Season 2 Episode 8: "Tried and Tested"
STAR TREK: PHOENIX
S02E08
"Tried and Tested"
Tseeww!
The harsh whine of a hand phaser peeled through the air as another beam fired into the target. "No effect," reported Selar as she adjusted her tricorder, which had a larger than usual Sparkle sensor – the new name since no one could consistently say thaumometer without tripping over their words – plugged into the data port.
Sighing, I said, "Adjusting frequency and raising setting to 2.5." My horn lit as several buttons were pressed on the phaser, then I took aim. "Firing."
Tseeww!
Selar shook her head. "No effect."
"Damn it," I hissed. I examined the phaser, a modified type-two currently with a pair of Shimmer crystals sticking out of its exposed inner circuitry. I checked the connections for what felt like the hundredth time. "It's hooked up. No other faults are showing. Every simulation says it should be drawing energy from the crystal. So why in Tartarus isn't it?"
"May I see it, ma'am?" asked Blackford, giving me a kind smile. He'd come over from the Baltimore as part of a personnel exchange plan; the ships were regularly cycling crew around as part of the research and testing, keeping us working on multiple projects simultaneously and with fresh eyes (and magic) every switch. It wasn't the most efficient but it kept us from getting too bored or frustrated, and meant that I, as the premiere expert with Federation technology and Equestrian magitek, was able to oversee all the projects one at a time.
In particular I found I quite liked working alongside Blackford. He was nice, had a sense of humor that reminded me of Cadeneza without the abrasiveness, and more importantly he respected my authority in all respects when it came to magic.
Too many others didn't.
So I handed it over. "Here. Maybe it’ll like you better than me."
He took the phaser and placed it on the nearby workbench, grabbing a small tool and a bright flashlight along the way. “Aha! Found it,” he said after about a minute of tinkering. “Looks like one of the nadion emitters was misaligned when you plugged the crystal in; the beam's been skipping the crystal altogether."
He handed it back to me as I let out a dry chuckle. "Damn… I must really be tired if I missed that."
"You've been up for twenty hours, ma'am," Blackford said as I reset the phaser settings to restart the experiment.
“Not an excuse; we’ve all been up that long or longer,” I replied as I took aim. “Firing.”
Tseeww!
Selar’s tricorder let out an unusual bleep as she scanned the results. “Sleep spell has been deployed.”
“Finally,” I groaned as I turned the phaser over. “Okay, let’s see how… wow. Seriously?”
A quick Sparkle sensor check showed the single phaser shot had completely drained the Shimmer battery, and cracked the crystal enchanted with the spell. I blew a pony-esque snort from my nose. “This never happened in the simulations,” I said as I set the phaser down.
“That is the purpose of these experiments,” Selar stated as she approached me, temporarily swapping over to her medical tricorder and checking me over with it. She inclined a single eyebrow. “Respectfully, Commander, you need rest. You have spent too long awake; I am exercising my authority as a ship’s doctor to order you to take at least seven hours to sleep, eat, and return refreshed.”
I arched an eyebrow at her in turn, but after a moment of glaring I submitted. “Right. Blackford, take the phaser back to the lab. Have the crystals analyzed… make sure one of the sirens gets a good look at it. I’ll be back at, err… computer, current time?”
“0120.”
Damn it; I only just then realized I’d missed sitting down to dinner with Wattson and Twilight. Hopefully I could catch them tomorrow. “0830 then,” I finished.
Blackford nodded. “Understood, ma'am. Goodnight.”
I nodded to him and Selar in return, and headed off. As the double doors hissed open I realized from the sudden brightness of the corridor lights just how tired I really was, hitting my eyes like dozens of sharp needles. A smell caught in my nose too, foul and stale, from the sweat coating my uniform.
Cadeneza awaited me as I arrived, half asleep on an armchair, wearing her typical lack of clothing for off duty. “O-oh, hey Sunset,” she said, sitting up, liquid sloshing in a bottle tucked under her arm. “I, uh, brought you something to relax with.” She gestured with the bottle.
“Ehgh, thanks but no thanks,” I mumbled. “My stomach hurts just looking at it.”
Cadeneza shrugged and set it aside. “Alright. Take a shower… you look like you need it.
“Already on it,” I said as I used my magic to peel off my uniform before heading for my shower. I stuck to ultrasonic, not trusting myself not to fall asleep from the water, but even that almost knocked me out.
When I came back out Cadeneza had a plate of food waiting for me, some simple rice and vegetables with soy sauce, and water. “Thanks," I said, this time with a smile. “Been pretty rough the past day or two.”
“Rough on all of us,” Cadeneza said as she pulled her legs onto the chair. “I’d swear, the way everyone’s acting you’d think the Dominion were about two hours from pouring out of the wormhole or something.”
I seized up, coughing as the piece of broccoli in my throat lodged itself from my sudden gasp, the fork in my magic dropping to the table.
“Whoa, you okay?” Cadeneza cried as I doubled over, desperately trying to cough the piece out before finally having to grab and swallow several gulps of water to dislodge it.
Gasping and sweating from the sudden burst of panic, I fell back in my chair, almost dropping and spilling my water in the process. “No, I’m… I’m fine, just, it’s that close already?”
Shit. I had almost forgotten, in the heat of all the research, just how dangerous the situation truly was. It was just under three days ago now that Nechayev informed us about the wormhole. The bulk of the Federation's fleet, now less than six hundred starships, left Starbase 375 the day before, bound for the wormhole with no Klingon support, and no hope of reinforcement even if they did breakthrough. The few of us in the know have barely been keeping it together since.
Since then, we've heard nothing. Granted, communication outside of the nebula was currently being facilitated by one-way information bursts, since security needs forbade the use of two-way communications, but we still should’ve heard something by now. Some swift calculations in my head told me that even with a massive battle, the fleet should’ve reached Deep Space Nine.
“...Sunset,” Cadeneza said, sitting up straighter. “Do you know something?”
My eyes narrowed. “Sorry, that’s classified.”
Cadeneza snorted. “Yeah, yeah okay.” Thankfully she didn’t try to pry any information out of me; she understood the need for security. “So I was working on the replicator idea earlier today.”
“Really?” I gingerly resumed eating. “How’d that go?”
“About as well as you’d expect,” Cadeneza grunted. She grabbed for a fallen part of her own uniform and pulled it up to show an unusual stain. “See this? This is some kind of enzyme cereal.”
“...what cereal?” I repeated, my eyebrows shooting up.
She let out another snort. “Okay, okay, so like, there’s this grain they grow on Tellar. Some fancy thing they came up with during their equivalent of the 20th century. It’s super vulnerable, barely grows anywhere even nowadays without a ton of pesticides or other things. And you remember your history, right, about how Earth went through a whole phase of food grown with versus without pesticides?”
I swallowed my bite of vegetables and nodded. “Riiiight, I remember. Just about every world running economies like Earth’s went through the same problem. On Earth, they actually referred to food grown without pesticides or genetic modification as ‘organic.’ As if all other food was somehow inorganic! Twilight and I couldn’t stop laughing about that one for days after we first read about it.” I swallowed a chunk of rice and waved my fork in the air for emphasis. "Honestly, it was one of the dumbest things I read about twenty-first century Earth… well, that and some shortlived fad called, what was it, like 'virtual tokens' or something?"
"Pfft, yeah," Cadeneza chuckled. "What a laugh that must have been. I tried explaining it to a Ferengi I ran into at a bar on Risa once and he about fell off of his chair laughing. Anyway, this grain was another one like that. Except that since it’s so rare to be able to grow it without pesticides even today, it’s protected. You have to fork out a ton of credits for a replicator pattern that uses it in any amount; Starfleet’s not allowed to have it aboard their ships unless it’s keyed to a particular person, and even then, there’s limits on how much it can be used.”
I thought about that for a moment, then nodded in understanding. “Right, it’s just like how you have to purchase replicator patterns for particular custom recipes made by restaurants or gourmet chefs; it’s how we protect their creativity from being stolen and wasted.”
It was one of the most interesting aspects of the Federation, I found, how frequently people within it claimed to not use money. Except we did. We simply used it for special things, the unique creations of artists and artisans of all types. A simple credit system based around energy usage helped provide a medium of exchange. Even the Federation still needed a way to parcel out land for homes or other such things; not everyone could have a massive vineyard in France like Captain Picard’s family.
It was a strange system, even considering the world I and my sister came from. Yet the system worked, because with all of their basic needs met, people focused on bettering themselves rather than accumulating as much wealth and property as possible. Estates like the Picards' were a rarity, and almost always had been passed down through the centuries.
It was a fair system, even if I had a difficult time with understanding it, to the point that I didn’t bother explaining it to Twilight that first day we went shopping after she first came to us. But over the years I've realized the rather simple idea behind all of it - contentment.
When society's basic needs are universally met, people are freed to chase what makes them content, instead of what provides their next meal, or keeps the lights on for another week. I wonder what the Federation would think of Equestria's economics–
“Hey, you listening to me?”
I blinked, realizing that Cadeneza was suddenly up in my face. “Whoa, what?”
“You conked out for a minute there,” she said, before collapsing back into the couch.
“Oh, uh, sorry. You were saying about the grain?”
She nodded and continued, “Yeah, so anyway, Pog told me he grew up on the fancy stuff; apparently his family was compensated well for contributing someone to some colonial venture they sent off to the Delta Quadrant back before the founding of the Federation. Crazy to think he’s got some family member out there he’ll never know.”
I winced, finding my last bite of rice and vegetables turning to ash in my mouth. “That’s terrible,” I murmured.
She blew a sigh out through her teeth. “Shit, sorry, shouldn’t have just dropped that one in your face.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” I said, waving it off as best I could in the moment. “Just keep telling your story.”
“...right. Anyway, since he was used to the fancy stuff, he hates the normal stuff, and it’s a popular grain so it’s in a lot of Tellarite dishes. He’s spent a lot of credits accumulating replicator patterns over the years. So he wanted to know if he could use this chaos factor thing to make a proxy of it.”
“...I guess that’s not technically in violation of the law,” I said as I put my plate back into the replicator and fetched another glass of water.
“Yeah, but see, the thing is, it worked. Sort of.” Cadeneza brought out her PADD and showed me some readings. “See here? Except it worked so well it produced the basic amino acids of the grain’s proteins, and nothing else. And since he tried to make it into a bowl of cereal, it produced this bowl of disgusting oily goo. He took one taste with a finger and then punched the bowl across the room; we all got splashed with it.” She grinned and laughed.
“...yeah, that sounds like Pog, alright,” I said with a grimace, holding a hoof to my forehead. “He did clean it up, right? Please tell me he cleaned it up.”
“Of course he did,” Cadeneza said. She looked at me cock-eyed. “Not even a little laugh? You really are tired. Let’s get to bed, then.”
I grimaced harder. “Err, no offense, but I think I need to sleep by myself. I don’t have the energy to be… err, frisky.”
“Hey, I don’t have to be frisky,” she said as she gently led me over to the bed, dousing the lights in the rest of my quarters. She drew me under the covers with her, gently holding onto me. “I can just sleep.”
“You’d better,” I groaned. “Computer, set alarm for 0800.” The computer bleeped in acknowledgement.
As the lights dimmed, I found myself scooting in closer to Cadeneza, nudging her arm till I was nestling in the crook of it. Cadeneza responded by brushing her other hand through my mane a few times, planted a kiss on the crown of my head, then held me just a little bit tighter.
I rapidly fell asleep after that, my dreams a troubled mess of shouting admirals, dinners with Cadeneza, and memories of home.
At some point the dreams seemed to fade, and my mind fully succumbed to sleep - only to be jolted awake when my horn all but exploded in pain.
"Ahh!" My whole body went stiff as a board in an instant, like every nerve in me had been pinched at once. I tried to speak, to reach for Cadenza, but nothing worked. All I knew was pain.
I tried to push through, struggling to reach the bedside console somehow. I had moved maybe a few inches, then it hit me again, blasting down my horn like lightning and setting my inner pool of magic aflame like nothing else ever had. The shock to my system was enough to send me tumbling out of bed and onto the floor like a sack of apples. Now I curled in on myself, shaking uncontrollably and barely holding in the contents of both my stomach and my bladder.
"J-Jacq..."
"Wha–Sunset, what happened?" Cadeneza blurted as she sat up and scrambled across the bed towards me. I blearily watched her scoot off the bed and do her best to get me back into a seated position. "You okay? I'll call sick bay right away."
"N-No..." I managed. "Call Twi--"
“Sparkle to Shimmer!” Twilight’s voice came through tense, almost strangled, like she was in as much pain as I was. “Sunset, did you feel that just now?"
"Yeah…it was like some kind of magic shockwave. What was that?"
"Dunno. But we need to find out.”
“Right,” I groaned. “Report to the science lab. Get them scanning the area pronto." I sighed. "And I know you're tired. I am too."
I could hear the appreciation in her voice even as she answered, "Aye, ma'am," and closed the channel.
“Shimmer to bridge,” I said immediately.
“Bridge here,” answered Williams.
“I need an immediate scan of the area and everything within ten light years for magic; my sister and I just felt an enormous surge shock us. Something's happened somewhere. And contact the other ships and order them to do the same. I'm on my way to the bridge now."
"Understood… ma’am, is something wrong? Are you alright?”
I smiled slightly. “I’m fine, Williams, thank you. I’ll be there soon.”
“Yes ma'am." The channel closed.
“Sunset, seriously, what–”
I shook my head even as I went for a fresh uniform. “I don’t know what caused it, but that’s what I’m aiming to find out. Get some more sleep, okay?”
She drew herself up, eyes narrowing into a deep look of concern. “Sunny…” She got up and walked over to me before kneeling down to hug me tightly. She let out a few deep, shuddering breaths as she held me, then bowed her head against mine before planting a kiss on my cheek. “Be careful, okay? Don’t get hurt.”
I choked up, barely able to respond thanks to the emotions roiling in my gut. I returned the kiss. “I’ll be okay, I promise.”
“You better.” She headed back over to bed and she was snoring before her head hit the pillow.
Blearily I trudged through the corridors, cradling an extra large mug of raktajino that I slurped every so often in the hopes of cracking my eyes open. Despite the magical shockwave, or whatever the hell that was, my body wanted sleep.
But I slipped into the magical lab, nodding to my fellow officers as I stepped up to the console controlling the sensors. “Sparkle,” said a Bolian ensign named Haq’ra, on loan to us from the Brynhild. “I thought you headed to bed hours ago.”
“I did,” I answered as I began working the console. “But Commander Shimmer ordered me to do some scans. A magical shockwave of some kind just passed through this area.”
She eyed me for a moment. “How do you know that happened?”
I tapped my horn. “Unicorns are sensitive to magic, and what Shimmer and I felt held enough energy to wipe out a starbase. Or worse.”
“Good enough for me. Beginning sensor sweeps.”
As I worked, the doors swished open, revealing Adagio Dazzle, her mouth curled up with worry. “Sparkle,” she hissed, “Aria, Sonata,and I almost permanently defeaned the captain of the Shimakaze when we were briefing her on a research project just now. We hopped a shuttle back over straight away. What was that shockwave?”
“You felt it too,” I said, nodding. “We don’t know yet. We’re not even sure where it came from,” I answered. Then I frowned, turning to the Sirens. “What did it feel like to you?”
“Oooh, at first, it was all shrill and fast, like a bajillion phaser bolts all at once,” Sonata answered, lazily waving her hands around in the air, her usual frenetic energy all but gone. “Then it went through us leaving this weird gross feeling in its wake, like being covered in salad dressing.”
“Oily salad dressing,” Aria added with a snort.
“Oily salad dressing left out to rot for five days on the counter,” Adagio concluded with a shiver. “We screamed at the top of our lungs in surprise. And when a siren screams…”
I flashed them a look of sympathy. “That sounds awful, I’m sorry to hear it.”
“What’d it feel like to you, Twily?” Sonata inquired.
I tapped my horn. “Like an explosion of energy, as if I’d stuck my horn into an electrical conduit. Sent me almost flying out of bed, left me pretty sick to my stomach too. Sunset reported much the same. She's on her way to the bridge as we speak.”
“Whatever it was, it was like no magic I’d ever felt before,” Adagio said, crossing her arms over her chest. “And far, far more powerful. Nothing on Equus ever came close to it, not even Discord.”
I shivered at the name. Discord, the spirit of chaos and disharmony, one of a number of magical creatures with the power to rival Princess Celestia in sheer magical strength. “Yeah,” I said, my voice almost choking on my words. “Definitely not good.”
“Ensign, I’ve got something,” Haq’ra said, drawing my attention back to the console. “The Sparkle sensors are picking some kind of trail emanating from near the Cardassian border.”
I leapt back over to the sensors right away to look for myself. “Confirmed,” I said as my magic tapped the keys, doing my best to follow the signal. “But it’s hard to track…” I tapped my badge. “Sparkle to bridge.”
“Shimmer here, Sparkle. What’s the news on the situation?”
“We’ve managed to identify a trail, but we’re having a hard time following it. Is there a chance we can get the rest of the fleet to tie their sensors into the Phoenix’s, work in tandem?”
“Should be doable. Stand by.”
After a short while spent waiting, Sunset let me know the sensors were tied in. Like old-style radio telescopes all pointed in the same direction, the sensors of the fleet worked together to act as a larger collection array, and with it tracking the signal was made much easier.
The Sirens watched impatiently as I continued to tap keys until I finally muttered, “That’s it. I know where it is. Bridge, Sparkle here. I’ve located the source.”
“Go ahead, Ensign,” said the voice of Liang. Evidently the Captain himself had gotten up to see to this.
“It’s in the Denorios belt, in the Bajoran system. The source is…” I looked over the readings more one more time, still not quite believing the crystal clear data in front of me. “The wormhole, sir.”
Silence reigned for a few moments before Liang’s hesitant response. “Is there a chance we can determine what caused it?”
“Not from here,” I answered, trying to keep any shakiness out of my voice. “Sir, if the source was the wormhole, the Dominion might’ve–”
“I’m aware. Report to the conference lounge. Are the Sirens with you?”
“Yes, they are, sir.”
“Bring them along. Liang out.”
The Sirens all gave me a puzzled look. “What exactly might the Dominion have done?” Adagio asked me as we left the lab and headed for the nearest turbolift.
“The minefield,” I said. “The Federation left a minefield in front of the wormhole before we abandoned the station. If the Dominion took it down, they could bring reinforcements through.”
Oddly this response caused the Sirens to share a knowing look, and rather than say anything Adagio smiled softly and remained silent.
Worry gnawed at my belly as the turbolift reached deck two, depositing us just a few steps away from the ramp up to the bridge and conference lounge. As we entered the lounge I saw that we were joined by the Captain, Sunset, Admiral Nechayev, and, oddly enough, Lieutenant Wattson. I tried to avoid catching her gaze as I took a seat.
“Very well, now that we’re all here,” Liang said, tapping his cane to his wrist. “The Admiral has given me permission to bring the two of you up to speed regarding the situation with DS9.”
“Not to speak out of turn, sir,” Wattson said, “but why me?”
“Same reason all the other command staffs are being advised,” Nechayev answered with a slight glare. “To be brief, we received intelligence that the Dominion were about to take down the minefield. We assembled a fleet of six hundred ships led by the Defiant and sent them to take back the station. The last we heard they were met by a fleet of over twelve hundred Dominion ships.”
“Holy shit,” Wattson whispered, echoing my own sentiments as chills ran down my spine. “Ma’am, do we know if they made it?”
She shook her head. “We don’t.”
“Well, the magic couldn’t have been from the minefield coming down,” I said. “I studied the design; there was nothing about it that involved magic. Ma’am, did the intelligence we received say if they succeeded in taking it down?”
“Yes, they took it down, with an anti-graviton beam using the station’s deflector array,” Nechayev repeated after checking her PADD. “Why?”
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with magic either,” Sunset said in answer for me. “So unless the Dominion has something magical…” She shook her head. “Ma’am, we need to get someone on site to check what happened.”
“Out of the question,” Nechayev said immediately. “We don’t even know the results of the battle. For all we know the Dominion obliterated the fleet and have reinforcements pouring into the Alpha Quadrant as we speak.”
“I’m not saying we send a starship,” Sunset countered. “But we have a runabout aboard. We can quickly tie some Sparkle sensors into it and send that. If we take a circuitous route we can then make it look like it came into the system from a completely different heading than this nebula.”
“I’m sorry, Number One, but I can’t authorize what might be a suicide mission,” Liang said. “We must wait to discover what the status of the station is. If it turns out that we took the station back after all, we’ll see about your suggestion.”
“We’d have to send someone who isn’t one of the Equestrians or the Sirens,” Nechayev said.
“Actually, ma’am, I disagree,” I said, raising a hoof. “If I may.”
“...very well, go ahead,” Nechayev grumbled.
I cleared my throat. “If we’ve taken back DS9 then it would actually be a good thing for either myself or Sunset to be seen in public.”
“But the Dominion would know you’re there,” Liang said, though from the twinkle in his eye I suspected he understood where I was going with this.
“Exactly, sir,” I answered, and received a smile from him that confirmed my suspicions. “If the Dominion sees one of us in public on DS9 then that gives them reason to believe the other is nearby. It helps throw them off any potential scent about the actual location of the Phoenix.”
Sunset tapped the table. “And I have another good reason, actually. Security Chief Odo. The phaser modification to deploy a sleep spell functions well enough a prototype could be taken. If he’s willing we can test it on him, and if it works on him we’ll know it works on all other Changelings.”
Liang nodded. “I see your point, Number One. We could disguise it as a simple crew transfer plus scientific expedition… you’re there to run scans on the wormhole using some special sensors developed on your runabout, you’re transferring crew, and while on the station you happen to speak with Odo and, man willing, test the phaser. I like this plan.”
Nechayev raised an eyebrow and nodded. “It’s a simple but effective bit of guile. Good suggestion, Ensign. Assuming that–”
“Bridge to Liang.”
Liang tapped his badge. “Liang here.”
“Captain, we’ve just received some major news. The Dominion has officially withdrawn from Bajor. The Federation has retaken Deep Space Nine.”
“Sweet,” Sonata muttered, the closest any of us came to what we all clearly wanted to do, which was pound the desk and shout. As it was, there were grins all around, and Nechayev visibly seemed to sit up straighter, as if a massive weight was lifted from her shoulders.
“Do we have word on casualties?” Liang continued.
“Not yet, sir. All we know is the Defiant survived the battle; the word came from Captain Sisko himself.”
“Excellent news, Williams. Thank you.” Liang tapped his badge to end the transmission then looked around the table. “Well, it seems Ensign Sparkle’s suggestion just went from intriguing to practical. I recommend we get on it right away.”
Nechayev nodded and stood. “I’ll need to pass along transfer orders. I’ll see if any crewmen are looking to leave the Phoenix.”
“And, with permission, I’ll see that the runabout gets the Sparkle sensor upgrade right away,” Shimmer said.
Liang shook his head. “I’ll make sure someone else does it; you clearly still need rest, Number One. You should take it. You’ll need it for the trip.”
“Allow me to handle the upgrade, sir,” I volunteered. “With Lieutenant Wattson’s assistance we can have it done within a couple of hours.”
Nodding to me, Liang said, “Very well. However, once you are finished, you are to remain off duty for the next twelve hours. Much as I appreciate the efforts of both yourself and Commander Shimmer, you are too valuable to use carelessly. Especially if we are no longer under the threat of Dominion reinforcements.”
“Aye sir,” Wattson and I chimed.
Nechayev looked around the room, as if weighing if she needed to say anything else. Then with a slight shrug, she said, “Dismissed.”
While the sirens went their own way, I followed Wattson to the closest turbolift on deck two. “Main Shuttlebay,” she ordered as the doors whisked shut, and with it the fresh air that abated the growing stench of tension surrounding the two of us.
It grew, palpable and strong, heavy in my nostrils, until eventually we both found ourselves calling out, “halt turbolift!”
Wattson and I faced each other, and to her credit she got down on one knee so we could more easily look each other in the eye. “Listen, Twilight… I want to apologize.”
My eyebrows rose. “You do?”
“Yes,” she insisted, tapping one hand against her other palm. “I already spoke to Sunset about this, but you deserve to know too. When I was much younger, I had a lot of health problems. The kind that meant I had to be placed under stasis more than once to keep me alive while they devised treatments. Eventually I got through it and I’m fine now, but it was touch and go for a long time.”
I let out a low whistle. “That’s... I’m so sorry, Amelia.”
She gave me a wry smile. “Yes, well, it’s what it is, and I’m grateful for it, but it was also a bit traumatic at times. Enough that I hate the idea of ever being placed deliberately unconscious.”
Instantly I realized where this was going. “Oh,” I muttered, looking away. “So my sleep spell–”
“Was one gigantic trigger, yeah,” she replied, her smile twisting into a half frown. “Not that you had any way of knowing that. I never told you or Sunset about any of this, because it happened well before I knew Cadeneza. Even she doesn’t know the full extent of it.”
I nodded, giving her an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, again, then, that I triggered you like that.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault. It was mine for messing with technology I didn’t fully understand, without a knowledge of how your safety spells worked. I’m the idiot that’s lucky to be alive right now.”
“Still, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I added any stress,” I said, even as I found myself smiling from her words.
She smiled back and opened her arms, which I happily sank into for a hug. “Apologies all around accepted, then?”
“Yup.”
She chuckled and gave me a tight squeeze around the withers before letting me go. “Well, I’m glad we worked that out. I don’t want to drive a wedge into our friendship.” She stood back up. “Resume.”
As the turbolift discharged us onto the Main Shuttlebay deck, we stepped inside. I took a moment, as I always did, to admire the sheer size and scale of it all. An absolutely cavernous space, longer than several sports fields and high enough to fit all but the largest warp cores inside of it with room to spare. Shuttlecraft of all sizes filled the docking bays, the throngs of maintenance personnel looking like so many ants crawling around the gigantic hanger. I watched a pair of Worker Bees lift off the deck and glide out into space, slipping through the blue forcefield with barely a hum from the field itself.
If I'm honest with myself, I've always been equal parts impressed and scared by the realization that only that semi-transparent blue wall was keeping us all from being sucked into space.
But our destination was the runabout Euphrates, the only vessel in the bay that was a starship instead of a shuttlecraft. Barely large enough to justify the name, it nevertheless had everything a starship officially needed, and met the minimum size qualifications by Starfleet Engineering.
Just.
As we approached we saw Hill coming from a different direction, pushing an anti-grav cart laden with sensor pallets and crystals. “Got everything you two need right here, ma’am,” he said to Wattson.
“Thanks, Chris,” she replied. “That was fast.”
Hill smiled and wiped some sweat from his brow. “Well, you know me. I’d better get back to Engineering though; they’ve been having some issues with the EPS conduits on Deck 17.”
We both nodded to him as he left, and I took the anti-grav cart and brought it over to the runabout itself. “Alright, Ensign,” Wattson said as she pulled out a couple of toolkits from a nearby locker. “Let’s get to work.”
I waited for Wattson to step clear before grabbing a toolkit for myself with a bit of magic. “I'll focus on the converter and Shimmer crystals. I should have them running inside of half an hour.”
“Try forty-five minutes; we’re not in that big of a rush and this is a runabout sized warp core; it’s not exactly outputting the same level of power as the Phoenix.”
“Aye,” I acknowledged as I headed for the central compartment, where the Jefferies tube access lay. Crawling inside was easy with my small pony frame, and I swiftly got into place near the warp core.
The warp cores of smaller ships like this fascinated me. Despite not being in engineering like Sunset, antimatter reactors always captured my imagination, just because of how remarkable they were. Back in Equestria we’d barely even come up with the concept of atoms, let alone antimatter. And if we somehow had discovered antimatter, I'm sure I'd have said to everypony who would listen that the very idea of deliberately inducing collisions between it and normal matter for any reason was pure suicide!
Sometimes I wondered if it still was, given all that was keeping the antimatter from escaping was a series of magnetic bottles and forcefields. Maybe one day Starfleet or someone could engineer a better power generation method, one that wasn’t so risky. But it was the only way to generate enough power to warp space-time and enable FTL travel.
By now setting up the converter was a simple matter; the majority was finished within five minutes, including the enchanting. The real kicker was customizing some of the inputs for this type of warp core. I’d seen a variety at this point, from the monster beast on the Enterprise, to the Phoenix’s slightly less powerful but no less impressive core, to the slender one about the Algerie that seemed bizarrely small for an Intrepid’s speed capabilities, to the classic workhorse design housed aboard the Shimakaze.
Compared to those, this one was like an adorable kid sister, pulsing away with power sufficient to bring the runabout up to warp six, but no more, and that was without powering shields or weapons. Bringing those online would slow it to warp five. Yet it chugged away, proud and happy.
In a way it reminded me a little of myself, when I still lived in Equestria.
Equestria… just the thought of it brought a tear to my eye, even now. I couldn’t remember my birth parents' faces anymore; the only reason I still knew their names was the information that had been recorded when I first came to Earth. Even Shining… I didn’t know anymore either. I didn’t even really think of him as my BBBFF anymore. Not when I had my BSBFF in Sunset.
Sometimes that realization haunted me, a guilty conscience, manifesting in nightmares where their faceless forms accused me of betrayal, of forgetting them in favor of Mother and Mom, of being a bad daughter, a terrible daughter, one they were glad they lost…
But that was ridiculous, I knew. I’m sure they were devastated when I vanished. They likely pestered Princess Celestia for days, months, years even, trying to find me before they had to give up. How much had it hurt them? How long had they suffered?
I wonder if they had any other children after me. God, how would I even feel about that anyway? We make it back to Equestria, only to find out they had some surrogate new daughter? Would I hate my little sister? Or would she pull a me and reject me for suddenly showing back up and turning her life upside down?
“Wattson to Sparkle. You good in there?”
Distracted from my thoughts I tapped my badge. “Yes, ma’am. Just finishing up testing. Everything is looking good; the converter is up and running in the green.”
“Great. Come help me with the sensor pallets, then.”
I finished up in the tube and crawled back out, finding Wattson in the forward section, several panels ripped out of the floor. “Oh, we’re replacing these sensors, not the ones on the pod atop the hull?”
“No, they’re gonna have that module swapped out with an extra photon torpedo launcher before they send the ship out,” she answered. “Just in case.”
My stomach soured at the thought. “Of course. Right.”
“You okay, Twilight?” Wattson asked as I got to work helping her with the delicate task of swapping out pallets. Each one took at least five to ten minutes to carefully shimmy out of position without harming it or leaving behind debris, and each new one took almost twice as long to fit back in.
“Yeah,” I answered as I worked. “Just a little reminiscing.”
“Thinking about Equus?” she pressed.
I let out a slight chuckle. “How’d you guess?”
“As long as I've known you, it's been the one thing that's always on your mind, no matter how busy you are otherwise. Even on your worst days, you'd talk about it.”
It took me several minutes of careful pallet installation before I responded. “Yeah. I’ve been kind of hoping these magic sensors will make it easier to find. Equus ought to stand out like a galactic center black hole on these, the magic signal will be so strong.”
“Assuming it’s ever anywhere in sensor range, but I hear you,” Wattson said as she finished slotting in a pallet. “You know we’ll find it someday. I promise.”
“I hope so.”
Soon we were finished with the installation, and after some basic tests, pronounced it a success. “Better go get some sleep now, Twilight,” Wattson said with a sly smile. “You look dead on your hooves.”
I squeezed my eyes shut momentarily to try to wash away some of my exhaustion. “Yeah, yeah I am.” My jaw gaped wide open in a huge yawn, prompting Wattson to snicker. “What?”
“Nothing, just… you stick your tongue out like a cat when you do that,” she said, giggling. “And your mouth gets all huge, like you’re gonna swallow someone up.”
I stared at her, one eye closed from tiredness, the other only half open. “What?” I repeated, more confused this time.
She looked at me, then her hands went to cover her mouth as she laughed aloud. “Oh crap… now you… ahahaha! The only thing missing is the flying part!”
“Huh?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Nevermind. When you wake up, look up ‘flying purple people eater.’”
“...you’re weird, Amelia,” I groaned as I turned around to head for my quarters.
The good news was, we had no trouble finding crewmembers among the assembled ships who needed to transfer to Deep Space Nine. Seven of them in fact.
The bad news was, we were all crammed inside of a runabout that for practical purposes ceased being comfortable with five passengers aboard. And we had a full day's journey ahead of us too.
I volunteered to take the con, since it was a one person job on such a small craft. The other passengers were ensigns and lieutenants who seemed content to keep to themselves and give me a wide berth, which suited me just fine at the present moment.. It left me plenty of time to sift over the reports of what the hell happened.
Like Captain Sisko’s report of witnessing the ships inside the wormhole disappear, after begging the Prophets to act to save Bajor. He presented it without comment, but the evidence was pretty clear: the removal or destruction or whatever the wormhole aliens did to those ships was what my sister, the sirens, and I all felt.
Which said a great deal about what non corporeal entities like the Prophets were capable of. It was why, as I came into the system, I’d been ordered to pass near the wormhole and scan it. Ideally we’d want scans from inside, but Nechayev didn’t think that was worth the risk, and for once in my life I actually agreed with her. If the aliens saw my magic as some kind of threat, who knows what would happen. They could attack us directly, or reverse course and let Dominion ships pass through after all.
Me, personally? I didn't want to tangle with them. If they really were using magic, they could easily sense my own and see me as some kind of interloper. I’d spent some of the time on the trip reading all of Sisko’s reports on the Prophets and from the sound of it, they’d sooner see me as something to destroy out of fear.
And I liked living, thanks.
The helm ahead of me beeped. "We're coming out of warp," I announced to the rest of the ship. "Make ready for departure."
As the stars shrank back into points, I witnessed a great many starships come into view, Federation, Klingon, and a few others. A mighty Galaxy-class passed near us, as if giving us a look before moving on.
I switched on the comms. "Runabout Euphrates to DS9, we are in system and performing a brief survey of the wormhole. Requesting docking access."
The voice that came over the comms was gruff, male, Irish, and instantly familiar. "Acknowledged, Euphrates. You're cleared for Runabout Pad C. And, Commander Shimmer, welcome to Deep Space Nine."
"Thank you, Chief O'Brien," I said with a small grin. "Euphrates out."
I adjusted course for the location of the wormhole, careful not to pass close enough to trigger it opening, and spent a short while scanning it with every variety of Sparkle sensors we’d managed to come up with thus far, the data from which confirmed Sisko’s report and then some: the wormhole was flooded with magic. Just about every bit of unidentified energy patterns that other starships had ever scanned from the thing showed up as a form of magic, albeit magic I didn’t fully recognize. Some of it looked a bit like teleportation matrices or magical storage, but the rest… I’d have to analyze once back on the Phoenix.
In the meantime I swung around to Runabout Pad C, set down, and waited for the automated docking procedures to secure us.
“All hands, we’ve arrived,” I announced. “Depart when ready. And good luck on your new assignments.”
The various junior officers all thanked me as they filed through; I let them all go ahead and step onto the station before I finally grabbed my own belongings and carried them with me to the airlock.
As I stepped through I took in the gray corridors, the grayer deck plating and the lighter gray accents; Cardassian architecture sure involved a lot of gray.
And yet to my surprise there was an officer waiting for me, a female human ensign I didn’t recognize, with a large afro hairstyle and chocolate toned skin. “Whoa-ho!” she said as she looked at me, grinning widely. “You know they said I was here to meet a Sunset Shimmer, and I was like that’s kind of a hippie name, and they told me you were a unicorn and I was like no way, that’s ridiculous but hey, here you are, hi!”
I raised an amused eyebrow. “Um, hello, Ensign…”
“Mariner. Beckett Mariner,” she said, sticking a hand out. “Chief O’Brien asked me to show you around the station; he’d do it himself but he’s too busy making repairs which is pretty much all he's been doing since we retook the station a couple of days ago. That battle was crazy; I was on board the Atlantis for it and we took out at least a half dozen Jem’Hadar fighters and a Galor-class ship before it was all over; were you in the battle?”
The speed at which Mariner spoke made me dizzy; I could barely parse it. “Ah, no, I wasn’t,” I said as I shook her hand. “Listen, Ensign. I do appreciate the warm welcome, and a tour sounds great. But I do have some important business with Constable Odo in an hour, so can we make it the shortened tour perhaps? No offense of course.”
Mariner nodded vigorously and gestured to the hallway. “Yes ma’am, of course. Sooooooo… what’s it like as a unicorn, huh? You get a lot of people trying to make wishes on you or something? Or ask you to do magic things?”
I snorted in amusement while we walked; whirlwind or not, there was something about this Ensign I liked. “Uh, not really; usually people just stare whenever they see me do stuff like this.” I deliberately floated my duffel bag up and around my head before wrapping it around my back again.
She watched, an expression of childlike wonder on her face. “Whoa! That is so cool!”
“Yeah, it’s pretty neat,” I said as we reached the turbolift. “So, where are we headed first?”
“Ah, thought we’d start with the habitat ring, so you know where your quarters are,” Mariner answered. “Level 25, section theta.”
“Cancel,” I said, looking back at Mariner. “I should be able to find my way there when I need to; right now I’d prefer to concentrate on more important areas.”
A frown briefly appeared on Mariner’s face before she swapped to an understanding smile. “Right yeah, I hear you. Important areas. So, forget the habitat ring. Promenade!”
The lift surged to life once more. “So, like any station,” she said, “the Promenade is the life of the place. Got so many people up there all the time, from local Bajorans to Starfleet officers to all sorts of neutral traders and more. Lotta people are doing business with Bajor right now due to its neutrality, and they don’t really care who controls DS9.”
“So business has barely slowed at all despite the change in management,” I quipped as the turbolift reached the Promenade, discharging us onto the lower of the two crowded decks. Scores, nay, hundreds of people of all species walked the Promenade, plenty in Starfleet uniforms but the majority in civilian clothing. I spotted a few in Bajoran militia uniforms too, likely part of station security.
Mariner raised her voice as she replied, “Yup, pretty much. So, first thing,” she pointed over just to the left of where we’d come out. “Security office is right there, just so you know. You’ll find Odo in there for your meeting. Second, you got latinum?”
“Uuuh… why?” I asked as she began to walk in the opposite direction of the security office.
“‘Cause if you want anything from the Promenade other than at the Replimat, you’re gonna need it. Credits don’t cut it on DS9; you gotta have cold hard cash.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a few slips, then tossed them to me. “Here. So you can get something at Quark’s once we reach it.”
“Thanks, but you don’t need to give me your money,” I said, trying to hand it back.
She snickered and waved it away. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a pretty swank bank account. I’m good at the dabo table, if you catch my drift.”
I chuckled in turn and pocketed the slips. “Alright. Thanks, Ensign.”
“Mind calling me Mariner?” she asked, her smile turning from mischievous to oddly hopeful. “I-I know you’re a senior officer, but, err, well… I feel like we’re connecting here.”
I eyed her for a moment, then found myself smiling with her. “Alright. Call me Sunset, then, at least on this tour and when I’m off duty.”
“Copy that, Sunset,” she beamed. She then pointed to a nearby stand. “Alright, so, let me give you the skinny on all the shops here. A lot of ‘em are the kind of thing you’d expect, touristy stuff, kitschy goods from Bajor, small food stalls, things like that. This one here, they sell amazing jumja sticks, way better than any you could get from a replicator.”
“I’m guessing that’s some kind of sweet?”
“Yup; made of jumja sap, full of vitamin C. Pretty healthy for a sweet actually, kinda like a Bajoran version of agave nectar,” she answered. “Want one?”
“Maybe later; I’ll try to grab one after my meeting with Odo.”
“Right on, right on. So, over there, that’s Garak’s tailor shop.”
I hissed a breath as I spotted who was working inside: a Cardassian. “Right, Garak, I’ve heard of him,” said. “Most of it bad.”
“Eh, some of it’s exaggerated,” Mariner said with a dismissive gesture. “Garak’s on our side, if that’s what you’re worried about; he even stuck with the Defiant while it was at Starbase 375, I heard.”
“Huh. Odd. I don’t remember seeing him when–” I cut myself off. “Nevermind that. You were saying?”
She eyed me for a moment, then shrugged. “Anyway, you ever want some good clothes, and I mean really good clothes, go to him. Whatever else you say about him, he’s an excellent tailor.”
She continued to lead me around, and when we neared the lower entrance to the restaurant she called Quark’s bar, she led me instead to a ramp leading to the upper level of the Promenade. “Not that many shops up here, but there’s a great view.” She pointed over to the great bay windows, which gave a beautiful view of the habitat ring and outer docking ring, along with all the starships around. “You can see the wormhole open from here too, sometimes,” she said. “Though I don’t know how often you’ll see it right now, considering the circumstances.”
Finally she led me the rest of the way around and stopped at the upper entrance to Quark’s. “So, here’s the other way in. Quark’s a greedy little shit, but he sells good food, and he’s got the only holosuites on the station.” She cleared her throat. “I, uh, was just about to go off duty actually, if you want to join me for a drink.”
“Unfortunately, I'm still on duty myself, and,” I quickly checked my PADD, “it's almost time for my meeting. But if you don't mind waiting, maybe I can join you afterwards?”
“Sure, sure!” she said with a light laugh. “No pressure. Right. Uh, right, guess I’ll go then… see you.”
I nodded, and she shimmied off into Quarks without looking back. Only once she was out of earsight did I laugh to myself and let my cheeks warm with the blush I’d been holding back. “Wow. Someone’s got an instant crush.”
Don't get me wrong, she wasn't bad looking at all, and I'd be lying if I said a small part of me didn't appreciate the attention. But not only did our respective ranks make that a non-starter, but I had Cadeneza already, and that was more than enough for me.
I stopped at that, my breath hitching in my throat for a moment. Did... did my heart just flutter a bit? My mind wandered back to the Phoenix, to the moment before I left Cadeneza's quarters. The way she held me, the words she spoke. The caring look in her eyes. "Is she..."
I blushed again, this time all on my own. I turned and gazed out the huge bay windows, as if I could see my ship somewhere out there. "Am I...?"
Bleep bleep. Bleep bleep.
Blinking in confusion, I pulled out my PADD, wondering who’d be sending me a communique on the station. It turned out it was Constable Odo; he’d become embroiled with a security issue and needed to postpone our meeting for at least an hour.
“Great,” I muttered. “What am I supposed to do till then?”
Briefly I considered joining Mariner, but as nice as she was, I didn’t want to feed her obvious crush, and she struck me as the type to assume I’d postponed things for her sake; it would make letting her down more difficult and I didn’t want to do that to her.
I’d learned a lot since my mistake with Smith.
So instead I found myself wandering down to the lower level of the Promenade, poking around at the shops again. I wasn’t hungry yet, so I didn’t bother stopping at the Replimat. I did spot a few potential gifts I could get Twilight, and picked out a book of Bajoran fairytales, something she’d appreciate. But nothing else caught my eye, so perhaps it was fate that inevitably landed me in front of Garak’s tailor shop once again.
I took a few deep breaths. Was this really somewhere I wanted to step inside? Defector to our side or not, Garak was still a Cardassian, and every security report I’d read on DS9 suggested he was, at best, not to be trusted further than a two year old could toss him, and at worst a potential liability.
And yet, I was curious. Too curious for my own good, it turned out, as after another moment, I stepped inside, triggering some kind of bell to ring out inside the shop as soon as I crossed the threshold.
Inside, I found a mostly empty space, though given the events of the last few days here it made some sense. Several hanging racks were setup in clusters, clearly awaiting inventory. Numerous crates dotted the room, a few marked, oddly, with Dominion and Starfleet security symbols; those were separated from the rest and clustered near the door. Near the back, where a door led into another room, was a single counter with a terminal set up on it, facing the customer side.
“Just a moment!” came a pleasant tenor voice from deeper within the shop. “I’m afraid I’m in the middle of something, but I’ll be with you in a moment. Apologies for the lack of clothing on display; I’m afraid that with the recent reconquering of the station, I’ve yet to properly unpack.”
Garak's voice oozed charm, but in a way that any unprepared person would find completely genuine. That kind of tone took practice. A lot of practice. But at least for the moment, I knew better than that. “Oh that's okay," I called back, putting a bit of extra sweetness into my voice as well. "I doubt you'd have anything that would fit me anyway.”
“Oh?" came a reply. “Then may I suggest using the terminal just ahead of you? In it you will find a catalog most suitable for showing off a vast array of styles to fit any shape or size.”
"I'm sure it does," I said, stepping up to the terminal and tapping the screen awake. "But I'm also sure you've never had a customer like me in your shop."
“Really? And why might that be?” he said, his footfalls approaching the door. “It is rare I find such discriminating customers; usually they’re more than happy to…”
He trailed off as the door slid open, revealing us both to each other. Right away I knew I could pick this man out of a crowd of a million Cardassians, no matter how similar he looked to his brethren. There was something about him, something about how he stood, how he carried himself, his posture, his breathing, the look in his eyes, like he was calculating every thing, every person around him... this was a man trained to be unremarkable, just one lost figure in a crowd, and yet that very fact made him unforgettable at the same time.
For his part, he remained silent for just a few seconds before his mouth spread in a wide smile. “Aaah. I see. I suppose an equine would find clothes designed for humanoids unsuitable at best.”
“That she would, Mister Garak,” I said, matching him smile for smile. Mine wasn't nearly so wide, but one look in his eyes told me he already knew my smile was as fake as his was. The battle of wits was on.
“Mister is what Captain Sisko calls me every time he wants a favor. In here I am simply Garak, a simple tailor plying his wares on this often beleaguered station,” he replied. "Now, might I have your name?”
“Lieutenant Commander Sunset Shimmer,” I answered.
“Ah, wonderful to meet you, Commander.” He stepped up to the counter and turned the terminal to face him. “You’ll have to pardon me while I make a few alterations to my tailoring program here to account for your specific needs. You’re my first non-humanoid customer.”
“Am I now?” I said with a slight chuckle, letting a bit of sarcasm slip into my tone. “You mean you’ve never met another equine before?”
“Personally? No. But there was a species of equines native to a planet Cardassia colonized several hundred years ago, Ellicoria,” he answered, his smile shrinking to a more knowing grin. “They were quite different from you, though. Tall, hulking, with hand-like forehooves that they walked upon, much like a Tellerite ape might. Quite a fascinating species, I’m told. They'd barely mastered spaceflight when my people encountered them, but unfortunately first contact only served to divide the Ellicorians' society. By the time a second survey team returned a few years later, they had annihilated themselves.. A truly tragic loss, one that Cardassia honors forever with museums on their former home world.”
I didn't need to be a member of Starfleet Intelligence to know a bucket of horseapples when I saw one. I'd never heard of these Ellicorians before, and I regularly spent my time off combing Federation databases for any sign of an equine species. But I didn’t show my doubt on my face. “Really? That’s a shame.”
“Indeed,” he said, briefly shrugging. “So, might I ask where you hail from?”
I raised an eyebrow, making it clear I knew he already knew everything about me, likely had from the moment I set hoof on the station. “Equus. Where it is, I have no idea. Neither does Starfleet, or any of the Federation's best stellar cartographers. I was brought to Earth when I was eleven years old by some kind of ancient teleportation mirror. I joined Starfleet to hopefully find my homeworld.”
To my surprise his face bore a trace of genuine sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, nodding to me. “Being estranged from one's homeworld is a feeling I too understand, believe me. I hope you are able to find yours again.”
He tapped a few more times on the terminal, then turned it around again to face me. "In the meantime, if you're interested in truly bespoke clothing, you're in the right place."
I glanced at the small clock on the nearby wall. Still at least thirty minutes before my meeting was supposed to start. "Just don't try to fit me for a saddle, Garak, and we'll be fine."
He chuckled at that. "I wouldn't dream of it, Commander." He stepped around the counter towards me, pulling a rather well-worn measuring tape from his pocket. "May I?"
I let my eyes wander the room while Garak moved in and out of sight, though I did have a short range stun spell simmering in the back of my mind, just in case.
"I must say, your species is quite remarkable," Garak said as he measured my left wing. "Almost perfectly balanced physical proportions, and absolutely beautiful with those colors as well. Are all members of your species blessed with such vibrant appearances?"
That may have been the first honest question he'd asked since I walked in, though if he was trying to ingratiate himself with compliments, I wouldn't complain.
"More or less, yes," I replied. “Some ponies have less variance in their colors than others, of course, but if you can think of a color, there's probably a pony out there wearing it.”
"I see, I see. Fascinating!" He took a few more measurements, writing each of them down on a small notepad he had with him. "Though I must admit it may prove a bit tricky to find suitable fabrics that don't also clash with your natural colors. But I do like a challenge!"
With that small amount of rapport developed, I began discussing with him, what kind of clothing he might be able to make. We bounced around a few promising ideas, and to my shock he whipped up an example piece that was more comfortable than anything the computers had ever turned out. Impressed, I asked about pricing. “I only really have Federation credits.”
“Not to worry; as this station is once again run by the Federation, there is an exchange office you can contact. The exchange rate isn’t always the best, but I believe we can come to a few compromises if need be,” he said, his smile still in place. “The challenge of making clothing for an entirely different body shape than humanoid is worth a great deal to me on its own.”
In the end I agreed to buy a few outfits, and he promised he would have them for me before I had to leave Deep Space Nine, and was alright with accepting payment upon pickup even, which kept things simple for me.
I left the shop a few minutes later with a receipt on my PADD, directions to the exchange office, and a somewhat bemused sense of satisfaction on my mind. “I ought to get Twilight to see him sometime,” I murmured to myself.
Gurgle.
I patted my stomach. “Okay, okay, I get it,” I chuckled. Since I still had some time to kill, I decided to head for Quark’s bar. The Replimat might be free, but the bar was closer to Odo’s office, and should prove more entertaining.
Entering the place immediately blasted me with noise, forcing my ears back against my skull for a moment, my hackles rising automatically as I looked around before adjusting to the noise level. The inside was as rowdy as I’d expected, with seemingly every table and booth full of patrons, some of whom were from species I couldn't readily identify. Smells of alcohol and food mixed with raucous laughter, loud conversation, and the telltale ding of the dabo wheel, giving the entire place an almost wild west kind of energy. The latter sound drew my attention to the back of the first floor, where I spotted Mariner holding court around the wheel.
"Dabo!" I heard her scream when the wheel finished spinning. The two dabo girls quickly collected slips of latinum from the other players and passed them to Mariner, whose stack of winnings was already impressive.
There were a pair of staircases that led up to the second floor, which was full of quieter tables it seemed, but I chose to go straight for the bar, sitting on a stool next to a Lurian who peered at me as if I was one of the strangest things he’d ever seen; at least he wasn’t trying to pet me like a few people in the crowd looked like they wanted to do.
“Hi there,” I said to the Lurian, sticking out a hoof. “Nice to meet you.”
He stared wordlessly at me, his mouth moving slightly as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words, before he briefly shook my hoof and then hopped off his stool and left the bar.
I looked down at my hoof, then shrugged. “Okay, dunno what that was about.”
“Oh, that was just Morn; don’t mind him,” said a familiar voice as a Trill Starfleet officer wearing science blue sat next to me. She gave me a smile. “He’s usually super chatty, but ever since we retook the station he’s been in a bit of a shock.”
“Gotcha,” I said with a chuckle. I held out my hoof again. “Good to meet you in person, Lieutenant Dax,”
“Likewise, Commander Shimmer,” she said, shaking my hoof. “So, what brings you to Quarks?”
“Just passing some time till I can speak with Odo,” I said.
“Well if you’re hungry for a snack, I recommend the sand peas with yamok sauce,” Dax replied, pointing out a menu I hadn’t noticed was embedded in a panel on the bar. “It’s a bit of an acquired taste, but your species is more on the herbivore side of omnivore I believe, so it should be right up your alley.”
I nodded. “Sounds good. Excuse me, bartender?”
“Coming!” A Ferengi wearing a suit laden with rhinestones carrying a small PADD in his hand approached. “Dax,” he said, nodding to her, then he paused as he looked at me, eying me, then her, then me again, before breaking out into laughter. “Dax, you know I don’t let pets in here.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said with just a touch of a growl in my voice as I reached out with my magic, ready to grab his ear if necessary.
Dax snorted with suppressed laughter as he blinked in shock and immediately launched into an apology. “Oh, excuse me, madam, I-I thought Dax was, err, you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve never met a member of your species before. I’m Quark, owner of this establishment.”
“Maybe you should get her a drink on the house as an apology, Quark,” Dax said with a chuckle. “Something hot.”
“Some sand peas and yamok sauce would be good too,” I added.
He let out a nervous laugh and bowed briefly to us. “Right, of course, coming right up. Excuse me for a moment.”
Once he walked away, I joined Dax in snickering at him. “Okay, I don’t usually play that card when I walk into new places,” I said, “but that was good.”
“He won’t even notice the loss of profit, don’t worry,” Dax said, waving it off. “He loses more than that every day from his usual operating costs. Besides, it’s always fun to stick his nose in it.”
“Fine by me.” I wrinkled my nose. “So this is where everyone on the station hangs out, huh?”
“That’s right,” Dax answered. She pointed over to one side of the room where a dartboard hung on the wall. “Usually you can find Chief O’Brien playing darts with Julian Bashir, our doctor. It’s too bad he’s so busy with repair work; I know he’d love to see you again.”
“I’ll try to say hello before I have to leave the station,” I said. “Speaking of hellos, I understand Worf was posted to DS9. Do you know where he is?”
She let out a soft sigh. “Oh, he’s still on the Rotarran with General Martok. He’s spent the last few months with the rest of the Klingons. I hope he’ll be coming home soon though… he’d better. We've got a wedding to plan, after all.”
I let my jaw drop. “Wait, what? Seriously?”
She snickered at the look on my face. “Yes, seriously. Did Worf never tell you?”
“Er, well, we were never that close on the Enterprise, and we only occasionally send messages to each other,” I answered. “He never mentioned this though.”
She shook her head and chuckled. “Classic Worf. Always keeping these things to himself.”
Quark chose that moment to return with two steaming mugs of tea and the promised food. “Here you are. On the house. Enjoy.” He then moved away before I could say anything.
I peered at the food, sniffing at the sauce. “...this is Cardassian, isn’t it?” I asked after a moment.
“Yup. But it’s good. Like I said, an acquired taste, but I really like it.” She sipped at her drink, then watched to see how I reacted to the food.
With a bit of hesitation, I floated up a sand pea, trying that on its own first. It was quite good; reminded me of a mixture of chickpeas and garbanzo beans. Then I dipped it in the sauce.
And was hit instantly with culinary heaven. “Oh my god,” I moaned as I found myself eating more of the sauce and the peas in rapid succession. “This is so good.”
Dax’s eyebrows shot to the top of her head as she let out an incredulous laugh. “Wow, really?”
“Yeah!” I insisted, finishing off the food in a hurry, and eating any remaining sauce to boot. “I need to get a replicator pattern for the Phoenix. This stuff is great. What’s it made out of–”
CRASH!
“What the hell are you doing?!” shouted a voice from near the dabo table.
“Cheater! You cheat!”
I turned and my blood froze as I saw a pair of Nausicaans standing at the dabo table, patrons that hadn’t been in the bar before, or at least I hadn’t noticed them. One had pulled a knife and was gesturing with it at Mariner, while the other grabbed one of the fleeing dabo girls and put a knife to her throat.
“Dude, seriously, let her go!” Mariner insisted, her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t cheating, you freaking lunatic. I’m just good!”
“Dabo game of chance!” the Nausicaan insisted. “Dabo not involve skill! It luck!”
“Shows what you know, dicks for breath,” Mariner snorted. “No wonder you always lose.”
Patrons around began screaming in fright from the pulled knives, prompting me to hop to my hooves. “Hey!” I shouted in my commander's voice, stomping my way over. I pulled my phaser case out of my duffel bag, though I didn’t open it yet, not wanting it to trigger a fight. “Let’s all calm down here. It’s just a game.”
“Just game?!” barked the primary Nausicaan, who turned his knife towards me. “I lost ten bars latinum to this cheater!”
“And I told you, captain underbite, I didn’t cheat!” Mariner shouted back.
“Ensign, that’s enough!” I barked. I looked up at the Nausicaan. “As for you, need I remind you this is a Federation station. Let the dabo girl go and put the knives away, or you're both answering to me.”
Both Nausicaans burst into laughter. “And what you think you do, little horse? Other than be stomped on by boot?!”
Before I could retort, he tried just that, swinging his foot at me like he was trying to kick a soccer ball. In the process his knife brushed someone’s shoulder, enough for them to scream and flail in panic.
And then all hell broke loose.
Dozens of patrons ran all over the place, trying to find somewhere to take cover as the Nausicaan with the hostage tossed her aside, and pulled out a disrupter, firing it in my direction. I deftly dodged the shot, grimacing as I saw it take out a panel behind the bar, prompting Quark and the other Ferengi to add their high pitched howls of fear to the cacophony.
I dove for cover behind a nearby pushed over table as disruptor fire raked my location. I distantly heard Dax shout, “Security to Quarks, there’s weapons fire!” into her combadge, but I couldn't locate where her voice was coming from.
Suddenly I was lifted up by my withers and thrown to the side, landing flat on my back atop another table, crushing plates and glasses beneath me and knocking the wind out of me. I could feel the small bits of broken glass already digging into my skin like hundreds of pinpricks. “Oowww, what the hell?” I murmured as I looked up, seeing a third Nausicaan I hadn’t spotted before, who was now punching the hell out of a random bar patron.
Mariner grabbed me and dragged me into cover as the disruptor fired at me again, barely missing me this time. “Whoa, you okay, ma’am?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I murmured. I tested my horn, but it wasn’t responding to anything other than telekinesis. Must’ve struck it somehow. Lacking any other option, I reached for the case with the phaser. If I took the sleep spell out of it and jacked up the setting I could easily stun the Nausicaans. They were tough but they weren’t Jem’Hadar tough.
Unfortunately just as I opened the case another patron fleeing the melee tripped over me, knocking it out of my grasp. “No!” I cried, watching the phaser, crystals and all, skid along the floor, stopping just out of reach of my telekinesis at the moment. “Damn it!”
Mariner, who’d leapt for another bit of cover so she could pelt the Nausicaans with fallen dishware, was close enough to the phaser to pick it up. “Okay, time to end this,” she said, grabbing it up.
I watched, frozen in slow motion horror, crying out for her to stop as she set it to a wide-beam setting, raising it to fire at the entire crowd.
Just as a trio of security officers led by Odo came running in through the doors, pointing to the Nausicaans.
Tseeww!
The phaser spread across the crowd, and everyone hit by the beam – patrons, the Nausicaans, Quark and his staff, and even Odo and his security – all crumpled to the deck instantly, filling the room with snores.
Mariner stared down at the phaser in her hand in surprise. “Uh, whoa, okay… phasers don’t usually act like that.”
Growling, I hopped up and snatched it away from her, checking it over. As I expected the Sparkle crystal and power pack were both entirely drained from that one shot. “That’s because it's not your standard issue phaser, Ensign,” I snapped as I put it away in its case.
“Oh.” She looked around the room, then back at me, the only other one still standing. “So, uh, what now?”
I sighed and tapped my badge. “Shimmer to Infirmary. Medical emergency at Quark’s bar.”
A kind, gentle voice immediately replied, “On my way.”
I glared at Mariner. “Return to your quarters. I’ll let your commanding officer know what happened here; they can decide what to do with you.”
She blanched at that, looking at me with unhappy eyes. “...hey, look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–”
I shook my head. “Mariner, not now.” I gave her a grin for a split second before it vanished again. “Save it for our exchanged communiques.”
That made her smile a little. “Yes ma’am,” she said. She grabbed up her latinum and left the bar, right as Doctor Bashir came in with a couple of med techs.
“Oh dear, what happened?” he asked, looking about the room. “Even Odo?!”
“Don’t worry, Doctor, they’re just asleep,” I said. “You’ll need me to wake them up.”
He looked at me oddly for a moment, then nodded. “Right, of course. I’m sure there’s a good explanation. There always is around here, it seems.” He immediately began examining me, starting with my horn. As I expected, he took a minute to skim my medical records before continuing. “Ah, got it. Okay, here, this should help,” he said, administering an analgesic.
Thanks to that, I was able to rapidly resuscitate Odo and his security officers. “Sorry about that, Constable,” I said as they all stood up, brushing themselves off. “That wasn’t the way I intended to, err, conduct the little experiment we had talked about.”
He grunted. “Nevermind that now; we need to get these Nausicaans into custody. We can discuss your visit later.”
I nodded, and assisted with waking them up as well, and getting them in handcuffs. Then I went around waking up all the patrons and such one by one till everyone was back on their feet and cleared by Doctor Bashir.
Who then took me aside as soon as he got the last patient cleared out of the bar. “So, care to explain what exactly that was about?”
I grinned. “Sorry, Doc, but I can’t. Suffice to say an experimental weapons test occurred where it wasn’t supposed to.” My grin faded. “Please leave that out of your report. Admiral Nechayev’s authority.”
“As you wish,” he said, eying me for a moment before shrugging. “At least everyone is alright… though you seemed to bear the worst injuries. Let’s get you back to the infirmary so I can finish treating you. Especially those small lacerations.”
As I followed him back, I found myself wondering exactly how I would write my own report about this whole debacle. At least I got the phaser test completed. Not in the way I had planned at all, but somehow I wasn't that surprised. Something about this station told me this level of chaos was nothing out of the ordinary.
I would miss it when I had to leave.
First, a message from my editor, Grand Moff Pony.
Just a quick note from the Editor's desk. (a simple editor, I assure you)
I want to extend a huge thank you to all of our readers for the enthusiastic response we've received throughout this story's run. It's great to see so many familiar names in the comments, along with plenty of new ones too. I hope you're enjoying the adventure as much as we're enjoying creating it!
As Dewdrops mentioned earlier, we'll have a somewhat slower pace going forward, but that assures that we have the time to write and edit it fully, and that you get the best story we can make. So thanks for your continued support, and see you next episode!
Thank you, Moff! Moff has been a fantastic help in improving these chapters before our lovely readers see them, in particular this one.
With any luck we'll have the next couple posted sooner than this one was. The next episode to follow from here will be the tenth and final mini-episode of the season, and then after that we will have a two-part season finale that will have you on the edge of your seat, with any luck.
See you next time, and enjoy. 
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Splendid! As soon as Garrak appeared, my immediate reaction was "On Shit, he'd be sympathetic. As an exile from his homeworld." I rather suspect he'd get along with Luna. Somehow I think she would enjoy the puzzle. Celestia would probably flip between wanting to reform him and wanting to murder him. A trait I've no doubt Garrak would find endearing. In a patronising way.
I hadn't considered the Prophets using magic. But there is similarities I suppose. I wonder if Twilight is going to get a look at the Orbs. If they turn out to be magical artifacts.... Hmm... And what if the Nightmare was a Pah Wraith? A fascinating premise. This opens doors.
I'm so glad to see this returning. My head is buzzing with theories and notions. I wonder where you'll go with this?
You know, wouldn't it be twisted if the Mirror Universe turned up? We return to equestria, but it's the Celestial Empire? Hmm. Or maybe not. It's been done.
Mariner was an unexpected but positive surprise.
A great chapter. Nice work.
11486852
and when in doubt, start reversing polarities on all the things!
Lower Decks and DS9, huh? Nice! Love how you included pre-Cerritos Mariner. She and Sunset will get along fine. I bet when we get to the Lower Decks era, Tendi is like excited if she ever gets to meet Sunset. Boimler too.
11487203
You just know Tendi would be 100% in the 'omg must hug the alicorn!' mode.
Reading a new chapter of this story is always a joy. I'm so glad you're back to writing it! Keep up the good work!
11487212
Sunset is an alicorn, but people often think unicorn first.
11487228
oops! Typo on my part there, lol. Fixed it.
We gotta Mariner an her speciality is Baking.
Stargazy Pie.
That bar scene was teh perfect setup for industrial sabotage and spying, but Mariner Pie messed that up good and proper.
I wonder if Garak is using a OTP style Quipu or just the simplest lint, fluff and coloured thread, maybe with which button paused on while chatting to insist on a point etc? The brush pattern while tidying up, because he wouldnt be able to do variations if he had a rigidly fixed manner.
Putting himself in his enemies jaws in order to aquire information.
How. Generous.
11487212
Right before she flips to "omg must clone the unicorn" mode, yes.
Woohoo! A wild Beckett appeared! And Garak too! Easily one of the most likable and interesting DS9 characters. Excellent chapter.
It is awesome to see Mariner here, since I absolutely love Lower Decks! It was also cool this took place on DS9 because that is on my own personal list of shows I need to watch eventually.
11487250
Yaaas!
okay, i absolutely loved this chapter, the interactions with Sunset and Garak, Sunset and Quark were perfection
wow i love it you have DS9 and Quark’s spot on right down to the fight.
this chapter is amazing.
Super excited to see this update again, time for a reread!
Is this story set in any particular time in the Star Trek universe?
11487346
It covers a substantial period from 2358 up to, currently, 2373, and so it takes place over a time period that includes all of TNG and up to DS9s sixth season.
11487250
Boimler: how many alicorn copies did you make?
Tendi: Yes
that level of Chaos onboard DS9? nah, thats just Thursday...
Welcome back, Dewdrops. What I like the best about your episodes is their absolute lack of commercials! Reading your stories is like watching an episode with words. Simply wonderful!
11487316
Glad you liked it!
This was a nice chapter. I kinda hope Mariner gets assigned to the Phoenix, she needs a bit more of a better commanding officer and hopefully a dress several of her issues far earlier. It would be interesting to see several of the cast of LD show up and experience some changes for the better.
YES!!!
deep space nine was the ONLY starter series I have fully watched so I'm VERY interested in how your gona do this next part and I already like what you did with the sleep spell thing
A way to knock out a whole room with one discharge!
...now if only they can make that into a type of flashback grenade to discharge without having to go into the room themselves...Dea right there if you want to use it in the story.
11487373
Now that's a conversation and a half
YAAAAAAs also Lol Nausicans.
11487450
Hehe. They're the bone-headed henchmen whenever they show up, imo. :D
Okay, the wormhole aliens being magic makes sense, but I will admit I didn't expect it. A good twist. Also, they would be terrifying to every other magic user in the story... But the Sirens have definitely run into them before. Their reaction was too calm and knowing.
Sunset better watch out, she is going to end up with a harem if this keeps up! I wonder if it comes with the wings?
Another great chapter, looking forward to the next.
Worker Bees is another thing from Discovery.
Whoa Beckett Mariner from Lower Decks. The Star Trek show made by the makers of Rick and Morty. I love Rick and Morty
I think it's because they're both so animated.
But what of that Andorian chick? I've never actually seen Lower Decks so I possibly don't know what I'm talking about.
Yes.
Yes
Morn!
I suspect this is set during an episode of Deep Space 9. I've seen like a couple of episodes of that. So far in my quest to watch all the Star Treks, I've only gotten as far as the end of Season 2 of The Original Series. It's quite fascinating.
I imagine Dax here is Jadzia because she was going to marry Worf right.
It's quite interesting suggesting the Prophets use magic akin to Equestrians. Wasn't expecting that to be honest.
Well I'm always glad to see a new chapter of this pop up. Look forward to the next one. Keep up the great work!
Oh, so Twilight and Sunset felt a great disturbance in the magic; as if millions of Jem'Hadar suddenly cried out in anger, and were suddenly silenced.
I'm just rolling around and soaking myself in lovely fanservice here. My god but it's too fun to get Sunny mixed up in DS9. As if they needed magic shenanigans, too!
Then again, if a body can figure out a way to ward off Pah-Wraiths with the fires of friendship, maybe we can all stand around and laugh at Dukat.
11487492
Why would you do that? Go on the Internet and make puns?
11487492
The workbees that would be in service in this era were first seen on screen in TMP.
Why is morn on the balcony rather then by the bar?
Amd the only real downer is adding lower decks into this.
Seriously WHY!?
Shimmer could really use an orb experience.
Garak remains one of my favorite characters in DS9, and easily top five in all of Trek.
Sunny's trip to DS9 was great. Really captured the feeling of the place.
11487386
Hehehe, thjank you. That's the idea. I know these chapters can be quite long, but, well, episode length~
11487492
Mariner appearing here is established part of her history on Lower Decks. The actual Lower Decks show doesn't take place for a good almost ten years into the future from the present date in the story, so that's why there's no mention of anything else related to LD. But it was established she was on DS9 during the Dominion War.
As for the timing on DS9 it actually takes place between two DS9 episodes: "Sacrifice of Angels" where at the end DS9 is retaken after the Prophets wipe out/teleport away/whatever they did to the Dominion fleet in the wormhole, and "You are Cordially Invited" where Jadzia and Worf get married officially.
11487575
Morn isn't on the balcony. He's at the bar as usual; I think you must've misread something in the story, as Sunset clearly enters through the main entrance and sits down at the bar.
As for why involving Lower Decks... so, I have to admit something to y'all. In truth I've been trying to deliberately reference or feature a cameo from every single Star Trek series that has been produced. So far, I have TOS/TAS (Kirk's body during Sunset's time on VIridian III, albeit a blink and you'll miss it moment.) I have TNG and DS9--both obvious by now. Enterprise had Phlox being spoken of. I referenced Prodigy with Glamgor Pog in the previous chapter, and now, as I mentioned before, Mariner officially served on DS9 during the Dominion War, so it let me invoke a Lower Decks cameo.
At this point the only ones I haven't hit are Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Voyager. Discovery is proving to be massively difficult because all of its 23rd century stuff was officially buried, I'm waiting for more stuff from SNW for that one, and Voyager will get some clear references soon enough.
As for why I'm doing it? Because it's fun for me. I love Star Trek, and I love celebrating its existence. So as a result of that, I like the idea that Sunset and Twilight, in one fashion or another, end up with something from every show involved in their lives. Even the shows I'm not that fond of, I still want to reference.
11487642
Garak is one of my favorites as well, so it was quite wonderful to be able to have him show up in the story, if only briefly.
I don't know why, but I wouldn't be too surprised if Garak wasn't entirely telling a yarn about Ellicoria. the best lies are those that have some truth to them, after all. no offence to Starfleet, but they don't know everything, and Cardassian space might have 1 or 2 secrets hidden in there, especially if Ellicoria's a pre-warp world, living or not. granted, I'm also certain that the writer has no hidden plans in plain sight and Ellicoria's a throwaway Garak moment. still, food for thought if one day they do come upon an equine world that's not Equis.
as for Quark, I bet you anything that he finds out as much as he can about Sunset so that the next time they meet, he's not at such a disadvantage again. I think it's even in the Rules of Aquisition.
I hope Mariner becomes a good friend regardless of Sunset's feelings on anything 'more' between them. good friends are often hard to come by.
Not surprising that the Prophets would register as having "magic" to the Equestrians.
I would expect pretty much all of the Metaspecies from Star Trek would qualify: the Organians, the Metrons, the Q, Trelane (assuming he is not a Q so as not to be redundant), Gary Mitchel (assuming the Barrier wasn't created as per the novel "I, Q", again so as not to be redundant), the *, the One, Sargon's people, the Guardian of Forever, and so on....
11487727
I thought she passed the bar and went up to the balcony and saw Morn.
and rather not see any Kurtzmen Trek on this
11487748
agree with the first part not the second
Now was that feeling really the Profits or was it something else, something like the Pah-Wraiths?
Well, the single shot is kinda sucky, but it did take out all of Quarks in one shot, including Odo. So mostly successful?
Garik and Rarity would get along splendidly... While she gives up everything she knows to him at the same time. Luckily is he isn't quite the monster he used to be.
11487179
I tbink a true Star Trek style Mirror Universe Equestria would go something like this.
Ponies are warlike, with Sombra in the Crystal Empire harboring Celestia and Luna, because the ponies would never tolerate Immortal rulers whose greatest power is amplifying Harmony.
Unicorns are the master race, with the pegasi as their main Warrior cast, with earth ponies being ruthless industrialists, and the banking class.
Griffins would be leading a coalition of creatures preventing the equestrian Empire from spreading any farther.
11487851
Eh, I think it would be more Luna and Celestia as Empresses holding the world hostage with their power to control the heavens.
11487748
Everything he says is true... especially the lies
11487927
one of my favorite Garak lines right there
HAH! I knew it. Oh, how I was waiting for that one 😂
11487727
Considering DS9 revisited Trouble With Tribbles, there might be decent potential to have a similar kind of story.
I imagine you have your Voyager idea planned, but I was thinking a micro wormhole and data stream sort of ordeal like what they did with The Doctor could work in some way or another. Maybe even some involvement with Barclay on the Pathfinder Project.
As for Discovery, the Time Travel Accords could make things difficult, but not impossible. They’ll probably find a way to retcon that at some point. There seems to be a lot of similar phenomenon that happened during Picard’s two seasons, you never know what could happen with Q (I don’t buy that death for a second unless it really is possible that they are just stars),
Just some thoughts on what various phenomena can do with crossovers and what not
It seems like there's even odds of a Ferengi laughing at that, taking notes, or explaining how they did NFTs properly.
Do you mean amino acids? Enzymes are a specific subset of protein that catalyze biochemical reactions.
Not surprising that the Prophets qualify as magical.
A question that could be asked of Equestria as a whole, depending on whether or not Celestia found somepony else to fill Twilight's destined role.
Or it's in a part of the EM spectrum unicorn eyes can't appreciate.
Mariner! I do appreciate how Sunset has difficulty handling the transition to the tone of Lower Decks.
I do appreciate how Applejack had to be adapted and humanized, but the Rarity analogue was already waiting for his cue on DS9.
Well, that went horribly right. Definitely not the best first impression Sunset could've made, but it still could've gone worse.
Wonderful to see this story back up and running... even if I did miss last month's chapter. Still, caught up now and looking forward to more.
11487748
So, I'm a little surprised I managed to sneak this past people, and maybe I didn't and no one in the know said anything, but the world that Garak is referencing is actually a slightly altered version of the Elcor Homeworld from Mass Effect. The idea was that Garak was spinning a yarn as he so oft does, so I thought why not make that yarn a reference to one of my other favorite sci-fi universes?
11487834
It was the Prophets. I can confirm that author intent was for it to be the canon event from Deep Space Nine, where Sisko talks the Prophets into not allowing the Dominion reinforcements to come through the wormhole.
11488008
Ah, well, when it comes to Voyager, the reference will likely not involve a character appearance unless there's a flashback event or we flash forward to a point when Voyager has already returned to the Alpha Quadrant. But you'll see. I'm not always going for outright crossover stuff--Mariner appearing on DS9 here was serendipity because she states in Lower Decks she was stationed there at some point, and since there's no set actual dates for when she served, it let me get away with putting here here. But that's because I was already setting a scene on DS9-- I don't want to force any of these appearances either. If they fit, great. If they don't, then they won't be forced.
11488206
I sure did mean amino acids. When I wrote that scene I think I was thinking too much of the speedfic story I wrote with a very similar premise, and inadvertently used the wrong term. It's been fixed.
Anyways thank you kindly, and I hope you continue to enjoy as it progresses.
11487727
Oh Lower Decks is set after TNG/DS9. I was right. I have no idea what I'm talking about.
11487528
Where else I am going to go to make puns?