The Leningrad Way

The de-egress hatch opens, the air of the inspection pod mixes with the ship's atmosphere with a small hiss. Katya beckons me forward as I step onto the deck of Polaris once again. And there she is, waiting for me, wearing that impossible Mao coat uniform, is Alice.
- Permission to embark? - I say with a grin.
- Welcome aboard, Captain. - she nods. Our fingers touch, nothing more. Not now. Not in front of the others. Just a brush of fingers and a smile.
Archer said Earth was in my debt and who would I be if I'd let Earth owing me one. So I asked the brass in Leningrad to commission my wife as operations chief aboard my ship. They were happy to oblige, it was the least they could do. I heard Salanger on LC-06, oh, it's NCC-80 now, asked for a jacuzzi and a massage bed and got it. So go figure.
By the way, back on the Burro, Alice was the actual boss. Me, I knew how to fly a ship and give people orders to make that happen. Alice was the mother hen, the heart and soul of the crew. She knows how to make people run, how to buy and sell, how to bargain, how to threaten and how to plead. If we're really going deep space, we need people like her aboard.
- Is everything complete? - I ask as we turn around a corridor junction. Katya went the other way, giving us some private space.
- Storage Bay 1's still not refurbished. - Alice says, looking at a PADD.
- What will that be, the new fabrication facility? - I ask and she nods.
- Inorganic construction. We'll gonna need it, who knows when we have to build a new Warp coil or whatnot.
- What about the weapons? - I ask. Alice shakes her head but grins.
- Frisco said only Starfleet can have these new phased lasers. They refused to give us even a single cannon. Hyoni scratch-built them, anyway.
- Does Leningrad know? - I ask, gleeful and dumbfounded at the same time.
- Of course, dear, they've encouraged us.
- So this is how the First Fleet begins, eh? - I sigh - Starfleet crossing us, denying us tech, so we use whatever illegal upgrades we can find.
- I think it's a typically Soviet method. - Alice grins - And if what you think of the Federation is true, this is how things'll be for quite a time.
- The Leningrad way. - I nod and I burst out in laughter. This is everything I hoped and feared, and this is the way that fits my the most - I like it!




I wanted to do a follow-up to my previous pic, both visually and in the story. If someone can drew me a pic of these two in their Mao jackets, please do so

Also, we know that in the TOS pilot, they had lasers instead of phasers. In my continuity, the plasma weapons were replaced by hased plasma weapons, namely phase cannons/pistols. Those were refined into phased lasers, simply called lasers later on, which were supplanted by modern phasers sometimes during Pike's command of the Enterprise. Also, no photonoc torpedoes on most ships, only capital ships have them in this time period. Polaris goes with a single accelerator cannon firing nukes.





Models by me
Bacgkround elements by NASA