The Bain Supremacy

Star Traks: Boldly Gone
Episode name	The Bain Supremacy
Season	9
Episode number	2
Writer(s)	Alan Decker, Anthony Butler
Year	2503
Stardate	178305
Chronology
Previous in series	Trial And Error [BG]
Next in series	We'll Always Have Romulus [BG]
Previous in timeline	Trial And Error [BG]
Next in timeline	We'll Always Have Romulus [BG]

Having escaped the Breen, Captain Reginald Bain lands right in the clutches of the James T. Kirk Hologram. Meanwhile, Commander Vioxx has the minor problem of all-out war with the Breen to handle. Some guys have all the luck.

Summary

Picking up where the previous story left off, Captain Reginald Bain regains consciousness in a maintenance closet on the Allegra after being zapped unconscious by the James T. Kirk hologram. Bain wants to know what Holo-Kirk’s game is this time, but Kirk says there is no game. He explains that he merged with the Allegra’s computer, and Bain realizes that Kirk can’t get out of the computer. Bain then demands to know what Holo-Kirk did with Lieutenant Commander Tovar, Commander Prosak, and Lieutenant Shelly Marsden. Holo-Kirk assures Bain that they will be fine as long as someone finds them before they run out of air.

Tovar, Marsden, and Prosak, meanwhile, are trapped inside a cargo contained that Holo-Kirk ejected into space.

Just after Admiral Kristen Larkin ordered all Federation vessels to open fire on the Breen, Commander Vioxx pleads with her to have them hold their fire, which she does. He asks her to let him mediate the conflict as a neutral representative of the Romulan Star Empire, which would give them time to find out whether Bain escaped the Breen or if the Breen killed him. Larkin agrees.

Holo-Kirk informs Bain that he will be crashing the Allegra into the Ziyal Center, the quadrant’s largest pediatric hospital and orphanage, located on Lorkassun in Cardassian space. Holo-Kirk will be transmitting himself to a comm relay station in orbit over the planet before the crash, and Bain will be killed. His name, however, will live in infamy as the one responsible for murdering thousands of innocents. Bain starts adjusting his wrist phaser, to which Holo-Kirk says to go ahead with whatever secret plans Bain is making because it won’t help. Bain says there’s nothing secret about it. He’s going to escape the maintenance closet and then come get Holo-Kirk.

Bain then breaks the door control, disabling the magnetic system holding it closed, and forces his way out into the corridor. Holo-Kirk tries to beam him somewhere else but finds that Bain’s alteration to his wrist phaser is generating a field that is preventing the Allegra’s transporter from locking onto him. Bain then goes to the ship’s transporter room and trashes it, taking the entire transporter system offline.

Gridloo and Pridloo, now released from the Federation Penal Colony they were sent to after their association with FOBBER, are transporting socks from Cardassia Prime to Breen when they run across the cargo container holding Prosak, Tovar, and Marsden. They bring it aboard and are surprised that it contains three people instead. The Pakleds assume that the box was a trap set for them by Bain. Prosak tells them that she is commandeering their ship, and the Pakleds trudge out of the cargo bay. Prosak, Tovar, and Marsden know that they have to track the Allegra, and Tovar says that the only way to do it is to contact his mother, Rosalyn Bain. Vioxx and Larkin begin discussions with Thot-Mutch as Sub-Commander Remax excuses himself to see to other matters.

Bain next goes to the Allegra’s engineering section and triggers the safety protocol for the ship’s singularity. This seals the singularity off and causes the ship to lose main power drop out of warp. Then he takes out the emergency power systems and the comm system, preventing Holo-Kirk from transmitting his program anywhere.

Tovar reveals his adopted mother’s Section 31 affiliation to Prosak and Marsden and contacts Rosalyn, who beams aboard with a way to boost the freighter’s speed. Rosalyn accepts Tovar’s reason for bringing Prosak and Marsden into his confidence, and she sets to work helping them beef up the freighter’s weapons while Marsden installs the engine booster.

Remax meets with Centurion Nortal and Sub-Lieutenant Zantak to find a way to prevent war with the Breen. Dr. Natalia Kasyov, who is still in the Anomaly’s computer, and Cabral eavesdrop as well. Remax decides that they will falsify the evidence of the Breen outpost’s destruction again to make it look like the Breen did it. He has Nortal gather every scrap of sensor data from the event while Remax goes to get the assistance of an experienced engineer.

Bain continues his rampage through the Allegra, setting his wrist phaser to overload and using it to blow up the ship’s computer core.

As Rosalyn, Tovar, Marsden, and Prosak work to get the freighter ready to catch and disable the Allegra, Gridloo and Pridloo, who are basically being ignored, decide they should just arrest themselves and lock themselves up in their rooms.

Remax goes to see Selex in the brig and tries to convince him to help prevent a war. Selex refuses. Instead he is counting on being extradited to Romulus, where he will be honored for trying to kill a RommaVulc.

Bain destroys everything on the Allegra’s bridge, including the backup computer core, which should be the end of Holo-Kirk. But after Bain smashes the backup computer core, Holo-Kirk is still talking to him. Bain realizes that Holo-Kirk has transmitted himself into the log recorder located in a bin on the side of the command chair. Bain picks up the book-sized recording device containing Holo-Kirk.

Kasyov and Cabral review the sensor footage from the destroyed Breen outpost and discover that it was already faked. The outpost was covered in thoron fields, which are used to mask weapons. It was actually a weapons platform rather than a science outpost. After discussing the situation with Remax, Zantak, and Nortal, they decide to blackmail the Breen.

The freighter catches up to the disabled Allegra just as Bain is about to destroy the log recorder containing Holo-Kirk. With rescue at hand, Bain decides not to. Rosalyn transports away, so Bain never knows she was aboard the freighter.

Remax takes the information to Vioxx, who arranges for himself and Remax to meet with Thot-Mutch privately. They tell the Breen what they know and threaten to hand the information over to Starfleet Command if Mutch doesn’t negotiate a cease fire with Admiral Larkin. In addition, they demand three crates of Breen lingerie and a look at what is underneath Mutch’s helmet. Mutch agrees, and Vioxx and Remax narrowly avoid throwing up when they finally see an unhelmeted Breen.

Tovar, Marsden, and Prosak come aboard the Allegra, letting the surprised Pakleds go. They get the Allegra running enough to return to the Anomaly and learn that they missed coming back to a war. The Anomaly takes Admiral Larkin to Breen for the formal signing of the peace accords.

Marsden loads the Kirk hologram into a self-contained holopod that cannot reach any kind of external connect. Bain goes in for a bit of retribution against Holo-Kirk.

Vioxx is concerned about the Selex situation and thinking of contacting Romulan High Command. Remax tells him that he already made arrangements. Just then, the brig force field system fails, and Selex beams himself down to Breen. He is immediately stunned and wakes up in Grad-Norm’s office. Norm contacts the Anomaly and demands that Bain exchange himself for Selex. Selex shouts that he wants asylum. Norm and Dobt-Phul realize that Bain won’t agree to the exchange. They decide that, since Selex technically invaded Breen by beaming down, they will put him on trial instead of Bain and hope the Breen populace will be interested. They have Selex taken to interrogation.

Bain turns Holo-Kirk over to Admiral Larkin. Holo-Kirk is taken to the Fleet Museum, where is program is installed in a holoemitter connected to a battery that can run without recharging for 1200 years. It is sealed inside invulnerable transparent duranium cylinder. The holoemitter activates and Holo-Kirk appears. He has enough time to say “Kirk. Enterprise” then look around confused before he is shut down. Only to appear again five seconds later. And this happens over and over and over, and will continue for the next 1200 years.

Featuring

• Captain Reginald Bain
• Commander Prosak
• Commander Vioxx
• Lieutenant Commander Tovar
• Lieutenant Shelly Marsden
• Sub-Commander Remax
• Dr. Natalia Kasyov
• Centurion Nortal
• Sub-Lieutenant Zantak
• Engineer Selex
• Cabral
• Admiral Kristen Larkin
• Thot-Phul
• James T. Kirk Hologram
• Rosalyn Bain
• Gridloo
• Pridloo

Author's Comments

I doubt that anyone will be too surprised to find this out, but even though every Boldly Gone story has both of our names on it, Anthony and I often write them separately. We’ll talk about each run, look at our schedules and who has ideas, and then divide up the stories between us. Some insanely obsessive person with way too much time on their hands could probably go through the previous 8 runs of Boldly and figure out, based on our other work, who wrote what. That said, we much prefer those rare opportunities when we can work on a story together. In the case of Series Nine, we got that chance on the first two.

That wasn’t the original plan, though. Anthony initially took on 9-1 himself, but, after getting a good three-quarters of the way through it, he decided he wasn’t really satisfied with the direction the story was taking (he can jump in and correct me if I’m wrong here). We had scheduled a night to hang out together, so one Saturday evening I was driving along the winding Baltimore County backroads leading from my end of the world to his trying to figure out if I had any ideas to offer on the story. I love inspiration (what writer doesn’t?). Sometimes generating ideas can be torture, but other times they just appear. This was one of those times. The entire sequence of events from Tovar, Prosak and Marsden rescuing Bain from the Breen to Bain defeating the Kirk hologram leapt into my head almost completely formed. If I remember correctly, I called Anthony as I was driving and started babbling to him about it. By the end of that visit, we had most or maybe even all of 9-1 done, and we split up 9-2 into sections for each of us to write.

I don’t often say things like this about the stories, but I am very happy with “The Bain Supremacy.” While the images I initially had in my head of Bain just ripping his way through the Allegra in pursuit of an increasingly-panicky Kirk hologram didn’t quite fit in the finished story, the overall concept works well, I think, and several of the gags made me chuckle all over again as I was editing the story for posting.

I’ve probably mentioned this at some point as well, but I love writing for Bain. There was a danger with him that we might make him too perfect, which I believe that we’ve generally avoided. He’s got his flaws and he can be downright oblivious about certain things, but he is a hell of a lot of fun.

Links

The Bain Supremacy