Trek BBS: October-November 2025 Challenge
"A Cyberpunk Story: Rust in the Machine"
The Prometheus-class U.S.S. Phoenix-X policed, progressively and properly in perfection as the Type-9 shuttlecraft Dracon exited its shuttle bay, jumped to and dropped out of warp. Captain Seifer and BOB operated the shuttle's forward consoles in a new area of space.
"Thanks for checking out this transwarp aperture with me," Seifer lamented. "The Federation has receded so far from where the Neutral Zone used to exist, patrolling our border has become painfully mundane."
BOB nodded. "I had to see this shuttlecraft in operation myself after we had previously sent it into Warp 10 and turned it into a giant cake in space."
"Putting it on a counter-course was the only way to revert it, but we sometimes still get purple cake oozing from circuit panels," Seifer added as he set the shuttle to deep scan.
The Ferengi chomped on some of the residual cake he found in a compartment. "The Dracon is actually pretty good."
"Yeah, I don't hate it," the Captain agreed as he was about to open a nearby panel seconds before an alert went off and the transwarp aperture in front of the shuttle aggressively pulled them in. "Oh, no. The cake has generated a tachyon pulse! Hold on!"
---
After a lengthy and chaotic ride through a transwarp conduit, the Dracon was deposited before the planet Avercol, in a star system inside Romulan space. Passing through the atmosphere, the shuttle crash-dragged itself through an elegant, multi-level, utopian city of angled half-Borg structures and intricate piping until it collided and knocked over a slightly larger wooden airboat. The two men groggily stepped out from the Dracon's back hatch in bewildered, midday awe.
"Ohhh, my head feels like a neutron star," Seifer gripped as he began taking in their surroundings. "This must be one of the worlds that suffered atmospheric contamination after the Romulan supernova seven years ago?" They then realized the grandiose and mechanically steam-powered city around the littered street they found themselves.
BOB checked his tricorder readings. "It is! I'm reading decalithium-residual particulates bound in neutrino compounds, which means staying here too long could lead a normal person to cellular degradation. Not me, though, since I'm cybernetic."
"Actually, we cog-integrated filtration apparatuses into our bodies for long-term compensation," announced the approach of a part-Borg, 18th century Victorian-adventure-dressed human woman with wild black hair. "The name's O-Ren, and this is my crew of ex-Borg."
Seifer noticed as several more men and women of various species, with lingering Borg implants and patterned demure jackets, top hats and goggles, stepped out of the steamy piped and mechanical metropolis to introduce themselves. "Whoa! Are you guys alright? And what is with all the unnecessary bronze??"
"Fifteen years ago, Avercol suffered a crash from Borg Cube 932 as a result of Janeway's neurolytic pathogen in her attempt at destroying the transwarp network," a human, half-Borg man named Corvin, in a vest, long coat and high boots explained. "We unintentionally sputtered in and out of ineffective, self-created transwarp conduits until being forced to repurpose our vessel, here, in what we now call Iron City."
O-Ren stepped around. "The Romulan Free State has never thought to survey this world so, ever since, our massive crew of Borg and various alien crash landers have filtered into a multi-class society. We utilize steam-based power, wear bronze-edged lapels and climb twisted metal staircases. Oh, and we have condos inside giant clocks."
"As a natural progression? In a contrived, non-self-aware way??" Seifer blinked in astonishment. "Is that a penguin with a limb-extending exoskeleton???"
Corvin looked, annoyed. "His name is Jacob and he's our bread maker."
"The point is, you completely inepted the Lockhart, our airboat that took us months to cobble together so that we may reach the Court of the Grand Duchess today to challenge her oppressive authority over the lower class," O-Ren divulged while pointing to a large Victorian blimp palace, ominously hovering over the city. "It's her birthday party and she's gifting her upper-class heads of states with special golden cogs and gears that would propel their technological progress and suffocate ours in the long run."
BOB was investigating an open panel on the outside of the Dracon. "We could get the shuttle air-bound if we transferred the pressurized steam-thrusters from the Lockhart, but with all the cake in the Dracon's systems, she'll need an overhaul to become space-worthy."
"The golden cogs and gears could easily sustain your EPS conduits," Corvin examined as he joined the Ferengi. "You just put them wherever the purple cake is. Also, is this a normal issue for Starfleet craft now?"
Seifer quickly closed the panel from him. "You don't get to judge us! Is that a bent pipe telescope on your belt?? Uggh. Never mind. Let's just go confront this Grand Duchess. Uck. My stomach turns just saying it."
---
With the Type-9 shuttlecraft Dracon abhorrently outfitted with a brass-tubed exoskeleton, with working gears, it steam-pushed itself up into the sky and stealthily approached the massive, ornate floating blimp palace that was the Court of the Grand Duchess. Armed, the four of them, and two more half-Borg rebels, snuck out along the outer balcony-walkways, passed some oblivious Borg-guards, before infiltrating and unintentionally separating through a maze of narrow corridors.
"Oh, a crasher, huh? Either you assimilate into our retro-society or you spend the rest of your life in one of our copper-wired Tesla cells," a Borg-guard said as he powered his clockwork gauntlet to smash through Seifer's phaser and launch a punch all at once.
Delayed, but quick, Seifer dodged and hop-kicked him down before running out into a large, marble and mechanical-frescoed ballroom with balcony. "You guys know cogs of almost any size are easily damaged with forks, right?"
"What we know is that your factory underclass rebellion doesn't measure against technocratic, salon-bred high-society," came the calming, luxurious voice of an elaborately dressed Grand Duchess as she stepped out of a giant clock sub-door to the floor of a group of waiting, lavishly dressed Borg and conformed alien heads of states.
A few more rebels and BOB were apprehended by guards with steam-powered rifles and led out passed electro-mechanical pedestals with glass-covered golden display gears. "You can't supress a soot-covered people forever, Duchess," Corvin countered, pulling out a wind-up grenade. "Grease-slick street smarts will always win over ornate, overly-collared complacency!"
"Please stop with this unending spring-loaded nonsense! Why does everything have to be tricycles, brass eyepieces, vacuum lamps and pneumatic message tubes?" Seifer crashed out. "Mechanical self-walking carriages and street after street of exposed pipes and unlocked hand-valves??"
The Duchess walked closer with a half-hair draped face. "Because this is a world free of the Collective, pioneering creative, workshop-heavy anti-perfection."
"O-Ren! You're the Duchess!?" Seifer went wide-eyed as he recognized her and all the Borg guards and rebels walked in unison after being outed. "You manufactured the upper and lower class? Why?"
Duchess O-Ren then pushed away her hair-covered face to reveal her true self. It had been clear that every Borg on the planet was still linked to her hive-mind. "It was the cog-integrated filtration apparatuses. They work to save us from Romulan supernova cellular degradation, but not without a subsidiary collective."
"But you've been playing everyone's personalities and talking through them like they're their own individuals?" BOB unpacked.
Duchess O-Ren nodded. "I must've hit my head harder than I thought. Some of my giant, bloated fish-mech psychologists call it multiple personality disorder."
"That explains the tinker-centric, neo-Victorian aesthetic!" Seifer double-taked. "Let BOB uplink to your collective and run a diagnostic on everyone's filtration devices. We can sever the hive-mind without the dependency on clanking, Telsa-charged industrialization."
The Duchess nodded, reluctantly, as a long-coated Borg drone with an aviator helmet and pocket watch wheeled out a clockwork-computer for BOB to interface. "Please accept my apologies. I'm sorry to everyone. It's just been so long."
"Uggghh!!!" Corven cried as he and several others were soon disconnected from the subsidiary collective. "A society without fingerless gloves, pneumatic dart launchers and telegraphs? O-Ren, this is going to take some getting used to."
Seifer turned to her. "Be free for real this time, O-Ren. If you want to be a gear-driven, antique cosplay with a metal trim corset, then it has to be you and you alone." He shuddered. "If I don't see a giant chain or leather journal again, it'll be way too soon."
"Other vessels have crashed here through the maligned transwarp conduit. There is at least one recovered into operation. A Klingon vessel I've named the H.M.S. Tempest. I think I need some time away from this wrought-iron world of machine rooms and riveted metal plates," O-Ren conceded. "I'll crew anyone willing to join me, even after all this, and take you and the Dracon back to the Phoenix-X."
The Captain nodded. "Thank you, Duchess. It's not a steam-plasma hybrid with Victorian-style pistons, is it? You know what. No! Beggars can't be choosers. I just need off this planet."
Soon, O-Ren took command of the gear-encrusted Mat'Ha-class H.M.S. Tempest, loaded with the cake-dripping, tube-wrapped Dracon, Seifer and BOB, before it jumped back into the transwarp conduit, back toward Federation space.
Corven took rule of the industrialized Avercol and freed them of its class restrictions. But he also wore a crimson-lined long coat and a gold staff with interlocking gears. Soooo, there's that.