| Once upon a time (as all good stories begin, except the ones that don’t) there was a powerful but sorta foolish starship captain. Because she was stuck in the Delta Quadrant all on her own (plus a hundred fifty odd crew) she often had to trade for supplies. On one of these trading missions, she met the Yeltsins, who came to her with an offer of a cloaking device.
"Not only will you be cloaked, but new technology allows the optional extra of projecting your image elsewhere in space," the Yeltsin salesmen said.
"Kewl," said the starship captain. "Gimme gimme - unless it can be construed to contravene the Prime Directive in even the smallest possible way…?"
"Nope," said the Yeltsins. "Here you go."
The starship captain grinned and activated her new cloak at once. She knew it was working because the switch was in the ‘on’ position.
Meanwhile, the Yeltsins were telling everyone about Voyager’s new cloaking device. Everyone they told went and told someone else, until soon nearly the whole durned quadrant knew. So when a Kazon Relora ship encountered Voyager, they knew she was actually somewhere else nearby.
The Relora captain quickly called for reinforcements and started shooting at the space around his ship.
"Kewl," said the starship captain. "It works! He thinks we’re somewhere else. Shields down; stand down from red alert."
"Urm, are you sure that’s a good idea?" Chakotay (the woodcutter) asked.
"Shut up, or I’ll *never* date you," the starship captain said. He shut up. "Now shields down, dangit!"
As more ships arrived, they too began shooting at the space around them, until finally a small but manoeuverable and extremely well armed ship turned up. Now, the captain of this ship had been on holiday for the past three weeks, and hadn’t heard about Voyager’s new cloak.
"Why are they shooting at space and not the ship?" Cap’n Bu-to-y asked innocently, not quite suppressing her evil grin. "Straaange people. Okey dokey, target wimp ship and fire."
Her tactical officer fired. Voyager exploded. It exploded goood.
"Oops," Cap’n Bu-to-y said unrepentantly. "Sorry." Then she spied the approaching Borg cube and left for another holiday.
=/\=
The Borg Queen yawned and woke from her beauty sleep. -?
//Well, um, it kind of blew up again,// her assistant, First of One, told her.
-?!?!
//We know we just fixed it, but they keep getting into trouble. Maybe if we sent a representative along to keep an eye on them?//
-.
Seventh of Nine backed away slowly. //No. No way.//
-?!
//No way,// 7/9 repeated. //Nein, non, nown, nyet, nee, nej, iie, tidak, anio. Nuh uh, not gonna. We do not wish to cease functioning, dangit!//
-.
//It’ll be fun,// 1/1 said persuasively.
7/9 whimpered
_To be continued…_ |
