Resistance, Sequel to ‘Renaissance of the Daleks.’
Posted: 2005-02-04 04:14pm
Some notes. This is a Sequel to Renaissance of the Daleks, a crossover fanfic of horribly unbiased proportions I did in July 2003. This one is set seven months later, after the fall of most of the federation, and will explore the efforts of the remnants of Starfleet to thwart the invader's plans.
You don't need to have read the last one, indeed, given the improvement in the quality of my writing since (perhaps I delude myself, but I hope not), I'd rather you didn't, but still, here is the link anyway. The Prologue recaps on most of what happened in the last one.
Obviously, a brief working knowledge of the Dr Who universe and the Star Trek one is very useful. The Daleks of this fic are the ones around the Dalek Empire era, and are highly advanced technologically. For Star Trek, I will be using, in some cases, characters, and more importantly, ships, from the games.
<Insert Fanfic Disclaimer Here>
----
Resistance, Sequel to ‘Renaissance of the Daleks.’
By Joseph Wilson
Prologue:
Annika Hansen, representative of the Dalek Empire, formerly Seven of Nine, of the Federation Starship Voyager, formerly tertiary adjunct of unimatrix zero one of the Borg Collective, looked at the Vorta functionary in front of her with barely concealed distaste. She ran a finger through her hair, brushing her left eyebrow where up until recently, a prosthetic reminder of her years as Borg had remained. She still had implants, a great many of them, but these had been designed more subtly.
Seven months ago, it seemed to have been to Annika, the starship Voyager was destroyed, and a small portion of its crew, including herself, had been captured. She didn’t have much memory of what followed, barring that she’d been experimented on. Apparently the Daleks wanted a new advantage over a race similar to the Borg in their own timeline, and analysing what was left of Borg technology in her may have yielded useful information about their development.
Then, rather than kill her, they had implanted numerous replacement parts. She hadn’t asked, but it was one of the numerous strategies of the Supreme Council, adopted to, ease ‘negotiations’ and subjugation. This had also necessitated a rather dramatic personality change. Many members of the ship’s crew would have been horrified by the new personality, cruel, vindictive and spiteful, rather like the Daleks themselves, but with enough charm and charisma to deceive. Ironically, some would say that the aliens had made Annika more human than the Voyager crew; she certainly looked it, human weaknesses and flaws as well.
“Mister Moron,” she said, her lips pulled into a thin smile. A thin smile over barred teeth.
“Mo’aren,” the obsequious Vorta corrected, oblivious to her deliberately hostile manner.
“Moron,” she continued, watching with concealed amusement as the Dominion representative bristled, “allow me to inform you of a few pertinent facts that may influence your decision. First, as you are no doubt aware, Borg activity on your borders has collapsed to nothing.”
He nodded, “Yes, though they’ve not caused us any problems in recent history, they’ve always been a threat, but they seem to have withdrawn inward of late.”
“While I hesitate to claim that we have destroyed the Borg for you, they are resilient, we have fractured them and dealt a massive blow to their fleets.”
If scepticism were water, Mo’aren would have drowned by now. “So you say,” he smiled, guardedly, “but I don’t see why that is any concern of the Dominion’s.”
“Further, the Alpha Quadrant powers you were so humiliatingly beaten by,” Annika’s smile widened, showing white teeth that clicked as the snapped them, for just a moment, taking a deep breath, “are all either falling back on all fronts, totally disintegrated and conquered, or have surrendered to us.”
“We only lost,” the Vorta was clearly not pleased by the memory, “because we were cut off from reinforcing our positions.”
“Be that as it may,” she said, “you still lost. Earth is destroyed; do you want your own worlds to follow? We have offered you generous terms. Terms the Federation would have fought tooth and nail for, and you have the terminal foolishness to turn them down?”
He glared at her, she had him rattled, somewhere in his consciousness, that she could tell, but he replied defiantly nonetheless, “You are bluffing,” he said, “and the Dominion will not surrender its sovereignty based on your outrageous claims of awe inspiring power and capability.”
Annika rose from the table, draped in a white cloth on the open plain, pushing her chair back, “Humans have a phrase, you may have heard of it,” she said, “Better a big fish in a small pond than a little fish in a large pond. You, and your so-called dominion will have to learn. You may have been the big fish until now. But now, now a shark has arrived in your pond.”
She returned the changeling servant’s glare, and he recoiled as if he expected to be struck, “And you I look forward to meeting again. The next time I see you, you will wish you had taken my terms today. I guarantee it.” Mo’aren was heartened by the slow speed the transporter she disappeared into seemed to operate at. At least that was inferior, but if all the rumours were true, then the woman had indeed been speaking the truth.
Chapter One
Star-base one hundred fifty two had been established to co-ordinate the mining of dilithium in the Ketaris System, near the Romulan Neutral Zone. But that time was long gone. Now the starbase was as close to a self contained community as the Federation had ever been. Resistance cells were operating on occupied worlds, but the command of the United Federation of Planets believed that their best chance for continued existence relied on something of the fleet surviving. Thus, they had taken the few starbases, such as this one, that the Daleks had not located in their invasion, and turned them into true fleet bases.
One Fifty Two was such a star-base, its extensive mining facilities, in the blasted ruin of a double planet, were quite capable of supporting its power demands, and thus its replicators, indefinitely. A cloud of hydrogen and less easily understood particles surrounded the planet, and kept the range of most sensors down, while providing an abundant source of deuterium.
The flagship of the impromptu task force that had been established in the Ketaris system bore an honoured name. Enterprise. The vessel that had saved the Federation, in its many forms, so many times that it would have seemed implausible were it not true. It had been one of the few ships to survive the Battle of Earth, fleeing into warp as the planet, cradle of humanity, home of the Federation, was destroyed. The atrocity had shocked and horrified the entire Alpha Quadrant. The Daleks had done it entirely casually, almost a gesture of contempt. Thousands of years of history, billions of people, erased simply because, most people thought, it had been decided that it would make an effective demonstration.
The most horrifying thing, to the rest of humanity, was the way this had succeeded. Vulcan had immediately entered negotiations for surrender, as almost everyone expected it to. It was after all, the logical thing to do. Andor, Bajor, Trill, dozens of Federation Members either surrendered unconditionally, as in the case of Vulcan and Trill, or declared neutrality, as Bajor and Andor had.
More chilling still was the effect the demonstration had had on the Romulan Star Empire. It had been true in human history that resistance groups hated and loathed those who stood by, or allowed themselves to be dominated, but that this hatred was nothing compared to the loathing and contempt reserved for collaborators. It was true centuries after the last war on Earth had ended too.
Captain Jean Luc Picard had often imagined the destruction of the Earth. It had haunted his nightmares. The Borg had been a staple, ever since their first encounter, and even more since the Enterprise-D, the predecessor ship of the one he sat on now, had encountered an alternate version of his first officer from a reality where the cybernetic menace had conquered the Federation.
It struck him as ironic, that now, he almost envied that version of Riker. The despair he felt was deep, a yawning black pit that he always felt himself to be hanging above by his very fingertips. Every day, many times, he would battle, tell himself that there was still hope for the Federation, but he could not see it. He could only see the reports of new capitulations, new conquests, and new defeats.
The war, he felt hysteria at even thinking of it as such, rather than some form of elaborate butchering, had been going on for seven months. Seven months without a victory, even a phyrric victory would be welcome, against the Daleks.
Their Romulan toadies, sometimes, were defeated, in skirmishes. But to do so only brought some new and dire retaliation from their masters. This, he had long ago decided, was why the Federation had insisted on Ship’s Counsellors. The depression would have resulted in massive numbers of suicides, as opposed to large numbers of suicides, were it not for them.
Picard was looking at the reports of the construction of the USS Justice, a somewhat cut back, somewhat modified, Sovereign class vessel, the second ship they’d managed to produce here since they’d finally brought the new, advanced shipyards online near the asteroid ring from the devastated moon, interspersed liberally with dilithium deposits, when the voice of Geordi LaForge came over the comm., into the Captain’s ready room.
“Sir,” the engineer said, “I think you ought to get up here.”
The bearded, he couldn’t be bothered to shave any more, acting commander was in motion almost instantly, heading out of the Captain’s Ready Room, and onto the bridge. “What’s up?” he asked.
“There’s a federation ship entering the system. Badly damaged.”
“Identity?”
“That’s what’s odd Sir,” he replied, “it doesn’t have one, just NX and then five zeroes, and it doesn’t match anything in the computer records either, it could be some kind of Defiant variant, but it’s definitely a federation ship.”
“I recognise it,” said Commander Data, “it was part of a so-called black operation established by Admiral Nolotai around eleven months ago.”
“Life sig-“
“We are being hailed.”
“On screen…”
════
Annika piloted the squat Dalek made shuttle with expert ease. She had little experience with its design, but her mind contained enough data on manipulating the large glowing buttons and other auxiliary controls to operate it smoothly. If she wanted, she could have flown the vessel by neural interface, but the reaction times were much the same.
She looked at the massive shape of the Dominion Dreadnought orbiting the planet they had concluded their… negotiations on, and sighed almost wishing they tried something. At least that would have been interesting, in this vehicle, challenging even. The Supreme Controller did not enjoy hearing about failures on her part, but she had to report in regardless. The surgical alterations that ensured her loyalty made sure that she did not even consider failing to report in as soon as possible. Besides, most of what she saw or thought was recorded and accessible over the command network linking all Dalek… assets together.
Tapping a few buttons on the communications console, she was greeted by the static hum of the communicator waiting for a connection to be established. The Dalek’s voice was grating and full of metallic reverb. It was almost as if someone had locked a dozen angry hornets in a tin can, and used it as part of a speaker system.
“Report,” it demanded, and the agent leaned back in her chair, “The negotiations failed, they do not believe.”
The Dalek was silent for a moment, “We must acquire their technology if Project Sorvad is to succeed,” it said, angrily.
“Yes,” the human replied, “but they will not give it willingly.” There was another pause, as if the Controller was consulting something.
“Agreed,” it screeched, “Project Sorvad is not your concern for now. Proceed to Romulus and gather information on the dissident threat our agents have reported.”
The comm. broke off, and in her mind, Annika could feel a message arriving through the command network. It was from the Supreme Controller, reports on Romulan activities.
════
The USS Incursion, the defiant variant, was in a state of chaos. Captain ReFalian, its commanding officer, was unconscious from wounds sustained in the battle, as was the first officer, leaving the command to the chief of the Science Department, a tall man, sporting facial scarring both fresh, and, surprisingly given the omnipresence of dermal regenerators in the Federation, old.
He leaned forward in the burnt command chair as the somewhat familiar face of the Federation’s greatest living hero appeared. “Captain Picard, I am lieutenant commander Verov,” he said, exalted to have found the base, “No time to explain the damage. I must tell you of something the Romulans are planning. It’s crucial to any hope of rebuilding the Federation…”
You don't need to have read the last one, indeed, given the improvement in the quality of my writing since (perhaps I delude myself, but I hope not), I'd rather you didn't, but still, here is the link anyway. The Prologue recaps on most of what happened in the last one.
Obviously, a brief working knowledge of the Dr Who universe and the Star Trek one is very useful. The Daleks of this fic are the ones around the Dalek Empire era, and are highly advanced technologically. For Star Trek, I will be using, in some cases, characters, and more importantly, ships, from the games.
<Insert Fanfic Disclaimer Here>
----
Resistance, Sequel to ‘Renaissance of the Daleks.’
By Joseph Wilson
Prologue:
Annika Hansen, representative of the Dalek Empire, formerly Seven of Nine, of the Federation Starship Voyager, formerly tertiary adjunct of unimatrix zero one of the Borg Collective, looked at the Vorta functionary in front of her with barely concealed distaste. She ran a finger through her hair, brushing her left eyebrow where up until recently, a prosthetic reminder of her years as Borg had remained. She still had implants, a great many of them, but these had been designed more subtly.
Seven months ago, it seemed to have been to Annika, the starship Voyager was destroyed, and a small portion of its crew, including herself, had been captured. She didn’t have much memory of what followed, barring that she’d been experimented on. Apparently the Daleks wanted a new advantage over a race similar to the Borg in their own timeline, and analysing what was left of Borg technology in her may have yielded useful information about their development.
Then, rather than kill her, they had implanted numerous replacement parts. She hadn’t asked, but it was one of the numerous strategies of the Supreme Council, adopted to, ease ‘negotiations’ and subjugation. This had also necessitated a rather dramatic personality change. Many members of the ship’s crew would have been horrified by the new personality, cruel, vindictive and spiteful, rather like the Daleks themselves, but with enough charm and charisma to deceive. Ironically, some would say that the aliens had made Annika more human than the Voyager crew; she certainly looked it, human weaknesses and flaws as well.
“Mister Moron,” she said, her lips pulled into a thin smile. A thin smile over barred teeth.
“Mo’aren,” the obsequious Vorta corrected, oblivious to her deliberately hostile manner.
“Moron,” she continued, watching with concealed amusement as the Dominion representative bristled, “allow me to inform you of a few pertinent facts that may influence your decision. First, as you are no doubt aware, Borg activity on your borders has collapsed to nothing.”
He nodded, “Yes, though they’ve not caused us any problems in recent history, they’ve always been a threat, but they seem to have withdrawn inward of late.”
“While I hesitate to claim that we have destroyed the Borg for you, they are resilient, we have fractured them and dealt a massive blow to their fleets.”
If scepticism were water, Mo’aren would have drowned by now. “So you say,” he smiled, guardedly, “but I don’t see why that is any concern of the Dominion’s.”
“Further, the Alpha Quadrant powers you were so humiliatingly beaten by,” Annika’s smile widened, showing white teeth that clicked as the snapped them, for just a moment, taking a deep breath, “are all either falling back on all fronts, totally disintegrated and conquered, or have surrendered to us.”
“We only lost,” the Vorta was clearly not pleased by the memory, “because we were cut off from reinforcing our positions.”
“Be that as it may,” she said, “you still lost. Earth is destroyed; do you want your own worlds to follow? We have offered you generous terms. Terms the Federation would have fought tooth and nail for, and you have the terminal foolishness to turn them down?”
He glared at her, she had him rattled, somewhere in his consciousness, that she could tell, but he replied defiantly nonetheless, “You are bluffing,” he said, “and the Dominion will not surrender its sovereignty based on your outrageous claims of awe inspiring power and capability.”
Annika rose from the table, draped in a white cloth on the open plain, pushing her chair back, “Humans have a phrase, you may have heard of it,” she said, “Better a big fish in a small pond than a little fish in a large pond. You, and your so-called dominion will have to learn. You may have been the big fish until now. But now, now a shark has arrived in your pond.”
She returned the changeling servant’s glare, and he recoiled as if he expected to be struck, “And you I look forward to meeting again. The next time I see you, you will wish you had taken my terms today. I guarantee it.” Mo’aren was heartened by the slow speed the transporter she disappeared into seemed to operate at. At least that was inferior, but if all the rumours were true, then the woman had indeed been speaking the truth.
Chapter One
Star-base one hundred fifty two had been established to co-ordinate the mining of dilithium in the Ketaris System, near the Romulan Neutral Zone. But that time was long gone. Now the starbase was as close to a self contained community as the Federation had ever been. Resistance cells were operating on occupied worlds, but the command of the United Federation of Planets believed that their best chance for continued existence relied on something of the fleet surviving. Thus, they had taken the few starbases, such as this one, that the Daleks had not located in their invasion, and turned them into true fleet bases.
One Fifty Two was such a star-base, its extensive mining facilities, in the blasted ruin of a double planet, were quite capable of supporting its power demands, and thus its replicators, indefinitely. A cloud of hydrogen and less easily understood particles surrounded the planet, and kept the range of most sensors down, while providing an abundant source of deuterium.
The flagship of the impromptu task force that had been established in the Ketaris system bore an honoured name. Enterprise. The vessel that had saved the Federation, in its many forms, so many times that it would have seemed implausible were it not true. It had been one of the few ships to survive the Battle of Earth, fleeing into warp as the planet, cradle of humanity, home of the Federation, was destroyed. The atrocity had shocked and horrified the entire Alpha Quadrant. The Daleks had done it entirely casually, almost a gesture of contempt. Thousands of years of history, billions of people, erased simply because, most people thought, it had been decided that it would make an effective demonstration.
The most horrifying thing, to the rest of humanity, was the way this had succeeded. Vulcan had immediately entered negotiations for surrender, as almost everyone expected it to. It was after all, the logical thing to do. Andor, Bajor, Trill, dozens of Federation Members either surrendered unconditionally, as in the case of Vulcan and Trill, or declared neutrality, as Bajor and Andor had.
More chilling still was the effect the demonstration had had on the Romulan Star Empire. It had been true in human history that resistance groups hated and loathed those who stood by, or allowed themselves to be dominated, but that this hatred was nothing compared to the loathing and contempt reserved for collaborators. It was true centuries after the last war on Earth had ended too.
Captain Jean Luc Picard had often imagined the destruction of the Earth. It had haunted his nightmares. The Borg had been a staple, ever since their first encounter, and even more since the Enterprise-D, the predecessor ship of the one he sat on now, had encountered an alternate version of his first officer from a reality where the cybernetic menace had conquered the Federation.
It struck him as ironic, that now, he almost envied that version of Riker. The despair he felt was deep, a yawning black pit that he always felt himself to be hanging above by his very fingertips. Every day, many times, he would battle, tell himself that there was still hope for the Federation, but he could not see it. He could only see the reports of new capitulations, new conquests, and new defeats.
The war, he felt hysteria at even thinking of it as such, rather than some form of elaborate butchering, had been going on for seven months. Seven months without a victory, even a phyrric victory would be welcome, against the Daleks.
Their Romulan toadies, sometimes, were defeated, in skirmishes. But to do so only brought some new and dire retaliation from their masters. This, he had long ago decided, was why the Federation had insisted on Ship’s Counsellors. The depression would have resulted in massive numbers of suicides, as opposed to large numbers of suicides, were it not for them.
Picard was looking at the reports of the construction of the USS Justice, a somewhat cut back, somewhat modified, Sovereign class vessel, the second ship they’d managed to produce here since they’d finally brought the new, advanced shipyards online near the asteroid ring from the devastated moon, interspersed liberally with dilithium deposits, when the voice of Geordi LaForge came over the comm., into the Captain’s ready room.
“Sir,” the engineer said, “I think you ought to get up here.”
The bearded, he couldn’t be bothered to shave any more, acting commander was in motion almost instantly, heading out of the Captain’s Ready Room, and onto the bridge. “What’s up?” he asked.
“There’s a federation ship entering the system. Badly damaged.”
“Identity?”
“That’s what’s odd Sir,” he replied, “it doesn’t have one, just NX and then five zeroes, and it doesn’t match anything in the computer records either, it could be some kind of Defiant variant, but it’s definitely a federation ship.”
“I recognise it,” said Commander Data, “it was part of a so-called black operation established by Admiral Nolotai around eleven months ago.”
“Life sig-“
“We are being hailed.”
“On screen…”
════
Annika piloted the squat Dalek made shuttle with expert ease. She had little experience with its design, but her mind contained enough data on manipulating the large glowing buttons and other auxiliary controls to operate it smoothly. If she wanted, she could have flown the vessel by neural interface, but the reaction times were much the same.
She looked at the massive shape of the Dominion Dreadnought orbiting the planet they had concluded their… negotiations on, and sighed almost wishing they tried something. At least that would have been interesting, in this vehicle, challenging even. The Supreme Controller did not enjoy hearing about failures on her part, but she had to report in regardless. The surgical alterations that ensured her loyalty made sure that she did not even consider failing to report in as soon as possible. Besides, most of what she saw or thought was recorded and accessible over the command network linking all Dalek… assets together.
Tapping a few buttons on the communications console, she was greeted by the static hum of the communicator waiting for a connection to be established. The Dalek’s voice was grating and full of metallic reverb. It was almost as if someone had locked a dozen angry hornets in a tin can, and used it as part of a speaker system.
“Report,” it demanded, and the agent leaned back in her chair, “The negotiations failed, they do not believe.”
The Dalek was silent for a moment, “We must acquire their technology if Project Sorvad is to succeed,” it said, angrily.
“Yes,” the human replied, “but they will not give it willingly.” There was another pause, as if the Controller was consulting something.
“Agreed,” it screeched, “Project Sorvad is not your concern for now. Proceed to Romulus and gather information on the dissident threat our agents have reported.”
The comm. broke off, and in her mind, Annika could feel a message arriving through the command network. It was from the Supreme Controller, reports on Romulan activities.
════
The USS Incursion, the defiant variant, was in a state of chaos. Captain ReFalian, its commanding officer, was unconscious from wounds sustained in the battle, as was the first officer, leaving the command to the chief of the Science Department, a tall man, sporting facial scarring both fresh, and, surprisingly given the omnipresence of dermal regenerators in the Federation, old.
He leaned forward in the burnt command chair as the somewhat familiar face of the Federation’s greatest living hero appeared. “Captain Picard, I am lieutenant commander Verov,” he said, exalted to have found the base, “No time to explain the damage. I must tell you of something the Romulans are planning. It’s crucial to any hope of rebuilding the Federation…”
