Allegiances 4 – Playing with Toys
by Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Marie St. Helene

Post Details

Title		Playing with Toys
Mission		Allegiances 4
Author(s)		Soghla' Jared & Soghla' Marie St. Helene
Posted		Sat Aug 20, 2011 @ 4:53am
Location		The F'Hew
Timeline		Not long after Marie's conversation with CoQ

As Marie came up the gangplank and re-boarded the F'Hew, she was greeted by Jared's cheerful looking face.

"There you are! I have something for you! Do you have a minute to try something out?"

"Must I?"

"Wonderful! Follow me!"

He lead her toward the cargo bay, chatting as he went.

"I've been thinking about your request and I had a bit of a play with some ideas while we were in the Nebula waiting. Finished them off in the last day or two. Thought you might like to see what I've come up with."

They arrived at the cargo bay, and Marie realised Jared had set up a bit of a practice area, with several dummies mocked up out of sackcloth and various other garbage. He went over to a couple of boxes arranged like a basic workbench, and opened up a box. He took out what looked like two ordinary klingon gloves - the fingerless kind with that ran all the back almost to the elbow. They looked like the same ones any klingon might wear, although they looked small. He tossed them her her.

"Try those on!"

Marie reluctanly pulled them on. The sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can get back to work.

The gloves were a perfect fit. The material felt slightly different to the normal Klingon ones she'd tried on occasions, and there seemed to be some kind of lightweight rod running along either side of her forearm. Visually, however, they were pretty hard to tell from the normal ones.

"Looks like they fit. Good. I got your physical specifications from HIchop's database, but sometimes that can be a little off. Can I have one of them back for a moment?"

Marie took them off again. So, HIchop's databse is just like its owner.

He took the glove off her and placed in on a plank of wood on the makeshift bench.

"I was thinking about your problem, and I was breaking it down a little. First thing I thought about a fight between a human and a Klingon is just a matter of resilience. You needed some way to be able to resist attacks - something that'd give you an edge over their strength."

He looked at the glove, and picked up an awl of the desk.

"This is made out of what's called a Kelisis weave. It's... chemically similar to what you would know as spider's web, although it's a bit better at diffusing kinetic energy along it's structure. Which means although it looks like normal silky cloth..."

He began stabbing the awl rather vigorously into the glove, throwing as much weight into it as he could muster. After four or five stabs, he put down the awl and passed it to her. She could see the awl had put gouges into the wood. And yet somehow, the material was intact.

"A normal spike or knife won't cut this material. Of course, it won't stop them breaking a bone, which is where the rods come in. Can I have that back for a moment?"

He took back the glove and rested it between two boxes, bridging the gap - the rods keeping it straight. Then he grabbed up a crowbar and brought it down as hard as he possibly could on the glove.

The rods barely flexed.

He took it and tossed it back to her.

"The rods are bonded transmissive polycarbite. Lightweight, but excellent at diffusing impact force. Basically between the structural strength of the rods and the slash-proof nature of the Kelisis weave, you could take a Bat'leth blow on the forearm from May'Bel and your arm would be fine."

"It might pull your shoulder out of your socket, but your arm would be fine. Means if someone comes out of nowhere with a weapon, you're never without a way to block the attack."

"The Kelisi used to make whole suits out of this sort of stuff. They had all sorts of weird beliefs about shedding blood and using edged weapons. Didn't stop them burning each other alive of course!"

Marie decided against pursuing that particular line of conversation.

"Of course, that's not going to help you for long if you don't have a way to fight back. So second trick... try touching THESE two fingers to your palm like THIS."

Marie emulated his movement. There was a 'SNICKT' sound, and suddenly two sharp prongs were protruding from the plate on the back of her hand.

"Hypodermic needles. Loaded with Dioxymethal Tholenine at the moment. Punch that into a Klingon and they'll be unconscious in fifteen seconds. Ten seconds for most other races. Won't work on me. Or Ferengi or Bolians for that matter. But you could use anything out of HIchop's anaesthetics cabinet instead."

Marie opened her hand, and instantly the needles snapped back into hiding.

"Oh, yes. Safety feature."

Marie was starting to smile; the evil, vicious smile that came so readily to her lips.

"You might need something up your sleeve in case someone keeps their distance of course. Try extending them again, and then point your fist at the dummy over there. Then do THIS with your thumb."

She extended her fist towards the dummy and then copied his movement. There was a muffled "THWIP" sound, and the needles launched themselves from the glove as a double-tipped dart - embedding themselves in the dummy. The area around the dart darkened a little as the anaesthetic was injected into the 'wound'.

The smile broadened.

Jared shrugged.

"It's a slow way to put someone down, but it's quiet and unexpected. You've still got a couple of other tricks though. Try doing THIS with your hand."

Marie copied his action, and two small prongs seemed to sprout - one from either side of her palm, facing out from her hand.

"Now try an open hand punch on the dummy there."

Marie drew back - a little unsure. She'd tried the klingon palm punch before, and had never been able to muster much force with it...

...meaning she was taken quite by surprise when she struck out with moderate force and the dummy went flying, accompanied by an energetic crackling sound. The air was suddenly filled with smoke and a faint burning smell.

She looked at her palm with shock, and watched a rogue arc of energy pass between the two prongs.

"You now have a 520 volt palm-punch," Jared explained. "That's enough to put down most Klingon warriors pretty quick. Also has the advantage that unlike with the hypo-dart, metal armour is just going to HELP that thing do it's job. The glove's palm is insulated of course, so it's not going to zap YOU. The power unit is good for about ten hits per glove, and it's not too hard to recharge."

Her eyes were well and truly alight by now.

"You do have one more trick of course. This one's a little more exotic. It's probably just me indulging myself to see if I could make it work, but it might be useful. Come around here and stand on this cross on the floor for a moment."

Marie did as he suggested, moving around to the other side of some boxes. As she got into position, she suddenly looked over and saw two disruptors wired up to a makeshift frame. There was also a sort of catapult built out of a cargo loading device. On the throwing arm was a dummy with a sharp looking bat'leth fixed to it. Jared had apparently designed a rig to shoot her and throw an armed dummy at her all at once.

She instinctively ducked and was at the point of leaping out of the way.

"Alright," Jared called from some kind of make-shift control device nearby. "These disruptors are on minimum power, but it shouldn't matter. You see the two discs on the inside of your wrists? When you hear this thing beep a third time, I want you to slap your wrists together hard so those discs connect, and then thrust towards the dummy like THIS. Ready?"

Marie didn't really get a chance to answer, with the first two beeps coming hot on the heels of his question. Slightly panicked, she resisted the urge to jump, and as the third beep came she did as instructed - slapping her wrists together, and then thrusting both palms towards the dummy, a moment before the dummy went flying toward her and the two disruptors discharged.

There was a... shimmer through the air - a wave like a heat-shimmer that washed out from her palms and towards the dummy, expanding in moments to be several meters across and then slowing down as it moved away from her. Marie went from wincing to shocked awe as she saw the dummy and the disruptor bolts all hit the wave and SLOW DOWN.

She stared at the spectacle. Both the flying dummy and the energy bolts were drifting through the wave as though they were they were sinking through treacle - caught in an almost frozen moment.

My own personal shield. How good is that? "You..." she found she couldn't express the thoughts tumbling through her head.

"It's not actually a stasis device, if you're wondering. I've seen time based weaponry once or twice, but it's... REALLY complex. Nothing you could put into a glove unit. This is more of an... inventive application of special relativity. It only lasts for a few seconds though, so you might want to step out of the way!"

Marie leapt to the side. A moment later, the disruptor bolts passed though the far side of the wave and sizzled though the space where she'd been a moment before - hitting the box behind her. The wave seemed to dissipate at that point, and the armed dummy came crashing down where she'd been standing.

"That's a once-off of course. Once you've used that, you'll have to bring me the power cell for it. Then I'll have to spend a day or two while we're at warp collecting exotic particles from the warp core before it'll be good to go again."

Jared shrugged.

"I guess it's a bit of a novelty. But it's certainly something no-one's going to expect."

That's one novelty I'm pleased to have in the palm of my hands.

"So... are those any good to you? Or did you have something quite different in mind?"

"You, Jared, are a nasty man with a cruel sense of application of scientific marvels."

There was a sudden odd moment. Jared's head whipped around to look at her, and his customary joviality was gone - there was an icy, lethal look in his eyes the like of which Marie had never seen.

And then a moment later it was gone.

"Oh... you mean the gloves. Well... I mean it's all non-lethal stuff. Hardly THAT evil. I'd assumed that was best, if you were planning on using them on other crew. I don't... do THAT sort of thing any more."

He was clearly unsettled by the moment. An there was something odd about his look now. He looked tired, and a little sad - as though she'd stirred an unwelcome memory. For the first time since Marie had met him, Jared looked... old.

"Well... I assume that means you're happy with them then. I'd best... see to the sensors..."