The full kit

Posted on Sat Dec 6th, 2025 @ 4:00am by Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII & Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D

Mission: Aeon's End
Location: Starfleet Headquarters. Location ********* IV. Orbit.
Timeline: Three years ago.
2364 words - 4.7 OF Standard Post Measure

The mobile Starfleet HQ left much to be desired. More like a rag tag bunch of stiff collars still grasping on to what was left of Starfleet. Some days she didn't feel like it was worth the hassle of dealing with them, or orders in general with the ragged state Starfleet was in. Much less worth the effort to deliver reports and intel in person at the site itself, but for whatever reason she still performed the duty as required. At least the delivery task didn't take too long and she could get back to the Athena soon, or so she thought until a familiar voice piped up from behind her.

"Commander Keating" P'rel announced, stepping towards her oldest friend and removing the large hood of her traditional out-cloak. Too long has passed, and she imagined she might feel awkward under different circumstances. The friendship had grown closer, and yet since their last vacation they had barely spoken. "It is pleasing to see you again. And alive at all".

"P'rel...?" Finn turned, a little confused considering she hadn't seen the Vulcan in quite some time. "It's...good to see you too, but...don't take this offensively, not that you claim to have any emotions to feel anyway, but..." She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "What are you doing here?"

"As you are well aware, though I have largely eschewed the harmony of V'tosh ka'tur for the efficiency of the Kir'shara teachings, all Vulcans have emotions". She held her hands clasped in front of her as she spoke, standing rigidly upright in a disciplined poise. "Though in answer to your question..." she stepped aside and raised her left hand, gesturing to a small collection of potted trees from behind which stepped Colonel Keating and his associate, 'Ray'.

"Kid's seen ya" Ray whispered like a ventriloquist through an pained smile, nudging Quinn with an elbow.

"Hey kid," Quinn stepped forward.

Finn's brow raised in confusion. "Ok, well, now I just have more questions..." She had always been close to her dad, and her Uncle Ray. They kept in touch when they could but very rarely ever met up. With everything going on in the universe and them stationed on different ships or planets it just hadn't often been feasible.

"Why don't you come give your old man a hug before you sprain a muscle in that big brain of yours trying to piece everything together without any details," Quinn cracked a smile, an expression not many tended to see on his combat hardened face.

She didn't waste an extra second, closing the distance between them. "Fine, but you still owe me answers old man," she wrapped her arms around him and he returned the gesture in kind pulling her into solid bear hug. "Same goes for you Uncle Ray," she said as she stepped back from Quinn and pulled her surrogate uncle into a hug just as fierce.

Ray laughed nervously as he embraced his adoptive niece, it really had been too long after all. "Don't look at me kidda" he replied, "ask your friend here. Somethin' 'bout changing the course of the entire war..." he looked down and shuffled his feet, feigning nervousness as he looked up at the strange, strange Vulcan woman. He remembered all those years ago when he'd first met P'rel, during the time when Admiral Kane had been framed for bombing the Academy. She was a ruthless bitch back then, and the years had hardly done anything to soften her.

"Perhaps that is a discussion for a more private setting" P'rel quickly interjected, "though 'Ray' does not overstate the matter". She gestured back the way the men had come from and ushered them all to walk, taking a position next to Finn whilst the two men flanked them. She hadn't told them much, only that there was an opportunity to win and that it could work; the threat of danger had been enough to bring the Colonel along if only to protect his daughter, 'Ray' was a bonus gun. She hadn't risked the full details however, the murder of billions in order to win might seem like an acceptable price to the Colonel but she couldn't risk it. She would tell Finn, she would have to, but not until they were committed and by that point the web of manipulations would be so complete that neither Keating would risk cutting and running lest the other choose to stay and take the risk alone. She would lose Finn forever over this, their close friendship now distant would be extinguished, though logically it was just another chip to throw down on this enormous gamble. Stepping the four of them through a turbolift door, she began to reveal the plan.

"We are going back to Earth. Earth is the key. There is a tremendous facility there which we must permanently destroy, and the only feasible way is a covert insertion with expert dismantling of the system, this is why it can only be you Finnley". P'rel tapped the command to move the lift down to the impound hangar. "I will brief you in further detail when we are underway, however we must leave immediately". She looked over to the Colonel and Ray, the latter of whom nodded.

"It's ready dontcha worry" he assured her, having secured by way of a sizeable bribe a seized private medical freighter. Small and bloody fast, it was also designed for stealth with a low sensor profile; perfect for rapidly getting into hot zones to evacuate casualties and deliver supplies without being detected. Starfleet officers could be bought as easily as Cardassian Glins these days.

"Ok....I feel like I'm going to need more than 'we're going back to Earth and we have to destroy a facility'..." Finn looked suspiciously between all three of the others. "What's this facility, why must we destroy it? Why does some facility have some sort of huge impact over this war?" Then she looked at Uncle Ray. "And what the hell do you mean by 'it's ready dontcha worry'? No offense Uncle Ray, but I immediately worry when I hear those words come out of your mouth."

Quinn chuckled at that. "She's still got your number Ray. Maybe I shouldn't have used some of your wilder stories as bedtime tales when she was little."

Watching the exchange unfold between the familial trio, P'rel interjected; "There are some things we should not discuss just yet. However, Mister 'Ray' has procured us a civilian craft..." she looked over to Colonel Keating, who himself did not yet know the full story but knew the key objectives. "Finnley...the Imps..." she used the term that had been coined by many to describe the so-called 'individual' members of the Imperative AI drones; "...their neural nets run on a positronic system, not too dissimilar from the Soong type synthetic labourers". The lift reached it's destination and she noticed that both Ray and the Colonel stepped out first, habitually checking the corners of the large craft bay before motioning the two women to proceed.

"In a similar fashion to how the cure for mendaxic neurosclerosis is to culture infected cells in a positronic matrix, the essential principle works in reverse to spawn positronic neurons when cultured in certain highly complex..." she trailed off, forgetting that her explanation was forthcoming a revelation which may jeapordise the participation of the others. "...in certain highly complex biological cell matrices".

Ray had led them to the promised craft and the Vulcan continued to exposit their mission as they boarded the rear ramp of the small, runabout sized, medical craft. "Earth is where this is done. As far as I have concluded, this facility is akin to a breeding ground for the Imps, and once it is destroyed they will have no way to replace their eliminated number". She took her seat as she nodded to Ray. "It is not a 'magic cure', however their inability to reproduce will allow the allies a chance to regroup and in breaking their life cycle we may have a chance".

Ray turned from his seat in the right hand cockpit helm station "And it aint just as easy as blowin' the place up, before ya get any ideas kiddo".

P'rel looked between Ray, the Colonel, and finally Finnley. "No" she agreed solemnly.

Finn took a seat in the vessel as she processed all of the information P'rel had given her. "So...we're going to destroy a breeding ground...sort of like eliminating a company of relief troops...are there not other breeding grounds for them to harvest from? And why didn't you just come to me? Why rope my dad and Uncle Ray in? And why can't we just blow the place up? Hell, why hasn't Starfleet already blown the place up?!" She asked.

Spinning around in his chair as the craft whizzed out of the bay and jumped to warp barely before the containment field on the doors had passed over them, Ray winked at Finn; "Aint much of a fleet left in them stars kiddo, even if they did know about it...". He looked to P'rel in the same way a naughty child might look had he been caught liberating the contents of the cookie jar.

The look from the Vulcan conveyed a promise that they would revisit this later, before she turned back to her old friend. "Finnley. Even if Starfleet knew, it would take months of wrangling and debate and by then it would be too late. At the moment there is one breeding facility, and it is undefended. By the time what's left of Starfleet and the Council come around to taking action, there is no way to know what the tactical situation could be. Even then, as has been proven countless times, a fleet assault would fail and in doing so alert the Imperative to our knowledge of the facility - they would reinforce it".

P'rel rose from her passenger seat and leaned over Finnley, retrieving a data pad of some unknown origin from a kit bag deposited by Ray earlier. She passed it over for Finn to examine; "As for explosions - it simply won't do. The entire planet has been turned into a giant hatcher- breeding ground for positronic and...biological matrices. I mean the entire planet. Every square mile of the Earth is given over to the breeding facilities, or the infrastructural systems to support them. And Sol itself is too heavily defended, we could never get close enough to set off a critical solar event..." she took the pad back back from Finnley a moment, and pressed ahead to a technical schematic.

"The key is the power regulation sytem. From what we have learned, the power cannot go out on these things, not even for a short time, or the entire positronic matrix essentially loses cohesion and dissipates. The storage units for the biological matrices are hardened as well; even an orbital bombardment could not possibly destroy all of them and we would only delay this. If you can overload the power regulation system in the central planetary distribution core, and find a way to mitigate any redundancies, we can permanently end their ability to reproduce and possibly even salvage existence from this war."

Pausing for a moment, she looked to both the Colonel and Ray before looking to Finnley. "Or we can return to HQ. I have sent a communique to the Admiral, but you are not mentioned in it...".

Finn just stared at them for a moment. "...permanently end their ability to reproduce. Now you're talking about an impact that could complete eliminate an entire species..."

Quinn's voice was the first to break through the silence, steady with a soft edge. "War is cruel kid. You know that. Hell, you've seen it...but you don't have to be a part of it. Sometimes I wish I wasn't either, but I think your Vulcan friend is right. We're losing the war, it's only a matter of time, but it's still your choice and none of us would hold it against you if you decided to step back..."

She looked between the three of them. All willing to step forward. To carry the weight of possibly eliminating an entire species to save what was left of their own. She didn't like, but she knew her dad was right and their odds were much higher if she helped. "Fine," Finn sighed. "I'll put together a plan....also..." her gaze shifted from Quinn to Ray with an expression of annoyed resignation, "are you two ever going to stop calling me kid? I'm almost 40."

Quinn busted out a laugh. "Not a chance, kid. You could be 60 and if I'm still around? I'll still be calling you kid." He smirked. "Now lets get this mission rolling. You take some time to review the data, then we'll build the plan together. P'rel, is there anything else we should know about this facility before we arrive?"

P'rel paused a moment, contemplating just how much they didn't know. How much of that crossed the definition of what they 'should' know...was debatable. "No" she replied simply, hoping that her friend of many years could not see through the facade. "Mister Ray has the approach vectors to avoid detection. It should take us at least until tomorrow evening. I suggest we utilise much of this time to rest and preparation".

Clicking his tongue, Ray wheeled around in the chair and slapped Quinn on the shoulder as he rose. "Rest sounds good," he muttered as he looked to his old pal with a meaningful look. Ray knew there was, there had to be, far more than the Vulcan was telling them; and there was no way in the universe they were coming back from this alive. But it had to be worth it, the Vulcan wouldn't bring them on a pointless suicide mission. If the mission ended the war - the extermination - so be it; their lives were minor currency. He suspected, though wasn't certain, that Quinn was on the same page.