NPC IK "Icarus" XR-7T Maintenance Drone - Quantum Entanglement

[Ras El'Heem]

((POW Prison, Alpha Trionus II))

 

The prison reeked of compromise. Each wing had been sculpted into an approximation of habitat, but that approximation stank of failure. Nothing fit right. Nothing worked as it should.

 

The Sheliak were held in chambers thick with humidity, vents coughing mist like sick lungs. The air was hot enough to blister the throat and so wet that rivulets streamed down the seams of the duranium plating and pooled in oily puddles at their feet. Their skin, if you could call it that, glistened with a tarry sheen and their folds of silicone based flesh were slick and steaming in the manufactured swelter. When they spoke, it reverberated through the bulkheads sounding more tectonic than audible and would sometimes make the loose bolts in the walls rattle.

 

Across the corridor, the Tholians endured their own mockery of a world. Their chambers pulsed with thermal radiation, and the heat was so intense it could peel human skin. Their crystalline bodies glittered like raw ore, polished instead of mined. When they moved, they moved with precision. Their limbs clattered against the scorch deck plating in brittle percussion like crabs scuttling out of the open. The heat gave off the stink of burning circuitry and the constant stench of char clung to every guard’s uniform in the facility. Patrols who had the misfortune of being placed on the Tholian perimeter quickly learned not to breathe through their noses.

 

Between the two wings that designated the prison as Lattice exclusive, were federation standard corridors, although the condition they found themselves in now, were far from standard. Long arteries of rat and metal fatigue. It was difficult to build anything that lasted long oscillating between the two extreme environments. The plating peeled where hands picked at it during long shifts. Coolant leaks collected in corners, staining the air with sickly sweet sharpness. Rust bled down the walls like old wounds. Even the environmental controls were suspect; every breath tasted of sweat cycled too many times through lungs and scrubbers alike.

 

Guards patrolled in silence with phaser rifles that acted more as props than actual means of enforcing power. Here, power was projected through neglect. The Federation could call this place humane. Necessary even. But the truth was here in the damp walls, the broken lamps, and the smell. Alpha Trionus II was where Starfleet hid things it didn’t want to remember or rather, wanted to forget.

 

Overhead, one of hundreds of maintenance drones swept its circuit, completing its hundreds of routine tasks and checks. Its repulsors whined with insectile constancy like a mosquito lodged forever in the ear. The prisoners and guards alike had grown used to it. Some had even grown fond of this particular drone whose body was marred by an environmental breach which resulted in a torrent of super-heated atmosphere clipping its wings. Icarus, 3rd shift patrol One-Eleven called it. Even after repairs, its lens clouded eye mindlessly watched over them from above. Duty that never blinked.

 

However, there are exceptions.

 

For half a heartbeat, quicker even, Icarus stuttered mid-flight. Caught in a shimmer no one could see. Inside its quantum core, a quark entangled with its twin in the Lagoon Nebula slipped into its alternate state.

 

A one became a zero. An insignificant change, really. Causality suffering a hiccup from a timeline tampered with, nothing to be concerned about.

 

A maintenance order marked itself complete. The battery relay for the prison shielding had been on the fritz, dropping harmonics and even losing shielding altogether for minutes at a time. And now the system believed the work to be done. It wouldn’t need to be touched again for at least a cycle. If a overachieving but overworked guard noticed the vulnerability, it would be weeks before a work order was dispatched.

 

Icarus steadied after a few short moments of a wobble. Its repulsors returned to their typical whine and its eye burned red again before it floated on, humming its endless route as though nothing had changed.

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IK “Icarus” XR-7T

Maintenance Drone

Assigned to Penal Camp Alpha Trionus II

 

Written by

 

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Lieutenant Ras El’Heem

Science Officer

USS Khitomer (NCC-62400)

K240106RE3