Foreseeable future – Museum of Horrors
by HoD Ro' Matlh & Soghla' Jared & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Marie St. Helene

Post Details

Title		Museum of Horrors
Mission		Foreseeable future
Author(s)		HoD Ro' Matlh & Soghla' Jared & Sogh Germite Ephilom & Soghla' HIchop Matlh & Soghla' Terri (Tell) Hope & Soghla' Marie St. Helene
Posted		Thu Jan 03, 2013 @ 9:31am
Location		Iapetus Capital Lake City
Timeline		Future

The transporters now were able to penetrate the thick cloud cover of Iapetus with no difficulty at all. They were deposited on a wide court yard surrounded by lush gardens. It was warm despite being perpetually overcast. Around them, buildings stretched in every direction, all combining a myriad of cultures in their design. Along the wide paved paths moved locals and tourists, ranging from small hairy things only a foot tall to at least one giant reptile almost 30m long.

Immediately in front of them was an archway, behind which a low building sat. On the Arch stood the title:
Smithsonian Museum of History - Iapteus Campus

Stepping through the arched gates they immediately saw what they were looking for. An ancient B'rel, more brown with rust than green, and missing most of it's armour plating sat lopsided on its three landing legs. The back was open and a sign hung from the roof over the opening:
Experience life in a real Warbird

Underneath was smaller print:
Come on a journey and find how life was lived as a member of the Klingon empire. Eat authentic food and witness genuine Klingon customs. Price 12pl.

In wonder the group approached. Sitting at a small stall in front of the open door was a fat Klingon, with porcelain white beard and bald head, wearing vibrant red clothes and a sash made out of plastic chain links.

As they approached, the figure looked up and they could see his eyes were as white as his hair. He weaved his head listening to the approaching feet and then said aloud, but with no enthusisam, "Argh, there matey. Have ye come to see what a real Klingon Warrior's life was like? This is the original IKC FHew that fought in the battle of 9 Fleets. For 12pl I will give ye a tour."

Even if the face had changed there was no mistaking the bitterness in that tone.

The once chief engineer of the bucket of rusty bolts that had been the FHew stepped forward. "What the hell are you doing here?" she snapped at him. If anyone noticed the emotion in her voice, they said nothing or put it down to her old age. "I've seen you do some things in your time but a bloody tour guide!" Her voice faltered on the last word. "You old bear, what have they done to you?" Then she did something very un Tell like, hugged him and whispered something in his ear, "juHDaq juqeng." [Carry us home].

Ro' didn't react to the hug. He may as well have been stone, "You said you were not coming here any more. At least I can drop the bloody fool accent the locals insist on. That it was too painful. And who have you brought with you this time? More Romcan scientists trying to understand the dead cultures gone past? Come forward and announce yourselves. I am blind, so I can't see you."

"Were all here Cap'n... for the tour. Me, Dr Doom, I mean Germite. The pain in the neck we call Jared who got us into this mess in the first place, HIchop and Marie."

Ro' sniffed the air, "Quite the reunion."

He gazed vaguely in the direction of the crew, "Well, have you nothing to say?"

"I have plenty to say," replied Tell. "I'm just not sure you want to hear it."

Germite looked at the shell of the great warrior he used to know. "Great KahLess, Man!!! What happened to you?"

Ro' turned his head, "I stopped taking your damn vitamins, you leech. And of course you were right, my eyesight deteriorated."

“He'll hear it whether he wants to or not,” Marie snarled, ignoring Germite. “You're wasting yourself here. And I don't care if you are blind. Blind or not, the real Ro' Matlh can still captain a B'rel. Or have you let the FHew get even more decrepit than yourself? If that's the case then you're an imposter because the real Ro' Matlh would never, never let his ship fall apart around him: be blown out of the sky, yes, but go to rust and ruin...? No, I refuse to believe it!”

Ro' rocked back in his chair, "So speaks the woman who sold my warp engine so she could become the first Non-Ferengi Nagus in history. Did you bring your wife?"

“I sold your warp engine because it was decrepit. I was elected Nagus because I convinced the previous one that it was the latest thing in technology but cleverly disguised because it was so rare and sought after. Mind you, a few small modifications did help,” she added with a nod in Tell's direction.

“The Ferengi liked the sheer effrontery of it all so they made me Nagus. Or, at least, that's what they said. I believe it was because they wanted to keep me under close supervision but couldn't lock me up because I hadn't broken any laws. All I'd done was play them at their own game. I notice you didn't mention that I got you a new – and far better – engine to replace it and made you a tidy profit in the process. Or is that what sticks in your craw; the fact that I traded for it, not that you honourably killed someone for it.”

Hichop stepped forward and brought his disrupter to Ro's head. "I can not believe I have let you die down here. Tell me Jared, why have I not already done this?"

"Because you swore to Haqtaj on your wedding day that if she did not kill Ro', then no one would," Jared replied quietly. "It was a blood oath and it still binds you 35 years after her death."

"What have we done to you. I will not let this happen to you. This is something a Targ should not suffer. You are Ro' and you will be honoured. If we make it back your future will not be this. I will take no oath and at some point Old Man you will die honourably".

There was a flash of movement and HIchop's gun was gone from his hand. Ro' was on his feet, just as fast at 122 as he had been at 20. He snarled at HIchop, "No one ASKED you to make that oath! You came up with it. You swore it. You devised it. You set out to bring me to this place. Don't try taunting me now."

Hichop started to remember his wife Haqtaj. While it still seemed like someone else's life he started to feel why he might have married when he thought it not likely. He also started to remember the Oath. "Well I am not that person in this Moment."

Hichop then turned to Jared and ask quickly as his gun was taken from him, he punched Jared in the face. "This is your Fault"

Jared was knocked onto his back several feet away. He sat up with a stunned look, and put his hand to his lip - where already a tiny trickle of blood was appearing.

He looked around at all of them.

"Oh... I see. I get blamed because I took the long way round. I had to get out and walk fifty years while you guys took the shortcut, still full of youth and fury."

"Except you ALSO took the long way round - you just don't remember it. So you don't remember how you stopped coming here because you couldn't bare the sense of helplessness, HIchop. Or Marie, how you stayed clear in case there was any retribution for the whole engine thing."

“Don't flatter yourself, Ro'” Marie said. “I stopped visiting the moment you gave in to self-pity. The engines were just an excuse.”

"Germite, you said years ago that if Ro wasn't going to take your advice, you weren't going to give it any more. And Tell... you haven't been down here in 10 years. There was always some research project going on with the institute that just meant you were too busy."

"My fault? I'm the only one who's even VISITED Ro' in the last few years. And I'm the only one who's trying to still do something about it. You guys gave up years ago!"

Ro's face turned in the direction of Jared, "I remember Jared. For me the story hasn't changed. Living far too long and spending your days wishing you had died young. I have been doing that longer than I have been young. But to day the memories came back clearer. Today I remembered the Battle of Nine fleets, more clearly than i remember my own face. Something has happened, and you are saying there is something to be done. Is that why we are all gathered here? One more final flight?

Tell looked around her searching for her friend Marla's face but couldn't see her anywhere. In fact she hadn't been here the whole time. A sudden coldness gripped her in the pit of her stomach. Why had she not noticed that Marla was missing.

"Where's Marla?" asked Tell "We can't leave without her"

"She won't come," a voice said. The crowd turned to see the young communications Vulcan from the station.

"You don't... none of you remember me now, I realise that. I married Marla's second Daughter," the Vulcan explained. She is with Marla now on their homestead. When I heard about what was happening I went to see her to amke sure she was not too disoriented and tell her about your plan to take her back. I am afraid it was too much for her."

He stepped forward and handed a worn paper copy of Romeo and Juliet, in the original Klingon, to Ro', "Her last wish was that I would appologise to you for not reporting for duty, and to return the book you leant her when she first joined the crew."

"Damn it" cursed Tell "I'll soon see about that. We can't just leave her here, she belongs with us. Ro' make her come with us."

"I don't think I made myself clear, Commander," the Vulcan responded. "Marla of House Varquis died today."

Germite was stunned. He didn't understand ten percent of what Jared had been saying, but he thought that he understood that it would take all six of them to return to their time. "That puts us in a pickle. How will we get back without Marla?"

Tell felt as if the whole universe had suddenly collapsed in on it self. "Is this some kind of sick joke. Marla can't be dead." she snapped. Not Marla, Tell refused to believe it, out of all of them, it couldn't be her. A wave of pain and sudden loss gripped and held her in its wake. Not Marla.

"I don't see a problem," Marie said into a silence that threatened to become maudlin. "You, Vulcan, what's your name?"

"Locar, Madame Nagus," the Vulcan replied.

"Good. Fetch Marla's body. We can perform that wailing rite Klinon's seem to think is needed to warn the dead that another spirit is coming to join them. Meanwhile, there will be six of us to go back in time. No-one said we all had to be alive, after all."

"The rite you refer to has already been performed, Madame Nagus," Locar replied, "and, while it is true that most Klingons traditionally view the dead carcas to be refuse to discard, the Varquis family is part human and has a family vault in which the body is due to be interred. I do not believe we will be able to convince the family to release it."

Ro' turned his blind eyes towards Jared, "Where does that put your plan?"

"Up the flaming Takara Pass without a bloody tractor beam," answered Tell. "What's it to be Jared?"

Jared blinked.

"Umm... I don't know! I... I mean... the metatemporal bridge is... I don't know. Let me think for a moment!"

He turned, and paced away from the group on his own a short distance, bumping his head with his fists.

"Think, Jared! Think! You have a six vein metatemporal arc, bridging across five dimensional verital-shift wormhole. They've arced at the far end and you've got the bridge still in potentia. But now you're down a corporal form. Can you do a five-vein counter-arc? No. There's no anchoring pattern for the bridge. The sixth vein would break the five others free and they'd end up scattered across a thousand possible histories.

"Can you ride the arc back as the sixth link? No, you'd need a stronger paradox engine. Not to mention the chance of annihilating yourself in the process.

"Can you manually target the arcs? No, not without another fifty years or so of experimenting with Metatech, running the risk of erasing this entire timeline. Plus, you'd be down more veins by then."

He kicked a rock.

"It can't be done! This is exactly WHY I used the FHew's SIF to limit the meta-matrix capsule. To prevent running the risk of ending up with too many veins to..."

He stopped...mid sentance.

"... The capsule..."

He glanced up the F'Hew, looming overhead.

"That'll have the bridging pattern impressed all over it. Vein meta-fingerprints, vectors of the last threshhold event... the works..."

He turned and ran back to the group.

"I think we can still do it! With a little help!"

He thunked a tiny fist against the F'Hew.

"The F'Hew. This might not make much sense, but the FHew remembers who was supposed to be on the bridge. Sentient being leave a sort of... psychic impression on an environment. Even if Marla's not physically here, The ship will know that someone's missing."

"If we can get the same ship into the same place and position reletive to the temporal event, we should be able to arc everyone back to where they came from. The meta-impression of the sixth crewman on the ship should do the trick. Like recreating someone from a transporter buffer."

"Except... you know... less logically possible..."

"We just need to get this thing off the ground and into orbit."

He glanced up at the ancient rusted lump of the F'Hew, hoping that wasn't the least possible of the things he was proposing.

Incredulity would not even begin to describe what Marie was experiencing. Disbelief was lumped in there with astonishment, amazement and a gut wrenching fear she could not even begin to describe. For all that.... For all that, Jared had pulled them out of worse situations through even more ridiculous schemes. She was not one to put her faith in anyone but she had no choice. It was Jared or nothing so Jared it must be.

“So,” she asked Tell, “ can you get this wreck to fly?”

"You want fly? I'll give you fly. This bucket of bolts will fly for me any day." Tell smiled which was unusual for her. She must have been doing a lot of that lately, soon change that. Tell took her jacket off and rolled up her sleeves and rubbed her hands together in anticipation. "I'm there already. Do we have enough duct tape Marie?"

"Oh, will you?" Ro' asked, sitting back and folding his arms, "With or without her Captain?"

“Oh, yes, the mighty Ro,” Marie sneered. “The invincible warrior. Look at you....blind, fat, decrepit. Fit only to be a second-rate sideshow attraction...if 'fit' is what you'd call it. Ask me, the only thing you're fit for is self-pity. What sort of way is that for a warrior to go? You might as well just take yourself off to the nearest bed and give up.”

"Well I wouldn't have put things exactly like that Marie, but you have a couple of good points there though. I especially like the bit about the second rate freak show and about him being self absorbed in his own loathing. You have such a way with words, its uncanny. Have you ever thought of being a writer?" A small smirk appeared at the corners of her mouth she was hoping that Ro' would raise to the bait.

Ro's stood again, all the age seeming to fall away form him like a cloack, despite his blind eyes and gaudy outfit, "Then let me tell you what this Captain says to his Crew!"

“Here we go,” Marie said to Tell, “the lecture. Now he'll pontificate about honour and glory and all those things that are likely to get us all killed.”

"So whats new?" Tell shrugged. "We're always on the edge of death when Ro' plots a way out. We'll come back, we...." Tell let the last few words fall silent. She had meant to say We always do but this time they would be one crew member short. "....do most of the time."

"Marie, we are going to need a real Dilithium engine, not this cardboard cut out they have given us. You are Nagus, buy it back if you have to."

“Dilithium engine?” Marie replied. “Not a problem. Being Nagus has its perks, one of them being not having to pay for things. Mind you, that creature you insist on calling my wife might have other ideas. He seems to think that as he's male, it's him who should be making the decisions. How I hate traditionalists! Still and all.... Tell, let's have a look at what we actually need. I've never been one for taking Ro's word on things at face value.”

"I'm right with you," Tell replied. "I know just the place we can find some spare parts and I have my shuttle to take us there. It'll be just like old times."

"HIchop, we need Deuterium, Anti-Deuterium and Dilithium. A man in charge of a whole research station should be able to find some spare."

Hichop replied to Tell, "I will return once the materials you need have been delivered. I will wait till the ship is in the air and then beam across. Until then you have the full resources of the station at your disposal."

And without a thought to the memories that were returning, Hichop tapped behind his ear. "Enisign Bec, one to beam up directly to the bridge."

"Tell, once we have our engine, she will need to be reconnected and tested."

“I'll help out when I return,” Marie said. “There are a few other things we'll need though I suspect a carton of good, old-fashioned duct tape will be the best thing to hold the old bird together. That and lots of oil to get things moving again! It looks like its been sitting there the best part of the past decade. I suspect there's more rust than real metal and my guess is lots of moving parts will have fused together. I don't envy you the job of getting the engines going again. The EPS conduits have probably corroded. If you come out of Engineering with nothing more than a few plasma burns you'll be lucky.”

"Germite, our computer systems are Qu'vatlh. Try and wrestle back helm, navigation, and life support."

Germite looked at Ro', "I'm a Doctor, not a computer scientist." After seeing the look Ro' returned, he sighed, "All Right. I'll get on it."

"Jared, get whatever box of science you need for the trip"

Ro' cautioned them, "As soon as we start to do this, there will be a lot of very interested people coming to find out what is going on. We need to be fast and furious. Any questions? Qapla!"