KnightofTempest
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Chapter 37
🕑 Added 2024-10-10 05:06:32 +0000 UTCWhen I arrived on Star Trek Earth, I did so in the middle of what seemed to be a bunker Bunker or underground cavern of some time, I wasn't sure which because of the fact that I couldn't see. The air in here was stale, dry, and carried a musty, leathery smell with it. I didn't hear anything, nothing crawling around in the dark, no water dripping down from the ceiling, no machinery trying to work, nothing. Nor could I see anything, as the area was pitch dark. The only way for me to see was by casting a globe of illusory light, so that's what I did.
A twist of mystic power and a mystical incantation sent a globe of light up into the air above me, illuminating the area in a soft, blue, light. I was in a bunker, all right. The place looked completely rundown, worse even than the one under the Belovo Fortress had been. If that bunker had been wrecked up, this one had been wrecked up and left to rot for a long time. As I looked down, I saw the remains of a corpse in a military uniform. The dry, stale, air had mummified the corpse, leaving parchment line skin stretched over bones.
The uniform wasn't one I recognized, though it bore some similarities to USMC MARPAT Camouflage from the Two-Thousands back on my original Earth. The national insignia wasn't one I recognized, though, a Black Raven on Blue. Likewise, the armored vest seemed to be more than just the standard Kevlar with a plate carrier, having some sort of odd-looking fiber plus ceramic plates. The weapon clutched in the Mummy's skeletal hands was also odd. A crude, boxy, thing that looked like some sort of laser rifle.
Fortunately, my powers of Comprehension gained from Amestrian Alchemy allowed me to figure out what this all was and how it worked pretty quickly. The composite body armor combined a type of carbon nanofiber and ablative ceramics to provide excellent all-around protection against bullets, blades, shrapnel, and laser weaponry. Meanwhile, the Laser Rifle used a Microwave Emission that likely wouldn't do much of anything even in Kirk's Time. It was debatable whether or not it would even be useful to Symkaria against Doom on Earth Six-One-Six as well. Hydra and AIM were currently making better lasers, to say nothing of SHIELD. The Armor would be a lot more useful to the Symakarians.
I still put both in my Bag of Holding. Who knew? Maybe I could improve on the designs later. Then I looked around the rest of the room, which judging from the dilapidated bunks and rusty footlocker had been some kind of barracks. What I found was a similar sort of situation more of these oddly-attired mummies lay scattered about the Barracks in varying poses, many having been sleeping in their bunks at the time. In the footlockers, I found several similar weapons along with similar equipment on the few people not to have been killed in their bunks.
A few had more novel equipment, a low-yield Plasma Grenade that could likely deal with an IFV or Scout Car but nothing that could handle any of the tanks or Warbots that Doom put out, an EMP Grenade that might fry a Servo Guard or two if they were clustered next to each other, a monomolecular combat knife that'd cut through stab-proof vests and other modern body armor. At least one had some sort of odd multitool that looked to be something that could be used to hack into older-style computers, honestly, it looked like the sort of thing that John Connor used to hack into the ATM in Terminator Two. I very much doubted it would work against the sort of computers Doom built. One seemed to have a coil pistol in his footlocker that might do some damage to a Servo Guard, more so than a normal chemically-propelled slug anyway.
Honestly, for the most part, it was all stuff that seemed geared to fight against a late-twentieth, early-twenty-first-century army. Certainly, nothing that would work against Starfleet's Phasers and deflector shields and it was debatable whether it would be of much use against Doom's more advanced forces like his Doombots, which were a cut or three above the basic Servo Guards. It all went into the Bag of Holding anyway, just in case they could be improved on. Honestly, this didn't seem like something you'd find on Twenty-Fourth Century Star Trek Earth. Had I missed my mark somehow? If I had, how could I figure out where I was? Looking
I spotted a darkened, dusty, photograph in a broken frame against one wall. The label on it was in faded Cyrillic and the picture was dusty and worn, but it showed a Muscular Man in a Military Dress Uniform with all sorts of fancy medals and gold braid on his epaulets, standing in front of another of those odd Black Raven on Blue Field Banners, with a drooping mustache, eyepatch over his left eye, and notably bushy eyebrows. The Faded Cyrillic label proclaimed that this was Marshal Vasily Hunyadi, Ruler of Greater Serbia and Conquerer of the Balkans.
I frowned, that name didn't ring a bell, but it did lead to more questions. I had to find some sort of archive. I exited out of the Barracks and wandered through the base. I was just lucky I knew enough Serbian to find my way around because if I didn't, or couldn't translate the Cyrillic Characters, I'd have been screwed. As I did, I passed more mummified troops, many of whom seemed to slump against the wall, dead.
As I explored the base, I began to put together an inkling of what had happened. This was a Pre-World-War-Three Underground Base that seemed to have had its exits caved in an attack and the members of the garrison who hadn't been killed had starved to death after their food had run out. The stop by the mess revealed the dire state of the food supply when looking in the kitchen revealed all empty tins and no full ones. The remainder of the Garrison all seemed to have died in the middle of their routines.
The Armory had been completely locked down, with only a very few people allowed to access it and hand out weapons. I found that out by using the contraband hacking tool to access the Armory's computers, which I managed after rebooting the emergency generator, a small fission reactor that thankfully hadn't sustained damage in the attack and had been successfully powered down by the last group still living. Once I had power to the computers, it was just a matter of accessing the systems, which I had the device to do from the barracks.
Mind you, the armory was a lot more of the same, crude laser weapons and basic coilguns with a few more useful things like the EMP or Plasma Grenades thrown in. I did see one sneaksuit of thermoelectric alloy that used the Peltier–Seebeck Effect to cloak the wearer from IR Sensors and Cameras, allowing better infiltration, but it was a bulky thing more akin to an old-timey diving suit than a modern form of body armor. It still went into the bag of holding, but Doom had other ways of finding cloaked enemies than Infrared Detection and Cameras. Aside from that, I picked up a pistol version of the Laser Rifle and a rifle version of the Coil Pistol, along with one other Grenade that was some sort of acid grenade that could burn through a Servo-Guard and maybe damage one of the less powerful Doombots.
Next, I found the commander, slumped over his desk, half of his head missing, and with a laser pistol on the floor at the foot of his desk. No guesses what happened here. His terminal, however, was still working, and as soon as I powered it on and hacked into it with the Contraband Hacking Device, I was able to get the full picture of where I was and what had happened.
This was the Coordinating Bunker of the Zmaj Redoubt of the Balkan Empire of Vasily Hunyadi, an Augment who controlled vast swathes of the Balkans during the Early Eugenics Wars. The Entire Former Yugoslavia except for Slovenia, which had broken away from Yugoslavia during the Great Civil War of nineteen-ninety that had ended when Hunyadi took over, plus Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Romania had belonged to the Balkan Empire of Hunyadi.
It seemed that in Nineteen-Ninety-Four, his chief rivals among the non-Augments, NATO and the Visegrad Alliance, which comprised Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Ukraine launched a multi-pronged military assault on the Balkan Empire in the wake of the assassination of Marshal Hunyadi aimed at rolling back the Augments. Air strikes on the Coordinating Bunker of the Zmaj Redoubt in Vojvodina while Hunyadi's Forces were reeling from his death effectively cut off command and control to the entire Zmaj Redoubt, an area of fortresses in Vojvodina that Guarded the Approaches to Novi Sad.
More importantly, even after the Coordinating Bunker restored comms, the blast from the air strikes had fused the bunker doors shut. Even though they could communicate, the Augments couldn't leave or bring in supplies. The Augments monitored the situation as they ate through their remaining food. They saw the Eugenics Wars develop and ultimately end after another four years of fighting.
Hunyadi had fallen and his Empire only lasted a year after his death, but Ericsson was still holding on in Scandinavia, Amin Held on in the Horn of Africa from his Capital in Addis Ababa, While Karamazov still held power in Belarus and had control of large parts of European Russia. Gomez still had his new Incan Empire in Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Bolivia, and Chile, while Al-Hosni still had his Caliphate in the Middle East that stretched from Libya in the West down to Yemen and East to Oman before stopping just short of the Turkish Border in the North. Finally, Chen Tiejun still held out in Taiwan, the Ryukyus, and the Philippines. Meanwhile, Khan still held vast Swathes of South and Central Asia.
Unfortunately for the Augments, they had angered the rest of the world by trying to conquer it. Many were guilty of ethnic cleansing, such as Al-Hosni and Hunyadi, who engineered the Genocide of Lebanese Christians and Muslim Kosovars respectively, others such as Chen Tiejun and Karamazov ran police states that would even make Baron Strucker sit back and tell them to take it easy. Still others, like Gomez and Ericsson seemed insane, with Gomez trying to do everything he could to resurrect an Empire dead for centuries up to and including making Quechua the official language of his Empire and banning Catholicism in favor of a reconstructed Incan Religion, while Ericsson built a cult of personality that would make the Kims of North Korea jealous.
Then there was the fact that all were heavily expansionistic, the most virulent of which was Amin who just would not leave his neighbors alone, even after consolidating control of the entire horn of Africa he mounted campaigns into Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and even across the sea into Yemen, controlled by Al-Hosni every year brought multiple campaigns for him. He also was a Dictator with a decent-sized police state and brutally suppressed the Ethiopian Christians in favor of Somalis and other Muslim populations.
Amin wasn't alone in foreign adventurism, however, as Invasions of Japan, Both Koreas, Vietnam, Khabarovsk and Primorsky Krais, along with Sakhalin Island in Russia, and two separate invasions of Mainland China were attempted by Chen Tiejun, with some success, while Karamazov invaded Russia and Ukraine from Belarus, forcing Ukraine to join the Visegrad Alliance, though he did see some success in Russia before the end. Meanwhile, Al-Hosni attempted an invasion of Turkey and Iran, along with attempting a Counterinvasion of Amin's realm in the Horn of Africa, while Ericsson Conquered Estonia and Iceland as well as seized Kaliningrad while Russia was distracted with Karamazov. Both Hunyadi and Gomez had conquered vast territories after only seizing control initially in a single one, that being Yugoslavia and Peru respectively.
Of these augments, only Khan seemed at least somewhat benevolent, though even he preferred to place his Augment Followers in positions of authority over the baseline humans and was still something of a Warmonger, taking control initially of India and Pakistan before conquering a vast swathe of territory consisting of, aside from India and Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and seizing control of Xinjiang and Tibet from China whilst they were distracted repelling Chen Tiejun's invasion of Southern China as well as Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tyumen, Kurgan, Cyelablisnk, and Orenburg Oblasts, along with Altai Krai from Russia while they repelled the Cloned Hordes of Karamazov. He may have been better for those he ruled than the other Augments, but he was no less a warmonger or tyrant.
In response, the rest of the world formed a united front against the Augments for the first and only time prior to World War Three. The Records showed the Russians reclaiming territory lost to Karamazov and Khan, Ericsson, Karamazov, and Hunyadi being defeated by joint operations between the Visegrad Alliance and NATO, China beating back the invasion of Chen Tiejun's Amazonians through extreme firepower, a bioweapon striking Amin and Al-Hosni that specifically targetted Augment DNA, a similar attack defeating Gomez, and a grinding advance against Chen Tienjun and Khan's Holdouts after they had wised up to the Bioweapon Attacks by the United Nations.
Khan was the last holdout but disappeared off the face of the Earth just before his final stronghold in the Deccan Plateau near Hyderabad was occupied. The food in the Bunker lasted for two years afterward, finally running out a few days after New Year's Day of the Year Two-Thousand-One. At that time, the base, through the comms unit, saw the breakout of a new Cold War. The Russian Federation hadn't survived the multiple invasions in the east, south, and west and had to be reforged into a New Soviet Union to beat back the assaults. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party successfully spun the multiple invasions from Chen Tiejun as invasions from Anti-Revolutionary Taiwan. The New Soviet Union and China also received new territories from defeated foes, with China Absorbing North Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, while the Soviets absorbed Belarus, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
Both were spited by the Japanese, who seized control of Sakhalin Island and the Kurils in the fighting against Chen Tiejun and sent reinforcements to South Korea, along with the Americans, to bolster them against a potential Chinese takeover. If that weren't enough, Kaliningrad, Estonia, Romania, Croatia, Bosnia, and Moldova joined the Visegrad Alliance, expanding a power bloc that was Anti-Soviet and was sitting on what the Soviets viewed as rightful territory in Ukraine and Kaliningrad, while the Americans had ensured that Tibet gained independence in the peace that followed the Eugenics Wars. At the same time, new governments arose in Pakistan and Bangladesh that were pro-Iranian and Pro-Chinese respectively.
By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Eastern Coalition had formed and consisted of the Soviet Union, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Indonesia. They were joined by the African Federation, which consisted of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Tanzania, Eritrea, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, and Chad, who had banded together in the year two-thousand against what it saw as predatory actions by the West to attempt to seize resource-rich areas for commercial gain in a bout of economic imperialism. They were juxtaposed against NATO and the Visegrad Alliance in the West, and the East Asian Security Treaty, or EAST, in the East, which consisted of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.
The stage was set for a new world war, not that anyone in the Base lived to see it, with the last of the troops in here, the commander, shooting himself in the head with a laser pistol two weeks after the last of the food ran out. I knew from metaknowledge that several brush wars in the twenty-thirties and twenty-forties would eventually lead to an all-out war between the two alliance systems in twenty-fifty that would only end in twenty-fifty-three with massive nuclear strikes on strategic targets in each of the blocs of both alliance systems as the war slipped from being a conventional one entirely.
While this was all fascinating and did a great deal to let me know where I'd wound up, it did nothing to get me to my desired location. Fortunately, with Apparition, I only had to visualize a place to be able to apparate there, and though trying to apparate to another continent was beyond me, Paris was just about doable from where I was in the Balkans. I spent some time looting the base, including the base library, which was full of a bunch of books, movies, and music, on the assumption that I could use rare, Pre-World War Three Media, to barter with. Even if the Federation had everyone on the Dole in the Core, I knew they issued energy credits for trade purposes, as places like Joeseph Sisko's restaurant and the antiques shops and cafes Picard visited on leave were things. That meant that there was an optional economy you could participate in using energy credits in the core, and I'd need to do that if I was going to grab any novel tech.
Then, with an effort of will, magic, and visualization, I cast apparition, aiming for the Café des Artistes in Paris. It was unfortunate that as I reappeared, I did so right inside the office of the Federation President which was across the street from the Café des Artistes. Currently, there was no one in here, but that didn't last. Almost as soon as I arrived, an alarm was tripped and forcefields snapped into place at the doors and windows.
Moments later, a group of seven yellow-uniformed men with the TV Remote-Style Hand Phasers of Early TNG out and ready to fire beamed into the Office. I sighed, holding up my hands in the usual gesture of surrender, as the leader of the Group, a familiar-looking, dark-skinned, Vulcan stepped forward.
"Umm, I come in peace?" I offered.
"I am Lieutenant Tuvok of Vulcan, state your name and intentions with President Amitra." Demanded the familiar-looking Vulcan.
"I am Jan Kowalski and believe it or not, this was an accident. I meant to apparate to the Café des Artistes across the street. It seems my lack of mastery of that particular skill is causing me even more trouble than it normally is." I admitted.
"I am unfamiliar with the term Apparate. I will have to take you into custody, you may explain at the Security Lockup." Intoned Tuvok.
I frowned at that, getting Tuvok was a problem. The man was a stickler for the rules and regulations, especially at this point in his career, pre-Voyager. You'd think that having served with Sulu aboard the Excelsior would have taught him to loosen up, but apparently, it required a stint being stranded in the ass-end of the galaxy for seven years to do that. If I told him that there was an entire shadow organization hidden within Starfleet that would jump at the chance to disappear someone with my abilities, he'd still take me into security to be disappeared. It didn't matter that such an organization actually existed in the form of Section Thirty-One, rules were rules, and not following them was illogical. I didn't have a whole lot of choice here.
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Lieutenant." I sighed.
"You do not appear to be in a position to attempt otherwise. We have you outnumbered seven-to-one and you do not appear to be armed. Surrender is the only logical option in your position." Retorted Tuvok.
"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your Philosophy, Lieutenant." I grinned.
"Quoting Shakespeare? I am afraid I do not understand." Frowned Tuvok.
"You will." I smirked.
"Enough. Set phasers to stun and open fire." Commanded Tuvok.
The security team opened fire, hand phasers set to stun firing orange beams at me. An arcane gesture and a mystic syllable, however, saw a mystic shield snap into place around me, intercepting the phaser beams. Stun beams like that wouldn't punch through my mystic shield, they didn't have enough power to do so. As I stretched my hand out, I called on the power of Ferromancy to short-circuit the force fields on the nearby window. The force field cut out, and reached out to telekinetically snatch the group's hand phasers out of their hands with the Force. As the phasers were ripped out of their grasp, a number of wandless, wordless, stupefy charms lanced out at the security team. Six of them were hit and knocked unconscious. Tuvok managed to dodge.
Tuvok however, had long since dropped his hand phaser and pulled out his tricorder, attempting to scan my powers. I couldn't help but grin as his frown deepened as his attempt to make logical sense of what had just happened was failing. It didn't even seem like he was that worried about his security team, though likely the fact that they were still breathing and merely unconscious helped there. Now that I thought about it, Stupefy wasn't that different from a phaser beam on stun. Funny how things work out sometimes.
"I do not understand. You show no abnormal brainwaves, no exotic energy readings, nothing. You do not appear to be utilizing any technology to do this, or if you are it is so advanced as to be invisible to our scanners. How are you doing this?" Demanded Tuvok.
"Magic." I grinned.
"That is illogical. Magic is merely a superstitious term for phenomena that we do not yet understand. Explain how you are doing this, and perhaps I will be able to understand." Insisted Tuvok.
"It's Magic Lieutenant, I don't have to explain it." I chuckled.
Then, I took three steps toward the now un-shielded window and flung myself out of it. The President of the Federation's Office was high up on the Presidential Palace, enough so that any normal human, or even an augment or species with redundant biology like a Klingon or Nausicaan, who flung themselves from this height would die on impact with the ground below. My own magically infused, superhuman, physiology could take it, but I wanted to keep that in my back pocket for now.
Instead, I visualized Sandrine's Bar in Marseille France, and once more dug up mystic power from my own internal reserves. This time, when I apparated, I wound up in an alley across the street from my destination. Just in case, I cast a glamour over my features, changing my appearance from my normal, Tom Hardy-like, looks, to something else. As I caught my reflection in the window of a nearby shop, the visage of a Two-Thousands James Purefoy stared back at me, right around the time he'd been filming Rome.
"Perfect." I grinned as I headed across the street to Sandrine's Bar.
I needed directions after all, and what better place to get them than a bar? Especially one that had been routinely frequented by a young Tom Paris. That was an interesting question, though. When did Tom Paris graduate from Starfleet Academy and get posted to the Exeter? It was in the twenty-three-sixties but when in the twenty-three-sixties. Could I run into him here? Would that be an issue?
Fortunately, as I entered Sandrine's there was no Tom Paris in sight, allowing me to conduct my business without fielding any inconvenient questions. I soon had directions to a number of places that might trade energy credits for rare media, along with various places that I could purchase older and obscure tech from. Apparently, there was a Ferengi Junk Dealer in the La Joliette neighborhood of the Second Arrondissement. With that, I made my way out of Sandrine's Bar, having apparently given Starfleet Security the slip.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't be the last I would see of Lieutenant Tuvok during this sojourn to Star Trek Earth. . .
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AN: So yeah, Jan's trip to Star Trek Earth doesn't start as well as it could have. First, he winds up in a centuries-old bunker from the Eugenics Wars, and then his problems with accurate apparition caused him to materialize right in the Presidential Office in Paris when he was aiming for the Cafe across the street. That tripped the alarms and he got held up by Starfleet Security, including Tuvok of Voyager Fame, who was currently posted to Starfleet Security on Earth after his latest stint at the Academy as a drill instructor.
It's actually an interesting time as multiple members of multiple casts are currently on Earth. Crusher is at Starfleet Medical, Tom Paris is in his last year of the Academy, Tuvok is with Security, as we've already seen, and Jadzia Dax is currently on Earth working after successfully completing the Trill Initiate Program where she'll run into Captain Keogh of the Oddysey in spacedock. Jan will only meet some of these characters before planeswalking back to Marvel.
He's already met Tuvok, who isn't the type to let being shown up by an illogical being with illogical powers stop him. Expect Tuvok to effectively be the one trying to track Jan down during his trip here and expect at least one more confrontation.
At any rate, the next chapter will be Jan actually meeting with the Ferengi Junk Dealer and trying to get ahold of tech that can be reverse-engineered by the Symkarians on Earth Six-One-Six.
Stay tuned. . .
