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That's my Q - #123,124 - "Meeeep, Wrong answer"-=On=- A long trip drawing near it's end, stop after stop in strange places, Africa, Asia, as the little plane made its way 'round the world. Sometimes the two talked, but mostly they remained silent. Amelia's feelings and desires seemed nearly like an intruder to Kitty, and she found it hard to spend the time as she would have liked, trying to get to know Evans a bit better. How much of him was Evans? That would have to wait. The two of them worked as a team, filling in, knowing automatically what needed to be done, so that they barely even had to talk to get the job done. Just as two officers had complemented each other in battle, or two people sailing a small ship, the two of them flew on through their journey. Would they have done so well purely as Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan? The world may never know. As they neared that last leg of their journey, Kitty/Amelia started feeling increasingly nervous. She wasn't the only one, however. The story of the disappearance of Amelia and Fredrick during their last flight pretty much was common knowledge. The fact that they were actually plucked out of the sky by a Delta Quadrant slaveship, was less well known, but it wasn't exactly a secret either. The logs of the USS Voyager, which were popular reading material of their own for those interested, helped with that. Even now, efforts were being made to contact the planet that Amelia was found on, not in the last part for an exclusive interview. However, somehow this all just didn't appeal to Evans... "Well, this is it..." he suddenly said out of the blue. "Between now and half an hour, we are going to be the first people to be confirmed to have made contact with aliens..." "If I have anything to do with it," his pilot said grimly, "they will not be able to make trophies of us, either." "Oh, we'll show them exactly what this little plane is made of... I'm glad we don't have to lug along all those provisions anymore. Makes this hornet as fast as she'll ever be. Especially with that little sump'n sump'n I prepared." he said, with a hint of an evil grin on his face, as he pointed to a little green button in the corner of the plane's dash. "What is it?" Kitty asked eagerly, reaching for the button. "Hey! Don't touch that!" Evans said. "At least not yet... It's ah... eh... Well, I guess it's a burst of shield-energy. Kind of like an EMP pulse. However, this wil generate a shield around our plane for about... Oh... a millisecond, just before roasting all our electronic devices... I don't know what good it will do, but it's all I could think of on such short notice..." "Well, that's not bad at all," Kitty said brightly, already considering all the different ways that she could put it to use. "Do we have any weapons?" At that question, Noonan tapped his coat, where one might expect someone to wear a holster. "A six shot revolver, armor piercing metal jackets..." he said seriously, not a trace of a smile on his face. "Oh, and I packed half a dozen of fragmentation grenades under the attendent's seat... Since we don't have an attendant, I didn't think she'd mind..." he added, smiling a bit this time. "I have no idea how to deliver those, actually..." he said, a troubled expression on his face now. "Let's just hope that our little pulse will scare 'em off..." "I know how to deliver them," Kitty said in amusement. "Open the window and drop them." This came from Kitty's memory, not Amelia's. "They say that's the emergency self-destruct procedures that some Earth naval vessels had all the way into the 21st century." Noonan looked at her a bit oddly. "Eh, how is tossing a grenade out of the window going to help us self-destruct, even if we would even want to?" "Not us!" Kitty chuckled. "Them! I'll be piloting, so I can bring us over them and you peek out the window and look for a handy shaft. Something that looks like nobody wants a grenade dropped down it. Then we deliver it just like Santa down the chimney..." Now she was talking more like Amelia... "and let them figure out what it does." Evans grinned as he added "It's going to go boom! What else is it going to do?" "Don't ask that," Kitty said, smiling. Then she frowned. "Do you hear something?" "Yeah... Where's that high pitched whine coming from? Sounds like an oil problem..." he said, looking at the meters. "Hm.. Nothing out of the ordi... ohcrapohcrapohcrap... Showtime!" Noonan looked out of the window over his right shoulder, and saw a pastel painted craft, pulling in behind them. It kindof looked like those F117s that flew in the early 21st century, only without a tail, and a lot bigger. "You better go evasive!" he yelled. "Roger," Kitty said smoothly, making a couple of adjustments. The plane appeared to tilt upwards slightly, then proceeded to drop like a stone. Suddenly a stream of translucent blue energy shot out of the front of the pastel colored craft, and missed them by only a few meters, clearly aimed to where the little aircraft was, rather than where it was going. On top of that, the front of the large pastel hexagon was opening up, revealing a receptionbay. "Phew, that was close... Looked more like a tractorbeam than a weapon... Try to get up, we need to be higher than them to be able to use the grenades..." Noonan said, as he reached behind him to get the case of grenades out of hiding. "Got it." Kitty pulled on the yoke, bringing their little plane out of its stall. She continued to pull. "Hang on!" The nose rose into the air as they gained altitude, rising above the enemy vessel before she executed the move that had terrified him when they were taking off. A half-loop, twisting the plane around as she reached full upside-down, sending it skimming towards the other craft. "I'll get as close as I can!" she said. Noonan released the grenades out of the window, and saw one of them bouncing of the alien craft's plating, and the other fall into the hole. "Yesss!!" He closed the window again, and stuffed another couple of grenades into his pockets, ready to use them. Even over the aircraft's noise, the two explosions could be heard, however, they didn't really seem to have any effect on the alien ship, as it too came about, and tried to get a hold of the little airplane again, with it's tractorbeam. This time it missed completely, it wasn't even near their aircraft... "I guess that shook em up quite nicely!" "Let's hope it shakes them up some more," Kitty said, easing out of the barrel roll and starting to pull up. "I need some altitude." She didn't sound as jubilant. "What now?" "It's still on our tail, we need to do someth... GAH!" As Noonan was talking, the blue beam shot out again, striking the aircraft... A shock was felt, as the aircraft decelerated, and was heading straight to the alien craft's gaping mouth. Noonan fell into his mantra again... "Ohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrap!!!" "The button! Hit the button!" Kitty gasped in alarm. "Before our engines stall!" "The button!" Noonan repeated after her, as he fumbled for the little green switch, muffled away to the side of the dash... A sudden whine, as the engines got a nitroboost, the generators were switched in a way that would burn them out for sure, even though they were seriously upgraded, and a coil hidden under the floor of the craft charged... Suddenly, a bang, and a visual ripple eminating from the center of the craft, flowing outward... The tractorbeam, that was a second hand model anyway and designed to deal with technology far inferior than it's own, experienced a feedback loop, and an explosion could be seen in the gaping hole of the alien slaveship... Another shock could be felt in the early 20th century aircraft, as all the lights in the cockpit burned out and the radio and the nav-beacon locators started to spread a very interestingly smelling smoke. Betraying their simple design, the engines kept running, and the aircraft dove down again, picking up speed fast. "Waaaaaah!!!" Noonan screamed in terror, as the earth was heading toward them yet again... "Concentrate..." the pilot murmured softly, as she shut out the sound of her navigator's terrified screaming and struggled with the yoke. The little aircraft slowly stabilized, the nose slowly rising into a steep pitch, as they began to climb high again. Once they were put into a climb about as steep as the two of them could handle without blacking out, Kitty spoke to Evans. "Don't you ever scare me like that again," she scolded. "You have to keep your head. I need you to keep us BOTH alive." Noonan was temporarily stupified by the chewing out of the far smaller lady, but it got him out of the panic-spell... "I'm sorry, I'm..." he mumbled... Then he got his head together again. "...Right... Eh... Grenades... I still have grenades! Up again!" "I'm doing it! Incidently..." Kitty frowned, holding the little aircraft in it's steep rise. "How are they tracking us?" Her engineer mind could make a couple of guesses, and there was this simple but beautiful moment when both minds tuned slowly to the same answer. "How indeed... If they tracked us visually or by infrared, they would have caught us in that beam a lot earlier... Must have been..." Noonan mused. "Our emissions... The exhaust!" "Oh, I can fix that," Kitty said with this gleam coming into her eyes. "Watch this." She started leveling out a little, now far above the alien craft. "Oh, and keep your grenades handy." Then she pulled the nose up... and killed the engines. As the airplane pulled up again, the heavy spacecraft dove to try and intercept them, tracking the exhaust trail. the nose sitll open, it undershot the relatively small plane by several tens of meters. Noonan, however, was completely sure they were excactly on ramming course, and closed his eyes, clutching the dash. "Njjjj!" When the aircraft leveled, he dared to open his eyes again, and saw that the large spaceship had come to a dead stop, no longer able to smell it's pray... "Look at them... They're just sitting there." Noonan commented. "What the hell?! They're rookies! They have no idea how to handle a dogfight!" he said with a complete stupor on his face. "Are those exposed engines?!" he said, with a look on his face, that showed how amazed he was at the aliens gross overconfidence. "Hold that thought, and get ready to drop some grenades. I can't promise a roll this time," Kitty said, restarting the engines as she fought with the yoke. The plane tipped, nose pointing downwards, and surged forward, which was now down in a wild twist, pointing back towards the alien craft. This run was by no means controlled... she muttered, sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth as she struggled with their plane gone wild. By pure luck, was it? Their wild career involved a tip to his side just as they skimmed the engines, an uncomfortable heat filling the cockpit. In the meantime, Noonan pulled the pins of grenades three and four out of six, after opening the window again. Noonan dropped the grenades out of the window, when the opportunity came, but he was just a little bit late, the grenades, threatening to bounce of the ships armor, instead of rolling into the engine bay. "DAMN! I missed! We need another pass!" However, just as he was starting to think he missed, the large alien ship accelerated again, actually moving the engines right into the path of the grenades again... "AAHH! Get us out of here!" Noonan screamed, not exactly knowing how much of an explosion to expect... "Out of here won't be a problem..." Kitty's voice was now dead calm, and she seemed entirely unruffled as she continued to fight the plane, which was now nearly out-of-control. The only betrayal of her demeanor was her face, which though utterly calm was so pale that it looked snowy-white. A series of explosions rang through the air, two small ones, followed by several larger ones. The big hexagonal ship started to list and fall toward the sea, falling faster and faster. A small ship tried to take off from the front hangar, but in it's haste, it launched too fast, skipped the surface of the sea, spun out of control and crashed into the sea, just like it's bigger brother. An enormous splash was seen, and another one, as something seemed to explode underwater, sinking to the depths of the pacific ocean. In the meantime, Noonan and Amelia franticlty flicked switches and levers, trying to get the engines to start up again. With only altitude, speed and airflow to work with, this was a bit more difficult than usual. "It's not working," she said after a moment, her voice still dead calm, with a heavy and unfortunate emphasis on the concept 'dead'. "We're going to crash. I can try to make it.. well.. survivable. We don't have any more grenades in here, do we? If we do, we'd better get them OUT before we impact." Noonan pulled the pins of both the grenades he had left, and threw them downwards out of the window. They heard two explosions under them. "What a pickle" the man had appeared out of nowhere, but the voice and tone you could recognise anywhere. "NJG!" Was Noonan's response once again... "I told you not to do that!" Evans said, to their new passenger. "No," Kitty replied, annoyed now. "A pickle is a cucumber packed in spices and kept in a jar. What do You want!?" "What were you actually trying to do?" Q asked, a bit redundant sure as he already knew what they were doing having seen it all happen, but he liked to hear the sheer sillyness of it from the two Starfleet officers themselves. "Well, in case you hadn't noticed, some big bully tried to kidnap us, and we defended ourselves!" Evans more than Noonan snapped at the arrogant figure. "Right now, not crashing sounds like a good start," Kitty said, scanning the remaining functioning controls and trying to figure out how to carry out this goal. Q rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers freezing everything in place except him and the two officers "Ok... now tell me... why in God's name did you think you could escape the destiny of these two people?" he signed and shook his head a bit "What would be the point of destiny if you could change it?" "What's the point of trying, if you can't?" Kitty asked, eyes narrowing, her terror turning to anger as the immediate threat ceased. "Eh... Yeah, what she said!" Evans actually agreed. "What else is there to do, than try, and try harder?" <Hm, that's rather philosophic... Gotto remember that...> "Exactly!" Q said with a smile, as if Kitty her question was in agreement with him "You do realise what you did though, right?" he asked, suddenly serious as he folded his arms. "We blew up an alien slave ship?" Kitty guessed, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards now. "We... Eh... Kicked their ass, and got ourselves a source of alien technology?" Evans added. "Yes... go on..." Q turned his hands around each other as if to visually enhance his urge for them to continue. "We jumpstarted the computer revolution?" Evans tried again. "Ok... let's take this slow... for the IDIOTS around here!" Q rubbed his forehead, "What would have happened if you Didn't destroy the spaceship and accepted the destiny of these two?" he wondered if they even Knew what characters they were dressed as. "I wouldn't have been living true to myself," Kitty replied firmly. "Or her." Q started pacing now, "No, no, no, a thousand times No!" he shouted trough the confined spaces of the plane "What happened Really?!" "We would have been taken to the Delta quadrant, where we would be found by the voyager's crew... So what?" Evans said, not getting the point "Yes! Bingo! Yahtzee!" Q spread his arms as much as was possible here "And what would the Voyager crew have found on that planet, Apart from you?" "Eh... Well... Other humans... Our grand-grand-grand-... grand-" Evans said, counting on his fingers, "-grand-children actually... Still I don't see the point. Now they will find the descendants of other people... eh... o-oh... They could actually find the same race over there that was going to enslave us... Another enemy..." Evans mused. " But Voyager would be far more advanced, with this spaceship for us to research!" he countered, even though he felt his heart sink into his shoes. "This spaceship was never found..." Q replied "...and Voyager never made it home" he folded his arms and sighed "congratulations you two... you have just succesfully killed a crew of 90 or so Starfleet officers." Kitty shifted to face Q entirely, sudden fire in her eyes. "You know, I really Hate it when people do this to me! Don't put me in a situation with no guidance and then tell me I did it wrong afterwards! I hate that, and she hates it too! You said nothing, Nothing about playing along with the storyline. Why did you even give us the ability to change it, if you didn't want us to!? "You said nothing about sticking to the story! You said you wanted us to understand the challenges, to understand what these people went through. Well, I've jumped the hoop. I've been in her shoes. I've understood the challenges, and I've risen to meet them! Amelia was all about doing what couldn't be done, about not being what everyone thought she would be!" She pulled off the flight helmet and threw it at Q as hard as she could. "And I want my Own Hair Back!" Evans looked with large eyes as Kitty challenged the Q. <Oh no... Now the fecal matter'll hit the rotary air distribution device...> Q just bearily dodged the helmet and pointed at Kitty with his index finger, as if to warn her to not do that again. "And what makes you think that That's All I wanted you to learn?" he looked at Kitty intently and then towards Ronald before turning back to Kitty "Plus what fun would it have been for me to see all of you struggle if you actually knew exactly what you were supposed to do? That was half the fun of it... you should've seen some of the enlisted crew..." he laughed a bit to himself before returning his attention to Ronald "...what have you learned from all this?" "Well..." Evans thought, and then it hit him..."I learned I'm quite jealous, and I love Kitty..." That made Kitty pause and her own eyes widened as she turned and looked at Evans, almost entirely forgetting that Q was in the plane with them. Q shook his head "Ok let me be more specific... what did you learn Just Now?" he was a bit surprised that they couldn't figure this out by themselves, perhaps he should've stuck with the Enterprise crew, they were a lot brighter then this bunch. I guess he wants us to say, that we all have a destiny, a way planned for us, being part of a greater plan..." Evans said to Kitty. "But I think that's rather silly..." "If that's what we're supposed to learn," Kitty said wryly, "he chose the wrong person to teach it to me." "If that were true, why would we continue trying? Even giving up would be part of our destiny then..." Evans added quite philosophically. Q threw his hands in the air "No! No! No!" he sighed again "What have you just done? Changed something... right? So wouldn't the lesson be that you are the master of your own destiny? Wouldn't there also be a lesson learned out of the fact that your actions have a result on other lives as well maybe?" he looked at both of them hopefully "Couldn't a lesson be that you should be a little less impulsive and think over some things a bit more? From what I've seen this isn't the first time you two gotten yourselves and others into trouble by acting on a whim" "Neither would it be the first time we got out of trouble by acting on a whim," Kitty insisted. "I suppose the biggest new thing that I learned from this... was that I love to fly." Evans thought about that reversed destiny thingy a bit better, and remembered their adventure in the mirror universe. He pointed a finger at him. "Did you have anything to do with that transdimensional anomalythingy, a few months ago?" he asked. "Did you want us to have a good look at what we might have become if we chose differently?" "What? no..." Q answered immediately, not even sure what Evans was talking about "...Mirror universes and gaps in space time are becoming more and more frequent lately, I am sure you just got stuck in an anomaly because of that hippie freedome fighter CO of yours trying to do the right thing... I had nothing to do with that" he turned to Kitty now "as for you little miss... I suggest you start 'whimming' really badly because you're really going to need a miracle to get from this one..." he clapped his hands twice and then frowned a bit "...just doesn't has the same flair does it?" he stated before snapping his fingers, putting them back into the positions they were in right before he froze time and the plane continued the crash course it was on, Q nowhere to be seen. "Oh crud." Kitty twisted back into her seat, grabbing the yoke. "We're gonna die." Noonan just looked out of the front window, and sat there frozen... His mind was trying to wrap itself around trying to jumpstart the engines, but nothing came to mind, except two words: "Game over" -=Off=- Lt. Kathleen Black Chief Engineer Starbase Ronin Lt. Jg. Ronald Evans Chief Operations Officer Starbase Ronin Q (PNPC) Omnipotent Being Q-Continuum (As played by Captain Caelen LaBrie) |
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