4: Planet Hera

Posted on Wed Aug 5th, 2020 @ 1:12pm by Commander Rita Paris
Edited on on Wed Aug 5th, 2020 @ 1:23pm

Mission: The Bulikaya Particle
Location: Meroset 347
Timeline: 2397
Tags: Rita Bulikaya

The smell of sugary sweet baked goods finally began to clear from her nostrils as Rita Paris’ eyes once again adjusted from the flare that accompanied the dimension-spanning Bulikaya effect.

That had now deposited her somewhere dark and foreboding. Where the wind atop the mountaintop howled as lightning arced between angry black storm clouds, pregnant with menace.

Facing her was a stone replica of... herself. Then, taking in the entire woman, Rita realized it wasn’t a statue. It was her. The helmet was retracted, the heavy rifle down and off to one side, the right hand held out in greeting. Her smiling face was open and earnest, one of offered trust and the spirit of Starfleet. Which was now immortalized forever in stone.

It would appear she had been attempting to reason with Hera, and she’d been turned to stone for her efforts. Then apparently moved out into a collection of such statues- many of them on their knees, pleading. Some were in charging battle poses, many looked as though they were attempting to flee.

Nearby, she heard the snort and shuffle of a bovine, and heavy hoofsteps on the stone floor.

Considering summoning her own armor, Rita chose not to escalate. After all, she had been doing this sort of thing all over the galaxy for years in a minidress and high heels, and damned if she needed some high-tech handicap just to hide from an ornery guard. Ducking down, she lowered her profile in the statuary garden that comprised the area in which she’d found herself, and used her own statue for cover.

Sorry, Rita. I’d fix you but I haven’t the faintest clue how, and I just need to stay alive for... a few minutes, now. No problem, just play hide and seek with a minotaur... or two or three, look at that. With harpies on air support, just screwing around in the sky up there. Ah- yup, that statue just moved. Ohhhh my stars and garters.

Standing still, she summoned said high-tech handicap from the extradimensional inventory that she kept stored in the bracers of the moon and sun she wore upon her wrists, themselves a gift of the goddess Hera. Powering up the EVA armor, she tapped it over to the stealth camouflage mode.

‘Starfleet Represent’ be damned- this was dimension hopping as an extreme sport, and it was one you survived or returned to your own universe as a corpse. Having been dead in a few ways a few times, Rita didn’t much care for being a corpse.

Plotting a course to the south and the capitol city below, the extradimesional explorer sprinted for the cliffside, staying low and fast. The living statue behind her had raised the alarm, and she could both hear and feel the thunderous hoofbeats behind her as the minotaurs charged after her. At the same time, the cries of the harpies telegraphged their intent, and her armor’s scanners picked all of them up and plotted likely projected flight vectors for aerial attack from above.

“Time to do that thing that saves your life, Interplanet Janet,” Rita said to herself as she bolted to the edge of the cliff, pivoted as she hopped off of it, and began a controlled slide down the side of the butte upon which the Temple of Hera was built, as she plotted her course through the vast city.

Herapolis, capitol city of Hera’s World, aka Meroset 347.

Once upon a time, Rita Paris had led the revolt that Admiral Meowlith had started. They had executed a three pronged attack on the mad goddess who had declared war on humanity, wherever they may be amongst the stars. Having discovered an Achilles heel that levelled the playing field, Rita had stormed the temple, taken out Hera’s generals while Asa Dael had destroyed her throne, causing a feedback loop that ‘short circuited’ Hera’s powers. With the psionic resonation collectors in the temples demolished throughout the city, the people were free and Hera was defeated. After which she would be reformed on the starship that bore her name, by the woman who had spared her life. Who believed in her, and convinced her to lead a better existence, and be a benevolent goddess once more.

This was not ‘that’ Hera.

This was the angry, vengefeul one that had launched her invulnerable chariots at the stars, and apparently had neither been stopped by Commander Paris, nor reformed. This version still had quite the mad on for the ‘children of Zeus’, and her followers were deciding the new girl in town needed flattening.

Which was unfortunate for them. Because Rita Paris knew Herapolis quite well. It was a favored scenario of hers for use in urban warfare training. She shared this with Ensign Sado, as they now trained together, often in this quaint bronze age landscape populated by monsters of Greek mythology. The R&D department used it to test out the mechs they designed and built for urban warfare in close quarters, and the scenario had worked excellently. Given the detailed scans, advanced holographics and amount of time she’d spent here, in a virtual sense, this was more home turf for Rita than it was for the troops following her down the mountainside.

Activating the virtual assistant in her armor, a miniature redheaded chibi cartoon in a Starfleet uniform sprang up in the corner. Speaking before it could, Rita ordered, “Play House of Pain, Jump Around.”

“Excellent choice mum! Let’s get those strength boosters online, and let’s nae forget the antigrav-pack is deployable if need be, for short flights up to 30 seconds, aye?” the chirpy voice of Fiona O’Dell nattered, but the computer’s AI that was running her wasn’t wrong. Rita had to admit it was a good idea, as the first few lines of the base cut in, and one of the tracks of her battle playlist she’d actually appropriated from O’Dell started playing.

In truth, Rita didn’t need the battle music. Using her suit’s scanners, she ducked out of the way of patrols, hid and stayed to the alleys and shadows, and was feeling reasonably confident that she was going to be fine, and not have to use her TR-116C2 today. As the particle’s half-life expired and she felt the familiar tug of the multiverse, Rita sighed, and reflexively said, “Thank Hera...”

Then time slowed down, and the pull of the multiverse became the mild discomfort of the multiverse. In her mind, she felt a presence... similar to one she knew, yet very, VERY different. Vengeful, angry and currently both infuriated and curious as to who dared invoke her name, here on her own world, whom she did not know... yet whose faith shone like a beacon when the name escaped her lips.

Racing through her heart and mind, Hera knew the mortal’s truth in an instant- one of the statues of her garden, from another reality where she had been defeated by chance and circumstance. Where she had been taken captive, shown mercy, and offered a boon, as was the wont of her kind, for the curious human who was so uncompromisingly compassionate.

Be better.

So she had been bade, so she had become. In doing so she had lived up the the request- to be the goddess the antique astronaut could tell her children about. Which Hera had done, time and again. She lived on good deeds, and her devoted followers loved and cared for her, not out of fear nor obligation, but because they genuinely wished to serve her, as she served them- through love.

It was, in a word, alien. Angrily she tore through the reality of it all, dispelling illusions and causing lies to poison and fester, but there was no rot. There was no change. Truth was invulnerable to any such assault, and it seemed the woman simply did not lie. The love the woman had in her heart, which flared forth when she offered a grateful prayer for her safe escape, had been unlike anything the goddess had felt in thousands of years. Yet so strong and pure it was, it had drawn Hera to the woman, to test it, to witness it.

Ultimately, to be humbled by it.

The decay of the particles was an inevitability that Hera could not change, even had she wished to do so. The traveler would continue on, this ‘lost navigator’ as she was known. All Hera could do was stretch the seconds out, to see this faithful with her own eyes, and hear her testify her faith. Even as the mortal departed, her heart reached out to the angry and unforgiving goddess to forgive, and to listen, and to heal. Because forgiveness and redemption were always there, for those who sought them

Be better.... was the last fleeting plea to the goddess, from her faithful whom she had never actually met.



By the dawn, as the prayers rose to her name to thank her for allowing the sun to rise once more, the goddess Hera stared at the statue, brought from her garden, to be placed in her throneroom. The expression of calm, the hand outstretched, without a weapon, in peace.

It seemed the tyrant of Meroset 347 had much to consider.