The Protagonist System

As soon as the photon torpedo was far enough away from the ship to not be detected on its sensors, I brought it to a stop and transfigured it into a lifepod. I added a few things to be comfortable, like a small replicator and an actual bed, and just relaxed. The last two days had been harrowing and I let my appearance change from looking like an old man to become Thomas Riker.
He was my actual height and I looked good as a younger Riker, which was almost like Mark Grayson from Invincible grown up. With a few little tweaks to my face and hair, I actually was Mark again. I let out a laugh at the pointlessness of that and put myself back to looking like Thomas Riker again.
Thankfully, my Kryptonian heritage had kicked in and I was not going to suffer and die a horrible death because I had started out this life as a mimetic symbiotic clone with an extremely short lifespan.
Although, it was a bit of a dick move for Q to force my memories to only unlock after I had reached maturity. I knew she wanted me out of the way before Q could do it himself; but, the irony of her making me into a cheap copy of a main character really hurt my feelings.
As I laid there in my lifepod, I went over the memories I had gained from my dimensional clone after I had come here and became Sim. Seeing how my previous life as Thomas Riker had ended up the same as it did in the actual show, gave me a sense of relief.
The only difference was that he still retreated occasionally to the USS Retaliation to spend time with Beverly and to help coordinate her rescue of all the people that 'died' in the conflicts between Bajor, Cardassia, and the Federation. They even established a hidden colony in deep space for them to keep them out of the conflict.
It was a good life to live and I was happy that things had worked out. We had saved so many people and rescued so many Borg. Section 31 had also enthusiastically accepted Agent Keyla's offer to send more agents to her, making her job easier, and they gained access to all the technology she and the Chappels amassed from all the Borg Cubes and other ships the Borg had assimilated.
It put Section 31 years ahead of the other races in the galaxy and they loved that. It still didn't match our own tech level, though. Like we had agreed, Starfleet was not ready for the Caretaker technology or the updates to everything else we had access to. Too much too soon would defeat the point and they couldn't grow into it like they were supposed to. Slow and steady almost always won the race.
I ate a small meal and closed my eyes. The memories of being Sim were fresh and I had to shuffle them off into the back of my mind. Even with how things had worked out, especially with T'Pol showing me that younger Vulcans did have strong feelings, I was left adrift in a universe that I had little to no idea about, with only Trip's memories as a guide.
I was only slightly tempted to pop up as someone else when Enterprise stopped somewhere, to possibly join the crew again. The thing was, I knew that with the way Captain Archer had reacted to Sim's existence, he would not welcome anyone else on his ship that could change things too much.
It was also weird to have a single man making all the decisions for the entire ship and everyone on it. Archer didn't really consult with anyone or had meetings with the command staff of the different departments to ask their advice on things. He made the decisions and everyone else had to go along with them.
Once I had Sim's and Trip's memories sorted and put away, I let out a soft chuckle. I had just realized I was somewhere in the uncharted Delphic Expanse that was a hostile and dangerous region filled with unpredictable gravitational distortions, electromagnetic fields, and known and unknown radiation... and I somehow felt right at home.
I checked the list of my abilities and skills and saw my Touch of Divinity was greyed out. I suspected that Q had somehow used our combining energy during that split second kiss to do something she never thought she would be able to do with a lesser being like me. Create a child.
It made me wonder if she would raise the child well, not bother trying, or would she half-ass it like Q did with his son when he was born. He was a nuisance and an annoyance as a teenager, just like his dad was, and that made me rethink Q's actions. I chuckled again, because it meant Q really had raised him himself. He still half-assed it, though.
I made sure the lifepod didn't drift or anything, secured it with station keeping thrusters, and went to sleep. I needed a good nap after my performance and I would decide later what I was going to do with the rest of my life here.
As a last thing before I drifted off, I activated the extra-dimensional senses I gained from the Worm entities, which were the same ones I used when in the High School DxD Underworld and Yasaka's dimension to detect movement and to set up wards of protection from invasion.
If anyone came anywhere near my coordinates, no matter the origin of that movement, I'd know about it. I just hoped I wouldn't need it, especially here in the Delphic Expanse.
****
In the original timeline, Captain James T. Kirk and the USS Enterprise were ordered to find a missing ship called the USS Defiant. It was a Constellation class, just like the Enterprise, and Starfleet Command had lost its signal near the Tholian Conclave's territorial space.
They soon arrive to the last known location and find the ship floating adrift and without power. The ship's sensors detected spacial anomalies and fractures, revealing a danger the Defiant must have entered unawares. Captain Kirk, First Officer Spock, Chief Medical Officer McCoy, and Navigator Ensign Chekov, put on environmental suits and beamed over.
They discovered the crew were dead and the Defiant seemed to be fading from existence for some reason. With limited transporter capability due to the malfunctions, Kirk ordered everyone to beam back to the Enterprise. Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott successfully beamed back Spock, McCoy, and Checkov, then lost Kirk's signal when the Defiant faded away completely.
Of course, this caused a lot of people to panic, especially McCoy, since he always did when something bad happened. Spock on the other hand, remained calm and investigated the anomaly. He soon finds out that the local space was experiencing intervals of interphase, where two dimensions briefly touched and merged temporarily.
Spock reasons that Kirk would appear during the next occurrence of interphasic energy and orders the ship to remain where it was, essentially violating another sovereign nation's territorial space. This does not go unnoticed by the Tholians and they approach the Enterprise to order it to leave their space.
The aliens were very strict species, being more insectoid than humanoid, and relations between their six legged people and the Federation were strained, so the situation would devolve quickly if Kirk didn't return.
Luckily, they soon saw a ghostly outline of Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise and realized he was trying to contact them. McCoy somehow arranged a kind of antidote to the madness that exposure to the spacial distortions caused, by using a fatal nerve gas and mixed it with alcohol to dilute it, reducing the fatal consequences to only feel like you were near death with a severe hangover.
With that dispersed to the crew by the time the next interphase event happened, Montgomery Scott was able to lock onto Kirk's transporter pattern and beamed him aboard as the Enterprise passed through and out of the interphase space, saving him from going wherever the other ship went.
The USS Defiant was declared lost with all hands.
****
I slowly woke up when I felt... something nearby. Usually, when something breaches a dimensional barrier, it was like a hard poke in the side and you knew exactly where it was. What my extra senses were telling me was that something had brushed up against this dimension briefly and settled down. It felt like... like it was right next door.
That was a really odd feeling, as was somehow knowing whatever it was didn't belong. I realized then that the dimensional energy felt wrong. I stored the things I had to make my coffin habitable and concentrated on that energy signature. Since I had one to follow, looking into that dimension and opening a portal to it was a piece of cake.
My eyes widened when I saw a Constitution class ship fading into existence. It was no wonder I felt it pass by, since the thing was huge. Normally, small breaches were all that were possible and this was the first time I'd seen an entire spaceship actually pass through dimensions.
I opened a portal and used my telekinesis power to push my lifepod through and appeared right beside the ship. That was when I felt the intraphasic energy and how something so huge had been able to pass through. How did I feel it? Because it was unnatural.
I used my clairvoyance power again to look at the Tholian ship nearby. I could hear their scientists celebrating that the detonation of a tricobalt device inside the gravity field of a dead star had shattered subspace and created an interphasic gateway to another universe. Since it had been too dangerous for their own ship to enter, they sent out a distress signal and an alien ship came through it.
It was drifting, so the Tholians were going to wait for it to exit the dangerous energy field before they would capture the ship, kill the inhabitants, and claim the technology and resources for themselves.
I felt disgusted by that tactic and gave them the mental suggestion that they needed to set their self destruct, just in case the aliens were hostile. They set it as they waited for the ship to clear the danger and I gave them a mental picture that they had plenty of time to turn off the self destruct. They didn't. Just as the USS Defiant floated out o the field to safety, the Tholian ship exploded with all hands.
With them out of the way, I used telekinesis to move my transfigured lifepod over to one of the manual access hatches on the side of the saucer section. There was no power, so I knew I couldn't enter the ship by normal means. I vanished my lifepod and opened the manual release lever cover and pushed it down, the hand cranked the small wheel to crack open the door.
There was a small rush of air past me, so that meant the safety bulkhead of the airlock was still intact. It was a relief, because that meant the rest of the ship had actual air and I would need to waste time trying to secure it to make it airtight again.
I closed the manual level cover and floated into the airlock, found the same thing on the inside, and opened it to crank the little wheel the other way and closed the door. A pull on the lever secured it and I closed the cover. It as dark and that was okay. I could still easily see everything. I went to the other airlock door and opened the access panel and turned the little valve there to pressurize the airlock.
Once that was done, there was a click sound and I opened the inner door. I closed it behind me and made my way to engineering through the Jeffries Tubes. It was the easiest way to check why main power was offline in an older ship like this.
Surprisingly, all of the crew were dead. In fact, they seemed like they had been dead for a while. That was a really odd thing, until I realized this ship had appeared about a hundred years in the past. The technology, though antiquated by my own standards, could be considered extremely powerful this far back in the timeline.
It was simple to reverse the shutdown of the engines and the reactor. It brought the ship back to life and most of the systems were online. I went to the engineering console and used the physical buttons there to turn on the display screen and checked the logs. The shutdown was ordered by the captain when people on the ship were being driven crazy and murderous by the intraphasic energy.
“I guess that's why the Tholians thought it was too dangerous for them to enter.” I said out loud and checked a few more logs, then shrugged. I had plenty of time to check things over later. For now, I entered my own credentials to the computer and was recognized as the replacement captain for the ship.
My next step was to take a copy of Chappel out of inventory. I needed help and the mostly manual ship barely had any kind of automation to help me run the thing.
“Please state the nature of the sexual emergency.” Chappel said with a smirk on her face.
“Hardy-har-har.” I said with a deadpan look.
Chappel laughed. “I'm going to say that every time you make a copy of the me you have stored, just so you know.”
I groaned and she patted my back. “It was your idea to make sure I had a backup of you.”
“Yes, yes it was.” Chappel said and looked around. “Oh! We're in an old Constitution class engine room. How did you pull that off? Are we in a museum back on Earth?”
“No, it's even better than that.” I said and then explained about what happened with Q, ending up on a weird prequel Enterprise with a crew of people that I didn't recognize from Federation records, and how I had escaped and found this ship in a nearby dimension and by the stardate of the logs was a hundred years in the past.
Chappel stared at me for several seconds and then laughed. “Only you, Tom. Only you.”
“It seems so.” I said and waved around us. “I need you to give me a hand to automate as much of this as possible and then we can slave it to the bridge.”
“It's already slaved to the bridge.” Chappel told me.
“Huh?” I asked, eloquently.
“It's how a lot of times Scotty stayed on the bridge of the Enterprise to work. The engineering system up there is almost an identical copy of this console.” Chappel said and patted the grey metal. “He just has a lot more experience than you with running things using mostly unmarked buttons.”
“But... wait...” I stopped talking and thought about it.
“Don't hurt yourself.” Chappel joked. “All of the stations there are slaved to their departments. Spock stayed at the science station because it has access to the scanners, sensors, and detectors from the science labs.”
“Uhura stayed at the communications console because she had access to all of the ship's operations.” I said and nodded. “Navigation and Helm worked almost the same way, since they would have to be huge if they had all that computing power right there instead of in their designated areas on the ship.”
“Remote access really does speed up the whole process of running a ship. If it didn't, why would ships need so many personnel assigned to the different departments?” Chappel asked.
“So, we just focus on the automation.” I said and stood up from the chair. “Everything is much more basic than we're used to, so be extra careful when you're working.”
“Aw, I didn't know you cared.” Chappel teased me.
I rolled my eyes at her. “If I didn't care about you, I wouldn't have left your penis attached.”
Chappel giggled. “Are you sure you don't want to give it a try?”
I shook my head. “I'm sorry, I'm firmly in the only loving women category. Despite there being a lot of temptation, maybe some trickery going on, and the appeal certain people can have, I draw the line firmly at not wanting a dick in my mouth. There's nothing wrong with it if someone does want that, and I won't judge them or anyone else for it, except myself.”
Chappel shrugged. “I didn't expect it to be so fun with having it, either. Experiencing things from another perspective really opened me up to what it meant to being who I was and what being myself meant.”
“And you still kept it afterwards.” I said.
“I did, because I realized it was just another way for me to share things with my partner.” Chappel said and wagged her eyebrows at me. “It was a hard truth for me to accept.”
I laughed and shook my head. “You can keep it to yourself, Christine. We need to get to work and get this ship out of Tholian space before more of them show up.”
“I just need a minute first to grab some essential tools.” Chappel said and walked over to a side room and entered it.
I shrugged and pulled some tools out of inventory and spent a few minutes opening up the engineering station. A lot of work needed to be done to automate all of independent functions in Engineering and I hoped we could finish and get out of there before we were caught.
“Okay, I'm ready.” Chappel said.
I looked up from the innards I was arm's deep in and I dropped the wrench at seeing her wearing the old style blue dress-like uniform. It was similar to her Secretary Chappel outfit and also looked a lot more scandalous with the plunging neckline and the skirt that was barely past the top of her thighs. She did a little twirl and the very short fluffy skirt disappeared and showed off her black lacy panties.
“What do you think?” Chappel asked with a wicked grin.
I reached down and adjusted myself, so she would see she had gotten me hard. “I think you need to be careful about bending over while we work.”
Chappel giggled and skipped over to me, showing off how the skirt wouldn't hide much if she didn't want it to. “Aye, captain. I'll be really careful about bending over when you're looking.”
I knew from the wording she didn't mean that she wouldn't bend over, only that she would make sure I was looking when she did. I opened her mouth to tell her not to do that, then sighed. She would definitely do it more if I told her that.
Chappel ginned at me and bent over at the waist, giving me a huge up close shot of her breasts, and she picked up the wrench before she stood up and handed it to me. I took it without a word and she smirked as she helped me pull apart the main console to start automating it.
With our vast experience with much more advanced systems and technology, it should take us long at all to make the ship fully operational from the bridge.