Vice Admiral Quinn Reynolds - Frankenlena
Quinn Reynolds
((Vortex, Neon Heights, Nassau))
It was a strange thing, talking to the ghost of a dead man. Of course, Kael wasn’t dead in this timeline, but in her own, Quinn had lost and grieved him. She spent most of the conversation trying not to think about how restoring their timeline would mean losing him all over again, trying to convince herself that this wasn’t her Kael.
But he looked like him, talked like him, smiled like him. The same kindness was in his eyes, albeit coloured by an existential weariness. It was hard to concentrate on what he was saying, and she’d let Sami and Jo do most of the talking.
Quinn glanced up at the mezzanine, then back toward Kael. It was like a growing itch, the desire to be somewhere he wasn’t, to put his face out of her mind. If such a thing was possible. With lines of investigation they could pursue, it seemed like a good time to make an exit. She had a feeling that the respite was hardly going to qualify; in the absence of Kael’s presence, there were plenty of other things to weigh on her shoulders.
Reynolds: Alright. It seems like we have the beginnings of a plan, at least. We can speak with Lena, then head back to the ship.
Kael looked at her for a moment, and then nodded. He turned his gaze toward the former Borg watching them from the second floor, and beckoned her down. Lena stepped back, vanishing back into the shadows, and Quinn assumed she was on her way down.
Reynolds: ::She looked to Sami and Jo.:: Is there anything else we should ask in the meantime?
Jo lifted her mug, looking around the room as thoughts whirred behind her blue eyes. Sami’s attention, on the other hand, was focused on the empty bottles behind the bar. Almost as if she hoped she could will them into filling, instead of sitting there dusty and empty. A sentiment Quinn agreed wholeheartedly with—and that frightened her.
Marshall: We know the Borg operate on a centralised network model, and while that makes them formidable, it also creates potential chokepoints—areas where we can exploit their system. We need to gather intel on their data flow and how they manage communications. Each drone we've got stored in our morgue might have clues on how they accessed and transmitted data. We can trace their pathways, identify where the signal strengths fluctuate, and deduce where their security might be less stringent.
Neathler: Lena might be able to help there.
Quinn nodded in agreement. At the least, the former Borg might tell them where to look for the information they needed, instead of leaving them to strategic searches or best guesses. She wondered whether they needed to organise meetings where there wasn’t a chance Bear Marshall would see them coming and going—and therefore the state of his wife in this universe—or if she should simply get on with it, knowing that this was not a permanent situation for Josett.
Marshall: Before we depart to poke the galaxy’s most unpleasant hornet’s nest, we need a proper inventory of our equipment here on Nassau. Every piece of tech salvaged, every scrap of data on hand. If there’s anything that even remotely resembles a Borg signal scrambler, it needs to be at the top of the list.
Neathler: ::She looked toward Tam.:: The pulse that disabled the drones. Would it be wise to use it, or do we want to keep that as a last resort?
Tam: I wouldn’t count on it working again. ::He shook his head.:: We’ve been holding that trick in reserve for years, because we knew they would probably adapt as soon as we deployed it.
A sound whirred in the background, some kind of lift platform in motion. It started Sami, who whipped around in her chair to look, and Jo threw a glance over her shoulder in anticipation. Presumably Lena, but Sami seemed to double-check with a look toward the stairs, making sure the hybrid ex-Borg wasn’t coming at them from that direction. Quinn took a slow inhale as this was going on, steeling herself for meeting the woman in this timeline’s state.
Neathler: The Borg might be on the lookout for the Gorkon the minute we leave Ma no Umi. ::She turned towards Quinn and Jo.:: Maybe we should take the opportunity to disguise it as a less new ship?
Reynolds: I don’t think it’s that the Gorkon is new, so much that it shouldn’t exist. The Sovereign-class had only just entered development when the Enterprise first encountered the Borg, and they might not have even launched the prototype in this timeline. We stick out, because we inherently don’t belong. ::She exhaled a breath, thinking.:: We might be able to do something about our signature on long-range senses, but beyond that we’ll have a hard time hiding who we are.
Marshall:: Response
Neathler: Any chance of your ships creating a decoy of some kind to draw away the attention from us when we leave?
Marshall: Response
Josett: They’d have to be interested in our ships for a decoy to work. Which they’re not. ::She gave a lopsided grin.:: What we could do is risk blowing one of ours up by having them cuddle right up and extend their cloaking field around you.
Neathler’s gaze shifted from Tam to the woman approaching them. Familiar curls tumbled across her shoulder—but just the one shoulder. A dark plate capped the left side of her skull, the light sliding across the oil-like metal the Borg used. More Borg hardware framed her right eye, ran along the fingers of her right hand, and no doubt there was more under the rugged clothing she wore.
Frankenlena.
Quinn forced herself to remain in neutral gear, while Sami looked at Lena for a moment, then averted her gaze and nodded a greeting. The reaction only seemed to amuse, and Quinn wondered if the hybrid had placed silent bets on it happening, or deploying said amusement for armour.
Neathler: Can and are you willing to help us?
Josett: Think I just did. ::She shot a sly look toward Kael.:: Assuming the boss signs off on it.
Kael blew out a sigh, grimacing. The Nassau survivors had already risked themselves once to help the Gorkon, and apparently sacrificed their drone-disabling trick to do it. She couldn’t imagine the prospect of losing any of their ships, but perhaps particularly one of their cloaked ships, was an appealing one. But if this Kael was anything like her Kael, that was a grimace of reluctant acceptance and not refusal.
Tam: I’ll speak to the captains of our cloaking ships. I think you’ll likely get a yes from the Klingons.
Josett: Any opportunity to stick it to the Borg. ::She snorted a dark laugh.:: And they won’t care that they’ll be setting themselves up to be wiped from existence. As long as there’s a chance for glory somewhere in it.
Neathler / Marshall: Response
Jamming her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket—evidently a look she favoured here as much as in the proper timeline—Lena parked herself in a chair, stretching out her legs and crossing them at booted ankles. Perhaps she hadn’t been a Borg long enough to lose her cocksure demeanour, though how it had come about in the timeline was a curiosity. There couldn’t have been a Dominion War here; even if Starfleet had discovered the Bajoran Wormhole, the Federation was gone long before hostilities could have erupted.
Josett: People will bitch and moan whatever you do. ::She shrugged.:: That’s what you’re fighting for, isn’t it? A universe where people are free to yell at you how wrong you are, instead of having agreement imposed by the hive.
Neathler / Marshall: Response
Josett: Neathler, right? ::She pulled a cybernetic-gilded hand from her pocket and gestured to the empty bank of bottles behind the bar.:: You want something to drink? You’ve been eyeing those like you’re lost in Vulcan’s Forge..
Neathler / Marshall: Response
Commanding Officer
USS Gorkon
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