"Wasp!"

[LeftEar JoNs 0]

12.01.08

USS Excalibur NCC-2004 C

“Wasp!”

 

Commander Left Ear JoNs, Executive Officer of the Excalibur.

 

Left Ear JoNs, Commander.

 

Executive Officer JoNs of the USS Excalibur.

 

The name, rank, and title had a nice ring to it. The command red uniform tunic was a nice contrast to the feline commander’s rich brown fur. At five foot five inches tall, JoNs wasn’t exactly on the tall side, but with the panther like features and muscular build, it could be said that Left Ear cut a formidable figure and bearing.

 

Generally, when she gave an order, the crew carried out the instructions with no argument. She had come up through the ranks, gone through command level training courses, and was generally a by the book, serious, and straight arrow officer.

Most of the time, the Caitian Ex Oh was unflappable and the outward appearance of a command level officer just fell into place. But, an outward appearance could be deceiving, and the old human adage to never judge a book by its cover was very appropriate right now.

 

JoNs was trying not to curl up into a fuzzy ball and babble or yowl incoherently with her displeasure.

 

The landing party had made planetary touch down. Captain Corizon had accompanied the Miriamano team to the surface, JoNs had been left in command of the Excalibur, and the bridge operations were all running smoothly. Nothing had blown up within the last few minutes. The Caitian senior officer had been rather content to let the big ship hang out in orbit of the planet while she sat and looked all feline content and pretty in the big chair.

 

Then, she had started reading through the departmental update reports. Apparently, the engineering staff was moving forward quite quickly with the “spider mole” technological counter measure idea. Left Ear continued scrolling through the data padd she held in a strong and wide paw, perusing the information contained there with a critical eye and trying not to cower in fear or something.

 

Wasps. According to the preliminary tech specs and the description of the counter device function, the grease monkeys planned to construct and employ …. small mechanical wasps to prevent any sort of future technological breach (Cult Spider Mole or otherwise) to the ship .

 

The little bastards.

 

Wait. The wasps. Not the Excalibur engineering staff …

 

Thirteen years previously

Starfleet Academy Annexed Grounds

San Pablo Ranch, Old California

Preliminary Survival Training Class

 

“This is so stupid.”

 

MVess JoNs glanced at the speaker, a pretty white haired Andorian cadet, and offered a commiserating purr to her. “Hey, we don’t pick our first semester classes; required core curriculum, so what’re you going to do?” The brown furred Caitian shrugged and turned her attention back to the instructor blathering on and on at the head of the group.

 

MVess, the Andorian, and about eight other cadets from her freshman class had been shuttled from the main Academy grounds onto the San Pablo ranch for this portion of the class training work. The land was flat and open, and comprised the grassland and plains portion of the preliminary survival training that the academy offered. The San Pablo Ranch had been in operation for about four hundred years, and a portion of the lands had been donated to the Fleet Academy about one hundred years previously for training and teaching purposes.

 

Personally, JoNs was bored out of her ever loving skull, considering she had grown up on the grasslands of Cait and was well aware of what it would take to survive if one where to ever get stranded on an open land area such as this. She had gone camping and on more then enough overnight hikes to be more then over qualified for the class.

 

Oh who was she kidding – she and her brothers could probably teach the class better then the instructor.

 

“… okay Cadets, the land is pretty basic here: flat landscape, grass, scrub oak, the occasional tree. What you need to watch out for is any non indigenous species that may have been introduced within the area over the years, therefore changing up the eco system of what appears to be a cut and dry geological area ...”

 

MVess’s ears perked forward at that point. Non-indigenous?

 

“…such as the Black Winged Prairie Wasp, which can be dangerous if provoked.”

 

Oh-kay. That doesn’t sound very … friendly.

 

The instructor, a dark skinned male lieutenant on a medical leave teaching assignment by the name of Brodie, pointed a finger toward a small tree about twenty paces away. “The current remaining wasps - numbering about two hundred or so now - are all that remains of a failed genetic experiment in the early 2000’s to cut down on an insect problem that had been infecting the surrounding ranch and vacation haciendas. Long story short, a common wasp genetic was bred with the common honey bee, a few DNA strands tweaked here and there, and the Black Wing was born.”

 

A murmuring trolled through the gathered group of cadets as tenuous glances were winged towards the tree; the aforementioned wasps could be seen skimming through the air around the tree.

 

“The bloodline, so to speak, of the Black Wing has continued to degrade over these decades. Every fifteen years or so, a new batch of the now highly aggressive wasps appears, but about half of their numbers are sterile, so the reproductive cycle just keeps dwindling. Eventually, the genetic line will die off, and there are no plans to resurrect the Earth species considering they were created in the first place.”

 

“So why in the name of the Great Predator Bird are we standing a bit close to the um, wasp inhabited tree with the nasty and aggressive wasps, sir?”

 

JoNs’s gentle purred voice carried a bit across the open expanse of the plains area, but her tone was not gentle. It was direct and to the point, or as to the point as a young eighteen year old cadet could be.

 

“I don’t think I like your tone cadet.”

 

“Well, we’ve been through this before sir; doesn’t change the fact that we really should get away from the said non indigenous species … right?”

 

“Cadet JoNs, I assure you that … ack!”

 

And there we go – one of the Black Wings buzzed the Lieutenant. Left Ear swore she heard about a hundred buzzing little voices scream:

 

“ATTACK! INTRUDERS TO THE HIVE! BOO YA YA YA YA!”

 

Present Day

USS Excalibur

Command Bridge

 

Yeah, Left Ear was still traumatized to this day over that incident and generally disliked any wasp, bee, or any sort of flying insect with a stinger.

 

Gods forbid that she ever serve on a Fleet ship named after a wasp species or something. She knew there was a Norway class fleet ship tooling about the quadrants that sported the name of the USS Yellow Jacket; there was no way in Hades that the Caitian would ever serve on that vessel.

 

JoNs recalled that the next two minutes of that fragging field trip had been just this side of bedlam. The black winged wasps swarmed, defending their tree hive. Minor stings and injuries had been sustained, but the cadet group finally piled and or dove into the transport shuttle that had been parked a short distance away. The feline had been lucky; her fur had protected her from a majority of the little stingers. The instructor was eventually reprimanded (citing general lack of judgment).

 

So, that case had involved a failed and dying genetic experiment and overall JoNs and the other cadets had learned a valuable lesson about the more aggressive insect that could inhabit – or made to inhabit – a planetary area.

 

And this current engineering case involved building a small wasp-like countermeasure device to guard against any further Blood Cult mechanical “spiders” that crawled aboard to mess with any internal ships equipment, and introducing them to the environment of the Excalibur.

 

Granted, the little so and so’s might consider the Excalibur their hive environment once they were programmed. Or whatever … can you program a cyber wasp?

 

Okay, now the Caitian commander was getting a headache. Note to self: pay a little visit to engineering and do some follow up investigating.

 

If the wasps so much as twitched the wrong way, or attempted a coup to take over the ship, or spazzed out and went all cyber zombie hoo rah wasp, JoNs was going to seriously bust some grease monkey rear ends.

 

Little bastards.

 

… she meant the tech wasp project, not the engineers.