Glitter and glue. And bombs, oh my!

Posted on Tue Apr 29th, 2025 @ 3:55pm by Senior Chief Petty Officer Harriet Hastings & Shadowy Figure & Lieutenant Commander Richard Dalziel & Lieutenant JG Ruby Rojas

2,837 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: The Foragers
Location: Bridge, USS Valiant. Empok Nor.
Timeline: Slightly before and during Neverwinter Boom.

Aboard the Valiant

Valiant lurched.

Which was odd for a ship docked inside a space station's docking bay. Alarms began to drone and automated emergency lights started strobing through the empty decks.

Richard had been familiarizing himself with ship's systems and make a list of improvements to put before the Captain. When the ship lurched, he asked. "Computer what caused the Valiant to lurch?"

"Empok Nor is currently under attack from hostile forces." The computer replied in its normal femenine voice.

His thoughts went to Emily, but he put them aside. "Computer locate Commander Ral and Lieutenant Meran."

"Commander Ral and Lieutenant Meran are on Empok Nor."

"Okay Computer, patch me through to the Commander's comm." Richard said.

Daynah and Jayden had made their way out of Zulgs and she searched for a secure place to contact the Valiant. She did not want to blow her cover, and yet she wanted nothing more than to assist in whatever happened aboard the station. It seemed that the Captain had a similar notion because the sound of her comm badge chirping in her pocket made the decision for her. She drew it out and tapped it with her thumb. "Ral here."

"Commander, this Commander Dalziel, the new CEO, what is your status?" He asked. As a precaution, he removed the Valiant from the station's umbilicals, and activated the ship's systems.

"We are well and remain undercover. Where is the Captain?" Daynah just wanted to make sure that the Captain was not caught in whatever happened here.

"I don't know where the Captain is." Richard said. "I can beam you aboard, if you like."

Harriet trotted up the boarding ramp after ensuring the ship was pulled from shore power and went directly to Engineering, where she found Jov spinning up the ships systems using the abbreviated, emergency SOP. When another crew person arrived, she left and headed for the bridge. She stuck her head into the transporter room then moved to the bridge. Finding the CEO alone, she moved to the operations console immediately and began running systems checks.

After a few minute, she said. "Sir. We currently have a skeleton crew of ten aboard. Chief Jov is in engineering bringing the system up and we'll have warp power in ten minutes or sooner. Petty Officer Biv is beaming crew members aboard as they report and Mishka is in the process of sweeping the ship to make sure no devices are in place, though the likely hood of that is low."

She tore her gaze away from her panel and asked, "Orders sir?"

"Very good." Richard said. "I'd like someone monitoring communications, I want to see where we can be most useful. Also I'd like Security to look into any similar cases, and to see if anyone is taking responsibility for this." he ordered. "I'll look into getting the Valiant free of her current predicament."

"No leave us here for the moment. I will check in as soon as we have more information. Ral out." Daynah closed the channel. She did believe that for the moment it would be best for them to stay on the station and try to learn who did this. There was the idea of where the hell the Captain was as well. She turned to Jayden. "We should intermix with the civilians and see if we can learn who did this or at the very least who is claiming responsibility,"

Jayden nodded and said, "Aye, ma'am." He then turned and when his own direction. He always had a big trouble with large crowds, but he always managed somehow. He probably needed a good and long meditation session after did. He would keep his eyes and ears open. Right now, his main focus was the mission.

"Understood, ma'am. Stay safe." Richard said. The channel closed, the CEO returned to the Bridge's Engineering console and ran several escape scenarios."

Harriet scowled as the feeds snowed and she glanced over her shoulder. "Sir, for some reason I'm showing an open hatch. It might be a bad sensor." Glancing over her shoulder, she stared as a figure moved from the hatch. Whoever they were, they were dressed from head to toe in spacer gear and respirator. More importantly, they were holding a phaser leveled.

"Yes," came the rasping voice. "By all means leave the Commanders on the station. I need you both to keep your hands where I can see them. My friends have a little work to do and you're interfering."

"Silly me, I thought this was our ship." Richard said. "Isn't that right, Ruby?"

Suddenly the door behind the intruder opened and all power to the bridge went out. An eerie, high-pitched voice echoed "This is my ship. Intruders will be violated."

A hatch silently opened. Then there was a bright flashbang. In the silence, the door closed and Ruby moved silently to another hatch.

Richard took advantage of the distraction, closing his left eye, he switched his optical implant (in his right eye) to night vision and engaged the intruder. Liberating him of his phaser, the CEO, fighting dirty, brought the intruder down. He then went looking for his friends.

A moment later, the lights came on and Ruby emerged from an access hatch. "I can help find them." She went to ops and ran an internal scan. The view screen displayed the location of everyone currently on the Valiant. "There you go." She then excluded the current crew. Three life signs still showed on the ship.

The encounter suit began to expand and a mechanical voice sounded over the respirator. "Clever clever. Here's your surprise." The suit suddenly burst, sending purple goo spraying all over the bridge and glitter twisting into the atmosphere driven by the explosive charge.

The phaser in Richard's hand had a glowing sigil on it that began flickering rapidly and the sound of it overcharging began trilling loudly.

Ruby had ducked behind her station when she heard the voice, but she still got some of the sparkly purple goo in her hair. Dang, she'd have to cut it again. "I. Hate. Glitter!"

She turned to Richard. "Beam that thing into space. I'm going after those intruders." She immediately instructed the computer to put all intruders on the ship inside a level 10 force field. They could breathe, but they weren't getting out. As an afterthought, she made it spherical and made sure it was too big to get through a door.

"Computer beam the phaser in my hand into space." Richard said. A transporter beam enveloped the phaser and it disappeared. He then knelt down to examine the now empty suit.

Harriet, wiping glitter and purple glue from her forehead with one thumb, used the other hand to wipe off the display, watching it smear. "Sensors indicate the subjects beamed out just as their friend here was taken down. Somehow. That's...impressive."

Peering, wiped at the display again and said, "Sir. I'm showing a power surge coming from engineering. Something is tapping into the battery power in the secondary ventral rack, creating a feedback through the systems..."

Abruptly, the main viewer blinked, showed snow and then a laughing skull and a countdown appeared on the main screen. They had two minutes until something happened.

"Ruby, help me purge the computer system." Richard said.

"Umm...purge the computer? That would wipe everything." She ran over to where she could access engineering and shut off the battery power in the secondary ventral rack, rerouting the buildup to bleed off into a dozen different junctions and then to disperse without causing damage. Then she reversed the power input to overload the source. Hopefully. At least she was doing something constructive.

"That could work too." Richard replied.

"We'll call this Operation Whiplash," Ruby said as she siphoned off the worst of the power buildup and reversed it back to whoever sent it. The rest was spread so thin as to render it harmless. "Now we wait." And really hope this worked.

Richard began wiping the goo off the displays, taking a sample to send to Sciences for examination.

The siphoning was working as anticipated...until it wasn't. Ruby shut off all affected systems and rerouted power to a holo deck. That should have worked long enough for her to contained the isolated overload. But then she heard a pop and a sizzle. "No!" She ran to the operations console where the goo had somehow gotten inside and was causing power to arch and dance across the surface. A moment later, she cut the power. But she still heard sizzling from the next console. "Richard, we have a problem."

"Yes, we do." Richard replied discovering that his hand was stuck to the console. He tried to pull has hand free, but it wouldn't budge. "Why haven't the emergency lights come on?" He asked.

Ruby turned a full circle. "I have no idea." There was an odd scent, too. "Do I smell popcorn?" She pulled a light from her belt and shone it around. "Your hand is stuck? There's some solvent near by. I'd replicate it, but hte power's out." Inwardly she groaned. He knew the power was out. "Don't move."

With the power out, she had to carefully negotiate around the splotches of purple goo. At least they glittered in her light, making them easier to avoid.

Five minutes later, she was back. "This should work." She poured a little bit over his hand. "Give that a minute. You can let it run down your hand or smear it. But be careful."

The solvent released his hand, but began to burn. Richard cradled his hand. "What was that? My hand is burning."

"Universal solvent. It's not supposed to burn--just don't get it in your eyes or mouth." Just then, the lights on the bridge began to pulse and flash. Smoke poured out of the view screen. Then what looked like a flying saucer appeared. Over the comms someone began to sing, "Welcome to the grand illusion..."

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Ruby did not need this in addition to purple glitter goo. "Computer, beam all the fire into space, widest possible dispersal. Oh, and don't do it anywhere near another ship. Or shuttle. Or the station." Then she added, "Or people. Definitely not people." She was starting to feel a little giddy. This was not good. "Cancel that. We don't have a permit for fireworks. Instead, lock all the fire behind a containment field."

Head swimming, Harriet picked at some of the purple and glitter that had clung to her hands and stared at it, spreading her fingers and holding them to the light. The glitter and purple actually looked kind of good. She wasn't one to get her nails done that often, but in this light...

At the JG's request, she tapped a few commands into her panel (careful of her nails) and said. "That part's contained. Looks like an unknown program is trying to send a worm into the station's computers through the dedicated uplink that's required while we're docked. We might want to shut that off."

As she said this last, she looked over at Ruby and felt a giggle in her throat before asking, "Ma'am. Do you like the glitter and purple for my nails?"

"Yes, but let's decapitate that worm first." Ruby giggled. "And hope it doesn't regrow another one." Katya would want to look at that worm. "I wanna know what that thing is, though. And where it came from. But safely. We can't let it loose anywhere." She paused. "Do we have an antivirus we could send back as we cut the access? Something like a She Hulk? You know, so it won't want to come after us again?" Ruby wasn't making much sense, even to herself. She waved her hand in the air. "You know what I mean. I need to get a sample of this purple glitter stuff. And that worm thing." She would have to be very careful not to mix the two. A purple glitter worm in the computer would be bad. Very bad. "Sample everything, then kill it." The idea made her giggle again as she went to find a sample container.

Richard looked at his hand, there was no sign of burns. Closing his eyes, the CEO took deep breath and focused his mind on the task at hand. Though computer programing wasn't one of his strengths, he came up with a plan. Creating a new folder, he baited the trap with some 'juicy' data. When the worm took the bait, he trapped it in an isolated storage that mimicked the ship's computer. "Ruby, I've captured a sample of the worm." He said handing her the storage cell. "I'll let you analyse it, while I see what I can do about the lights, and why there's an elm tree growing in the corridor."

"There's an elm in the corridor?" Ruby had to see that. She ran through the door to find a large tree filling the space. It was purple and glittered in the lights. Was it moving? Maybe not moving, moving, but the leaves were fluttering in a non-existent breeze. The bark looked a little damp and...gooey. "Umm...this does not look good." The worm was contained, so at least whatever was trying to hack into their computer was, hopefully, thwarted, but that purple glitter goo was taking on a life of its own. "It has to be feeding off something."

She had a strange thought. "Hey, tree..." Fortunately, nothing happened, but she might have imagined one of the branches wiggling just a little.

Rumbling slightly, eyes and a mouth appeared from the elm and a barkish voice hummed lightly then began to speak:

I am so high i can't contain
the happiness I feel today
I look around and see my friends.
As i stare reality bends
I can almost touch the stars
my head is up above so far
I'm in my own reality
Everything thing is clear to me
In these sessions i feel good
Pass it to me if you could
so I could get a little better
Make me warm in winter weather
Inspire we with out a doubt
a guaranteed grin I've been without

Ruby started singing, "I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me..."

Grumbling the Elm's eyes glanced to the side at Ruby as she sang and actively winced, "Yo dude. Find a bucket for that tune so you can carry it. I never sing. I'm a poet-tree."

"Hey, at least you're not feeling blue, da ba dee da ba do." She laughed at her own joke. "Since I've not seen a glitter tree, I think that you should leaf us be."

"I know a poem, tree." Richard said.

"See all, hear all, say nowt,
Eat all, drink all, pay nowt
And if ever tha does owt for nowt, allus do it for thisen. ".

The tree made a rude noise in Richard's direction and promptly dissolved into a sparkling whirl.

Blinking, Harriet waved away the renewed cloud of glitter. Giggled. And then brought up the environmental controls and pushed the filtration slider to maximum, trying to shake off this feeling.

After a few beats, she said "Um. I don't know what is with the goo and glitter. But those foreign objects are still showing in Engineering, and the cargo areas."

Ruby had been giggling at the tree, but at Harriet's comment, she stopped. "Foreign objects? Can we grab the one in engineering, put it in the cargo bay, then put a containment field around them? I'd like to know what they are before we get rid of them."

Reconfiguring her readout, Harriet said, "Cargo bays are sealed and containment fields in place. We don't know what they might do but since they wanted to connect with the station, I recommend against giving them physical access to the station ma'am...sir."

"Oh, yeah. That would be bad. Very bad." Ruby shook her head, then stopped because it gave her a headache. "We can't do that. Can we find out who sent them?" She reminded herself that she was the assistant chief operations officer as she was feeling loopy. "Should I be doing that?"

"Of course, Ruby." Richard said. "We have to find out who we're dealing with, in order to stop them."

"And then we can punch them in the nose with a glittery bat." Ruby giggled. "Or if it's a real purple glitter bat, it can just bite them." She liked the idea of a glittery purple goo bat flying after whoever did this and biting them where it was most inconvenient.

"Bats where?" Richard asked as they headed for the Cargo Bay.

"Wherever we can find them," she countered, because, of course, that made perfect sense to her.

As she worked and her head cleared more, Harriet looked around and realized she was alone on the bridge. Frowning she said, "Right. I have the bridge...."

 

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