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Chapter 15 is done my friends!  I finished my first run through and it's already at 16k words and counting with a whole lot more to do before I'm fully satisfied with it. Normally I would have had the chapter long done by now, but my wife and I bought a house and moved in recently so all my time has been sucked up by the move and I've literally fallen asleep at my keyboard writing after I put my kids to bed.  My plan is to take this long Memorial Day weekend and finish polishing it (I live in the US) and then drop the next chapter on Tuesday, June 1st in the evening.  In the meantime, enjoy this snippet draft from the new chapter!


Gothic is going to the Devolin system!  If any of you can figure out where this is going based on those two words, well, you're a more hardcore Star Trek fan then even me!  :-)  Let me know if you figured it out without either looking it up or reading the snippet to get the pretty easy/big clues I've put in there.  You're on the honor system!


Oh, after asking for some advice from some other successful authors, they recommended that I ask my current patrons to spread word of my story and recommend it to anybody they think who might like a Star Trek fic too.  So, please recommend me to your friends and family and neighbors and random strangers on the internet!  :-)


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Low hanging fruit.

Those were the words that kept repeating in my mind. I had a good bit of time to myself while Section 31 prepared the groundwork for the Bajoran mission, the question was what could I do with it. What could I do to improve my life and future in this dimension in the time I had? I had so much knowledge of this universe, secrets from the past, present, and future that I could exploit, and what had I done with it?

Yes, I had gone to Minos and taken over that planet and made it my own. That was a significant step forward and would reap benefits for years and years to come, but what since? Caution and fear had kept me from exploiting some choice opportunities. But was there some low hanging fruit still left that I could tackle in the several weeks I had left before my mission, something my ship could take on with its maximum warp cruising speed.  While the shows had plot speed, my ship's engine did not.

Thinking about my ship led my thoughts to another one off episode in season 6 or…no, it was season 7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. A cloaking device would be an amazing addition to my ship and would increase its usefulness many times over. The ability to hide my presence, from more than just long-term scans, would mean I could go practically anywhere, do so much more

I could acquire one, possibly, from the Klingons, directly or indirectly. I knew from an episode in DS9 where Quark acquired one that some were floating around on the black market, but I wanted something better and not one I had to pay for or risk getting on some law enforcement watch list trying to obtain illegally.

Comments

Joe

Apsoluty love this and he can salvage the ship or use it at minos to upgrade and redesign his ship

War sage

Love it, though while the Devolin System was familiar I couldn't remember till I looked it up, though with half of that ship fused in rock not sure how much can be savaged, though S31 will be very curious on how Gothic got it if they find out.

Joseph Orlando

Remember, half of the ship had rematerialized inside the rock of the asteroid, so that's pretty much impossible. That said, Gothic isn't one to waste. I think you'll like what I did.

Joseph Orlando

That's always a risk. And yes, Section 31 was probably aware of the experiments in the first place. This is something Gothic (and I, wink wink) has to struggle with always. He works closely with Section 31, but knows he can't really trust them much. I see 31 being pretty pragmatic about Gothic. As much as Gothic complains about the Federation, he still wants to see it protected and survive. They'll know that. Plus they've gotten advice from the future that he'll be important. They wouldn't want to mess with that unless they had a rock solid reason to.

Darth Xion

Keep in mind that this cloaking device might be inferior to the tested & true versions of Romulans & Klingons - at least this version which passes through everything. It might have extreme power requirements or doesnt work properly resulting in the accident

Joseph Orlando

Great point. Gothic is greedy but he's a cautious one. He knows there are issues that will need to be worked out, including the obvious one that caused the original accident on the Pegasus itself. We really don't know much about the phase cloak or its power demands. The Enterprise literally used it for like a minute in canon and that's not exactly typical usage. Who knows what would have happened had they used it longer. MY struggle has always been in giving Gothic, an SI, opportunities to act on his foreknowledge, but not give him power ups that are so extreme they're potentially story breaking.