Part 82: Holiday Update: Let's Read: Planet X - Part 7

STAR TREK The Next Generation / X-MEN: PLANET X - part 7

Last Time on Dragon TreX-Men: King Cold and his army launched an attack against the peaceful planet of NotEarth. Wait, no, that happened already. Um… Picard talked to the chief lizardman, who used his people's traditional peaceful greeting of ironically threatening to kill Picard and destroy the Enterprise. Let's hope that doesn't get misconstrued.



Chapter 20

Picard tells King Cold that he's not leaving, so King Cold opens fire immediately. The Draa'kon's first salvo drops the Enterprise's shields to 22%.




What kind of firepower? Oh, right, the bullshit kind (I'm not making an 'over 9,000' joke, fuck you). Picard returns fire, but it does nothing. He's tempted to keep firing, but decides against it because the Draa'kon are still plot immune and his resources are 'limited' (since when?!). The Enterprise takes another glancing hit and loses shields completely. Damned viral matrix.

Data discovers the Connecticut has a weak point, behind each of the ship's warp nacelles. Lt. Rager, one of Lt. Sovar's friends, manages to bullshit the ship behind the Connecticut instantly, without taking any hits even though their shields are down.


Shoot the glowy bits!

Picard shoots the boss's glowing vulnerable spots, and all but one of the Connecticut's warp engines explode, the remaining one is badly damaged, which means they can still move. So Picard heroically orders a retreat (he is French). But the Enterprise gets hit again, and Picard does a backflip and faceplants into a bulkhead. Data saves the day (he'll do that a lot), and the Enterprise escapes.

Weapons are offline, the warp drive is offline, the impulse engines are damaged and may fail at any moment. Oh, and shields are down too, because them being up worked so well last time. All of these things occur because any one of them isn't quite (ham-handed) enough to establish that the Draa'kon are scary and powerful and the Enterprise is in danger!, so the author needs to use all of them. Except we know it isn't, so it fails to elicit anything but mockery.


Oh shit, time for some bullshit with the deflector dis-Geordi calls the bridge and tells Picard to use Nightcrawler to teleport through the Connecticut's shields, because we've already established he can. Picard asks Storm if it's possible. While he's doing that, the Enterprise takes a minor hit that opens several hull breaches in engineering and (presumably, it's not mentioned) several crewmen get sucked into space while he's considering his options. His option. He only has the one.

Storm also mentions that if Nightcrawler makes the attempt, he may be sickened and pass out, so Riker suggests that Data should go because he won't get tired, and is smart enough to sabotage fuck with the Draa'kon ship. The other better option would've been: Sending Wolverine with Nightcrawler and telling him to claw his way through everything and everyone that looks like they may in some way be important. He'd have enjoyed that, but Storm didn't think of it. Also, that's pretty much the climax of the book, and we wouldn't want to skip ahead ten chapters, would we? (Yes, we would)

Picard thinks about it for about a half a second, then decides to send Data and Nightcrawler to potentially teleport into deep space (or a wall) and die. Picard then orders Riker to assemble some boarding teams with some X-Men in each one.

… Guys, I have just learned why our boarding party shuttles are so amazing. They're full of Holographic Wolverines!

Storm is pleased with this idea, and Riker wants to go commit suicide lead a boarding party himself. Nightcrawler needs a moment to study the Draa'kon ship. Riker stops to get Lt. Sovar, because having a NotHuman will be really vital onboard the Connecticut. Also, it's nice that they have time to have a ten-minute meeting in the middle of a fierce phaser battle. The Draa'kon remind them by doing more superficial damage with their weapons. Y'know, the same weapons that nearly destroyed the Enterprise in three volleys. Plan made, the plot drives right off the cliff again. See you next chapter.



Chapter 21

Data and Nightcrawler make some small talk while Data arms himself and the Enterprise takes another hit. Data is confident he's assimilated enough information about the Draa'kon to be able to fuck over their ship, then they immediately launch their plan to drop the Connecticut's shields and send boarding shuttles over to dick with King Cold's forces. That'll teach him to have a ridiculously high power level.

Nightcrawler has no problem teleporting over to the Connecticut, then passes out. So Data fireman's carries him off and the scene ends without resolving anything.

We then jump to Riker, who's with a boarding party. The Connecticut's shields drop (Data succeeded off-screen) and… the Connecticut's shields go right back up, so only Worf's team (Worf, Banshee, Archangel, and three redshirts (Kirby, Ditko, and Dies Horribly)) made it over. Worf tries contacting the other boarding parties, but can only reach Data. The Draa'kon have backup shield generators (why didn't the Federation think of that! ) which kicked in the instant the primaries failed.

Archangel immediately takes to the air to scout. Stupid idea in close-quarters hallways, but Worf approves and Archangel nearly dies for his trouble. Archangel then leads the surprised and angry Draa'kon back to the boarding party, and Lt. Dies Horribly gets killed instantly. Worf immediately attempts to avenge him, but Archangel does it first because he's shooting from above so all the waist-high barriers the Draa'kon install all over their ships provide them no cover and, because Archangel has a higher power level, he defeats several Draa'kon effortlessly; while Banshee makes their guns explode and Worf just shoots them with phasers.


That's our Worf!

They then check on Dies Horribly. He's dead. So they leave the body and move on to go sabotage the Connecticut a cliffhanger ending.



Chapter 22

Riker is pissed. Riker want smash bad aliens! Riker no want to still be on Enterprise. RIKER SMASH!... ok, no. Riker and Troi launch in shuttles to go stop the Draa'kon in Verdeen. Picard promises to keep the Draa'kon occupied so they won't shoot the defenseless shuttlecraft, lol.

Dr. Crusher makes Lt. Sovar to promise to get blood samples from the transformed so she can figure out how to make the Xhaldians less retarded cure them, if they want to be cured. Riker's team consists of Storm, Shadowcat, Lt. Sovar, and three other security officers (who are probably female). Troi, meanwhile, gets Wolverine, Colossus, and four redshirts in her shuttle. Riker worries foreshadows pointlessly about Troi (she'll be fine), and they launch shuttles. Since it would hardly be Star Trek without a holodeck scene and a shuttlecraft crash (and we've already had a holodeck), which do you think is going to occur now?

NEITHER, we're back with Worf. He's successfully murdered several more squads of King Cold's soldiers. No Ginyu Force yet, though, so it'll be ok. Worf's job is to cripple the Connecticut's engine room. They fight their way in, break the warp core, and flee. This is a really short chapter, but this isn't a cliffhanger so…

… King Cold is pissed. The Enterprise apparently crippled the Draa'kon's internal sensors, so they've been trying to figure out what's going on this whole time. He's upset that so many of his warriors have been killed so effortlessly, so he orders Frieza to activate the fire barriers and suck all the air out of the corridor that Worf is in. THEN the chapter ends. On a cliffhanger.



Next Time: Worf beats a force field in a fist-fight (ok, not really), Riker and Troi find the transformed, and Captain Picard finds time to write a Captain's Log (really, he does!)