Good Power
Posted on Sun Jul 5th, 2026 @ 8:29pm by Captain Saelira Venn
2,602 words; about a 13 minute read
Mission:
Mission 1: Through the Janus Gate
Location: Engineering Compartment, Pakled Vessel
Timeline: MD003 - 1400 hours
The Pakled ship had many engines.
Some of them were old. Some of them were new. Some of them had belonged to other people who had not wanted to give them away. Most of them made noise. Noise was good. Noise meant working, unless the noise became very high and very fast, and then it usually meant someone should run.
Greb stood in the middle of engineering with his hands on his hips and looked at the new thing.
It was not shaped like the other engines. That made it important. It sat in the centre of the deck inside a frame they had welded from three different metals, one cargo brace, and the leg of a chair that nobody liked. The device itself was dark and smooth in places, sharp in others, with rings inside rings and markings that moved when nobody touched them.
Greb did not like the markings.
He liked the power readings.
“Is it in?” he asked.
Nogl, who was the engineer because he had once fixed a heater and only burned one hand, peered around the side of the device. His face was lit green, then blue, then a colour Greb did not know but decided was probably expensive.
“It is in,” Nogl said.
Greb nodded. “Good.”
“It is also not in.”
Greb frowned at him.
Nogl pointed at a cable hanging loose from the upper housing. “This part is not in.”
“Then put it in.”
“The ship says no.”
“The ship says many things.”
“This one is red.”
Greb looked at the nearest display. It was red. It also had many words. Words were often put there by people who wanted to stop better people from becoming stronger.
“The ship is afraid,” Greb said. “We are not afraid.”
Nogl considered this. He looked afraid, but not enough to argue.
“The ship is also making a long beep.”
“Long beeps mean important.”
That seemed to settle it.
The ship was lumpy and wide and carried more stolen compartments than original ones. It had a Cardassian power relay welded beside a Ferengi stabiliser, three Starfleet conduits that still had the wrong colour stripes on them, and a Breen regulator everyone avoided because it sometimes made the floor cold. The walls were crowded with labels written by different crews in different languages. Most of the Pakled labels were simpler.
GOOD.
BAD.
DO NOT TOUCH.
TOUCH IF CAPTAIN SAYS.
One panel had all four labels on it.
Pakled ships were not built. They accumulated.
Around Greb, the others watched from behind consoles, crates and one large shield generator that had never generated a shield but did make a useful table. Nobody wanted to stand too close to the new thing. It made the air feel thick. It also made their teeth buzz.
Mup, one of the younger Pakleds, held up a reader that had been taken from a Dominion shuttle. The reader had not stopped flashing since they brought the device aboard.
“It has angry words,” Mup said.
“What words?”
“I do not know. They are angry.”
Greb leaned closer. The reader scrolled through Dominion script, then stopped, stuttered and replaced it with a symbol that looked like a doorway folded inside a knife.
“That is not Dominion,” Nogl said.
“Is it better than Dominion?” Greb asked.
Nogl considered this carefully. “It is older.”
Older was usually better. Old things had survived long enough to become old. Greb knew this because he was older than many Pakleds and he was captain.
“Make it work.”
Nogl picked up the loose cable. It sparked before he touched the socket. He pulled his hand back and looked offended.
“That one bites.”
“Use the glove.”
“The glove also bites.”
“Use two gloves.”
Nogl thought about this, then nodded as though Greb had said something wise. Greb liked when that happened.
He put on both gloves. One was Klingon and much too large. The other had fingers that did not match his hand. He took the cable carefully, held it away from his face, and pushed it into the nearest socket.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the ship stopped humming.
Every light in engineering died at once. The consoles went dark. The fans fell silent. Somewhere far above them, a loose panel finished rattling and went still.
Greb blinked in the sudden dark.
Nogl said, very quietly, “I made it stop.”
Nobody moved.
Then the device opened its eye.
It was not really an eye, but Greb did not have a better word for it. A line of pale light appeared inside the rings, thin at first, then widening until it filled the space between them. The markings around the device brightened one by one, not flashing, not flickering, but waking.
The warp core gave a low, sickly cough.
Then power came back.
Not from the warp core. Not properly. Greb could tell because the old core always complained first and helped second. This was different. This came through the deck, through the frame, through the cables they had attached where cables were not supposed to go. It rolled into the ship with a sound Greb felt in his stomach before he heard it in his ears.
The lights came back.
All of them.
Engineering flooded white, then gold, then settled into a bright, clean glow the ship had never managed before. Consoles restarted. Displays filled with numbers. The main power column rose so fast that one of the screens gave up trying to count and changed to warning symbols instead.
Mup stared at his reader.
“The ship has more power.”
Greb smiled.
Nogl took a step toward the nearest console and squinted. “Much more power.”
“How much?”
Nogl tapped the screen. It chirped, sparked and produced a list of numbers. He read none of them. Numbers were slippery things if there were too many.
“Very much.”
The Pakleds began to grin at one another.
“Shields?” Greb asked.
Mup checked another display. “More strong.”
“Weapons?”
“More strong.”
“Engines?”
Nogl gave the device a respectful look. “Much more strong.”
Greb drew himself up. He had known it. The trader had said the machine would make them powerful. The trader had also said many other words, too many words, words about alignment and membranes and regulators and not activating it near unstable subspace conditions.
Greb had stopped listening after powerful.
The trader had wanted many things in exchange.
Greb had given him some things.
Not all the things.
That was also strong.
A vibration moved through the deck. It passed up through Greb’s boots and into his knees, then through the walls, then into the air. A tool lifted from the table beside Nogl, hung there for half a breath, and dropped.
Everyone looked at it.
“That is new,” Mup said.
“Good new,” Greb decided.
A console began speaking in the ship’s flat computer voice.
“Warning. Unscheduled power influx detected. Source: non-local subspace resonance. Warning. Main power transfer exceeds structural tolerance. Warning. Unidentified quantum aperture regulator has established partial field alignment.”
Greb looked at Nogl. “What did it say?”
Nogl listened as the computer repeated the warning.
“It says the power is not local.”
Greb frowned. “Where is it?”
Nogl looked at the bright device. Then he looked at the cables. Then he looked at the deck as if the answer might be hiding under it.
“It is here now.”
Greb nodded. That made sense. If power was here now, it was theirs.
The others murmured approval. This was what they had wanted. Their ship had been slow. Their ship had been tired. Their ship had needed parts. Now the ship was bright and awake and full of good power.
Another warning sounded. This one came from the device itself, a low series of tones that did not match any alarm Greb knew. The moving markings brightened. For a moment, the empty space inside the rings seemed less empty. It looked deep, as if someone had cut a hole through the ship and found somewhere else waiting on the other side.
Mup leaned forward.
“I see stars.”
Greb looked. He saw nothing but light.
“There are stars outside,” he said. “That is where stars go.”
“These stars are inside.”
Nogl slapped Mup gently on the back of the head. “Do not look at inside stars.”
Mup stopped looking, though not quickly.
The ship groaned. It was a long sound, metal arguing with itself. Somewhere in the distance, an EPS relay overloaded with a pop. Another display began counting backwards from a number none of them had entered.
Greb watched it.
“Why is it doing that?”
Nogl tapped the display. “It is counting.”
“I see that.”
“It is counting backwards.”
Greb thought about this. Backwards was not always bad. Sometimes going backwards got you away from people with bigger weapons.
“Can you make it count forwards?”
Nogl tapped the display again. The countdown vanished and was replaced by a warning triangle.
“Yes.”
Greb nodded, satisfied.
The device hummed louder.
Not much louder. Just enough that the sound no longer seemed to come from the machine alone. It came from the walls now. From the deck. From the air behind Greb’s head. It made the ship feel larger than it was, as though engineering had stretched while nobody was watching.
For the first time, Nogl did not look pleased.
“Captain,” he said.
Greb did not like that voice. Nogl usually sounded confused or proud. This was neither.
“What?”
“The power is still going up.”
“Good.”
“It is going up when we do not ask.”
Greb looked back at the device. The light inside the rings shifted. Something passed across it, too quick to see properly. A shadow, maybe. Or a reflection. Or a place.
“We asked before,” Greb said. “Maybe it remembers.”
That made sense to him. Good machines remembered what strong people wanted.
The computer spoke again, but this time the voice warped halfway through the sentence, stretching thin and then snapping back into place.
“Warning. Helm input mismatch. Vessel displacement detected. Warning. Vessel displacement detected. Warning. No impulse command registered. No warp command registered.”
Mup looked at the helm repeater. “We moved.”
Greb turned sharply. “Who moved us?”
Mup blinked at the display. “No one.”
“Ships do not move because no one says.”
“This one did.”
Greb considered that. He did not like ships doing things without being told, but he did like moving faster than other people expected.
“How far?”
Mup touched the screen. The stars on the tiny display jumped, vanished, came back, then became a line of numbers.
“A small far.”
Nogl leaned over another console. “Subspace slip. Partial. Not full. Not safe.”
Greb heard the important part. “Slip means fast.”
“It also means wrong.”
“Fast wrong is still fast.”
Nogl opened his mouth, then shut it again. That was another thing Greb liked about him. He knew when the captain had explained enough.
The device pulsed.
The lights dimmed, brightened, dimmed again. For a breath, the engineering compartment seemed to tilt without moving. Greb felt his feet on the deck and also felt, in a way he did not have words for, that the deck was not exactly where it had been. The feeling passed.
Mup made a small noise.
“What?” Greb asked.
“There is a thing on sensors.”
“A ship?”
Mup studied the display. “Maybe.”
“Where?”
Mup’s forehead wrinkled. “It is not here.”
“Then it is not a ship.”
“It is also not not here.”
Greb stared at him.
Mup turned the screen so Greb could see. For an instant, there was a contact marker on the edge of the display. It had no transponder, no heading, no hull shape. Just mass. Just a pressure mark in the sensor field. Then it blinked away and became another warning.
“It was there,” Mup said.
“Bad ship,” Greb decided.
“It is not here yet.”
Greb frowned. “Ships are here or not here.”
Mup looked back at the screen.
“This one is not here wrong.”
That made several Pakleds mutter. Even Greb did not like the sound of it.
The device hummed again, softer this time. Almost pleased.
Nogl took one slow step away from it.
“The regulator is looking,” he said.
Greb looked at him. “Looking for what?”
Nogl checked the Dominion reader. The angry words had become older words again. They moved in spirals. The reader crackled, then translated one fragment badly enough that even the computer seemed embarrassed by it.
MATCHING ANCHOR NOT FOUND.
SEARCHING.
SEARCHING.
SEARCHING.
Greb did not know what an anchor had to do with power. Anchors were heavy. Ships with anchors were slow. He did not want one.
“Tell it we do not need an anchor.”
Nogl tapped the reader. It sparked.
“I told it.”
“What did it say?”
Nogl waited. The reader refreshed.
SEARCHING.
Nogl swallowed. “It says no.”
The ship slipped again.
This time everyone felt it. A short, ugly lurch that did not throw them forward or back, but sideways in some other direction that bodies were not made to understand. One Pakled dropped to his knees. Another grabbed the useless shield generator table and held on as though it had suddenly become precious.
The stars on the external monitor smeared into red lines for half a second, then snapped back into place.
Only they were not quite the same stars.
Mup stared.
“We are faster.”
Greb smiled because everyone was looking at him and captains smiled when good things happened.
“Yes.”
Nogl shook his head slowly. “We are not going fast.”
“We moved.”
“Yes.”
“Then fast.”
Nogl looked at the device. The reflected light made his eyes look too small. “No. We are being moved.”
That settled over engineering in a way the alarms had not.
Being moved was different.
Being moved meant someone else had hands on your ship.
The computer tried again.
“Warning. Subspace shear increasing. Warning. Chronometric deviation detected. Warning. Quantum aperture alignment unstable. Recommend immediate isolation of device.”
Greb did not ask Nogl what it meant this time. He knew enough. The ship was afraid. Nogl was afraid. Mup was afraid. The computer had always been afraid.
The device was not.
The device was bright and calm and humming as though it had only just begun to remember what it was for.
Greb stepped closer to it. The air around the rings prickled across his skin. The markings turned slowly, folding through shapes that made his eyes want to stop following them. He did not know what the machine had been before. He did not know who had made it, or why the trader had looked frightened when Greb’s people dragged it aboard.
He knew what it was now.
It was theirs.
“We keep it,” Greb said.
Nogl hesitated. “The ship says we should turn it off.”
“The ship is afraid.”
“I am also afraid.”
Greb looked at him.
Nogl lowered his head. “But I am strong.”
Greb put a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Good. We are strong together.”
The others nodded. That sounded right. It sounded like something captains said before getting better things.
On the display behind them, the contact marker appeared again.
Not a ship.
Not yet.
Just a pressure in the dark, a shape the sensors could not understand, something large enough to bend the readings around it.
Then it vanished.
The device hummed again.
Greb smiled.
“It likes us.”
No one saw the stars outside move half a step to the left.
Greb, Mup, & Nogl
Pakled Vessel
RSS Feed