From: cs_d637@ceres (Paul Neve)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: DwarfTrek - The Beginning
Date: 19 Nov 1992 14:22:06 GMT
Organization: Kingston University
NNTP-Posting-Host: ceres.kingston.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

Here it is, at last!

This first part of the story has been through countless rewrites and suffered
endless modifications...

The delay in posting was because I only recieved one Email message about
posting it, and was about to give up on it when my friend told me that
a load of responses were actually posted to the board (which I must
have missed...)

(C) 1992 Paul Neve. Any similarity between characters herein and real
people is strictly intentional!   (Dr. Drassum, you know who you are!!!!)

Usual disclaimer stuff, etc....

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Captain's Log, stardate 44182.7

We are proceeding at Warp 9 to the Kugos VI scientific colony where 
research is taking place in regards to the creation of artifical worm-holes. 
Starfleet Command recieved a garbled transmission from Dr. Shane Athem, the
otherseer of the colony, approximately an hour ago. He managed to establish
that the colony was under attack; unfortunately, contact was lost before we 
could establish by whom. Since then no further communications have been
recieved with the colony, and the only tranmissions from this area have been 
a strange series of audio tones. It is suspected that the Borg are involved; 
a Ferengi transmission was intercepted by a listening post on the Federation 
border, describing a group of cube-shaped ships passing through the nearby 
Genetia sector and advising ships to avoid the area.
    This information, like any intercepted from Ferengi space would usually
be taken with a pinch of salt at best, but the Borg are never to be taken
lightly. The use of the phrase "cube-shaped ships", plural, disturbs me 
especially.
    Mr LaForge and Mr Data have made extensive modifications to our weapons
since our previous communication with the Borg, but their improvements
remain untested and neither of them can guarantee that they will have any 
effect on the Borg. Mr Data has also written a program that uses the
Enterprise's communication channels to transmit random pulses over the same
subspace domain that the Borg use to communicate, theoretically cutting off
the Borg's collective consciousness. The operative word is "theoretically";
as before, nothing is certain.
    It may be that Kugos VI remains unharmed and that the loss of
communications is a mere technical malfunction. However, if the Borg are
involved, I fear the worst.

***

"Mr. Worf, any changes?"
    "Negative, sir. We are continuing to recieve the same set of audio
tones from the vicinity of the colony, but no coherent transmissions."
    "Analysis of the tones, Mr. Data?"
    "Inconclusive," answered the android. "An unknown source could be
jamming the colony's communications, but if this is correct, they are
using an unknown technique."
    "Mr LaForge, report your status."
    Geordi's voice came up from Engineering.
    "Everything's ready, Captain. The warp engines are ready to transfer
power to the phasers, but I still can't ensure that the capacitors will
be able to take that much power. If it is the Borg, we'll have to take
the risk."
    "The shields?"
    "I can give you a solid energy barrier for around thirty seconds using
Data's new software, but I can't predict how much power I'll need. We could
find ourselves a sitting duck after we've used it."
    "Like you said, Mr LaForge, we'll have to take the risk. Bridge out."
    Picard sat back in the command chair, feeling his apprehension grow
more acute by the second.

***

Athem burst in as the floor quaked under the Borg assault.
    "We've got to get the out of here!" He looked closer at Drassum. 
"What the hell are you doing?" he said. "You've started the tachyon chamber!" 
He swerved quickly to avoid a piece of falling debris, tripping over the 
wreckage of a computer console as he did so.
    Drassum looked up for a second to glance at Athem. He continued to
punch buttons on his console as the attack intensified. As he did so, a
melodic hum began to fill the room, drowning out the sounds of explosions
and weapons fire.
    Athem staggered over to Drassum and peered at the flickering text on
the computer screen. His expression changed to one of horror. "Are you mad?" 
he cried. "You'll kill us all!"
    Drassum pushed Athem away from him. "You don't understand! This is all
I've ever been able to get to work all my life! All my life I've worked on
this, and after years of failed experiments and miscalculated formulae I
finally perfect it, and this happens! Well nobody's going to stop me now!
Not you, not Starfleet, not even the Borg!"
    Athem flew at Drassum, trying to tear him away from the controls.
"Don't you get it?" he screamed at Drassum's face. "Everybody will die!
You'll wipe out everything from here to the Neutral Zone! Don't do it!
We'll all die!"
    "It'll work now, I know it will! This time I've got it right!"
    "Don't be a fool! It's never worked before, why should it now? I'm
telling you, that equation will start a catastrophic chain reaction! Look
at those figures! For once in your life do something right!"
    Drassum pulled away and punched in the final sequence. "That's it!" he
yelled triumphantly. "They'll see! They'll all see now! Mock my research,
did they? I'll show them!"
    The console started to spark and the melodic hum which had been rising
to unbearable levels became a dischordant screeching. Drassum looked on in
amazment.
    "No! It can't be! I did everything right! There's nothing wrong! Why?
Oh, God, WHY?!!"
    He collapsed into a hunched up shape on the floor, sobbing.
    Athem looked aghast as the containment chamber started to vibrate.
The metal was glowing red hot due the intense heat behind it.
    Drassum got up and walked over to the console. He hit it hard, making
a visible dent.
    "Why can't I ever get anything to work?" He punctuated his words with
another thump on the console. "Why won't it work?" Thump. "Oh, please, 
make it work!" Thump. Thump. Thump!
    Athem looked at the man in disgust. He stomped towards Drassum, landed a 
swift uppercut on his chin and ran out of the room.
    The quivering mass that was Drassum remained where it fell.

***

"Captain! Single Borg vessel, firing at the colony!"
    "Visuals." The familiar cube shape appeared on the screen.
    "Mr. LaForge, are you ready yet?"
    "Sorry, Captain," said Geordi. "You'll have to wait a few more minutes,
I'm having trouble recalibrating the shield and phaser neutonals to 
compensate for the power increases..."
    Worf interrupted.
    "Borg vessel has changed the direction of its attack. Now firing at...
Captain, the Borg are firing on a convoy of shuttlecraft!"
    "Hurry it up, Mr. LaForge!" Picard looked at Riker. 
    "Let's give them something to shoot at that fights back," said Riker. 
    "Agreed, Number One. Helm, take us past them at full impulse, then hit 
them with full photon torpedo and antimatter spreads."
    The Enterprise shot past the Borg and let fly with everything it had.
The fireworks that occurred looked very impressive, but the Borg took it
in their stride, and retaliated by unleashing their cutting beam. Picard
was ready.
    "Evasive!" he barked.
    The Enterprise dived sideways, flinging itself clear of the Borg
weapon with mere feet to spare.
    "Missed!" crowed Riker. The Borg cutting beam re-targetted, proving
Riker wrong even as he uttered the word. Picard was almost thrown from
his seat at the Enterprise shook violently. The beam tore right through
the shields and carved a huge gash in the secondary hull.
    "Shields have failed," reported Worf.
    "Geordi, where's that extra phaser power?" asked Riker.
    "It's coming! I'm channelling warp power to the phaser banks... now!"
    Worf watched his console in amazment as the phaser levels climbed to 
impossible levels. He stabbed the controls; a wide beam of energy flickered 
into being between the Borg ship and the Enterprise, engulfing the cube 
shaped vessel in a crackling sphere of energy. The Borg ship shuddered 
visibly.
    "We have breached the Borg's subspace field," reported Data.
    "Hit them again," ordered Picard. "Let's see if we can do some damage."
    Data was just executing the command when the lighting on the bridge
increased to an unbearable insensity. All the controls went dead.
    Then everything went black...

***

At about this time, Kryten was hoping that Starbug's controls would go dead;
after all, a ship with no controls had to be safer than one with Rimmer as 
its pilot.
    "Look Kryten, that asteroid shouldn't have been there, that's all there
is to it. You just can't face being wrong, admit it."
    Kryten considered telling Rimmer exactly what he thought of him, but
decided against in. Mechanoids who use that sort of language never get 
into Silicon Heaven, he thought. He sure was regretting offering to give 
Rimmer flying lessons. It had turned out that Rimmer had never actually 
passed his shuttle piloting test. Upon close examination a large blob 
of Tippex was apparent on Rimmer's Pilot's License, and when this had been 
dissolved it was clear that the word that had been obscured was 
"provisional".
    After a month or so of piss-taking by Lister and the Cat, Kryten had
taken pity on Rimmer and offered to give him lessons. One set of holographic
controls later and Rimmer was in business.
    Or rather, he wasn't. Kryten had actually lost count - no mean feat for
a mechanoid - of how many near misses Starbug had endured with Rimmer at its
holo-controls. He could remember Rimmer narrowly avoiding Red Dwarf itself, 
several gas giants, three stars, two asteroids (this was the third), a 
two mile long Coke can, and a small statue of Elvis Presley, (Rimmer managed 
to find potential targets to collide with that defied sanity) but after this
lot the other mishaps all sort of dissolved into one. Kryten was gradually
losing his patience; another mean feat for a mechanoid.
    "Mr Rimmer, sir, perhaps it would be better if we packed up for today
and continued another time. Mr Lister will be getting worried."
    "Lister getting worried? He wasn't even out of bed when we left." 
    "Well, we did leave at 5 am. I think that's just a teeny bit early."
    "Time waits for no man." Kryten looked confused. "Julius Caesar said 
that, Kryten."
    Kryten was sure he didn't, but failed to see the point in arguing.
Rimmer took his silence as a cue to perform a loop-the-loop, which he
fluffed up miserably, almost smashing into the same asteroid again.
    "Sir, I really must ask you to be more careful!" said Kryten, his face
full of worry.
    "I'm always careful Kryten, you should know that by now."
    "Well, you're doing well for a beginner," said Kryten, not wanting to
hurt Rimmer's feelings, "but if you can't avoid asteroids on your test then
in all likelihood the examiner will fail you."
    "I didn't see it. Anyone can not notice a little bitty asteroid on a
screen. How was I supposed to notice it?"
    "Well sir, how about me shouting 'Mind the asteroid' in your left ear?
Didn't that suggest to you that all was not well?"
    "I didn't hear you."
    "Well, the flashing red alert lights?"
    "What flashing red alart lights?"
    "The loud siren noise and Starbug's navigation system shouting 'alert'?"
    Rimmer looked at the mechanoid through narrowed eyelids. "You're 
jealous!" he exclaimed.
    "I'm sorry, Mr Rimmer?" 
    "You're jealous because I'm a better pilot than you are after just three
lessons."
    Kryten was somewhat taken aback by this. "I don't think that's quite the
case," he spluttered. Not only was Rimmer a slightly worse pilot than Dan
Quayle's grandmother, but they had actually been on 623 lessons. Kryten's 
programming was kicking in now; "don't offend the human, don't offend the 
human," it droned. Kryten wanted to call Rimmer a smeg at unfeasibly loud 
volumes, but that probably came under the category of 'offending the human'.
"I can't be jealous," he said. "After all, I'm a mechanoid."
    "Well Lister's being teaching you how to lie, so how do I know you're
telling the truth?"
    Kryten stuttered incoherently. "Well, sir, er... sir... um... er, sir,"
he declared.
    "What's wrong, Kryten? Got hiccups?" said Rimmer sarcastically, as he 
went back to the controls. Kryten knew that Rimmer had returned to his flying 
without even looking over at him because Starbug started to shudder violently. 
Kryten sat back down, and started to practice saying "smeg". Lister had told 
him to keep practicing, especially when he was with Rimmer. Despite putting in 
many hours' worth of work he still couldn't get it right.
    Starbug started to shake from side to side, meaning that Rimmer was
actually trying to steer the ship in a course other than a straight line.

***

    The lights returned at half strength but only a small number of the
computer displays came back on. The main viewscreen remained black.
    "Damage report, Mr. Data?"
    "Uncertain, Captain. We appear to have been attacked with a precisely
focused subspace pulse, which has neutralised our main computer system. 
I am attempting to compensate using the backup systems."
    "Any other damage, Data?" asked Riker.
    "This is also uncertain, Commander. At the moment I cannot obtain any
accurate data from the computer."
    "What about the Borg? Did they generate the pulse?"
    "Unlikely, sir. They appear to be suffering similar effects to their
systems."
    Data's fingers danced over the controls and the main viewscreen flickered
back into life. The picture was full of static, but it was plain to see that
the Borg were having even more difficulties than the Enterprise. The Borg 
vessel was spinning towards the surface of the planet, hopelessly out of
control.
    "I would hypothesize that the Borg place far more dependence on their
computers than we do; this would explain why they appear to have been
affected more adversely than we have."
    Data's words went unheard as the rest of the bridge looked on in
amazment, watching the Borg spiral ever more out of control.
    "Borg vessel will enter Kugos atmosphere in exactly ten seconds,"
announced Data.
    Before it hit the atmosphere, a strange distortion appeared in the
Borg's path. It crackled with energy, flashing a cascade of swirling colours.
    The Borg vessel span straight into the centre of the distortion. To the
eye, it shrank slowly, then it quickly compressed into a single point, 
vanishing unexpectedly in a burst of blinding light.
    The Enterprise crew maintained an amazed silence for several minutes. It
was Data who, once again, finally broke the silence.
    "Captain, I have achieved limited access to the sensor controls. The
distortion appears to be a worm-hole of some kind, but it is unlike any we
have previously encountered."
    "Have they done it?" asked Riker. "Have the Kugos team actually created
a stable worm-hole?"
    Riker and Picard looked at each other. Both of them remembered at
exactly the same time.
    "The shuttles!" they exclaimed. Riker looked at Data.  "Have you 
got them?"
    "I cannot find the shuttles on any of our operational sensors."
    "Wait!" called out Worf, pointing at the screen. "What's that?!"

***

    "You're not watching, Kryten. You're supposed to tell me my mistakes."
    "Smeeeee... smeeeeeeeeeggggg, smeeeee! Oh, it's no use, I just can't
get it right!"
    "What ARE you talking about? Are you watching me or not?"
    Kryten was lost in concentration and wasn't listening. His whole face
screwed up with the sheer effort he was putting into his work.
    Rimmer quickly swerved to miss a white giant star. Good job Kryten
hadn't seen that, he thought. I can avoid things, if I try!
    In his jubliation at his first major solo success Rimmer completely
failed to miss the big wobbly temporal distortion thingy that had suddenly
appeared and flew smack bang into the middle of it.
    "Er, Kryten?"
    "Smeee, smeeeee.... what have you hit now, sir?"
    "Well... I haven't actually hit it."
    Kryten looked up. He looked at what was going on outside. He looked
over at Rimmer.
    "Well you can't hit something that isn't solid," explained Rimmer.
    "SMEEEEEEEGGGGGG!!!!"
    Suddenly they entered the heart of the big wobbly temporal distortion 
thingy and felt the universe come apart around them and their feet leak out 
of their nostrils.
    Starbug vanished amidst a dazzling array of special effects which would
have been utterly beyond the BBC's budget.


NEXT EPISODE: Lister and the Cat take on the Borg... while Kryten and Data
              discuss nipples!

BE THERE!


Author's note: Please don't tell me that my trick with the phasers can't
be done! I'm not even ATTEMPTING to confirm with Trek canon; it's a
Star Trek/Red Dwarf crossover, for Crissakes
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative