TBG Omake - Down the Rabbit Hole
Nov. 6th, 2017 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoAN: This is an omake fanfic of a Quest (fanfic) called To Boldly Go, based primarily on Star Trek.
Both cadet OCs are Tenipuri expies. I decided not to make it part 5 of The Academy by the Bay series since it doesn't take place in San Francisco, mostly.
Academy Extensions: Down the Rabbit Hole
Mission Log, Stardate 27106.2, Commodore Chekov
We have arrived at Terra Nova for an Academy exercise in cooperative combat and survival training. Our activities will take place a good distance from the human colony on this planet, in deference to their troubled history with United Earth. We will be primarily keeping to the Grand Verdance Caldera almost a continent away from any settlements. It should be more than enough room for our group of third year cadets.
On our journey here, I happened to overhear several cadets speaking dismissively of this exercise. They believe the wildlife and environment there should not be much challenge to them. They are correct. But they do not yet know that what they will actually face is the most dangerous foes of all -- each other.
~~~
It was dark, darker than the darkest night, which was quite understandable because it was also far beneath the ground. Two particularly unlucky cadets made their way through the subterranean tunnel that they had accidentally fallen into, their progress tortuous due to the rocky ground and ever present darkness.
“This is all your fault, you kn--OWW!”
Akesh Momon, proud Qloathi cadet in the Starfleet Security stream, bit off the start of another complaint as his knee scraped against a stray bit of raised rock along the chasm walls. He glared vaguely in the direction of his fellow cadet, who he could barely see under the dim glow of the improvised flashlight he had rigged from a type one phaser. Damn Seyek and their superior nocturnal senses.
“Ssshut up,” the other cadet hissed back reflexively. It was the ninth time Kaorssu Kaidoss had heard the complaint since they’d fallen into this abyssal pit, and every time it had led to an argument. Neither of them liked not getting the last word. “I didn’t ask you to follow me.”
“Yeah, and if I hadn’t followed you, you’d have been crushed under a pile of rocks chasing those overgrown rats,” Momon grumbled back under his breath. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quiet enough against the background silence of the cavern.
“They’re novan diggers, not rats,” Kaidoss corrected him through gritted teeth. “Also, I wouldn’t have been crushed, because I wouldn’t have fallen through that sinkhole if it hadn’t been for your loud stumbling and extra weight!”
“You probably weigh more than I do!” Momon protested. “And your digger rats probably made that sinkhole!”
“Don’t be an idiot! No native animal can make a cave this big.” Kaidoss spoke right over his companions next response as he immediately warmed up to his area of expertise. “I told you, this place has to be either naturally occurring, or artificially made a long time ago. The fact that fauna like the diggers act strangely in the surrounding area, almost as if they’re being driven by conflicting instincts, is suspicious--”
“So what?” Momon interrupted, finally able to get in a word edgewise. “Maybe the the first generation colonists got all the way out here back when they were stuck living underground and forgot to turn some stuff off--”
Kaidoss huffed at the interruption, but rallied nonetheless. “--Or maybe Gold Team found this place first and is planning a staging ground below our Blue Team base,” he suggested. “If I was trying to map this place without using active scans, I’d probably use a series of infrasonic bursts, which can cause the strange behavior in those diggers.”
“Ugh, that’s the only reason I haven’t hit my emergency beacon yet,” Momon groused.
The both of them had carried short range communicators when they’d fall down into the caverns, but they’d both stopped working. In the uncertain gloom, they couldn’t be sure if the units were broken or being jammed.
“We’re going to be in sooo much trouble with everyone if this turns out to be nothing,” the Qloathi youth added rhetorically.
As if in response to Momon’s lament, the rough but narrow tunnel they were traveling through suddenly opened up to a vast open cavern, with no boundaries to be seen in the dim lighting.
What immediately caught their attention though, was a structure that stood directly before them, just a short walk away. Giant gleaming walls stood there, illuminated by a deep reddish glow coming from the depths of several giant crystalline spires that stretched high into the ceiling.
“That’s...not human construction,” Momon stated flatly.
“N-no.” Despite the obvious statement, not a single sarcastic remark came to Kaidoss’ mind.
In unspoken unison, the two cadets slowly walked up to the structure. The pearlescent walls behind the crystal spires were smooth and warm, a clear sign of advanced materials engineering.
Momon squinted into one of the crystal chunks making up a nearby spire. “The light,” he murmured, “it looks like it’s pure refraction.”
Kaidoss poked at his tricorder. “The crystals should go up all the way to the surface,” he read. “They must be gathering and focusing sunlight, all the way down to here.”
“That’s...a pretty piece of engineering,” Momon praised, edging around the nearest spire to view it at different angles.
“But, there’s been no reports of large deep earth crystals in Terra Nova’s geological surveys,” Kaidoss continued with a frown. “You’d think someone would have spotted something like this before.”
Momon shrugged. “It’s a big planet.” He was going to add some anecdote from early Qloathi surveys when a strange indentation in solid structure behind the crystals caught his eye. Curious, he reached for it. “Hey, what’s this?”
Instead of meeting solid wall, his finger sunk into the indentation. Immediately, the smooth surface in front of them folded and twisted in place, until it “pulled back”, leaving a man-sized hole in the middle. The two cadets both startled at the sudden appearance of an entrance, jumping back and nearly tripping each other to the ground.
“What did you do?!” Kaidoss hissed, bending down to pick up the tricorder he had dropped.
Momon took a deep breath to calm his own panicky heartbeat. “Looks like I found the door,” he said, and with forced bravado, walked back to the new entrance. He peered inside, but was disappointed to see little more than a short corridor that abruptly led to a turn, blocking any further insights to where it led.
Kaidoss flicked his tongue nervously. “Are you sure it’s safe to go inside? What if this one of those old Orion depots and we’re going to accidentally wake up another dreadnought?”
“We’re nowhere near old Orion space,” Momon scoffed, feeling braver now that the entrance remained innocuous. “None of their stuff looks like this. Besides,” he flashed a smug grin over his shoulder, “if you’re too scared to check out the unknown, you shouldn’t have picked Starfleet.” With that, he stepped inside.
“Why you…” Kaidoss’ hiss was one of anger this time. Pushing his own uncertainty aside, the Seyek youth also surged into the structure after his irritating companion.
Fortunately, the two of them didn’t have far to go before they reached what was apparently the center of the structure. It was a small room compared to the outside, with glowing alien text covering each wall from ceiling to floor, and some kind of large control mechanism in the center.
“Kaidoss! Look at this!” Momon waved at his companion, their rivalry forgotten in his excitement.
Kaidoss joined him before one of the text filled walls, scanning it with his tricorder. It was all gibberish to him. “What is it?” he asked his clearly excited fellow cadet.
“Preservers!” Momon declared, arms flailing excitedly. “Just like the Amerind--oh!” His eyes widened in sudden realization. “We’re inside an obelisk!”
“What?” Kaidoss repeated flatly. It was still all gibberish to him.
Momon continued talking right over him, not even registering the remark as he babbled. “I didn’t realize back there because of all the crystals, but if you take all of that out, it’s a giant obelisk structure just like the Preserver artifact on Amerind that the first USS Enterprise found!”
Kaidoss frowned and poked at his tricorder, wondering if it happened to have that data preloaded. Apparently not. “How do you know this?” he grumbled.
“We went over it in the Preserver Conspiracy Club,” Momon answered offhandedly.
Kaidoss rolled his eyes at the ridiculous name - obviously not an official Academy organization - before shaking it off as irrelevant. “So can you read this stuff?” He gestured at the control platform. “Operate those controls?”
“Er--” Momon stopped short at that. “Well, I--um...maybe?” He wasn’t the best at linguistics, but it couldn’t be that hard, right?
Turning, the Qloathi youth moved over to the control panel and stared at the controls. His fellow cadet followed him.
“What did the one on Amerind do, anyway?” Kaidoss asked, his own curiosity now aroused.
“It was an asteroid deflector,” Momon answered absently, still looking between the walls and the controls.
“Asteroid...like the one that destroyed the original Logan City,” Kaidos murmured in realization. If only the human colonists of the time had known about this place...well, they would have still had to figure out how to use it, so it may not necessarily have helped.
“Alright,” Momon broke into his musings. “I think I figured out how to, uh, turn it on.” He rubbed his hands together nervously. “I’m sure the power readings would get someone’s attention up there, and they’ll come looking for us, uh, wherever we are now.”
“And, so?” Kaidoss pressed, ready to be done with the whole thing.
“Right.” Momon looked at the controls again, and took a deep breath. “Here goes.”
~~~
“What happened then?” Rear Admiral Thuir asked, his tone both exasperated and disbelieving.
“Well,” Chekov paused to take a leisurely sip of his wine, some fancy chardonnay from a local Napa winery. The professor let suspense build for a moment longer before answering his superior officer.
“They correctly predicted that the sudden power readings caught the attention of the training ship. And the Terra Nova colony. And... a local comet, which suddenly changed to a collision course toward the planet.”
Thuir groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Yeoman, make a note.” His muffled words still managed to be audible from behind his fingers. “I need to get Nash to come in and do her Not Touching Things presentation to the cadets. All of them.”
“Yes sir!” Yeoman Oizzizuichi piped up from one corner of the room, where ze had been metaphorically fading into the woodwork while the two senior officers discussed the recent event.
“To their credit,” Chekov added with an amused grin, “they did realize what was happening before we found them, and were successfully able to reverse the artifact to deflect the comet away from the system.”
“Yeah?” Thuir put down his hands and looked at the other man skeptically. “So why did I wake up to a bunch of letters from ornery politicians today?”
“The Terra Novans weren’t happy about entirely losing the comet either,” Chekov revealed. “They had been planning to study and mine it when it passed them by on its original course.”
“Of course they did,” Thuir sighed in resignation. He picked up his own mostly-finished glass of wine, and knocked back the last of it in a single motion.
“It did take some fast talking to convince the colony not to further use the artifact to move the comet again,” Chekov continued, “at least - not until the proper experts have looked at it.”
Thuir frowned in thought as he gently put down his empty glass. “That’s going to be a while. I hear all the best archaeologists are busy digging into the Orion Empire mess.”
Chekov nodded in agreement. “It will be Command’s headache to sort all that out. But, there was one other thing though,” he added. “In their...excitement...the cadets apparently hit on some other functions of the obelisk before they found the right one to deflect the comet. Mr. Momon was quite vocal that he had at one point pulled up a marked map of the galactic cluster -- a map with the route that the Kadeshi fleet is likely traveling even now.”
Thuir paused at that unexpected revelation. “The Kadesh? You’re serious?”
“Mm.” Chekov took another sip of his wine. “Unfortunately, he could not be sure which exact order of controls had turned it on, and I would not let him try finding it again.”
“Of course,” Thuir agreed. “But, if he only had a glimpse of the map, how can be sure it’s the Stargazer’s route?”
Chekov chuckled. “Apparently, Cadet Momon is also a member of the unofficial Extra-Galactic Exploration Club.”
Both cadet OCs are Tenipuri expies. I decided not to make it part 5 of The Academy by the Bay series since it doesn't take place in San Francisco, mostly.
Mission Log, Stardate 27106.2, Commodore Chekov
We have arrived at Terra Nova for an Academy exercise in cooperative combat and survival training. Our activities will take place a good distance from the human colony on this planet, in deference to their troubled history with United Earth. We will be primarily keeping to the Grand Verdance Caldera almost a continent away from any settlements. It should be more than enough room for our group of third year cadets.
On our journey here, I happened to overhear several cadets speaking dismissively of this exercise. They believe the wildlife and environment there should not be much challenge to them. They are correct. But they do not yet know that what they will actually face is the most dangerous foes of all -- each other.
It was dark, darker than the darkest night, which was quite understandable because it was also far beneath the ground. Two particularly unlucky cadets made their way through the subterranean tunnel that they had accidentally fallen into, their progress tortuous due to the rocky ground and ever present darkness.
“This is all your fault, you kn--OWW!”
Akesh Momon, proud Qloathi cadet in the Starfleet Security stream, bit off the start of another complaint as his knee scraped against a stray bit of raised rock along the chasm walls. He glared vaguely in the direction of his fellow cadet, who he could barely see under the dim glow of the improvised flashlight he had rigged from a type one phaser. Damn Seyek and their superior nocturnal senses.
“Ssshut up,” the other cadet hissed back reflexively. It was the ninth time Kaorssu Kaidoss had heard the complaint since they’d fallen into this abyssal pit, and every time it had led to an argument. Neither of them liked not getting the last word. “I didn’t ask you to follow me.”
“Yeah, and if I hadn’t followed you, you’d have been crushed under a pile of rocks chasing those overgrown rats,” Momon grumbled back under his breath. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quiet enough against the background silence of the cavern.
“They’re novan diggers, not rats,” Kaidoss corrected him through gritted teeth. “Also, I wouldn’t have been crushed, because I wouldn’t have fallen through that sinkhole if it hadn’t been for your loud stumbling and extra weight!”
“You probably weigh more than I do!” Momon protested. “And your digger rats probably made that sinkhole!”
“Don’t be an idiot! No native animal can make a cave this big.” Kaidoss spoke right over his companions next response as he immediately warmed up to his area of expertise. “I told you, this place has to be either naturally occurring, or artificially made a long time ago. The fact that fauna like the diggers act strangely in the surrounding area, almost as if they’re being driven by conflicting instincts, is suspicious--”
“So what?” Momon interrupted, finally able to get in a word edgewise. “Maybe the the first generation colonists got all the way out here back when they were stuck living underground and forgot to turn some stuff off--”
Kaidoss huffed at the interruption, but rallied nonetheless. “--Or maybe Gold Team found this place first and is planning a staging ground below our Blue Team base,” he suggested. “If I was trying to map this place without using active scans, I’d probably use a series of infrasonic bursts, which can cause the strange behavior in those diggers.”
“Ugh, that’s the only reason I haven’t hit my emergency beacon yet,” Momon groused.
The both of them had carried short range communicators when they’d fall down into the caverns, but they’d both stopped working. In the uncertain gloom, they couldn’t be sure if the units were broken or being jammed.
“We’re going to be in sooo much trouble with everyone if this turns out to be nothing,” the Qloathi youth added rhetorically.
As if in response to Momon’s lament, the rough but narrow tunnel they were traveling through suddenly opened up to a vast open cavern, with no boundaries to be seen in the dim lighting.
What immediately caught their attention though, was a structure that stood directly before them, just a short walk away. Giant gleaming walls stood there, illuminated by a deep reddish glow coming from the depths of several giant crystalline spires that stretched high into the ceiling.
“That’s...not human construction,” Momon stated flatly.
“N-no.” Despite the obvious statement, not a single sarcastic remark came to Kaidoss’ mind.
In unspoken unison, the two cadets slowly walked up to the structure. The pearlescent walls behind the crystal spires were smooth and warm, a clear sign of advanced materials engineering.
Momon squinted into one of the crystal chunks making up a nearby spire. “The light,” he murmured, “it looks like it’s pure refraction.”
Kaidoss poked at his tricorder. “The crystals should go up all the way to the surface,” he read. “They must be gathering and focusing sunlight, all the way down to here.”
“That’s...a pretty piece of engineering,” Momon praised, edging around the nearest spire to view it at different angles.
“But, there’s been no reports of large deep earth crystals in Terra Nova’s geological surveys,” Kaidoss continued with a frown. “You’d think someone would have spotted something like this before.”
Momon shrugged. “It’s a big planet.” He was going to add some anecdote from early Qloathi surveys when a strange indentation in solid structure behind the crystals caught his eye. Curious, he reached for it. “Hey, what’s this?”
Instead of meeting solid wall, his finger sunk into the indentation. Immediately, the smooth surface in front of them folded and twisted in place, until it “pulled back”, leaving a man-sized hole in the middle. The two cadets both startled at the sudden appearance of an entrance, jumping back and nearly tripping each other to the ground.
“What did you do?!” Kaidoss hissed, bending down to pick up the tricorder he had dropped.
Momon took a deep breath to calm his own panicky heartbeat. “Looks like I found the door,” he said, and with forced bravado, walked back to the new entrance. He peered inside, but was disappointed to see little more than a short corridor that abruptly led to a turn, blocking any further insights to where it led.
Kaidoss flicked his tongue nervously. “Are you sure it’s safe to go inside? What if this one of those old Orion depots and we’re going to accidentally wake up another dreadnought?”
“We’re nowhere near old Orion space,” Momon scoffed, feeling braver now that the entrance remained innocuous. “None of their stuff looks like this. Besides,” he flashed a smug grin over his shoulder, “if you’re too scared to check out the unknown, you shouldn’t have picked Starfleet.” With that, he stepped inside.
“Why you…” Kaidoss’ hiss was one of anger this time. Pushing his own uncertainty aside, the Seyek youth also surged into the structure after his irritating companion.
Fortunately, the two of them didn’t have far to go before they reached what was apparently the center of the structure. It was a small room compared to the outside, with glowing alien text covering each wall from ceiling to floor, and some kind of large control mechanism in the center.
“Kaidoss! Look at this!” Momon waved at his companion, their rivalry forgotten in his excitement.
Kaidoss joined him before one of the text filled walls, scanning it with his tricorder. It was all gibberish to him. “What is it?” he asked his clearly excited fellow cadet.
“Preservers!” Momon declared, arms flailing excitedly. “Just like the Amerind--oh!” His eyes widened in sudden realization. “We’re inside an obelisk!”
“What?” Kaidoss repeated flatly. It was still all gibberish to him.
Momon continued talking right over him, not even registering the remark as he babbled. “I didn’t realize back there because of all the crystals, but if you take all of that out, it’s a giant obelisk structure just like the Preserver artifact on Amerind that the first USS Enterprise found!”
Kaidoss frowned and poked at his tricorder, wondering if it happened to have that data preloaded. Apparently not. “How do you know this?” he grumbled.
“We went over it in the Preserver Conspiracy Club,” Momon answered offhandedly.
Kaidoss rolled his eyes at the ridiculous name - obviously not an official Academy organization - before shaking it off as irrelevant. “So can you read this stuff?” He gestured at the control platform. “Operate those controls?”
“Er--” Momon stopped short at that. “Well, I--um...maybe?” He wasn’t the best at linguistics, but it couldn’t be that hard, right?
Turning, the Qloathi youth moved over to the control panel and stared at the controls. His fellow cadet followed him.
“What did the one on Amerind do, anyway?” Kaidoss asked, his own curiosity now aroused.
“It was an asteroid deflector,” Momon answered absently, still looking between the walls and the controls.
“Asteroid...like the one that destroyed the original Logan City,” Kaidos murmured in realization. If only the human colonists of the time had known about this place...well, they would have still had to figure out how to use it, so it may not necessarily have helped.
“Alright,” Momon broke into his musings. “I think I figured out how to, uh, turn it on.” He rubbed his hands together nervously. “I’m sure the power readings would get someone’s attention up there, and they’ll come looking for us, uh, wherever we are now.”
“And, so?” Kaidoss pressed, ready to be done with the whole thing.
“Right.” Momon looked at the controls again, and took a deep breath. “Here goes.”
“What happened then?” Rear Admiral Thuir asked, his tone both exasperated and disbelieving.
“Well,” Chekov paused to take a leisurely sip of his wine, some fancy chardonnay from a local Napa winery. The professor let suspense build for a moment longer before answering his superior officer.
“They correctly predicted that the sudden power readings caught the attention of the training ship. And the Terra Nova colony. And... a local comet, which suddenly changed to a collision course toward the planet.”
Thuir groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Yeoman, make a note.” His muffled words still managed to be audible from behind his fingers. “I need to get Nash to come in and do her Not Touching Things presentation to the cadets. All of them.”
“Yes sir!” Yeoman Oizzizuichi piped up from one corner of the room, where ze had been metaphorically fading into the woodwork while the two senior officers discussed the recent event.
“To their credit,” Chekov added with an amused grin, “they did realize what was happening before we found them, and were successfully able to reverse the artifact to deflect the comet away from the system.”
“Yeah?” Thuir put down his hands and looked at the other man skeptically. “So why did I wake up to a bunch of letters from ornery politicians today?”
“The Terra Novans weren’t happy about entirely losing the comet either,” Chekov revealed. “They had been planning to study and mine it when it passed them by on its original course.”
“Of course they did,” Thuir sighed in resignation. He picked up his own mostly-finished glass of wine, and knocked back the last of it in a single motion.
“It did take some fast talking to convince the colony not to further use the artifact to move the comet again,” Chekov continued, “at least - not until the proper experts have looked at it.”
Thuir frowned in thought as he gently put down his empty glass. “That’s going to be a while. I hear all the best archaeologists are busy digging into the Orion Empire mess.”
Chekov nodded in agreement. “It will be Command’s headache to sort all that out. But, there was one other thing though,” he added. “In their...excitement...the cadets apparently hit on some other functions of the obelisk before they found the right one to deflect the comet. Mr. Momon was quite vocal that he had at one point pulled up a marked map of the galactic cluster -- a map with the route that the Kadeshi fleet is likely traveling even now.”
Thuir paused at that unexpected revelation. “The Kadesh? You’re serious?”
“Mm.” Chekov took another sip of his wine. “Unfortunately, he could not be sure which exact order of controls had turned it on, and I would not let him try finding it again.”
“Of course,” Thuir agreed. “But, if he only had a glimpse of the map, how can be sure it’s the Stargazer’s route?”
Chekov chuckled. “Apparently, Cadet Momon is also a member of the unofficial Extra-Galactic Exploration Club.”
