a lemonade, please.” James answered, sitting down at the table.

The chairs were comfortable, and the cushions automatically adjusted to James’s body, like some sort of mimetic foam.
The Captain ordered the drinks, lemonade for James, milk-coffee for his XO and something called a “Rock-da-jee-no” for himself.
He ordered a fourth drink with James assumed was for Cmdr Teramak, one cup of katheka.
The smell was strong and pungent, and James wondered what it was made from.

“I think I should introduce you both to each other.” Said Kirkinger.
“James Raynolds, meet Cmdr Nathalie Tremblay, my XO, and one of the best in the fleet.” He said proudly.
“I had to fight tooth and nails to get her, and it forced me to cash in on a few favors, but she’s worth the effort, believe me.
Nathalie, meet James Reynolds, intruder.” He added with a smile.
“James can outfight the best of them, as you saw with Cmdr Teramak’s injuries.
And I have a feeling his “specialty” will help us in this mission.”

“You must be good indeed,” Cmdr Tremblay said, “because no one onboard can beat Teramak in hand-to-hand combat, despite the fact many of us are highly trained in unarmed combat.” She finished, again examining James from head to toe as she had done on the bridge.
Apparently satisfied with her scrutiny, she sat down at the table, followed by James and the Captain.

They were all seated, the Captain at the end of the table, Cmdr Tremblay to his right, when Cmdr Teramak entered.
He saluted the Captain and the XO and gave James as evil an eye as James had ever seen from someone, then took a seat opposite James, to the right of the XO.

“Now that we are all here,” the Captain said, “I will tell you about this mission.
A few minutes ago, I received communications from one of our listening posts on an M-class planet sitting at the Federation-Cardassian border, located 12 LY from here.
They told me that they had found something very important and that we should go and take a look as soon as it was possible.
As they were going to explain, their red alert klaxon was heard, and their sensors showed three ships approaching.
They were relaying information on the ships when we lost the transmission.
Ops believes it was jammed at the source.
Starfleet Command, when appraised of the situation, told us to go there and investigate.”

While the Captain was explaining the situation, James was studying the others, to see how they reacted, and how serious was their situation.
James felt they were most likely going into battle, having reached the conclusion the Federation was at war since the Captain had first spoken of the good old days of exploration.
While going in a fight didn’t really worry James too much, he was simply hoping they weren’t going on a suicide mission.
Although his current understanding of the situation, with the XO and Cmdr Teramak tense but not overly worried, and his perception of the Captain, a man who truly cared for his crew and would not likely sacrifice them for nothing, conveyed to James that this mission would certainly be dangerous, but feasible.

“From the information we received,” Kirkinger continued, “The arriving ships were three Dominion attack ships and one Cardassian destroyer, Keldon-class.”
He tapped a button on the small touch panel located on the table top in front of him, and a three-dimension holographic image appeared, containing the four ships in the report, and what appeared as schematic details of each ship floating around them.
The image was sharper, crisper than any hologram James had ever seen, but it no longer held any surprise where these people were concerned.
After all, he mused, how difficult is it to create perfect holograms to a society using matter replicators?
The Captain continued his report:

“We are certain the ships will send troops down to take over our post, and then steal whatever it was they found down there.
Our mission, first and foremost, is to find any survivors and bring them back with us.
Then, we need to find what it was the outpost’s team had discovered, and bring it back, or if we can’t, learn all we can about what it was.
And finally, make sure no Federation sensitive information falls into Cardassian-Dominion hands.”

The Captain paused, looking at everyone around the table, as if to judge their reactions, then continued.

“This will be difficult, as the ships will most likely be in orbit of the planet, above the listening post.
And while this ship can defeat any of theirs individually, we can’t take on all four simultaneously and win.
Suggestions?” he asked, as he looked first at his trusted XO, then at Cmdr Teramak, and finally at James, to make it clear he wanted suggestions from everyone, not just his crew.

Cmdr Tremblay looked at the display and, tapping the touch panel on the table in front of her, changed the view of the three-dimensional display, zooming out far enough so that their target planetary system was in view, with the ships no longer represented by images, but simply by dots.
On the planet’s surface, James could also see a dot representing what he assumed was the listening post.

“Well, we come in at all speeds, deploy a couple of fighters, and after the initial attack, when they’re wondering who to shoot at, we beam a contingent of troops on the surface, intent on retaking the listening post.” Said the XO, looking closely at Cmdr Teramak, clearly invinting him to assess her suggestion.
“I’m confident we can do this with an acceptable level of losses in Starfighters and personnel.”

“But,” Teramak added, “there’s a great risk to the ship while we beam them down, and once on the ground, we will no longer be able to offer space support, and our troops on the ground will be left on their own…” He didn’t seem to relish the prospect, and neither did the Captain.
“And even if we stayed to fight, the odds are against us, so much so that even if we won, we’d most likely be crippled, dead in the water as you humans say.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” James said tentatively, “ but what exactly do you mean by “beaming”?”

James was half expecting the answer he received, given all he had seen, but it still stunned him like a Troll’s punch to the head when he heard it.
It was Cmdr Tremblay who answered.

“We mean to disassemble their molecules, transform them into an energy matrix, and transmit that energy at a pre-decided point on the planet, and then transform that energy back into Starfleet officers.” She finished with a smile, obviously happy at James’s surprised expression.
“The problem is, in order to do this, we need to lower our protective shields, which makes the ship much more vulnerable to enemy fire.”

“Well, James, what do you think? Do you have any suggestions for this mission?” Kirkinger asked, the inflections in his voice clearly requesting an answer from James.

Teramak looked at James as if he was looking at a five year-old toddler who had proven unable to write the simplest word.
It was clear he didn’t think James had anything to offer to this mission.
James certainly did not want to give the Cmdr satisfaction, and so he told them what he thought, not holding anything back.

“I believe, as your officers do, that a frontal assault would mean our doom, and it is completely unnecessary.
Stealth and speed will be our allies in this mission, at least on the ground.”
He paused, looking again at the display, and seemed to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

“This ship can take out any ship in the group, you said.
Would it be able to, being a gunboat, to take it out in one volley, or at least cripple it?”
He looked at the Captain, who nodded.

“We would most likely overload its shields and blow it up if we fired all our tubes, but then we’d be a few seconds without torpedoes.” He concluded.

“We’ll only need one barrage,” James said confidently, “because right after the barrage, we’ll be through the enemy lines and exactly where we need to be.”
James went on to explain his plan, and when he was done, even Teramak looked at him in a different light.
He was still mad at him, James realized, but now there was definite respect in that look, one that James vowed to increase.
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

I notice the viewing counter keeps getting higher, but no one comments...

Comments are welcomed, by the way, whether positive or negative...
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Sonic Glitch »

Hey from this crowd oftentimes no comments are good comments ;) I'm enjoying it. I just don't comment often because I am utterly unfamiliar with the Shadowrun universe. That being said I am enjoying the fish out of water perspective of the character, and the sections flow very well into each other. Nicely done so far! I look forward to more.
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Ok, cool, just remember that criticism is also welcomed, so you see anything you don't like, you can let me know and why... :)

Chapter 9

As the Musashi approached Feltin III, the planet on which the listening post had been constructed, the excitement on board the ship was felt everywhere.
Especially in James’s team.
The team was composed of some of the ship’s veteran Security Personnel, people who had seen combat before, and could keep cool under fire.
Each and everyone had been hand-picked by Cmdr Teramak and the XO, and each and everyone had been told that on this mission, the leader was James Reynolds, or as he would be called on this mission, “Shadowmaster”.
While surprise had etched every face at this announcement, none had offered a single complaint.
James had quickly understood that it was mostly because the order had come from Cmdr Teramak, a man these officers obviously respected.
A respect that was well earned, in James mind, because once his plan had been accepted, Cmdr Teramak had quickly made all the necessary preparations, including procurement of the strange equipment he’d requested.
And strange equipment it was for the Starfleet personnel, for anyone looking at them would have recognized the uniform colors, but not necessarily the uniforms.
Gone were the pyjama-like garments, replaced with body armour and a visored helmet.
James had told the Captain and his team in no uncertain terms that only idiots went into combat without any kind of protection.
Armour was useful, for even if it couldn’t protect you fully from your opponent’s weapons, it would protect you from a glancing hit, and could even make a difference between a deadly wound, and an incapacitating one.
While the Captain had not liked James calling Starfleet idiots for not equipping personnel in combat with armour, he was forced to accept the views of a man who’d seen more combat than anyone aboard, a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.
But while he wanted his men to be well protected, their unfamiliarity with any kind of armour meant that James had to settle for light armour for them.
Being used to wearing some, he opted for Heavy armour, since he knew it wouldn’t slow him down, or alter his stealth much.
He had requested that all Helmets have Comm-Links and full audio and visual augmentations in them, including Infra-Red vision and Hearing Augmentation.
Using the replicators to manufacture the armours, James had had eight full sets made in minutes, seven for his team, and one for him.
The team had been limited to eight members, because it had been decided that a smaller team could move faster, and hide easier than a bigger one.
Each team-member had a melee weapon of their choice, so they would maximize their efficiency in close quarters, and they all had a Type-III Phaser rifle as their main weapon, and a Type-II weapon in a special holster at their belt.
James had opted to use his Colt Manhunter as his main weapon, since it was the weapon he was most familiar with.
He did have a back-up weapon, which he intended to use if necessary.
They had called it a TR-116 projectile rifle; he called it the “Barrett of the future”.
It was a sniper rifle, nothing less, nothing more.
It fired Tritanium slugs at its target, the Tritanium making the slugs armour-piercing in nature, up to two kilometers away.
James was sure it would find itself useful during the mission, and since he was the most experienced with such a weapon type, he would be the one to use it.
He had had Teramak create a sound suppressor for the weapon, intent on making any shot as difficult to pinpoint as possible.
He also had the Cmdr replicate APDS -Armor-Piercing- rounds for his pistol, since they were going in fast, intent on hitting the enemy hard.
James understood they were in a war, so while he usually did not like to kill, he knew this was going to be a kill or be killed situation, very different from his usual missions, where guards - with the exception of the high-security location guards – were more interested in apprehending him than killing him.
And of course, each of James team-mates had the standard Starfleet Tricorder in order to detect enemies.
They were all sitting in the back of a craft, called a Runabout, checking their gear, and repeating the role each of them would take in the upcoming mission.

It reminded James of his military service, when he was younger and a lot more naïve.
He had been part of an elite Spec-Ops team, working for the United Canadian-American States armed forces, or UCAS for short, doing special missions for the good of the UCAS – or so he had thought at the time.
He had been doing missions for a full year, sometimes going up against Corps who acted against UCAS interests, sometimes against other countries - James usually acting as point man in these missions because, despite of his size, he had always been light on his feet- before he started realizing his superiors were just as corrupt as the people he went against.
James had been happy when he had found out that all his team-mates felt the same way he did, and as a group – filled with starry-eyed kids - they had decided to bring them to justice.
The men pulling the strings had been doing it for many years though, and they didn’t need much time to discern what James’s group was up to.
That was when they had decided to send James and his group on a mission deep in Aztlan territory, what was once called Costa Rica, under orders to capture and bring back a Shaman of Quetzalcoatl, for “crimes against the free world”.
The group went in, and realized very quickly that their intel was bad, so bad in fact that they had lost two men of the 8 men team in the first 10 hours of the mission.
Isolated, with no way of knowing what intel they could trust, they had decided to go back, and find a way to cross the border North back into the UCAS or the Sioux territories.
Luckily for them, their Shaman, Dancing Bear, was powerful and had many allied Spirits, so in the beginning, they had been able to make some headway back towards the North, towards home.
But then awakened creatures, creatures evolved from standard animals into magical beasts of legends, had come out and had started stalking them, attracted by the Shaman’s Spirits.
After a harrowing fight, they had decided it best to cut to the coast, and try to find a means of transportation out of Aztlan.
They had fought all the way to their target, losing team members every day, until only Dancing Bear and James were left.
One morning, after narrowly avoiding a confrontation with a Feathered Serpent, they had exited the forest, and had found themselves on the coast.
They had exited on the top of a narrow cliff, overlooking the ocean, and had been looking for a way to get down when the Feathered Serpent had attacked again.
Dancing Bear, wounded, dying, and following his Totem’s teachings, gave his life in one last effort, flinging his most powerful spell at the creature, knowing it would kill him but that it would save his friend’s life.
In its death throes, the Serpent had caught James with a swing of its tail, and had propelled him over the cliff, down into the shark infested water.
The tail hit and the impact of the water had made James pass out, thinking it was the end for him.
But he had awakened in a small hut near the shore, where a fisherman had hauled him out of the water, and had tended to his wounds.
James had stayed there a few days, helping the old man with repairs to his house, fishing with him, until he was well enough to travel.
The old man had taken him to the nearest city, where James had used his training to climb aboard a cargo ship going north, to the more civilized lands.
James, after many days of hiding aboard the ship, had finally arrived in Seattle, where he had gotten off the ship, and had made the decision to make his army superiors pay for what they had done.
That was when he had abandoned his old identity, and had become James Reynolds.
That had been nine years ago, but the memories were always vivid in James’s mind, as he saw them every night when he went to sleep, and dreamt of his old team mates often.
And so, it was with these glum memories that James was about to go on a mission in this strange reality.

His teammates were finishing their preparations when their helmet’s Comm-links came to life.

“Cmdr Teramak to Shadow team, prepare to launch on my mark. Copy!”

“Shadow team here, ready when you are, copy!” was James’s reply.

“Launch in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!” Then the Comm went silent, and the Runabout moved.

The plan James had hatched was that the Musashi would leave Warp once it had past the planet, and would then double back, hidden from enemy sensors by the planet itself.
While hidden from the enemy, the Musashi would launch 6 attack fighters and the Runabout.
Then, the Musashi would go full speed around the planet to the East, while the attack Fighters would circle the planet to the West.
The Akira’s greater sub light speed would ensure it arrived face-to-face with the enemy before the Fighters, ensuring their attack would be performed with a small surprise factor.
The Musashi was going to swoop in, fire a full torpedo volley from its four forward launchers in the torpedo pod, all aimed at the Galor-class ship.
It would then continue its attack, attracting the attention of the Dominion ships.
Meanwhile, the attack Fighters, coming in from behind the enemy forces, would fire all their micro-torpedoes at the hopefully already crippled Galor, and would then assist the Akira in the fight until the Runabout gave the signal that the package was delivered.
While these two groups attacked the enemy forces, the Runabout, coming in from the North, would swoop in low through the Mountain range, and beam Shadow team a few kilometres higher up in the mountains, allowing them to recon the terrain before coming into contact with the enemy.
James had decided with this course of action when he had learned that the listening post, in order to decrease the possibilities of detection by enemies, had been built in these mountains where large deposits of Kelbomite – a mineral – made scanning very difficult because of its signal refraction capabilities.
James counted on those capabilities to make his team’s approach almost impossible to detect.
The high position also meant that any sniper would have a great view on the terrain below, and thus would be able to better support the infiltration team.
Once the team had been beamed down, the Runabout would then Warp out of the system and regroup with the rest of the attack group to pre-set coordinates, and would wait for reinforcements from Starfleet before coming back to retake the listening post, and reclaim its troop.
They had estimated one or two hours before receiving any reinforcements, and so the team would be on its own and would need to hold out until help arrived.

“ETA two minutes!” James heard the pilot call out.

The team took up position on the cargo transporter pad, some on the personnel transporter pads, and they waited.
James was much more nervous than he had been in many years, and he knew exactly where this nervousness came from: he was about to be disassembled in his constituent particles and them “beamed” to the surface of a world.
He had been told it was harmless, that the chances of a mishap were less than 1 in millions, yet he was still very nervous when he heard the transporter technician call:

“Shadow team, beaming down now!”

James felt a tingling sensation in his entire body as he was enveloped in a shimmering blue light, thinking “That’s how Teramak got the jump on me” as he saw the interior of the ship quickly being replaced by rocks, trees and a mountain side gradually sloping down to his left.
He realized, as the tingling slowly receded, that he was no longer standing on even footing, and that he had been beamed in the perfect position for his location.
The sophistication of the entire process seemed staggering to James, and he was once more impressed how scientifically advanced this Federation was.
Regaining his composure in the blink of an eye, James identified their current position on their wrist mounted GPS, which was powerful enough to give them a position even through the interference.
They were two point three kilometres away from the oupost, and so he ordered his team to start advancing, while he looked for a defensible position to set up his sniping post.
At first, they had planned for James to go with the team, and set someone else as the sniper, but James had quickly swept the idea away, as he came to the conclusion that he was the perfect sniper.
He had greater familiarity with solid slug rifles, and his reaction speed made him the perfect sniper, able to react to danger before anyone would even know it was there.
And if a sniper was no longer required, he was the fastest one on foot, and would be able to regroup with the team faster than anyone else.
So James went to work, looking for the most defensible position which afforded him the best view of the lower slopes and outpost entrance.
He found an outcropping topped with a bush, and a narrow ledge about twelve meters long leading to it.
The ledge wouldn’t easily be travelled by anyone not augmented like James, and the small bush would offer him cover from an observer coming down towards him.
He crossed the ledge rapidly, and set himself up in position, lying down on his stomach, setting his extra rifle clips next to his left hand for rapid reloads, and putting his APDS loaded Colt Manhunter on the ground to his right.
If anyone tried ambushing him, they’d be in for a surprise.
And so, for two hours, James watched his team as it slowly make its way to the outpost.
The guys were perhaps a hundred meters from their objective when it happened: James spotted many areas around the team begin to shimmer, before coalescing into the forms of Jem’ Hadar soldiers converging on his team, weapons at hand, ready to fire.
James spotted the Jem’Hadar closest to his team and fired three successive shots, each bullet scoring a hit at the center of his target.
The third Jem’Hadar soldier had jerked and was falling when the rifles’s first loud “crack” was heard by the group.
The sound suppressor, combined with the echoing effect from the mountain made any attempts to trace him practically impossible.
His team reacted perfectly in sync, all going down to one knee, covering all possible angles, and, after each picking a target, they fired.
The Jem’Hadar had been taken by surprise by the sudden death of their comrades and the loud noises, but had recovered quickly, and so when the Starfleet team opened fire, many Jem’Hadar retaliated, some even as they were falling down, dead.
Three Shadow Team members fell down, the remaining four changing their aim to cover newly opened gaps in their fire zones and firing continuously into the advancing enemy.
The first assault by the Starfleet team had cut a swath of destruction on the attacking Jem’Hadar, killing ten in the initial volley, but more still came out of the underbrush to attack the Starfleet officers.
Unfortunately for them, death rained down from above faster then they thought possible.
The first wave of Jem’Hadar were barely touching the ground when James had other targets lined up and had opened fire.
He picked his targets carefully, only shooting those Jem’Hadar who were in position to fire at his team.
Five shots and five more dead Jem’Hadar later, James was already ejecting the empty eight-round clip from his rifle and slapping a fresh one into place.
Another volley from his team at the approaching Jem’Hadar, hitting those who were getting into firing position, thinned the enemy ranks by four more.
Five more, though James, noticing one of his fallen teammates was still in the fight.
Ensign Rekmor had simply positioned himself flat on the ground, and had positioned his rifle in a way where he could fire it one-handed, and had taken his Phaser pistol in his other, covering another possible angle of attack with it.
He was obviously hurt, but still the consummate professional.
The Jem’Hadar had stopped the attack, hiding behind rocks and outcroppings, seeming finally to realize that they couldn’t take down the invaders as easily as they had thought.
James was about to show them they weren’t even safe behind their rocks when they all turned around and looked at an approaching figure, obviously their leader considering the way they acted around him.
James called his team:

“They are regrouping behind some rocks, about twelve of them, possibly waiting for reinforcements.
Take the wounded, and head for the western trail from your area.” He said, “And I’ll take care of anyone who tries to follow. Head for the entrance to the outpost, and call me when you get there.”

“Roger that!” came the response, “And you’ll be happy to know we have no casualties… yet…”

He noticed one Jem’Hadar had looked at what resembled their version of a Tricorder while James was speaking, and now the soldier was going towards their leader, a thin humanoid with curly black hair, and great big ridged ears.
He showed him his instrument, and pointed at the screen.
Some Jem’Hadar were already going back towards James’s team, probably to see what they were doing, when he acted.
He took careful aim, and shot the Jem’Hadar’s leader in the head.
The large calibre round impacted hard, making the leader’s head explode like a ripe melon, showering everyone around with brain matter and blood.
The Jem’Hadar that was standing in front of their leader looked down, dumbfounded, and then fell backwards, a big red hole in his torso.
James fired six more rounds before the Jem’Hadar were able to find cover.
He waited until his team had reached the outpost’s entrance and gave the signal before packing his gear and leaving his position.
In the time it took for his team to reach the outpost, James did not fire another shot, so deep in hiding were the Dominion.

“Watch out guys, the Jem’Hadar may have cloaked again.” He said in the Comm-link.
“I’m on my way, begin penetration of the base.”
The truth always depends on which side of the fence you're standing... ;)
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Praeothmin
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Re: Shadowrun crossover with many realities...

Post by Praeothmin »

Chapter 10

James quickly made his way down the same trail his team had followed earlier, his collapsible stick in his left hand, his Manhunter in his right, ever alert for possible ambushes, ready to react at a moment’s notice.
His enhanced agility allowed him to easily keep his footing on the uneven ground, and so although he was careful to be as quiet as possible, he was running down the trail, making good time towards the outpost.
As he was nearing the location of the battle between his team and the Jem’Hadar, he slowed down, studying the terrain, and picked an alternate route that would bring him near where the Jem’Hadar had regrouped, and then lost their leader.
He approached cautiously, making as little noise as possible in his armour, which for a man his size was very little indeed, and crept forward.
He inspected every nook and cranny of the area, looking at the bodies to see if he could find anything interesting or helpful, and when he found nothing useful for him, he moved on towards the outpost.
That was when they came at him.

He was rounding a huge boulder to the left, easily as high as his shoulders, when he saw the air shimmer to his right, revealing a Jem’Hadar soldier, with a two-handed weapon that looked like a cross between a sword and a shortened Naginata, already in a slashing motion aimed at his gun hand.
At the same time, he heard light footsteps at his back, as if someone was advancing on him.
His reflexes and years of combat experience took over, eliminating the thought process between perception and reaction, and James exploded into motion.
He sidestepped to his right while pivoting to his left side, at the same time lowering his right hand to his side while his left hand, the one holding his collapsible stick, crossed over in an upward motion to intercept the sword at an angle and deflect it wide.
The Jem’Hadar was strong, much stronger than an average human, and was holding his weapon with both hands, but he simply could not compete with James’s augmented strength.
James had always been big and strong, and had always trained hard to make his body the strongest it could be, enabling him to lift fully grown men his size over his head easily.
But then he had his strength enhanced through Bioware, to the point where James was now stronger then an average Troll, able to lift a Harley Davidson bike overhead and throw it away, which he had done in the past against opponents to great effect.
So it was no surprise when the blade was deflected wide, James keeping enough momentum to finish his pivot - now standing to the left of the Jem’Hadar - and hit it on the side of the head using his Manhunter, with sufficient force to crack its skull.
Before his first opponent was even fully down, James had turned around, brought his gun to bear on the second attacker, and had fired twice, at point blank range.
The light armour barely slowed the armour-piercing rounds, so they exited the Jem’Hadar’s body at its back and went ricocheting on some boulders.
That’s when James noticed the third attacker, a Jem’Hadar that hadn’t come at him in close combat, but had positioned itself behind a boulder, kneeling and aiming, waiting for an opportunity to shoot its enemy.
As James quickly realized, the opportunity was now, and the soldier fired.
James tried to evade, diving to the side, but he had already committed himself on his previous attacks, and reacted too slowly.
He was halfway in a sidelong dive when the energy bolt hit him on his right flank.
He felt the impact, smelled the burned material, and thought he felt a slight burn on his side, but he still managed to roll upon impacting the ground, losing his grip on his collapsible stick, and when he came out of his roll, kneeling with his gun aimed at the Jem’Hadar, his enemy knew its doom.
Except it didn’t try to evade as James had, accepting its fate, it simply tried to realign its weapon and fire at James, hoping perhaps, to take its enemy down with him.
But once again, in a world where people had no augmented reflexes, James was the faster of the two, and he fired twice, hitting the soldier in the head, making the Jem’Hadar’s shot go wide, impacting a boulder explosively.
Still on one knee, James examined his surroundings for a few minutes, trying to find another enemy in ambush.
He also used the time to see how bad he was hit, but found that his armour had protected him well.
The shot had not fully penetrated the armour, although he now had a large hole in his right side – large enough for his fist to go through - and saw pink flesh where fabric had once been.
He touched his side, and noticed no wound, his reinforced skin having absorbed some of the attack.
Satisfied, he slowly got up in a crouching position, collected his collapsible stick and started towards the outpost.

He made it after another thirty minutes of careful progression, arriving in view of the outpost’s entrance.
He noticed many bodies lying around, all of them Jem’Hadar, some even piled in the doorway, as if they had been killed trying to penetrate the building.
This meant his team had successfully bypassed the building’s security, and were inside.
What James needed to find out now was if they had encountered any resistance and how they were faring.
He went in cautiously, his Manhunter leading the way, though his finger wasn’t on the trigger.
If he encountered his teammates first, he didn’t want to accidently shoot them.
While they were wearing better armour than the Jem’Hadar, James aimed to kill, and his AP rounds would go through their light armour easily.
His senses fully alert, James crept forward ever so slowly – for him.
He was going pretty fast by human standard, and so had covered most of the base in less than twenty minutes.
He was glad to see only Jem’Hadar bodies were to be found, though that still didn’t mean his team was in good shape.
After all, they had two wounded men with them, and their condition could have worsened with the continued fighting, and the time it took James to get down from his perch to the outpost.
He estimated they had beamed down more than two hours ago, and so he felt confident help was on the way, but they still hadn’t completed their mission topside, and there was the possibility enemy reinforcements were also coming.
He rounded a bend in a corridor when he heard shouting and what he recognized as Phaser and Jem’Hadar weapon’s fire.
He accelerated using his augmented reflexes and speed to their fullest, and came up to the backs of six Jem’Hadar soldiers.
They were crowding an entrance to some room James couldn’t see, some crouching in the doorway, using the walls as partial cover while they fired inside, while others were standing next to them, waiting for an opportunity to lean in the doorway and fire in the room.
He stopped at the corridor’s end, dropped to one knee, took aim and fired.
He had emptied his entire clip before the Jem’Hadar had even reacted to the first shots, and he reloaded as they were falling to the floor, all 6 of them dead.
He waited for a few seconds before calling out to his team, and when they replied, he let out a relieved sigh.

“I’m coming in,” he said, “So don’t shoot!”

He entered the room, and noticed that his teammates had used overturned tables, libraries and chairs as cover.
Their barricade was covered with holes, like giant pieces of Swiss cheese.

“How is everyone?” He asked.

“Doc was able to successfully treat Finley and Rekmor,” Lt. Harriman said, nodding at the two team members who had been shot by the Jem’Hadar earlier, “They’re banged up, but operational.
Unfortunately, he was shot himself in that last fight. We all have basic First Aid training, but we haven’t been able to stabilize him, and he’s losing a lot of blood.
These damn Jemmies have some sort of component in their weapons that keeps wounds from clotting.”

James looked at “Doc”, one Lt. Ron Epstein, and immediately knew the guy was in trouble.
He had been hit in the thigh, and James could see hit femoral artery had been sectioned.
The guys had put a semblance of a tourniquet on the Doc’s upper thigh, but James knew it wouldn’t stop him from bleeding out, or from losing the leg if not treated soon enough.

“Do you have anything that can close blood vessels in the kit?” He asked.

Lt. Harriman pointed to a device, and quickly showed James how to use it.
“But we don’t know how bad it is, or if we’ll actually make it worse if we start working around the artery.”

“Let me worry about the artery and its repair, and you make sure everything is sanitized before I go in.” James said, taking his armor gloves and his helmet off.
Lt. Harriman looked at his with wide eyes.

“You know how repair an artery?” He asked incredulously.

“Probably not like you guys do it, but yeah, I do.” He said while sanitizing his hands.
“I was an intern for a year in a hospital before I decided I didn’t like it and quit.
The skills are useful in our line of work though.” He finished with a smile.

He was glad Cmdr Numorr wasn’t there, or she would have known he was lying.
James had actually learned all he knew – and he knew much – on his own, since no longer having a SIN, a System Identification Number, he was forever barred from enrolling in any school, and his knowledge had to come from public library medical books he could consult online, or any books he could obtain illegally.
He also knew his teammates would most likely not allow him to help the Doc if they knew his only practice had been on himself and some other Shadowrunning team members after tough missions.

“Now, I need clean gauze, and someone to wipe the blood off the instruments once I’ve used them.”

“Adams, you guard the entrance and stay alert. They may be coming in for another assault. Don’t trust your eyes, trust the audio enhancers in your helmet instead.” Harriman called while preparing James’s instruments.

Once everything was ready, James started his work, Harriman assisting him as best he could.
It actually ended up being easier than expected, as even though the wound was severe, and the Med Kit limited when compared to a full medical bay, the Starfleet technology once again proved to be quite efficient.
In less than ten minutes, James had sutured the artery, closed the wound, and stabilized the Doc.
While Doc would not be able to move on his own, and wasn’t even conscious, he was breathing regularly, and his pulse was stable.
James knew he would need more advanced treatments and a blood transfusion aboard the Musashi, but he was out of danger for now.

Once his medical duty was over, James and the rest of the team re-arranged the defences in the room more properly, even using the dead Jem’Hadar to shore up their defense “wall”, and then they searched the outpost’s database to find out what was so important they needed the ship to come quickly to meet with them.
They found references to an Orb of Reality, which made Rekmor gasp in surprise.

“What is it?” James asked the man.

Rekmor started to reply, but then, unsure, looked at Harriman for support.

“Don’t tell me you still don’t trust him after he’s done for us, you damn fool.” Harriman growled.
“This is information he needs to know, and you’re the best one to tell him, since it’s your religion that is concerned.”

James understood Reknor’s hesitation, and, looking at him, said:
“Knowledge always helps on missions, and so while I understand talking about it might violate a religious code, our lives could depend on this knowledge.”

“You’re right sir, I apologize,” Said Reknor sheepishly, “ It has nothing to do with a code, it is simply that my people take this very seriously.
I am Bajoran, that’s why I have these ridges on my nose, you see!”
James looked surprised, because he had thought Reknor a human with a skin condition.
“The Orbs of the Prophets, our Gods if you will, are ancient relics that legends say were sent to the Bajoran people by the Prophets, through the Celestial Temple.
Starfleet calls the Temple a “Wormhole”, and it is located near Bajor.
You see, our Gods exist, and one of Starfleet’s officers, Commander Benjamin Sisko, has been chosen by them to be their Emissary to the Bajoran people.
These Orbs had been stolen by the Cardassians during their occupation of Bajor, and some have been returned since.
They are a great treasure to my people, but they can also be dangerous.
They are physical, and of energy at the same time.
When one finds an Orb, one must be cautious around it.”

Not sure if he believed everything Lt. Reknor had told him, James resumed searching for information on the Orb of Reality.
It wasn’t long before he found out it was in the outpost, in a secure vault in the Commanding officer’s room.
He got the security codes, and left the room.
He got to the command center quickly, and saw this was where the outpost’s Starfleet officers had made their last stand.
Bodies were littering the floor, all shot many times, but James took satisfaction in counting almost as many dead enemies as there were Starfleet personnel.
Why am I proud of that, he wondered, I’m not part of their fleet. As soon as they find a way to send me back, I’m leaving. What do I care if they win or lose?
Looking at the bodies, thinking back at how he was treated, and the way the people acted, he received his answer.
Because they’re good people, that’s why. And no matter what I do in life, how I make my living, I’ll always respect and admire good people.
He paid his respects to the dead officers, and then looked for the Commander’s room.
When he found it, he went in, and opened the vault.
What he found was an ornately decorated square box, approximately eight feet cubed, with small double doors at the front.
Not wanting to run any risks, James didn’t open the door, and approached the box carefully.
He looked for possible traps, and found none, so he grabbed the box which felt very light to him, and he went back to join his teammates.
When he arrived, he tried to contact the ship.

“Shadowmaster to USS Musashi. Come in, Musashi!” He said, his voice even, calm.

“Musashi here,” Came the reply, “What’s your status, Shadowmaster?”

“We’ve found what we were looking for, and are ready to be beamed up. Three of us need to be beamed up in Sick-Bay, but I am happy to announce we have no casualties.” James said.
“Unfortunately, none of the outpost’s officers survived.” He added soberly.
“What about you guys?”

“We were not so fortunate in our assault, as we lost one fighter during the initial skirmish, and the attacks have resulted in two more casualties on the Musashi.
The second attack went much better though, and we were able to clear out the skies for you.
Give us a few seconds, we’ll beam you right out”.

Once again, the air around James began to shimmer as he was surrounded with a blue wall of light, and within seconds the familiar surroundings of the Musashi’s main transporter room replaced the outpost’s walls.
As James stepped off the transporter pad, the doors to the room hissed open, and Captain Kirkinger entered, followed by Cmdr T’Len.

“Nice work!” He said, smiling, but with a hint of sadness in his eyes.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t find any survivors down there, but I’m glad the entire team made it.
I’m willing to bet you’re responsible for this success.” He finished with a smile.

“Actually,” James started, “You’re officers performed admirably well. They remained cool and level-headed under fire, when a lot of seasoned officers could have panicked.” He appraised honestly.
“I’m glad they were there. They penetrated the outpost without me, and held off all following attacks, while managing to stabilize the wounded team members.
I honestly could not have done it without them.”

Captain Kirkinger beamed at James’s comment, as did the rest of the team.
They left when the Captain dismissed them, after congratulating them on a mission well done.
He was obviously proud of his officers, and James felt he had every right to be.
Then his brow furrowed, and James noticed he was looking straight at the Orb’s containment box.

“What is that?” He asked.

“One of your officers, Lt. Reknor, called it “the Orb of Reality”, given to his people by their… Prophets.”

The Captain’s expression changed to one of great surprise, and then one of great worry.
James noticed this, and didn’t like it one bit.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, intently studying the Captain’s face.

“Starfleet has dealt with these… Orbs… in the past, and they were always the cause of much trouble.
Temporal anomalies, spacial displacements, all uncontrollable, all yielding great headaches for Starfleet headquarters.” He finished.

“And it would seem this one may also be the source of trouble, Sir.” Said Cmdr T’Len, who had been in the back of the room, silently scanning the Orb.

“What do you mean?” Kirkinger asked with alarm in his voice.

“Sir, please bear in mind these are only preliminary scans, and as such are not the most precise…” She was interrupted by an impatient Captain before she could finish.

“Yes, yes, I understand, now get to the point Cmdr.”

“Well, “ She resumed, undaunted, “The Orb is emitting high energy Chroniton particles and some Verterons.
It is at present “dormant”, one could say, “She added when she saw the Captain’s face, “so it poses no immediate threat.
Also, and I find this most curious, its Quantum Resonance frequency matches the one from our guest.”
The truth always depends on which side of the fence you're standing... ;)
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