Mist of Shadows
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Myst in DC part 36
🕑 Added 2020-01-07 08:30:25 +0000 UTCRiker wasn’t sure how to feel as he watched the planet change before his eyes, going from a barren wasteland to a pristine M class planet, perfect for habitation in the span of half a minute. “What do we have?”
“It’s like watching a genesis device,” the science officer said warily, thinking about some of the early terraforming technology the Federation had used in the past.
“Hopefully without the drastic side effects,” Riker said, not taking his gaze off the blue and green world.
“It’s a bit warmer near the tropics than most humans would prefer but it’s certainly survivable. I’m not seeing any sign of instability and the air is nearly perfect. Permission to transport down to the planet to take samples?” the science officer asked, wanting to be one of the first people to set food on the new world.
Riker grinned at the man’s enthusiasm. “Are your scans picking up any large fauna?”
“No, just various trees, flora, and small animals.”
“Bring up the island near the bottom of the screen. Would it support the number of Kazon we have in the cargo bay?”
“Provided enough of the flora is edible, there should be enough space to support an entire fleet and several colonies,” the scientist assured him as he zoomed in on the island.
Riker nodded. “Take a team of scientists and security and scout the island for a colony site, we need somewhere to leave the Kazon we encounter.”
“On my way,” the science officer said as he headed for the turbolift, eager to get started.
Riker tapped his combadge. “Riker to Myst, are you done upgrading the planet?”
Myst pulled his attention off his upgrade interface and the planet he could see out of the window and tapped the combadge that Tuvok had assigned him. “More or less, I’ll take another look once things have a chance to settle down.”
“Is something the matter?”
“No, I just want to double check things,” Myst replied as he stared pacing so that his mana pool would recharge faster, “and let the computer run some scans. Once you have a colony location, I’ll be able to create a stone shelter and ward the cabinet so the Kazon can’t come back through.”
“How long will creating a shelter take?” Riker asked.
“Maybe ten minutes. Given the general temperature, I’m just going to toss up some pillars and a roof then ward the cabinet so none of the Kazon can find it on the planet. A couple of charms and they should leave the area alone once they get there.”
“Can you create a couple of shelters for the Kazon?” Deanna asked, knowing some of the crew would feel better about stranding the Kazon if they had something more substantial than tents for shelter.
“I’ll probably need to look up some decent designs that won’t fall apart and play with the holodeck a bit because I’m not an architect but it shouldn’t be that hard to come up with something reasonable,” Myst replied as he opened his gacha wheel and looked over his options as he walked back and forth, much to the barkeep’s amusement. ‘Weapons for 20,000, Devices for 15,000, Trinkets for 10,000, Books for 5,000, and Chalices for 10,000.’
“We’ll set up the cabinet on the planet, you can research things while we head toward the fourth planet provided you still want to upgrade it?” Riker asked, wanting to make sure everything was still going according to plan.
“That’s the plan,” Myst replied as he bought the Weapons wheel. “The fourth planet should be well within the region of space that will support life and it gives me practice for Kes’ world.”
“Do you have any suggestions for defending the system once we leave?” Riker asked, curious if Myst had anything else up his sleeve.
“We could set up automated defenses but I’m not all that comfortable leaving an AI to run things when they might get bored.” Myst reached up and caught the poorly made silver trident that dropped when his Weapons wheel stopped spinning then bought the Device wheel.
“That would take weeks to program and design. We’d also need a database of threats or we’d need to make the AI adaptive and I’m not comfortable putting an untrusted AI in charge of weapons,” Riker said, knowing it would take a decent amount of time to make something that wouldn’t result in a lot of problems.
“The other option is you keep a skeleton crew on the Kazon ships using the cabinets. I should be able to upgrade a runabout’s transporter to cut through the Kazon’s shields which means they should be able to relocate their crew to the planet with the rest,” Myst explained as he looked at the trident’s collection of abilities, not sure why he’d need the ability to permanently give cephalopods humanlike speech or give animals the ability to change into fishlike monsters.
“We’re a bit low on crew but that would give us a chance to continue looking through their computers,” Riker agreed after a couple of seconds of considering the problem.
“I’d be happy to upgrade a shuttle. Have you worked out an agreement with Chakotay yet?” Myst asked as he reached out and caught the strange metal helmet that dropped when his gacha wheel stopped. He studied the disturbing collection of wires and gizmos attached to the strange helmet, fairly sure the device had come from a mad scientist’s scrap bin.
“We have, we’ll be sharing crew and rotating people between the ships,” Riker replied, knowing the only reason he was even considering the plan was because of Deanna and Sabrina doing their best to vet Chakotay’s crew. “Which means feel free to upgrade the ship to a reasonable level.”
“Understood, I’ll upgrade a shuttle then take a cabinet over to Chakotay’s ship,” Myst replied as he bought the Book wheel.
“I’ll send Paris to help with the shuttle,” Riker said then ended the call.
Myst looked at the helmet with his upgrade ability as he headed for the door. He twitched and nearly dropped the helmet when he realized that the helmet reformatted the user’s mind and reduced violent tendencies in the process of turning people into mind readers. “I guess that’s one way to deal with criminals, all the skills, none of the annoying personality issues,” he muttered sarcastically as he put the helmet in his inventory, left the room and headed down the hallway.
‘Live is easy when you’re evil, just a little twist and all your problems go away.’ He shook his head and did his best to ignore the thoughts running through his head about building an empire of dark elves out of mind wiped aliens as he headed towards the closest turbo lift. The worst part was that he was fairly sure he could rationalize wiping out the Kazon’s entire culture or at least most of it considering they were slavers and backstabbing bastards with few if any redeeming qualities.
‘No worries Anakin, you’ll be perfectly fine, nothing could possibly go wrong with your insane plan to bring order to the galaxy,’ Myst thought as he walked down the hallway. ‘I need to get back to DC before I decide to ‘fix’ things.’
He reached up and grabbed the leatherbound book that dropped when his Books wheel stopped. “Geppetto’s Guide to Puppets...” he trailed off as he opened the book to a random page and noticed the magical diagrams on the page that talked about imbuing puppets with speech. “Nice, intelligent golems.” He carefully closed the book and put it in his inventory. He waited until he walked past the random security officer to buy the Trinkets wheel as he didn’t want to startle the man.
He frowned when he reached the intersection and couldn’t remember which way he was supposed to go. ‘I should have asked for directions.’ He brought up his minimap and looked at the path he’d need to take to get to the shuttlebay. ‘Okay, that’s not too bad, two rights then down a couple of floors and we’re good.’
He reached up as the gacha wheel stopped spinning and grabbed the small black satin bag that dropped. “Weird.” He looked at the bag with his upgrade ability, not sure what lunatic came up with the idea of creating a bag that could turn gems into dice and imbue them with the ability to generate spiritual power. “That would be more useful if I actually had any abilities that used spiritual power,” he muttered as he put the dice bag in his inventory then bought the Chalice wheel so he could close his gacha menu without feeling like he might have gotten something amazing and missed it.
Tom Paris raised his eyebrows when the door to the turbolift opened and he saw Myst and his floating prize wheel. “Anything good?”
“No idea,” Myst replied as he stepped into the turbolift. “You know where we’re going, right?” he asked hopefully.
“I looked at the map,” Tom assured him. “Computer, continue,” he ordered as he watched the spinning wheel start to slow down. “Are you expecting to get the holy grail?”
“No, I’m just hoping for something interesting,” Myst replied as he reached up and grabbed the silver chalice that dropped when the wheel stopped.
“Any luck?” Tom asked as he studied the ornate silver chalice.
“Huh,” Myst muttered as he studied the chalice. “That’s actually straight up useful. It gives the drinker a limited form of clairvoyance that should let them locate people.”
“How long does it last?” Tom asked.
“It’s permanent,” Myst said as he conjured some water in the chalice. “Do you want to test it?”
“Sure, what the hell,” Tom said as he held out his hand, figuring if the stranger wanted to screw with him, he had plenty of ways to do it.
Myst handed him the chalice. “Here you go.”
Tom took a drink. “I don’t feel anything…” he trailed off as he got a shadowy image and a sense of distance when he thought about Kes. “Huh, Kes is in her quarters with Neelix. The Captain is on the bridge.” He focused on his father. “My father is in a meeting… and is roughly 70,000 light years that way,” he said as he gestured toward the wall.
“Neat isn’t it?” Myst asked with amusement as he took the chalice and took a drink, happy to add clairvoyance to his list of skills. He grinned as he focused on Dawn, getting a shadowy image of her and B’elanna snuggling on her bed. He focused on his new power with his upgrade ability and poured mana into it until the image was crystal clear. He spent a decent chunk of mana to upgrade the ability to also work on objects.
“It’s certainly different,” Tom admitted, sort of happy that he couldn’t see people with perfect clarity, considering he didn’t want the temptation to watch people when he shouldn’t, especially when the ship had several telepaths.
‘Yeah, just as well that I have a mental shield and the anti-scrying necklace,’ Myst thought as he stuck the chalice in his inventory his thoughts following the same lines as Paris’.
“I don’t suppose you can share your storage trick?” Tom asked hopefully.
“I wish.” Myst frowned as the doors opened, revealing a hallway that looked the same as the previous hallway. “You’d think you’d use colored lines or something to denote which level you’re on.”
“You get used to it eventually,” Tom said as he led the way toward the shuttle bay. “Can you hand out any other interesting abilities?”
“I have a few more tricks but I need to talk things over with Deanna and the Captain before I start handing out anything too disruptive, mostly because I’m planning on leaving as soon as I finish upgrading everything and can find a suitable ship,” Myst explained as they headed down the hall.
“I don’t suppose I can talk you into upgrading the ship to get us home in weeks?” Tom asked hopefully.
“Sorry, sometimes the journey is more important than the destination. When Q sent Picard and the Enterprise hurtling through space into Borg territory he gave them a peek at the dangers of being complacent.”
“He also let the Borg know about the Federation and cost thousands of lives,” Tom countered.
Myst shrugged. “And saved hundreds of billions of lives in the future by giving them time to prepare. I’m not saying he can’t be an ass, he can, it’s just that at the end of the day, if it weren’t for the warning, humanity would have been crushed in a few hundred years.”
“Small comfort for the people that died,” Tom said as they walked into the shuttle bay.
“If I had been one of the people who died I would have found it comforting,” Myst assured him.
Myst’s gaze jumped between the shuttle bay doors and the various runabouts as they walked into the shuttlebay. “Don’t get me wrong, it sucks but would the Federation have even given the Borg more than a passing thought if one cube hadn’t demolished their fleet? They would have convinced themselves that Picard was wrong or that they were so far away it wouldn’t matter.”
Tom turned to look at Myst. “If you were going to destroy the Borg, how would you do it?”
“You mean without using some of my more interesting abilities? I’d probably talk to an engineer about jamming the link between the drones and the collective then, while they fall apart into squabbling factions, I’d try to learn all their secrets. If nothing else that would likely give you a chance to recruit the former drones and learn any tricks they have. I’d also find some precogs and recruit them for gunners, with any luck they’d be able to modulate the phasers with each attack so the Borg couldn’t adapt or at least give us warning about them showing up. Cloaking technology could also be rather useful for avoiding them.”
“And with your abilities?” Tom asked.
“I’d probably upgrade a computer virus so that it would rip through their network and cause every Borg ship to shut down the network that keeps everything linked or triggers their self destruct.” Myst shrugged. “Or I’d upgrade my weapons to the point where I could just obliterate the Borg vessels in such a way that they’d never know I was even there or if I was feeling particularly insane and vengeful I’d go get the temporal weapon ship that some aliens have then find the original Borg homeworld and destroy it.”
“I have a feeling that would drastically change everything in the entire Delta Quadrant.”
“More than that,” Myst said, thinking about Guinan’s race being displaced by the Borg and all of the ripple effects it would cause if the Borg never came to be. “But yeah, playing with time is generally a horrible idea. Of course, I’m not about to mess with things when I know I won’t be around to correct anything that went wrong with my ‘fix’, I’m going to open a portal and jump to another world once I’m done setting things up, one step closer to home.”
“What’s your world like?” Tom asked as he walked over to one of the shuttles.
“Picture Earth without the Eugenics war, now add people with superhuman abilities, anything from telepathy and telekinesis to the ability to rip bulkheads apart with your bare hands or build technology that even you would have a hard time reverse engineering.”
“Most governments would kill to gain agents with any of those abilities,” Tom said as he opened the back of the shuttle.
“You’d think,” Myst muttered, still a bit surprised that certain sections of the government hadn’t relocated Ivy to an empty island and arranged a work release program in exchange for her enhancement serum. “One of the villains has a formula that would allow a human to match a Klingon in armwrestling and makes them nearly immune to poison. But they let her bounce in and out of a mental ward rather than recruiting her. It’s more than a little wasteful.”
“Let me guess, they want to keep things fair?” Tom asked, thinking about the Federation’s stance on augments.
“If I had to guess, it’s probably not enough to matter when you have people that can move planets or toss around starships.”
“Move planets?” Tom asked in disbelief.
“What can I say, it’s an interesting world,” Myst replied with amusement as he spent a fair amount of mana upgrading the transporter and power systems on the runabout. “That should do it.”
“That’s it?” Tom asked in surprise.
“I’m not Q, I don’t require flashes of light to draw attention to what I’m doing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I should head over to Chakotay’s ship and upgrade everything so that it doesn’t explode the first time something looks at it funny.” Myst reached out with his new clairvoyance ability and focused on Chakotay then teleported to the cockpit.
Chakotay twitched as Myst appeared out of thin air. “That’s disconcerting.”
Myst glanced around the cockpit area that sort of passed for a bridge then focused on Chakotay. “Just a bit, Riker gave me the go-ahead to start upgrading your ship, what do you want upgraded?”
“Everything,” Chakotay replied with a slight grin.
“I’ll do what I can,” Myst replied as he brought up the ship’s systems, trying to figure out what to upgrade first on the older model ship.
0o0o0
“This is larger than my quarters,” B’elanna mused as she stepped inside the stone dome that Myst had created and glanced around at the basic living space. It was a bit spartan but looked fairly well thought out, if you ignored the complete lack of modern amenities beyond what looked like a simple wood stove and basic bathroom.
“Good, it’s supposed to be large enough to hold a family and space isn’t exactly at a premium,” Myst replied as he finished upgrading the basic water system he’d cobbled together, changing it from transfigured metal pipes to something that would actually last a few hundred years, provided someone didn’t go something completely stupid. “The lights are magic which means they’ll still be shining in a thousand years.”
Sabrina gestured toward the metal stove she’d just finished installing. “It’s not exactly Federation standard but we’re giving them the tools they need to survive not the tools they’d need to escape the planet.”
“I can’t say I blame you.” B’elanna would be a lot happier if the Kazon ended up reverting to a pre-warp society considering their stance on slavery and general behavior. “Where are they supposed to store their food?”
Myst gestured toward the trap door in the kitchen area. “In the cellar or at least that’s where I’d keep everything.”
“That reminds me, Is there a reason there aren’t any large animals?” B’elanna asked as Dawn walked in and looked around.
“I’m guessing he forgot,” Dawn said as she glanced around. “It could stand a bit more light and some pools but other than that, it looks good.”
“Mostly, I just wanted to make sure it was safe enough that Riker wouldn’t object to leaving the Kazon on the island,” Myst admitted. ‘Not to mention they’d probably enjoy hunting large game.’
“There’s a difference between dangerous Klingon beasts and things like deer and rabbits,” Dawn pointed out, fairly sure Myst had avoided adding the large game just to screw with the species of hunters.
“Fair enough, I should probably build a wall around the village and improve some of the fruit trees if I’m going to upgrade the type of animals.” Myst was fairly sure the Kazon wouldn’t want to leave if they had plenty of hunting, water and fresh food which meant they’d likely spend less time trying to escape or signal for rescue.
Dawn snickered as she caught some of Myst’s thoughts. “We should probably head to one of the other islands and build a small town for shore leave and hunting, fishing, and gathering fruits and vegetables. All it takes is a single cabinet and the ship will have the largest larder in the fleet.”
B’elanna grinned as she imagined biting into a nice roast deer fresh off the fire. “No objection here, the more food we can harvest the less energy we’ll have to use replicating the basics, which should keep everyone happier.”
“In that case, I’m going to toss up a wall then we can take the shuttle over to another continent and we can find a good place to set up a town,” Myst said as he headed outside into the bright summer day.
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Chichi son
“I’ll do what I can,” Myst replied as he brought up the ship’s systems, trying to figure out what to upgrade first and the older model ship. first on the? ‘Live is easy when you’re evil, just a little twist and all your problems go away.’ Life is easy
