Arguing with myself...

Posted on Thu Oct 13th, 2011 @ 7:59pm by Captain Nathan Cowell MD & Lieutenant Colonel Anastasia DeVries

Mission: Tomorrow's Arizona
Location: Various
Timeline: Directly following 'Mirror Mirror...'

[Transporter Room One, USS Arizona]

The transporter hummed to life as the Arizona received the pattern of inbound personnel from the Federation vessel of the time period the ship had entered into. Chief Petty Officer Ascott Merriweather stood at the controls, overseeing the transfer protocol to ensure that the transfer from 27th century transporter technology to 24th century technology was a smooth one. As the figure coalesced into a solid form, Chief Merriweather nearly fainted. He'd assumed the Commodore was on the bridge, not on the other ship. It wasn't until he actually looked at the man's uniform that he realized the Cowell standing on the transporter pad wasn't his Cowell.

"Welcome aboard, sir..." Merriweather said tentatively, not entirely sure if it was the right thing to see.

"Ascott, you sight for old eyes. How the hell are you? I haven't seen you in... centuries! You're looking good for a corpse," the man said with a smirk.

"Begging the Commodore's pardon, but I'm not dead..." Merriweather piped up.

"You're absolutely right, my boy... You're very much alive since you're from the past. But in my time, you're long dead... And I'm a Captain, not a Commodore," Nathan said, indicating the four solid gold devices on his collar.

"Ah..." Ascott said with a raise of his eyebrow, "I stand corrected, Captain."

"You do that, I'm going to head on to the bridge. But it was nice seeing you in the flesh, Mister Merriweather. Keep up the good work," Captain Cowell said as he strolled out of the transporter room. This left the transporter chief to wonder just what, exactly, had just transpired.

[Bridge, USS Arizona]

Captain Cowell stepped onto the bridge of the Arizona and looked around, a wave of nostalgia washing over him as he took in sights and sounds he hadn't taken in for nearly as long as he hadn't seen the Chief. The faces on the bridge were familiar to him, though some of the lower ranking officers and many of the enlisted escaped his recollection. One face that stood out, and rightly so, was that of Lieutenant Colonel Anastasia DeVries. She looked particularly lively as she sat at her station, owing mostly to the fact that she too wasn't a corpse anymore... or at all depending on which point of view one was looking at things from.

"Colonel, looking lovely as always," Nathan said with a smirk as he approached the central area of the bridge. The rest of the staff, already somewhat prepared for the arrival of another Cowell, didn't seem nearly as shocked as Merriweather had been. Still, it wasn't every day that two of the same person came strolling onto a ship's bridge.

However, in the case of Stace S. DeVries this was all too familiar territory. Having had the pleasure of meeting many duplicates of herself over the years she was not envying Cowbell at all but secretly cheered that for once it wasn't her having to deal with the mess. "Damn right," she retorted to the older version of her Captain Crusty. "Now, who else do you have hiding up the proverbial sleeve? I've experienced this enough to know there's got to be more."

Nathan looked around the bridge and settled on Lt. Cmdr. Aix, who looked rather uncomfortable under the ancient gaze of the nearly one thousand year old man, "Well, I do have an Aix running around... but mine has a much better body... And she happens to be a woman now."

The old man chuckled as Aral balked at the connotation behind the Captain's words. Shaking his head, Nathan turned back to DeVries, "So where's the younger me at? Napping in his Ready Room?"

"More than likely," the woman nodded. "And you're still wearing that hideous plaid. Hopefully the older you has wised up about it."

"Look here, young lady... plaid is comfortable and warm as hell. Wait until your blood thins out a little, you'll see what I mean. Now come on, let's go wake the youngin' up and see what we can do about getting a handle on what's going on here. I'd love to know why you have some Borg flanking this ship... among other things..." Nathan said as he moved toward the rear of the bridge.

Stace smirked at the remark. "And I'd like to know who's actually running what's left of the Federation... Captain."

As the two entered the Ready Room, Nathan chuckled as he found his younger self doing exactly as he had predicted, sleeping. The dilemma suddenly presented itself. While the Cowell from the current age was far older and even more experienced than his 24th century counterpart, the man technically outranked his future self. Had Captain Cowell cared much for such trivial things as rank, he might have let his younger self sleep a bit more. He was not, however, overly hung up on it...

"Wake up, you puss..." Captain Cowell berated himself as he slapped the younger man's legs off the desk. Commodore Cowell sneered at his older self as he straightened himself out and took in the two people standing before him.

"Bite me, prick..." Nathan grumbled at his older self as he stretched his neck out a bit, "So, take a seat, stay a while, tell me how the Federation is doing these days."

As the older man sat down, he chuckled at the question, "Mrs. DeVries asked me the very same question. Hate to break it to you guys, but there is no Federation... not as such. It was dissolved by Starfleet about a hundred and fifty years ago when we couldn't fend off the attackers and still agree on how we should do it. Martial law was declared by some Admiral, can't even remember his name, and from there, the Federation was absorbed into Starfleet... most people in what used to be the Federation are now living on starships... granted, we're not half the numbers we once were, and when the Romulans and Klingons were crushed by the advances of 8472 about a century ago, we absorbed them into our fleets as well. The only ones that didn't like the idea of working together with us were the Breen, and they're extinct now thanks to their unwillingness to adapt."

The old man paused and gave his counterpart a meaningful look, "How did you convince the Borg to adapt to being subservient to you?"

"I didn't..." Commodore Cowell said bluntly, "They offered us the alliance when we entered the Archadian system and found their Unimatrix. I guess they're trying a new tactic... hell, they have their own cloning vats now, so I reckon they're already past assimilation."

"There's not much out there to assimilate..." the older Cowell said dryly.

"Good point..." the younger man agreed, "But the fact remains, we've forged an alliance but we still don't have the means to go on the offensive."

"And you thought we could help you?" Capt. Cowell chuckled, "Sorry to disappoint... myself... but we're in no better condition to put on an assault than you are. Your shields most likely are impressive since you've gotten help from the Borg. We could use a few tips in that area to be honest. But offensively, we can't pack much of a punch. One scout vessel? Sure, we've got you covered. An armada... might as well bend over and kiss your ass good-bye. The only vessel I know of that could do the job, we can't get to..."

Commodore Cowell perked up at hearing that there was indeed something that could be used against them, "Where is it?"

"An abandoned shipyard that wasn't totally destroyed. The actual yard is in a hollowed out asteroid, which makes for perfect cover since the engines and what have you weren't online when the yard was attacked about a hundred years ago. Starfleet Command was pretty pissed when we lost the yard too..." Nathan explained before stopping to take stock of just where the line of questioning was headed, "You're thinking about going after it, aren't you?!"

"Damn right!" Nathan said, slamming his fist against the table, "I'll be damned if I'll be stuck in this shit hole of a timeline any longer than I have to. If it means I gotta go grab me a new ship and come out guns blazing, that's just what needs to happen! Why haven't you gone ahead and done the same thing? Don't tell me your balls shriveled up after three hundred years of fighting these bastards..."

"Now you listen here!" the older Nathan said, rising to his feet, "Ain't nothin' on me has gone soft and soggy in three hundred years. If I'd known I could have made a deal with the Borg, I'd have done it and got shit moving a century ago!"

"You were on the wrong side of the fence for that," Commodore Cowell remarked rather coldly, "The Queen is in the Delta Quadrant, a place you haven't been in a very long time."

"Well that's all in the past now," Captain Cowell remarked impatiently, "What matters is you have some muscle with you... I assume you can call for more Borg if you need to..." Nathan's younger counterpart nodded curtly in response, "Then we've got no shortage of decoys if nothing else. The fact that they're working with you will likely piss those ugly fuckers off if they find out about this..."

"Too late," Stace piped up suddenly, which prompted her Nathan to chuckled for once.

"Yeah, they came to greet us at the Union side of the gateway," Nathan elaborated.

Capt. Cowell's face sank a bit, "Well shit... there goes the element of surprise then... But still... we have more ships now than we ever did before with your Borg reinforcements. We can just send them somewhere and let them take a beating while..."

"Hold the hell up one second," the Commodore interrupted suddenly, "You're not using the Borg as cannon fodder... Much as I hate them... more so now than ever thanks to you..."

The Captain knew in an instant what he was going on about and was instantly on the defensive, "If I had known she would be assimilated I never would have sent her on that damn away mission! You can't blame me for not being damn psychic! She knew the risks, you know them even better than she did when she decided to follow you around. I beat myself up enough about that shit when it happened and I'm not about to take shit from you over it just because you're pissed off that she's a drone. Besides, I saw her on the bridge when I came aboard... It took everything I had not to run over and squeeze the life out of her knowing she wasn't a drone in any point in time!"

"Fine..." the younger Cowell said, stopping his older self's tirade, "Then you shouldn't feel too bad about it when I say they aren't just fodder. We've already lost one of them while trying to get to this damn quadrant, and I'm not going to throw them away just because it makes you feel better about yourself. If I use them, it will be constructively... and since you don't outrank me, you don't get to pull the 'I'm older than you and know more than you do' time travel shit, because if you did know more, you'd have dammit made rank by now."

"Whatever..." the elder Cowell grumbled, flopping back down, "So what's your plan... Commodore..."

"First I need to know where this shipyard is," came the sarcastic retort.

"A big field of asteroids in the Babel system. The reason we can't get to it is because unlike here, there's no ambient radiation to mask out trail. 8472 has a rather annoying habit of tracking our movements out of warp and responding rather quickly. I don't think even the Arizona can drop out of warp close enough to the asteroid belt to slip in and get to the complex before they find you," the older man provided.

"Ever try a cloaking device?" the younger Nathan asked.

"Sure, let me just call some Romulans and borrow one from them..." his older counterpart said dryly, "Cloaking devices are rare, and most of them have been outfitted to orbital stations to keep them hidden and operational. Even if I had one spare, I wouldn't be able to just hand it to you."

Nathan looked over to Stace, "Think we could get our Borg friends to fabricate one for us?"

"Maybe... they've done a good deal for us already..." the woman shrugged.

"Even if you do manage to get a cloak and get into the shipyard... the vessel isn't complete by any means. It's still missing come key components like... a warp core for instance..." the Captain explained.

"We've got a core," the Commodore remarked swiftly, "And I'm sure this ship has a lot of other things that would come in handy."

"You're talking about gutting your own ship to salvage that thing, you realize that..." the older Cowell pointed out what seemed rather obvious.

"You have a better idea? The location of a weapons cache we can raid without the risks?" Commodore Cowell inquired, "Now's the time to pipe up."

"No, dammit, I don't..."

"Then sit down, shut up, and let it ride," the Commodore said firmly, "Once I get this ship up, I'm going to need to get back to the Delta Quadrant. Might be worth your while to come with us. The Borg have a stronghold there that is neigh impervious to assault from the outside. Would make a great place for the remnants of Starfleet and the Collective to stage an assault on 8472."

"Maybe..." the older Cowell admitted, "But there's no guarantee anyone will want to follow along with your scheme."

"Fuck'em if they don't. I'm trying to get home, and this ship is the best way to do it. If 8472 is smart, they'll block our reentry into the Union system. With this new ship, we might be able to blow a few of them out of the sky and make them think twice about following. After that, you can take the schematics from the ship, build weapons of your own with Borg help. Once you've driven them out of the galaxy, you can forge your own path either together or separate. Either way is fine with me, as long as I get my people home," the younger Cowell explained.

"Have it your way, youngin," the older Nathan said as he got up from his chair, "You get a cloak, grab that ship, and I'll see who wants to have a future that doesn't involve hiding in the shadows."

"Sounds good, old man," Nathan chuckled before turning to Stace, "Why don't you see the man out. I'm sure he wouldn't mind a friendly face seeing him off."

"Joy..." Stace frowned a bit but nonetheless got out of her own chair and followed the Captain out.

"Now... let's see what we can't make happen..." Commodore Cowell smirked to himself after the two had departed.