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Literary Challenge #38 : We'll Always Have New York
pwebranflakes
Member Posts: 7,741
Hello and welcome to another edition of our writers' challenges! :cool:
Today we start the two-week run of the thirty-eighth Literary Challenge: We'll Always Have New York
This is the writer's thread -- only entries should be made here.
The Discussion Thread can be found HERE.
We also have an Index of previous challenges HERE.
The rules may change from one challenge to another, but I'd like to remind everyone what the base rules are. These may grow as we move on, so also feel free to give feedback!
Today we start the two-week run of the thirty-eighth Literary Challenge: We'll Always Have New York
You and your crew recently experienced an anomaly while observing a star that caused "subspace folds" that have never been observed before. As the phenomenon seemed to pass through your ship, it temporarily placed you and your crew back in time in New York City, United States (you pick the time period, bonus points for writing as a Klingon 
). Write a Captain's Log entry about the experience, and how you returned to the correct place in time and space.
). Write a Captain's Log entry about the experience, and how you returned to the correct place in time and space.
This is the writer's thread -- only entries should be made here.
The Discussion Thread can be found HERE.
We also have an Index of previous challenges HERE.
The rules may change from one challenge to another, but I'd like to remind everyone what the base rules are. These may grow as we move on, so also feel free to give feedback!
- Each Challenge will run for two weeks. For 2 weeks we will sticky the challenge and let you make your entry.
- There are no right or wrong entry.
- The background story, questions I ask, and format requested are only to serve as a platform that you can start your writing from. Feel free to change up the back-story or the way you deliver, as long as the entry stays on topic of the original challenge.
- Write as little or as much as you would like.
- Please keep discussion about the entries in the appropriate Discussion Thread.
- In the Discussion Thread, feel free to write what inspired you and what your thoughts on the topic are.
- A few other important reminders:
- Please heed the rest of the forum's rules when submitting your entry! All of them apply to these posts.
- Each poster can have one entry. Feel free to edit your post to fix typos or add/ remove content as you see fit during the next two weeks.
- After two weeks time, the thread will be locked and unstickied, as we move on to the next challenge.
- We'll have two threads: One to post the entries in and one to discuss the entries. **Cross-linking between these two threads is acceptable for these challenges ONLY!!**
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Captain's Log, Star Date... considering when and where we were, September third, 1945...
The Manticore was observing a star causing unusual gravimetric waves in the Sirius Sector block.
T'kek our science officer was monitoring a strange shift in the poles of the star when the ship was struck by a strange energy wave, later we would find out it was a new type of subspace fold.
Several EPS conduits exploded and despite a plasma fire on deck ten no lives were lost, though our doctor was less than pleased to be interrupted from his first night off to handle the problem.
Supplemental: Requisition a case of Romulan Ale for the doctor.
Continuing, when the ships systems came back online we attempted to contact Star Fleet and were concerned there were no beacons or signal coming from Earth.
I ordered the helm to make our best speed there to see if there was an issue.
Upon arrival, the lack of Earth Space Dock, Utopia Planetia, the lunar colony and any satellites surrounding the planet came as a surprise.
After listening to the radio broadcasts of the time, we realized this was an important day in the planets history and we would be foolish to not observe it more closely.
Myself and my first officer Syren made use of a pair of holographic emitters in order to blend in a bit easier, while New Yorkers have been said to ignore and accept most anything. I highly doubted they were ready to see an Orion Female.
I dressed as a sailor and she appeared as a dark haired nurse, we beamed down into an alleyway and walked out onto the main street, people were celebrating, I grabbed a news paper seeing the headline of Peace I smirked. This was the official end of Earth's Second World War.
As Syren and I looked around we noticed a man with a camera taking various pictures of the celebrating people, now as a buff of this time period I knew there was a picture that was synonymous with this date and specifically this place in New York. But where were they? sighing and realizing how much I truly despise the Temporal Prime Directive and paradoxes in general I did my duty and grasped Syren by the waist dipped her back and kissed her deeply? as I saw the flash go off I stood back up and wondered just what she was going to say in regards to this.
After she stopped blushing and mumbling about getting a repeat performance we went back to an alleyway to contact the ship.
My Chief Engineer and Science officers had come up with a plan. Apparently the polar switch that affected the Manticore and crew was simply rare not new. The star we had been watching was currently giving off the same distortions that had started this mission to begin with. Prior to the wave hitting we would need to send a deflector pulse of equal and opposite frequency. They theorized it would send us back where we belonged.
Upon returning the ship we warped to the star and repeated what happened and prayed it got us home.
Just as T?kek noticed the shift in poles, we released the pulse, the same wave encompassed the ship, once again a few conduits blew but this time there were no casualties.
Supplemental: Remind the doctor of overdue poker debt.
As soon as we were able, we contacted Star Fleet and set course for Earth Space Dock for repairs and to report on our mission.
Supplemental: Do Orions enjoy Saurian Brandy?
End Captains Log
The Retribution has been ordered to assist U.S.S. Rhode Island in making scans of a highly unstable graviton star. However, when we arrived at the RV co-ordinates, only a duranium shadow remained of the Rhode Island.
My science officer surmised that it had been sent through time; where and when was a slight harder to discover. We were eventually able to determine that the missing ship, commanded by Captain Harry Kim, had been sent back to the years after earth's 3rd World War - and the day that Zefram Cochrane launched the Phoenix.
We had planned to send a multi-spatial probe into the star, in order to determine the time period in which the Rhode Island was in. However, my executive officer had informed my that the probe may not survive. Running out of time - and options - I summoned the senior staff to the conference room for an emergency meeting.
"Does anybody have any useful suggestions into HOW we're going to get Capt. Kim and his crew out of there?", Starfleet Admiral George Aubrey asked.
"I don't think we can do much about that right now, sir. The star is becoming increasingly unstable from the latest scans," Reman science officer T'Kek replied.
"Short of taking the ship through the pulses, there isn't anything we CAN do to help the Rhode Island", said the chief engineer.*
*will continue
"One More Candle"
Personal Log of Captain Alexei Ivanovich Strannik, Encrypted.
It's easy to talk about the Temporal Prime Directive. About the moments in history where the most wildly-diverging timelines converge and then break apart--the temporal loci that send out shock waves forwards and backwards in time by the sheer gravity of what happened there. And how those compression waves have a way of drawing people caught in temporal anomalies into or around the most chaotic time frames--places of impending tragedy where the worst...and also the very best in people will soon be displayed for all to see.
It's also easy to speculate about why we wound up on Earth from all the way in the Tau Dewa block--perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I exist partially in another phase, or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that elsewhere in the United States during that time frame, I 'slept' underground in stasis, still waiting for the geologists to come and awaken me.
But all of that is reduced to academics' talk when it actually happens, and you find yourself suddenly swept from shouting a warning to a shuttle crew to raise shields and flee the temporal anomaly scanners had just revealed--and that you can sense all over you, and then you're swept back in time and place.
And then you look up...and up...a bit to the right...and up even further, and you realize exactly what the enormous shadow is that blocks the sun from your view: a place so majestic and yet so few, in the scheme of time, ever had the chance to witness in full glory as I now have.
That this is the world that adopted me...not the world of my birthright...doesn't matter in a time and a place like this. One that engenders such reverence and such mourning all at once. We can look at monuments and reflect upon tragedies past, parse them at a safe distance--but the awful, helpless foreknowing of actually standing in that shadow simply cannot be adequately expressed.
Commander th'Valek shielded us quickly enough with his illusions; to those passing by, we were nothing more than another set of average tourists or perhaps commuters on foot. And that meant we saw at close proximity the vitality in this place. Utterly vibrant. Utterly fragile.
This I will never forget: I saw them exit and walk by, just heading home from a day's work.
We had to return to our time, those of us of Earth in one way or the other with aching hearts as we walked among the heroes of ordinary life.
The temporal compression waves were growing exponentially stronger--and with the right tuning of our equipment it was clear that we would very soon be swept away, back home, well before morning, and all we could do was wait in silent vigil.
One change I did make, as we waited in the place history told me would be safe even if our calculations were wrong. There in St. Paul's Chapel, one more votive candle burned, soon to stand against the dark.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
"His widow Keiko insisted that the official funeral and burial be performed on Zyin IV, and the admiralty agreed. I am going because he was my favorite instructor at the Academy. T'Panna is going because her roommate serves on a Corps of Engineers ship and will be attending. All I can say is that I wish I had a chance to say goodbye to him." He paused for a moment. "End recording."
Satisfied with the half-full duffel bag, he zipped it up, lifted it, and started walking towards the door. Then he dropped the bag, smiled, and said, "Computer, transport me to the shuttlecraft Firefly, authorization Hillel Tango Epsilon Eight."
T'Panna entered Shuttlebay One and was shocked to find Hillel sitting in the shuttle. "You have reformed now? This is the first time I've seen you early for a departure in the entire time I've been known you. If this wasn't for a funeral I would say that you are meeting a former love there."
Hillel took his feet off of the control panel and sat up straight. "Good morning to you too, Commander. Are you ready for a seventeen hour ride in this small shuttle?"
It took four hours to reach Deep Space Nine, followed by two hours waiting in the queue to pass through the wormhole. T'Panna wondered if Starfleet had gathered this many ships in the area since the Dominion War. This time there was a wide variety of vessels - mainly shuttles and runabouts, but also several large capital ships. O'Brien had definitely made a lasting impression on the fleet.
The wormhole was as majestic as she imagined. How could something like this be so stable for decades? Then the ship jerked violently and she was flung from her seat.
Hillel noticed T'Panna on the ground, determined that she was not severely injured, and checked the instruments. The forward viewscreen showed a hazy city at what appeared to be night. Hillel rubbed his eyes and confirmed that Firefly was rushing towards the ground at an alarming rate. "Maybe I've found where the Prophets live here in the wormhole," he muttered.
T'Panna mumbled an insult and strapped herself in. "That planet shouldn't be there," she said through bleeding lips.
As soon as Hillel realized that a crash was inevitable, he adjusted the heading to make the crash as smooth as possible. "I'm aiming for the field near that barn a few kilometers away," he said as the buildings came within a few hundred meters. Something seemed odd about the place...and then they collided with the barn.
The impact knocked Hillel unconscious. He woke up to the smell of blood. A large animal was lodged into the port side of the shuttle, right on top of where T'Panna should be. Hillel scrambled to free himself and then realized he couldn't help her. T'Panna's neck was twisted at an odd angle and a several hundred kilogram animal - a cow? - was on top of her. What a terrible way to die, he thought.
The aft compartment of the shuttle was on fire. Hillel scrambled out of the shuttle and took an inventory of the situation. He was alone in a field near a poorly-developed city on an unknown world. The buildings all appeared to be made of wood. This must be a small farm, he thought.
Then something in the shuttle exploded, knocking him down to his hands and knees.
There was no stopping the fire after the explosion. All of the nearby buildings were set ablaze by the flying debris. Hillel's training in emergency management kicked in. It was time to knock down doors and tell people to leave.
Hours flew by as the situation grew more desperate. This planet's star was under the horizon, but the fire made it look like broad daylight. As the blocks flew under his feet, a few clues started to form together in his mind. He could read the signs and understand the people. His combadge had fallen off hours ago, but the language was familiar. The motor vehicles looked like something out of an ancient history lesson. Could those really be combustion engines?
In an alley he found a newspaper and picked it up. It was The Chicago Daily Tribune, dated Sunday, October 8, 1871. T'Panna had become the first Vulcan - well, quarter-Vulcan anyway - to die on Earth as the shuttlecraft Firefly started the Great Chicago fire.
The weight of this revelation sunk in. It felt like the atmosphere had thickened and gravity had doubled. All he wanted to do was sit down and cry. Had his actions really caused one of the greatest tragedies in American history? How was this possible?
Relentless in their pursuit, the flames - his flames, his devastation brought from the future - caught up to Hillel. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man rush into a building that was clearly about to collapse. Remorse can wait. He ran over to help.
The man came back out carrying a small child. "There are three more in there," the man said. He briefly made eye contact. Hillel was shocked to see the eyes of Miles O'Brien.
Before Hillel could say anything, O'Brien had entered the flaming building. The child had run off, so Hillel was free to go in. As he took his third step into the building, Hillel saw the second floor of the building start collapse all around him. A quick dive brought him outside as the building fell inward.
The child came back and grabbed Hillel's shoulder. "He saved my life and died a hero," the girl said. Then another hand grabbed Hillel's other shoulder. "He saved my life too." "And mine," a third voice said. Suddenly he was in a swarm of children, clothes ruined but otherwise unharmed. They were all praising O'Brien.
Hillel stood up and examined the crowd. There were probably fifty children standing in the street as the city burned. Then the impossible happened - again? - and the crowd parted for O'Brien to pass. His curly hair was singed and blood was on his bare arms, but he held eye contact with Hillel. "I made a difference with my life. Will you?"
Another hand grabbed Hillel. This one was so strong that it pulled him to the ground. He looked up and saw T'Panna in a perfectly clean uniform. There was no blood, no death, and in a moment of honesty he found her attractive. They were onboard the shuttle Firefly again.
"Chief, what is wrong? Can you hear me?" She continued to poke at his shoulder. Hillel gently grabbed her hand, held it in his, and replied.
"I think I just heard from the Prophets."
"Thank you," I replied, smiling up at her.
The barista was a young girl, no more than 19 or 20 years old by my guess. Her neon hair was braided into a thick ponytail that draped down her back. She had on a dark polo shirt and green apron, a white name-tag read 'Zoe.'
"First time in New York?" Zoe asked.
"I guess you could say that. Does it show?" I almost wanted to laugh as I pondered the absurdity of the truth. I may be as human as she is, but these people could barely launch themselves into space while I had traveled across half the quadrant in just the past month alone.
"Yeah, a little." She spoke in a strong accent, then added as an after thought, "Make sure you see the sights while you're here. There's a fantastic pizza joint not far from here in Chelsea!"
"Thanks, I'll see if I can make the time," I acknowledged slyly.
Oblivious to my little joke, she turned and returned to her work. I looked around at the various people gathered in the small dining area, enjoying a beverage or snack before returning to the floating museum docked only about 30 meters away in the Hudson River. I observed my two companions enter through the double glass doors of the main entrance. They took a moment to survey the cafe before noticing me and moving to join me at the table. Orin Ryce--my Chief Engineer and a friend with whom I had shared a dorm room with at the Academy--lead to distance across the cafe. It was entertaining seeing the two of them in period specific garb.
"You wouldn't believe how much trouble we had finding it," Orin said, taking an open seat. "It was massive! Even with a tricorder I couldn't get more than about a percent of it."
Kelsi Ty--my first officer--took a seat opposite her human counterpart. As she looked at me I could see my own reflection, framed in bright pink plastic, in the large lensed sunglasses she wore. I wanted to chuckle a little bit at how silly she looked as the oversized glasses obscured much of her face.
"But we have the information we need, right?" I asked, composing myself.
"Affirmative, Admiral," Kelsi replied.
"Took a little Borg intervention from Three to sift through all that data without getting caught though," Orin informed, nodding in recognition towards her. Kelsi rarely let people refer to her by that designation anymore, but Orin and I were among those exceptions.
"Any issues getting access?" I asked, taking a sip from the beige mug.
"Are you kidding?" Orin smirked. He continued as though the next thought were as obvious to the rest of the group. "There isn't a security system on the planet that can stand against two Starfleet engineers, especially when one is a genius and the other is half Borg."
I just shook my head a little at my friend.
"Your modesty not withstanding, good job you two," I commended. "As for me, the great 21st-century scavenger hunt went well. I'm reasonably sure I was able to find everything we need to assemble the transponder. It'll be crude, but should work."
I reached down and lifted the brown canvas messenger bag that had been sitting at my feet and laid it on the table. Kelsi took the bag and peered inside, examining the various contents as Orin and I watched on.
Finally, as if pleased with my wares, she looked up and announced, "I agree. These items are acceptable. These components, in conjunction with the technical schematics we acquired, will allow me to modify my cortical implant for the desired effect."
"Great, get started," I ordered. "We probably shouldn't linger in this time longer than necessary."
I took another sip of the coffee and watched as Kelsi again sifted through the contents of the bag, setting a few items aside. Orin fidgeted in his chair a little as if debating what he wanted to say next. I didn't have to wait long, the young man wasn't known for censoring his thoughts.
"I'm still a little unclear how you knew that we could even find schematics for a temporal transceiver in a 400 year old computer database," he paused to consider his next comment. "I mean, Chronowerx Industries folded over a decade ago when their CEO inexplicably disappeared. Its been bought and sold half a dozen times and carved up more than twice that. There is no way any of this information will survive to our century."
"Just a story my Dad told me once," was all I would share with my colleague.
There was a long and awkward pause as Orin glared at me.
"Right..." was all he finally responded, clearly dissatisfied with my answer.
Kelsi seemed to ignore the conversation, fixated on her task. She had since opened up her tricorder and begun analyzing the technical schematics of the tiny transceiver she was constructing.
"Well, I'm beyond ready to get out of here. All this traffic and noise is driving me crazy," Orin complained, staring out the cafe windows at the busy boulevard just outside. "I miss the soft drum of my engines."
I had to admit, as much as I found this era fascinating, the past week in early 21st-century New York had made me long for the familiarity of the Odin. Nothing felt more like home to me than the bridge of my Galaxy-class starship. I wondered to myself how much time had passed for the rest of my ship and crew since the collapse of that star had displaced Orin, Kelsi, and I.
"I for one am tired of these ridiculous optical filters," Kelsi muttered, the first real acknowledgement of the banter going on between Orin and myself. She never even looked up from what she was doing as she spoke. "Based upon my observations, its unlikely any of the native population would have taken notice of my ocular implant."
I shrugged slightly, not entirely disagreeing with her.
"Maybe, but there's no reason to risk it either," Orin smirked. He was having too much fun to let it go. "Besides, I think they work for you!"
Even with the enormous glasses obscuring her eyes, I knew my Borg officer was glaring sideways in Orin's direction. She wasn't the most emotionally expressive individual I had ever known, but over the years I had learned to read her. I decided to change the subject and thus keep Kelsi focused on her construct.
"It's a shame we can't risk exploring this era more," I intervened. From our vantage point in the cafe, we could observe the comings and goings of pedestrians as they went about their lives. "These people are on the verge of some incredible social and economic changes."
Now it was Orin's turn to glare, this time in my direction.
"Don't romanticize them too much, Aiden," he began, his tone and volume dropping somewhat. "Afterall, they're also on the verge of a devastating war that will claim over 600 million lives."
I sighed, still looking around at the people as they passed. "Fair enough."
Silence overtook the table once more. I sipped at my coffee and Orin seemed to turn his attention to the small device his Borg counterpart had assembled. It was perhaps ten or fifteen minutes before anyone spoke again.
"Why are we here at this museum?" Kelsi asked, only barely looking up.
"As it turns out, my scans indicated this location has the ideal quantum coordinates for initiating the transceiver," I relied. It was the first time in years really that my background in quantum mechanics had been even remotely useful. Despite being a skilled engineer myself, I had come to rely on my staff to fill in the technical expertise in recent years. An unexpected side effect of command perhaps--more delegating and less doing.
"A bit of poetic irony I guess," Orin commented, glancing towards the carrier and the historic vessel contained within its hangar deck. I silently agreed with a nod.
"I should complete assembly of the transceiver before the facility closes," she assured us. I smiled at her, Kelsi never ceased to amaze me with her speed and efficiency. As much as it had been a prideful boast on Orin's part, he was right in that the two made an almost unstoppable engineering powerhouse.
Orin looked up from the downloaded schematics as a thought came to him. "What do you think will happen when we turn it on?" he asked. His eyebrows raised to accent the comment.
I had given this question some thought myself. Honestly, I had no real idea either, only supposition that made logical sense based on what little I understood of temporal enforcement. "I imagine someone from the distant future will stop by to figure out why we're here. They should have a means of returning us to our time as well. That transceiver should broadcast towards the 29th-century or so."
"I sure hope we haven't done anything to alter the timeline," Orin commented.
Kelsi noticeably paused a moment to consider that notion. I slightly chucked.
"On the bright side, we'll never know one way or the other," I stated. My mentor had once commented on how time travel used to give her headaches. I found no such annoyance in temporal mechanics; it was all a matter of perspective and if we had changed anything it was likely that we had already changed with it. In any case, I decided to reassure my Chief Engineer with false conviction only a leader can get away with, "No need to fret about a paradox you can't perceive."
"It'll still make for an interesting log entry," Orin chuckled.
Kelsi and I both stared at him blankly for a moment.
"I'm not looking forward to writing it," I finally replied.
We are en route to the ISH system for a study of its star which behaves strangely according to Starfleet's science department. As we are about to discover the star's mysteries, a surprising experience is going to happen.
-What are your readings science officer? said the captain.
-The star's neutrino field is highly unstable, as if it would collapse on itself.
-Your recommendations?
-I suggest we warp in near ISH three and launch a class twelve probe, then we get out of the star's gravity field.
-Sounds like a good plan. Helm, take the lead.
-Yes sir, warp destination layed in, arriving in five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.
As soon as the ship warps into the stellar system, the science officer quickly inputs the probe's launch command.
-Probe launched captain.
-Helm, get us out of here.
Then the communications officer says :
-Captain, I'm picking up a radio transmission from Earth but it's not on any Starfleet channel.
-Let me hear it, said the captain.
The bridge's speakers shout :
-''Baby, baby ooh!''
-Enough! said the captain.
The channel was cut and the science officer turned toward its consoles that started to beep like crazy.
-What's happening? said the captain.
-The star is collapsing on itself captain.
-What about the probe?
-I'm currently gathering the data.
-Helm, get us out of here now!
-I can't sir, warp engines are not responding!
The captain swiftly opens internal ship communications.
-Engineer, what's happening down there?
-I don't know captain, the dilithium crystals are not reacting at all. I've never seen this before. I'll attempt to replace them.
-Hurry up!
-Understood sir.
-Captain! said the communications officer staring at the viewscreen.
The captain turns his eyes to the viewscreen only to realize the star went supernovae.
-Sir the shockwave will hit us in ten seconds. said the tactical officer.
-I highly recommend we launch a tachyon beam in order to drill a hole in the shockwave, said the science officer.
-Make it so!
A huge burst of blue tachyons emitted from the ship's deflector makes its way to the shockwave.
-Is it working? said the captain.
-It won't be enough.
-All hands brace for impact! suddenly shouted the captain.
The shockwave touches the ship without blowing it to pieces. Instead, a white light surrounds everybody on the bridge and in the ship. The white light slowly fades to reveal a 2013 New York.
Everybody is astonished by what they see : everything is backward because time flows the other way now. People are walking backward, talking backward and acting backward. People eating food looks gross. The captain looks for his crewmembers who are scattered throughout NYC Broadway Street. All look disoriented but they are acting normally.
-Why aren't we affected science officer? asked the captain.
-It may be possible that the tachyon drill we used has somehow protected us from the temporal inversion Earth is actually experiencing.
-Do you think there's a connection between that last radio transmission and what happened to the star?
-It may be possible captain. Do you know anything about what we heard? You seem to have overeacted when you heard that song.
-Yes, I do remember what it is and believe me, you don't want to know what it is.
-Why not?
-Believe me.
-As you wish captain.
-All I can tell you is that this song comes from this century.
-Watch out! shouted the tactical officer, waving at a crewmember.
An ensign nearly got hit by a bus's wheels but he managed to step back in time.
-How do we get back to our time? asked the captain.
-I think we can realign the timeline if we keep the radio signal we heard from reaching ISH's star.
-What could be the source of that radio signal?
-Sir! shouted the engineer who was holding a newspaper.
-There it is, today is America's first live spatial music channel, said the captain intensively reading the newspaper.
-They have sent a satellite from Cape Kennedy and the live broadcast has been set here in New York. Justin Bieber, the famous artist who composed the song ''Baby'' lead the show.
-We have to kill Justin Bieber then! said the tactical officer.
-No mister Klingon, said the captain, if I rememeber correctly, this man will become the United States's youngest president so he has to stay in the timeline.
-We could sabotage the satellite in a way where it could not send something, replied the engineer.
-This is one great achievement for these people, we cannot destroy it, said the captain.
-How about we set our phasers to emit a reflection field around the satellite? We could use our tricorders to pinpoint the firing position, said the science officer.
-Excellent idea! Work on it at once, replied the captain.
The science officer hails two other crewmembers to reach him. When they arrive, he explains what to do and the small team begins tricorder calculations, phaser settings and methodical alignment.
-We are ready captain, said the science officer.
-Let's do it.
The phaser wave is shot directly in the sky where the satellite will be in this reversed timeline.
All of a sudden, the whole New York scenery becomes white again and fades out to become the bridge of a federation starship.
-Everyone's ok? asked the captain looking around to each staff officer.
Everyone on the bridge noded in a positive way.
-Are we where we are supposed to be science officer?
-I believe we do captain, astrometrics sounds normal to me.
-What about our strange star?
-The star is stable sir.
-And for the radio transmission?
-I am not receiving any transmission captain, said the communications officer.
-Well, it seems we have made the correct decision. Helm, set a course for Earth.
-Course entered sir.
-Engage.
The starship makes a long circle then warps out.
Meanwhile in another sector of the galaxy...
-Maq' Pa'Tuh! (Sir we are receiving a transmission.)
-Kho fu fu yupoh. (Put it through.)
The klingon bridge's speakers emitted a sharp prepubertal voice : ''Baby, baby ooh!''
-Kresh'K! (Stop.)
The bridge is then quiet and the klingon captain stands up, turns and walks toward his communitions officer, puts his hand on his shoulder and says :
-Th'rish. (Where does it come from?)
-Ke Uk'ma ''Federation''. (From federation space captain.)
-Tu'k Ve Ak' Tu! (Death to all humans!)
The staff on the bridge then started to rally themselves with a battlecry.
...because he will find an easy way to do it.
-Bill Gates
Captain Amanda Palmer strode onto the newly upgraded bridge, and glanced around, still getting used to the new configuration. The layout was essentially the same as that of the Sovereign Class, but smaller, more compact. As she passed the dedication plaque, the familiar quote caught her eye:
"Words build bridges into unexplored regions" - Adolf Hitler
Unlike the Sovereign Class, the command chair was isolated in the centre of the bridge, with her first officer now located at the secondary tactical station at starboard, while the new chief of security, Lieutenant Commander Bellic Chanos, scowled at the viewscreen from tactical one at port, the lights from the bridge playing across the azure skin of his bald head.
The Bolian was of course, not the only new face on the bridge: Ensign T'Natra had been promoted from relief helmsman to senior navigator, following a mix up of duty assignments which had mistakenly seen a newly qualified fighter pilot assigned as helmsman. Palmer hoped that wherever Ensign Mitchell landed, he would find himself in good company. Another addition, was strategic operations officer Lieutenant Elyse Fisher at the mission ops console on the port side of the bridge, who, while a veteran member of the Valkyrie's crew, finally had a duty station on the bridge, rather than forced to dwell in the security complex on deck three. At the starboard console which mirrored Fisher's, was seated the civilian scientist who made the majority of the officers feel like they were back at the academy. Doctor T'Pan, the legendary subspace morphologist, regarded the console before her with a casual passivity which belied the anticipation and curiosity she was feeling.
On the forward viewscreen, the orange dwarf stars drew closer, and the deck shuddered slightly as the Nova Class vessel was buffeted by the turbulence of the subspace folds they had been assigned to investigate.
"Captain, I would recommend activating the metaphasic shielding," T'Pan calmly stated.
Palmer glanced to Commander Rynar Lambert, and nodded, not even needing to speak for her first officer to understand her order.
"Metaphasic shielding is coming online now, Captain," Lambert responded as Palmer lowered herself into her command chair.
"What do your readings show, Doctor?" Palmer enquired.
"A most unusual manifestation of subspace which I have never seen naturally occur," T'Pan replied. "It is reminiscent of the soliton wave experiments of the late twenty three sixties. I wish to see if proximity to the stars increases the intensity of the folds."
"Take us in closer, Ensign," Palmer said, shifting her gaze between the viewscreen, and the readouts on the arm rests of her command chair.
"Aye, Captain," T'Natra acknowledged. "Taking us to within two thousand kilometers of the corona of the primary."
The shuddering of the deck grew more and more pronounced, until suddenly there was an eerie sensation like weightlessness, despite the artificial gravity.
"Report!" Palmer demanded, firmly gripping the arms of her chair, as the deck felt like it was rearing up beneath her.
Lighting flickered, and the viewscreen went offline.
"We're caught on the crest of a subspace fold, and being carried along on it at superluminal velocity in excess of warp nine," reported Lieutenant Brandon Mayer from the ops console.
"Helm, stabilize our trajectory," Palmer snapped, before looking to T'Pan. "How do we stop this, Doctor?"
"A subspace disruption in the path of the folds might cause them to dissipate," hypothesized the Vulcan scientist. "A graviton pulse from the navigational deflector might be sufficient to do so."
That was enough for Palmer.
"Lieutenant Mayer, bring the secondary deflector online and generate the pulse," she ordered as a plasma conduit ruptured at the rear of the bridge.
"Aye, Captain, firing deflector pulse now," Mayer replied.
There was a hideous shrieking noise, as if the very frame of the ship was being twisted, and then with a massive impact, everything went black.
She could feel herself rocking, as if in a hammock, but then Palmer felt the carpeting of the deck beneath her cheek, and a liquid warmth on her hairline, and she gradually pushed herself up into a kneeling position.
"Report," she called out, regaining her footing and looking about.
The bridge was a mess, with most consoles either destroyed or only partially functional. So much for the upgrade... she thought ruefully, as the deck continued to sway beneath her feet. Some officers lay unconscious, while others ignored their wounds, either pulling themselves back to their posts, or assisting their wounded colleagues.
"We've dropped out of warp," Mayer reported. "To be more accurate, we've dropped out of space entirely. According to external sensors, we're fifty feet beneath the upper New York bay."
"Are you kidding me?" Palmer demanded.
"No, ma'am," Mayer assured her. "We were carried over fifteen light years along the route of our original heading, right back to Earth. According to the system log, the anti-grav thrusters fired automatically when there was no helm input to avoid a crash landing, and the computer targeted the largest body of water along the flight path. To be honest, it's a miracle we didn't hit the Verrazano bridge as we came in. At the speeds we were travelling, both the ship and the bridge would have been destroyed, as well as turning most of Brooklyn into a crater."
Palmer took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
"Status of the ship?"
"Not good, Captain," Mayer admitted. "There's damage reports coming in from all over the ship, but that's not all..."
Palmer sighed and tapped her comm badge.
"Senior officers, report to the conference lounge immediately," she said.
Five minutes later, Palmer was sitting at the head of the conference table, periodically dabbing the cut on her forehead with a sterile dressing.
"So we're not just under water, we've been thrown just shy of five hundred years into the past," she summarized.
"That's right, Captain. August thirteenth, nineteen sixty nine," Elyse clarified.
"Understood. Our course of action seems clear, we simply need to get back into orbit and create a temporal vortex to return to our own timeframe. First year temporal mechanics covered the procedure, this should be simple."
"That's going to be a bit of a problem, Captain," admitted Lieutenant Commander Meliden Bowen. "The force of our impact has seriously damaged the articulation frames of both the primary and secondary navigational deflectors. Without the ability to correctly position them, we won't be able to properly manipulate the chronometric particles to create the vortex."
"Can't you just replicate a new frame?" asked Lambert.
Meliden shook her head.
"When the cargo bays were restructured to accommodate the new rearward torpedo launchers, the industrial replicators were relocated to inside cargo bay two. Falling equipment in the crash damaged those replicators beyond what can be repaired on board," she explained. "We can still replicate anything small enough to come out of a food replicator, but not the size of parts I would need to repair the industrial replicators, so no, I can't just replicate a new frame, even though the blueprints are in the Valkyrie's computer."
"I might have another alternative, Captain," said Elyse, scrolling through files on the conference table's glossy surface screen. "There is a New York-based company in existence at this time which produced a lot of equipment and munitions for the US military. We might be able to outsource the construction of the parts to them, and simply replicate enough currency to pay them."
"Captain, I have to object to this proposal," Chanos said, leaning forwards against the table. "To allow Starfleet schematics to fall into the hands of a pre-warp civilization, even a Human one, is an unacceptable breach of the Prime Directive."
"The objection is noted, Commander," Palmer observed. "I understand your concerns and appreciate your vigilance, but we're not talking about weapons technology, or even an instance like when Admiral Kirk outsourced transparent aluminum manufacture to a company in twentieth century San Francisco, we're talking about an articulated mounting frame, no different in theory to what presently exists in radio telescopes and radar installations. I'm going to have temporal investigations on my case for this, but I guess that's why I'm the captain..." Palmer closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. "Elyse, do it. Do it now, before I change my mind."
"Aye, Captain," Elyse replied. "Tapping into the local telephone network with the communications array, and - making the call now." She tabbed a few controls on the surface screen, and moments later, a trilling sound could be heard.
"Stark Industries, how may I direct your call?" a disembodied voice politely enquired.
"I need to speak to someone about placing an order for some hardware," Elyse said. "I understand that your company is used to projects where discretion is paramount."
"One moment, please," said the voice, followed by a momentary silence, and then a male voice spoke:
"This is Howard Stark."
"Hello Mister Stark, my name is Elyse Fisher. I have an urgent order I need to place for a piece of hardware, and I believe that your company may be best suited to accommodate my needs."
"You're English?" enquired the gruff tones.
"I am indeed," Elyse replied. "I'm from Chelsea, in London."
"You're going to want this, whatever it is, shipped over to the UK?"
"No sir, we're actually in New York at the moment. Transportation is not a problem, we can handle that, we just have a manufacturing issue, which your, uh, past projects, rather qualify you to assist us with."
"I see, what is it that you need?"
"It's probably best that I put you on with our chief engineer," Elyse said, ignoring the look of wide eyed horror from Meliden, who shook her head and gestured silently. "One moment please..." Meliden's eyes narrowed into a glare, but she took up the conversation.
"Hello Mister Stark, I'm Meliden Bowen. What we need, is an articulated support frame for a ten meter parabolic dish. It's going to need to be made from grade thirty eight titanium alloy, and have a nine point attachment chassis."
"Grade thirty eight?" repeated Stark's voice. "Specialist stuff indeed. I didn't realize there were any decent technical colleges in Wales, where did you study engineering?"
Caught off-guard, without thinking, Meliden automatically replied:
"San Francisco, actually."
Elyse smirked and repressed a giggle as Stark answered.
"Berkeley? You're not some damn hippie are you?" he demanded suspiciously.
"I'm not a hippie, I'm an engineer!" Meliden replied indignantly. "How many hippies do you know who can discuss titanium alloys and their applications? This is a serious commission for the kind of hardware you have a reputation for being able to deliver. How soon would you be able to fabricate?"
"I'd need to see a design schematic before I can commit to a timescale, but maybe a week, ten days."
Meliden smiled and sat forwards against the table, her Cardassian neck ridges making her look like a cobra about to strike.
"Now Mister Stark, I know how engineers like to exaggerate deadlines," she said. "Is five days a more realistic proposition?"
"You're an engineer alright," Stark laughed. "But it's not just a matter of fabrication time, but other projects I have running, schedules I need to adhere to."
"If disappointing your other clients is a concern, we would willingly compensate you, and them, for any delays to your schedules," Meliden said reassuringly. "We have a limited timeframe, and are willing to pay a premium for that. Funds are not an issue, name a price."
"Very well, twenty five thousand dollars will clear my schedule," Stark said. "And you bring me the schematics in person to discuss them so there can be no confusion over any details."
Panic struck Meliden, but before she could refuse, she saw Palmer typing rapidly on the desk, and an internal memo flickered before her.
"Uh, very well, Mister Stark. Twenty five thousand dollars it is. I'll see you with the schematics this afternoon. I have your address here."
"See you this afternoon, Miss Bowen," Stark said, before a click being heard, followed by an audible humming.
"Excellent work," Palmer said. "Meliden, report to sickbay. Elyse, get to work replicating Mister Stark's money. Access historical archives to use serial numbers from recently destroyed bills. We might technically be producing counterfeit money, but we're not confidence artists or thieves. I don't want Mister Stark to have any issue from the authorities when he tries to use this money. Also, replicate the necessary schematics so they will look like era appropriate engineering blueprints. Remove any superficial details or anything else which could suggest how the frame will be mounted."
"Aye, Captain," Elyse replied, as she and Meliden rose from their chairs and exited the conference lounge.
Palmer turned to face T'Pan.
"You've been very quiet, Doctor," she observed.
"I had no relevant suggestions to present," replied the scientist. "Logic dictated that I allow you and your officers to resolve this situation, although of course, I extend my regrets that my research has placed your ship in this unanticipated predicament. If you will excuse me, I shall retire to my quarters and examine the data we have gathered thus far."
Four hours later, Palmer and Elyse entered sickbay, and Meliden looked up from where she sat on a biobed. The corded ridges from her neck and eyebrows had been removed, and her skin was now a warm pink. She smiled at Palmer, and the captain saw that the gap between Meliden's front teeth was still there. Even with the changes in her face, her smile was still her own.
"What do you think, Captain? How do I look?" she asked.
"You look..." Palmer's voice trailed off as she examined Meliden. The eyes and voice and smile were the same, but the facial changes were as jarring as the new bridge layout. Eventually, she admitted: "This will take a bit of getting used to."
"Oh you'll have plenty of time for that," Meliden assured her with a broad grin. "I've wanted to look like this my whole life, there's no way I'm having this procedure reversed."
"Here're some appropriate civilian clothes for you," Elyse said, handing over a pile of garments. "There are attache cases with the money in transporter room two, and Commander Lambert will be escorting you to ensure your safety."
Meliden smiled again.
"I guess I ought to get ready then."
Howard Stark heard the buzzer and looked up from a series of blueprints.
"C'mon in," he shouted, downing the remains of his glass of whisky and pouring another.
The doors opened, and he saw an attractive brunette in a pinstriped pencil skirt and cream blouse, closely followed by some mook in a brown suit carrying two huge suitcases.
"Mister Stark? I'm Meliden Bowen, we spoke earlier about a project," said the brunette as she approached.
"You said you needed a support frame," Stark said, casting an eye over Bowen's slender form. "Who's the muscle?"
"Oh, that's Mister Lambert," Meliden replied. "He's looking after your money for me. Do you want to have a look at the blueprints for the frame?"
"Sure, just spread 'em on top of these," Stark replied, draining his glass, and dropping it onto his desk.
"Another project?" Meliden asked, glancing at the torroidal diagrams on the desk, before spreading her own blueprints on the top.
Stark waved his hand dismissively.
"Just something to keep the hippies quiet," he replied. "The promise of clean energy keeps them off my back about my other, uh, production lines, or it will, once I can get it working."
"Well for a start, you need to be using palladium for the induction coils," Meliden said absently, before focusing on the task at hand. "So what do you think, Mister Stark? Can you build the frame we need?"
"What's it going to be used for?" Stark asked, not lifting his eyes from the blueprints.
"For mounting a dish on a ship," Meliden replied. "I'm not at liberty to discuss the applications beyond that, I just need to know if you can do it, and in the agreed upon time."
"Millitary, huh? No problem," Stark replied. "When you said you were from San Francisco, I was worried that you were a bunch of hippies out to scam me."
"I take it this has convinced you otherwise?" Lambert enquired, speaking for the first time.
"Yeah, you could say I'm convinced," Stark said. "I can build your frame for you, it'll be ready for you next Monday, by which time all those damned hippies will have cleared out from upstate."
"What's happening upstate?" Meliden enquired.
Stark waved a hand dismissively as he poured himself another drink.
"Some three day love in with a bunch of musicians," he replied distainfully. "Bunch of unemployed bums, if you ask me."
Meliden shrugged non-committally.
"It looks like we have an agreement, Mister Stark," she said. "Your money is in the cases, and we'll contact you later in the week to arrange delivery."
"You've got my number," Stark said, returning his attention to the original set of blueprints on his desk as Meliden and Lambert turned and headed for the office door.
"Palladium..." he mused.
Out on the bustling street, Meliden and Lambert walked a block, before turning into a darkened alley, making their way passed garbage cans until they were hidden from the view of the street. Reaching under his jacket, Lambert tapped his comm badge.
"Lambert to Valkyrie, two to beam aboard," he said. "And Captain, you're not going to believe what's happening at the weekend..."
So now, I present you:
Specific Grim
Dice tumbled over the soft green felt, making muted clicking sounds as they bounded.
"Seven," stated a malevolently cheerful, if somewhat muffled, voice. "It seems, Mr, Kaskeratti, that your soul and your moonshine distilleries now belong to me!"
The figure on that side of the table was shrouded in shadows, but strong fins flanked it's ovoid silhouette. The gangster's small derby, perched atop it's mouth, seemed to glow in the harsh, yellow, overhead lighting.
A rough, flat voice grumbled a terse reply. "Over my dead exoskeleton, Hal Capone. I mined those distilleries from the very earth using nothing but sweat, tears, and heavy machinery." Khas' right manipulator limb tightened it's grip on the harpoon gun hidden under the card table.
"Think you'll off me that easy, eh?" Came Hal's smug voice. "I got a gun, too, Kaskeratti. Yeah! It seems we're at a standoff, see?" Khas watched the hat bobble at the top of the fish gangster's head as it's mouth opened and closed.
Khas scowled to himself. The Halibut was a crafty foe indeed. He tightened his finger around the trigger slowly, staring Halibut Capone squarly in his two close-set eyes. Hal Capone returned the look steadily, daring Khas to make his move. It was a tense moment indeed.
Suddenly the door burst open and two suited shrimp with Thompson subacquatic machine-harpoon guns aimed their fearsome weapons at the card-playing duo. With a nod of understanding Khas kicked the table over as Hal brought his own weapon up, and prepared to open fire.
The simulation paused as Khas' hidden commbadge chimed.
"Khas." He grumbled, like he always did.
"Cap'n! We got a thing on sensors! It's sort of an anomaly. Or an anemone. Certainly an anomalous anemone at any rate. Might wanna scoot up." The voice was also malevolently chipper, though decidedly feminine.
"Acknowledged, Lieutenant Tarayl. As always your lack of formality sickens me. I will be up momentarily." Khas sighed, blowing a suppurating breath out of his cranial oxygen/carbon exchange vents and ended the program.
****************
Khas shambled gracelessly onto the bridge. Lieutenant Commander Shanda, his tall, slim Andorian First Officer stood up from the captain's chair to make room for him.
"Did we interrupt anything important, Captain" Shanda asked with a smirk.
"It was a terrible simulation, Lieutenant Commander. Who would bother to create a scenario where one dwells within a sub-aquatic pineapple?"
"It takes all kinds, sir." said Shanda diplomatically. That was one of her favorite holoprograms.
Khas turned his chitin-plated head towards Tarayl. "Put it on the main screen, Lieutenant, and give me your analysis."
It took Khas a few moments to make any sense of what he was seeing. It appeared as though the background image of stars was rippling at first, but as he continued to stare, he could see that it was more like something was curving space right there in front of his eyes. The shape was something like a hundred writhing tentacles pressing and struggling against a thin sheet of plastic. Most of the crew couldn't bear to stare at it for long and just seeing it gave Khas a headache. Tarayl simply watched with rapt fascination as she described the sensor readings.
"Not sure, sir. Subspace emissions are going wild in the area, though. I'm getting Chronitons, gravitons, even phlogistons. Something's definitely stirring up subspace right there. Doesn't match anything in Starfleet Records, but it seems almost alive, Captain."
"Well, it could pose a hazard to shipping in the area, whatever it is. We might as well give it a look. Raise shields and bring us in. With our luck it will end up being some giant borg-encrusted Romulan supership from the future."
"Could be Q again, sir." Shanda added thoughtfully.
Khas's eternal scowl deepened. "Man. TRIBBLE that guy." he intoned.
*************
From up close, the distortion was enormous. Vast, tapered, barely visible structures flexed and moved just at the edge of understanding. Khas had ordered the image off the main screen some time ago, but he was still watching it from the tiny interactive panel on his command chair.
"Still no response to our presence. Scans aren't turning up anything new." Tarayl seemed almost disappointed.
Khas stroked the spikes of chitin jutting from his lower mandible and clacked his dozens of rending teeth together thoughtfully. "Try hailing it on the subspace radio. Perhaps we'll get it's attention that way."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea, Commander" Shanda spoke quietly. Something about that shapeless entity caused her an immense sense of disquiet.
"Noted. If you would, Lieutenant, Tarayl."
Tarayl gave Khas a smile and tapped a virtual button on her interactive console. After a moment, her smile grew strained. "Uh...Captain. I think we got it's attention."
**************************
Khas would never be able to make much sense of what happened next. Indeed, today he can't even remember it. There was a sound that came over the ship's comm systems that he felt more than heard. The lights started to flicker. Tarayl said something about enclosing and the ship. Khas remembered himself shouting something about engaging the warp drive and then nothing at all seemed to happen for a very, very long time.
When Khas awoke next he was very disoriented. He rolled over onto his belly and found the action took an inordinate amount of effort. He hauled the forward half of his thorax up on one arm and tapped at his commbadge. His movements felt ponderous and slow.
"This is the Bachelor to the Bride." It was an old joke to the crew, but he found using it made them feel slightly more at ease about their horrible, anthropo-arachnoid commanding officer. Hopefully, someone on the USS Bride of Quiet could hear him.
"Bride, here. That you, Commander?" The voice sounded more irritated than concerned.
"Of course it's me, Piper. What's going on up there?" If Lieutenant Piper, the Bride's surly Chief engineer was answering the comms, then things were probably awry.
"Couldn't even begin to tell ya. Half the crew's missing. We found a few of them just floating in space not too far out. They've been...changed. They're mostly dead, of course. Except for Crewman Lovegood. the Holodeck janitor. He seems to be made of living stone and seems quite put out by it."
"He'll get over it. His grim duty has hardened his soul much as the capricious whims of causality have hardened his body. Any idea what happened, Piper?"
"None! I will tell ya that we seem to be in orbit around Sol III of all places, only it's smoggy and there seems to be some wars going on. Chronometer's saying that, based on current star positions, it's about 8:42 pm Greenwich Mean Time, October 3rd, 1940. You're just north of New York City."
"So we've been moved through both time and space?"
"I'm an engineer not a time-space theorist. I mean...I took a few classes, but mostly so I could see a girl, you know? Didn't pay much attention. Tarayl's the one you'll wanna ask that. Uh...she's somewhere nearby. About two kilometers north of you. See if you can't find her. Oh, and be careful about violating causality or the Temporal Prime Directive of whatever. Huh...you know Kirk'll be showing up in a bit."
Khas stood up painfully and his perspective on things changed. There were small creature pointing up at him and hooting in horror. If this was Earth and those were humans... Hrm. Well, this was rather going to be a problem.
"We can pretty much throw all of that out the door. I have already been seen."
"Can't you be more careful, ya terrible bug? If humans from this era saw you, their heads would pop clean off their bodies."
"Piper, silence your meat-hole. I'm close to fifteen meters tall at the moment and in the middle of a large field. Two humans are pointing and hooting at me. This reminds me of being in the Academy. I will find Tarayl. Do what you can to keep the ship running."
Khas looked down at the two humans who had seen him. They were holding each other and were obviously terrified. Khas squatted down awkwardly and looked at them closely.
"Sorry for the interruption. Which way is North?"
They goggled at Khas for a moment in confusion until they heard the word "North." One of the two figures pointed off to Khas' left.
"Thank you. Have a pleasant day." One of them started making those gurggling sounds that humans make when overwhelmed by their horrible, alien emotions. Khas unfolded himself back to his full height again and ambled off towards the North and his missing Science officer.
It didn't take long but Khas was spotted several more times on the way. Humans in smog-spewing conveyences stopped to point and jabber at him. Khas ignored them. He had to find Tarayl. He made his way to a likely copse of trees near where her last transponder signal and was startled when a blindingly-blue light flew up to him unsteadily. Khas blinked one eye, then the other.
"Hey, Listen!" The blue light shouted impatiently. "Captain! We've got a big problem!"
Khas nodded sagely to Tarayl. "Quite."
*********************
Khas sat down and spoke quietly with the pixie-ish Lieutenant. Her own form shimmered and had taken on an insectoid sort of appearance that Khas found uncomfortably attractive. "What do you make of things?"
"1940, huh? No good. I think that whatever that...thing...was, it was trying to break in to our reality from somewhere outside. That's the best I can come up with right now. We've been pulled here, probably along with it. Don't even ask me why here and why now. I couldn't begin to tell you, but the passage has screwed with reality something fierce. There's no telling how much damage we've already done to the timeline."
Khas looked up at the helicopter already hovering nearby. "Noted." He rumbled. "How can we get back?"
Tarayl just shrugged her tiny shoulders. Her wings tinkled. "That beasty's probably still around here somewhere, though there's no telling what it looks like. It could be anything. Entering space probably changed it worse than it changed you and I."
"Do you think you could pinpoint it, Lieutenant?"
"I could always try. Might be emitting some exotic particles. I'll need to beam back aboard and get access to the ship's sensors. I'd suggest you go back in with us, but...I don't think you'd fit, Captain."
Khas looked around glumly. He could hear sirens in the distance. "Do so. I'll try to keep myself out of sight as much as I can. Given the tensions of the day, I do not expect to be able to do so."
Tarayl gave Khas a vicious smile and disappeared in a shimmering cloud of science. Khas stood up again and started moving deeper into the farmlands.
**********
Khas had just finished a meal of terminally startled deer when his comm badge chimed.
"Khas" he rumbled, picking a hoof out from between his grey, translucent teeth.
"I think we got something, Captain. The whole region's lighting up with subspace emissions. And by region, I mean the whole bleedin' solar system. Something's distorting reality in a terrible way, like a hand trying to push through a rubber wall. It's stretching from a central point. They can't sense it with the instruments they have here, but we're getting a lot of radio chatter anyway. Seems that...something...is pushing itself up out of the water near a place called Manhattan. Reports say it's big, green, and...er...tentacle-y. About the same size you are, actually."
"What do propose, Lieutenant?"
"I think that's the source of our trouble. All of it. If we can...I don't know...push it back somehow, it might cause space-time to snap back into its proper place. I think that's just the little bit of it that's managed to punch clean into our reality, sir. The place where the emissions are the strongest is right off the coast. Slap that creature back through there and I'll betcha it'll think twice before trying that again."
Khas grumbled, as he always did, and managed to finally dislodge the hoof. "Very well. I am on it. Guide me to his Manhattan place."
******
It took a few hours to make the trip. The harsh, grating buzz of the helicopters overpowered the panicked caterwauling of the surprised, horrified (and in one case highly aroused) American citizenry. While Khas could make some sense of what they were saying, he didn't realize how much he relied on Starfleet's auto-translate software to make up for his linguistic deficiencies. He'd have to rectify that if... No. When. When he made it back to his proper place and time. His appeals for calm probably sounded like tearing sheet metal to their poor ears anyway. He just hoped he could make it to the human's primary dwelling hive without too much fuss.
This would not be the case.
Khas was greeted by some human military vehicles when he reached the edge of the city. He was impressed by the towering structures across the water, but less so by the hurriedly thrown together defensive position. Someone was squawking at him, but he couldn't make it out. He held up his hands in supplication and slowly squatted down so he could hear the little man a bit more clearly. The human took a step back, but held his own hands up.
Khas very, very slowly tapped his comm badge. "Keep this line open and translate what this man is saying to me."
Piper grunted in reply. "He says "'identify yourself or get blown all to Feckenbach."
Khas had never heard of a town called Feckenbach, but given the needlessly complex history of human linguistics, he didn't question it. "I see. Translate what I say back for him in 20th century English if you would. Do try to make me sound diplomatic."
"Roger that."
"Terrible meat-creatures of Earth." Khas said theatrically. He paused as his comm badge broadcast his words into the jibbering mess of ugly consonants that is 20th Century English. "I come to you today in peace. Even now a terrible creature assaults your shoddily-constructed metropolis. I am here to defeat it in the name of Lord America. May your slipshod gods bless the USA."
At those final words the men cheered and the officious-looking one gabbled back at him.
"He says that it's off that way and that he'd appreciate it you could go around the city instead of through. There's a lot of people packed in the streets."
"I will take this monster the same way that Japan will take your nation's navy next year: By surprise."
"You shouldn't have told him that." Piper snerked.
"Whatever. We'll let the time police fix it later. I have to go fight a space monster now."
Khas waded out into the sea. As his legs drug through the grey, briney water he caused great swells to batter the small boats ferrying horrified people off the island. Many of them pointed at him and cried out in horror or delight. Khas couldn't tell any more than he could when it happened to him at the Academy. Humans were such inscrutable creatures. Already primitive combat planes were swarming in to the air. A few of them lined up on him and began swooping down, only to break off without firing. He supposed the officious human at the defensive position was to thank for that. Or not. Either way.
The city really did have its charms, Khas thought. The vast hive-city of the Arch-Genarch on Arkathia couldn't match it for size, even today. Deep in his withered soul, Khas was quietly impressed by the industriousness and banality the humans of this era displayed. For just a moment, he was caught off guard as an enormous green humanoid woman with a curious, spiky forehead loomed on a pedestal ahead. He realized it was the famous Lady Liberty. Khas quietly wondered where Lord Liberty was. Beyond her, however, was a ruined corridor between two towering buildings. The creature had entered there. It was time.
Of course, it's impossible to sneak when you're a giant space bug from the future, but Khas crept as best as he was able to. The interloping entity had manifested itself as en enormous green humanoid. On its back were two great wing-like structures and its head seemed soft and bulbous. Hearing his approach, it turned, revealing a face made of tentacles. It bellowed a challenged in a tongue that made Khas' teeth tingle. Despite being unable to understand the words themselves, Khas was sickeningly aware of the meaning: "I hunger!"
To emphasize it's point, the creature bent down and grabbed an entire group of humans in one of it's tentacled forelimbs. They were carrying a banner that said "Welcome Cth..." or something along those lines, but Khas couldn't read the rest. The banner tumbled to the ground even as its bearers were consumed.
Khas lumbered foreward and slamed his chitinous fist into the creature's squid-like face.
*********
"The Commander's gettin' stuck in!" Piper uttered breathlessly. He tapped a few buttons and a staticky news broadcast from somewhere nearby the fight piped through the bridge's audio relays.
"Jet Johnson here and you won't believe this, folks, but another monster has emerged from the sea! This one's big, black bug-like man, and wearing a uniform of some kind! The green monster's seen it and...OH MY GRACIOUS! The black one's just walloped the first monster something fierce! The two are exchanging blows. My goodness folks, I can't believe my own eyes. Sea monsters fighting right here in Manhattan. Oh, the green one's slammed the black one with some sort of tentacle and sent him reeling into the Empire State building. The black one's back up and charging. HOLY F....Oh...Words fail me folks! These two Titans of the Deep are just destroying downtown. The green one's grabbed the black one's shirt and pulled it off.. ((here, the sound of vomiting can be heard)) The big-man's built...like...like a spider! There's extra legs under there! It's leaping onto the green one now. He's got him and he's dragging him back, back into the sea! Oh my god! Oh my...I'm gonna have to stop drinking, folks. I have no idea what to make of this. The green one's putting up a terrific effort, but the bug monster's pulling steadily back. Waves rock the coast and boats are been sunk by the dozens, but still..."
Piper smiled happily. "That's our monster, eh? Oh, they're gettin' close. Ah, bloody hellfire! He's lost his comm badge. Can anyone think of a way to tell 'im where to go?"
*******************
Exhausted, Khas gripped the rubbery Kathy Hulu or whatever it's name was an pushed it under the waves. It continued to bellow profanities that Khas couldn't really hear, but still understood. It was maddening. His head craned around, looking for any obvious sign of the rend in reality he was supposed to drag this beast into, but could find nothing. Khas was starting to lose heart when an actinic lance fell from the sky and turned a few thousand liters of sea water into steam. If Khas were capable of smiling, he would have done so. Instead, he grabbed the weakening monster and dragged it along behind him.
***************
There was a "sproing" of sorts.
***************
Khas blinked. The strange, frightening, writhing mass just disappeared. The rest of the bridge crew looked a bit ill, but glad for it being gone.
"Any idea what just happened, Lieutenant?"
"None, sir. It was there one minute and...now it's gone. I feel a bit strange, honestly. Like my insides just flipped."
"I also feel a great deal of discomfort, but I was certain it was simply gas." Khas replied soberly. "Belay that order to transmit a subspace hail, then. We'll sniff around some more, but if that distortion does not return, we'll need to move on. I wonder what happened to it."
*********************
Meanwhile, in a place beyond space and time....
A vast and indescribable being rubbed the tip of its maddeningly huge pseudopod gingerly. It's attempt to burrow into this reality had failed. Again. It's unspeakable bulk pulled away from the ephemeral wall between worlds and it moved on to find easier pickings elsewhere. The wound in timespace even now was rapidly healing itself. The inhabitants of that universe would never know, never possibly remember, just how close to annihilation they had come. Kathy Hulu would try again one day, but for now, they were safe.
USS Powhatan
Captains log, Stardate..oh heck I'm not sure, with all the jumping around the clocks are still messed up. Call it Tuesday. It was supposed to be a simple mission. Drop off some scientists who were observing some sort of folds in subspace, do a little exploring, maybe even some of the badly needed maintenance that the antique Constitution class ship seemed to need on sometimes an hourly basis. When a ship got that old, there were a lot of loose nuts that needed regular tightening, or things stopped working. Like now...
Lt Rhonda 'Polekity' Evans, was a temporal throwback like most of the crew of the Powhatan, only in her case instead of being stuck in a wormhole for over a century, was shoved through a portal from an alternate 21st century earth that was about to be destroyed. Still as her poppa used to tell her, any morning when you're on top of the dirt instead of underneath is is a good day. Looking at the readout on the view screen however, it was not looking to be a good day.
"Bridge to engineering. How much longer, that fold is getting closer!"
It was a good thing she didn't speak much Andorian, but she did know most of the curse words, her Andorian chief engineer swearing like a sailor as she struggled with the ancient engines "two more @#$%# Dilithum crystals are cracked, if we try to energize the drive in this state I can't @#$%^ guarantee we wont end up in a @#$%^ cloud of ^$#@##!"
"do what you can, but if we don't get moving soon we'll be the first to see what happens when you try to surf a subspace wave!"
She closed the connection as the chief commenced swearing in another couple of languages at the engines "Time to impact?"
Her first officer was another Andorian, but Mirra was a lot more laid back than the ever stressed engineer "Three minutes forty nine seconds" she said, watching on the screen as the fold was getting closer, even now visible to the naked eye as a distortion in space. "I've managed to put us bow first in the wave with maneuvering thrusters."
Rhonda just nodded "Good, hope we won't need to find out if that was necessary." For not the first time she wondered why Starfleet would put something so old out in the black that spares haven't been stocked for many of their systems for over ninety years. Not that most ships used spares anymore, with the high power replicators they had now. On the Powhatan it was just food that could be replicated, and even then you had to go up to a slot in the wall and put a card in to order. "wheres R2-D2 when you need him?" she muttered, watching the fold get closer.
"Who?"
"never mind, before your time...and looks like we're about out of it ourselves-ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR IMPAC-"
The ship rose as if cresting a wave..and kept rising. Outside the starfield seemed to be compressed, as if things were shrinking, while the Powhatan was hit full force by the fold..then empty space.
It's the noise that got her attention. On a starship, especially one of this vintage, there were always noises. Fans, pinks and beeps from various instruments, the distant rumble of the impulse engines, the ringing of her i Phone....wait what? There was a click as the red emergency lights came on, then the emergency systems one at a time, followed by groans of the bridge crew as they began to stir from where they had been flung. Her own face was bloody, forehead hit the edge of the captains chair during the impact, blood matting the soft black fur she was covered with. "ev...everyone ok?" She asked, holding onto her chair as she got wobbly to her feet
"Been better Captain" said Emerea Elfan, her Trill helmsman, the young woman climbing back up into her own seat "we seem to be in one piece, trying to determine..that's weird." Emerea frowned, looking at the readouts "I'm not picking up any subspace beacons, or for that matter, not even the station where we dropped those scientists four hours ago."
"nothing on any of the standard frequencies either Sir" came from behind her, the com officer shaking his head "though I'm getting some signals, frequencies that haven't been used for..shoot, hundreds of years."
"Let's hear it" Captain Evans said as she sat down. There was a bit of static as the frequency was tuned in..then music came through the overhead speakers, an electric guitar whine filling the bridge, then..
"There must be some kind of way out of here,"
Said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief.?
the bridge crew looked at each other stunned, hearing it in English..only to be even more surprised when Captain Evans started singing along...
"Businessman they drink my wine,
Plowman dig my earth
None will level on the line,
nobody offered his word, hey"
"Captain, are you all right? And what's that buzzing noise?"
Rhonda just blinked, as if coming out of a dream "it's Jimmi Hendrix..my dad was a huge Hendrix fan...buzzing,wait what?" Starfleet uniforms don't have much in the way of pockets, but there was one thing that she carried with her ever since the day she was thrown from her world into an alternate future, even through the Academy. It had all her music, and pictures of her family lost four hundred plus years and another dimension away...and it was buzzing in her hand, message on the screen reading 'voice mailbox full'. She stared at it, then up at the view screen as it came on, it was a familiar sight, one they saw just a few weeks ago, except for the lack of a spacedock, and no lights from the lunar cities lighting up the dark side of the moon..but then there were no moon bases or space docks around earth in her 2013. "Holy @#%, I'm home..."
Conference room, four hours later
The USS Powhatan had moved out of sight behind Luna, there was enough power left to do that. They had a couple probes just peeking over the moon, gathering what data they could on their situation, Captain Evans called a department heads meeting to go over their their next possible moves
"the #%$@ crystals barely held Captain, we have also detected Dilithum near the south pole of Luna, and can easily get enough to get us back to full power in about four to five hours."
"that's good" replied Dr Olefa, the Bolian head of medical "But where are we going to go? Your home world won't discover warp travel for another fifty years, not to mention the temporal prime directive-"
Mirra spoke up. "Technically doesn't apply-this isn't the Federation's past. There were no Eugenics Wars in the 1990's here, while there were conflicts between meta-beings, it technically now seems to be a corporate police state. I'm sorry to say Captain, that should you attempt to go down to this Earth, despite it being where you are from, you would be arrested or worse within seconds, as would myself or any of our non human crew."
Rhonda nodded glumly "I know, I've seen the videos. And they don't even talk about what happened here, it's like the state of Rhode Island never existed, literally" she said, pulling up an overhead on the viewer. It was as if an entire third of new England simply vanished, just a giant water filled circular bay.
"Even Google doesn?t admit the word paragon exists,as if it's been erased from the language."
Ensign Elfan spoke up "there is one promising thing Captain. Long range sensors are detecting another fold, possibly the same one, though it seems to be reversed."
"Reversed? You mean like when a wave hits something and it rebounds?"
"Exactly Sir. Once we have the warp drive back, it may be possible to reverse the effect that got us here in the first place. The wave however is moving away from us..."
"So the clock is ticking. Right, Chief, take whatever and whoever you need to get your Dilithium. Try not to make too much racket, though I don't think there's any real danger of getting spotted by anything if you stay on the dark side of the terminator. Emera, keep tracking that fold and as soon as we have the drive back get us there."
"There's one other thing Captain" Mirra said as the chief engineer left the room "are you going to try to contact your family?"
Rhonda shook her head "no, as much as I would like to it wouldn?t be fair to the others-"
"With all due respect captain, bull****" That caused her to blink, Dr Olefa was hardly ever profane, perhaps the chief was rubbing off on him. "No one on this crew would protest you making contact, in fact they would be more upset if you did not." She watched as he stood and looked out the view port at Luna below them "I was stationed there in 2258 as humans calculate years, before being posted on the Powhatan. I left my wife when I deployed with our first child on the way, when we finally escaped from the wormhole loop I got back just in time to see my great granddaughter die of old age..Captain, you need to see them, and THEY need to know that you did not vanish into thin air."
She bit her lip as she listened "But you saw the reports, anything out of the ordinary gets reported to the Federal Security Agency-"
Mirra just grinned and put several small devices on the table "Holoemitters, just like we use for the EMH system and we adapted when we got Ensign Tiver out of that situation on Mirande IV."
her arguments were rapidly fading "But we don't even know where they are-"
"That won't be hard Captain, you have your phone there that interfaces with the data networks, you can use that to contact him, and we can trace the signal."
She had forgotten about that in her concern for her ship. "You know, I kept it the whole time, just because of what's on it. At the Academy one of the tech instructors managed to not only manage to get it interfaced with modern charging systems and with our communications, upped the memory to 64 Terabytes, I know , tiny memory but still." she said, laying the phone on the conference table, then taking a deep breath, touched the screen. There was a several millisecond delay, as the ship's network interfaced with a communications satellite.
"whats that noise it's making?"
"it's ringing, that means it's trying to make contact on the other end"
She waved her hand to shush them , after about five rings there was a voice she hadn't heard in six years, or four hundred plus depending on how you counted. "You got some ******ned nerve calling on my daughters number. She's dead, they're all dead, leave us alone!" followed by a dial tone as her father hung up. Rhonda looked shaken, but Mirra was already at work on her PADD
"I have got a location, eastern north America, New York City."
"what the hell are they doing there, I would have thought they'd have gone back to Florida, only reason they were in the northeast at all was for me."
Mirra just grinned "I guess we'll just have to ask him when we see them!"
Ft Meade Maryland, FSA Intelligence Processing
"Hello, what's this?"
"What's what?" the agent looked up from his New World Today paper, as his partners' computer started beeping.
"Just had a hit on a family member of a paranormal. Phone call to his personal cell phone from her number, Rhonda Leah Evans, alias Polekitty."
"Maybe it's just another hacker?"
The agent shook his head "unlikely, after the public executions the last time someone tried this..and this is weird we don't have a location for where the call came from except, wait...got it...signal detected coming from...a communications satellite?"
That got his full attention "Call the Director, and get some Exterminators in the air. I think we need to pay the Evans family a visit."
Captains log, supplemental.
Well that had to be a new record for an away mission going pear-shaped. I had decided to take a small group as possible, just myself and Mirra. We scanned for any life forms within fifty meters, then ten, then finally five, this was New York after all, one of the most densely populated regions of north America. It was an empty alley we beamed down into, empty before the two cops turned the corner. Cops, heh. I've seen soldiers with smaller weapons and less body armor. Fortunately it wasn't proof against a phaser on stun, nor were the surveillance cameras in the alley.
"It's not going to be long until they're missed Captain."
"I know...dammit just once I'd like to see something work smoothly!" Rhonda muttered as they ducked into the doorway of a building, the sound of a helicopter passing by overhead.
"I think something just did." Mirra pointed to box next to the doorway, with buzzers for the various apartments "What did you say your parents names were again, Randall and Sharon?" Mira pointed at the name tag on a label by one of the buttons "13C it says, shall I push the button?"
"No, they've got no reason to believe its me at the moment..better if we just go up. Can you get this lock overridden?"
The andorian just grinned, tapping a few keys into her tricorder. There was a click, then the door opened "how do you say, piece of cake?"
"You should know by now, never say that..." Rhonda muttered as they got on the elevator. It was dingy and barely lit, like most of the building. In fact it was almost a flophouse, the elevator lurching as they got to the thirteenth floor. The hall was lit by a bare fluorescent fixture, the doorway to apartment C was clean at least. "well here goes nothing." she reached out and pressed the doorbell..then hearing nothing, knocked on the door.
"For the last time Mrs Ramirez, I haven't seen your..." he'd gotten taller, not technically her little brother anymore as he was now a half a foot taller than her. "Do I know you?"
Rhonda just stood there open mouthed, until Mirra prodded her "Your emitter Captain, you're still disguised."
"oh, right" She turned it off, and now it was her brother who was gawking right before he wrapped his arms around her, he had gotten stronger too "Rhonda!! I Knew you weren't dead!?
"ooof!" her breath was knocked out of her as she was bearhugged, then over his shoulder as an older, much thinner man than she remembered came out of the back "Jacob, keep it down, I just got your mom to fall asleep..."there was a crash as the tray he was carrying fell to the floor. Mirra glanced across the hall at the older woman who was peeking from her apartment door, then suddenly slammed it, the sound of a lock turning. With a frown she stepped into the apartment , closing the door behind her.
"Rhonda, how...no wait..there was a FSA agent by earlier this afternoon. You can't stay here, you gotta run before they catch you-"
"Wait run, what? I ain't running nowhere, I just got here..and where's mom?"
Her dad looked down "she's in bed...with the shortages of medical care, and the pregnancy, and the MSRA..but you still can't stay, they'll find you, Rhonda!" she ducked past him, already reaching for her tricorder. It was bad, worse than the look on her father's face.
"Why isn't she in a hospital?"
"Because unless you signed the loyalty oath and join the Corporation, the only medical care you can get is a monthly free clinic. It wasn't so bad before they moved us all in here."
She looked at the readings "white cell count low, BP low, whatever she's got is really kicking her immune system hard..I can fix this!"
Her brother looked skeptical "I know your healing powers worked good on injuries but diseases-"
"Oh I don't have them anymore, the docs who looked me over after Schrodi shoved me through the portal corrected the radioactive DNA mutations. Only thing that the treatment didn't remove was the fur, because they thought that was natural. Miss being able to fly, but it's better than being dead...so when I got accepted to the Academy I took the medical track, course the way the universe tends to hate me it seems I got stuck in command instead of in a clinic. yeah, we've got something in sickbay that will get rid of that infection pretty easily."
"It's not going to do any good if they catch you and KILL you!"
Mirra stayed out of the discussion, instead looking out the window. "Captain there are multiple vehicles converging around the base of this building, occupied by people who are equipped similarly to those 'cops' we encountered earlier." Both her father and brothers faces went white, while Rhonda just sighed "and of course they'll have TV crews, and negotiators, and the like. I don't have time for this, and mom doesn't have time for this." she tapped her combadge "Evans to Powhatan."
"we read you Captain."
"Status report"
"mains will be online in approximately fifteen minutes.-also Captain? We are intercepting communications, there is an assault group entering the building you are in."
She looked at her family "You have any real desire to hang around here?" her brother and father just shook their heads "No one cares what rights get trampled anymore, as long as people feel safe, and they've got their reality shows." her brother said with disgust.
"Well fortunately they don't have those where we're going." she grinned "Evans to Powhatan, five to transport."
"don't forget mom's cat"
"fine...five humanoids, and one feline. Though if that damn cat pukes on my bridge it's going out an airlock..."
She felt the familiar tingle of the transporter just when the door was kicked open, with three armed men and a TV Camera behind them. She flipped them an undignified bird as the apartment faded out, replaced by the familiar sight of the transporter room. "Welcome aboard the USS Powhatan, don't mind the faded paint, she's an old girl" Her mom hadn't even woken up from being transported, though Pukey the cat looked rather disturbed by the whole affair "Evans to Sickbay, got a patient for you in transporter room three Dr Olefa, take good care of her for me. Bridge, this is the Captain. Set your course for the subspace fold, and lets get out of here"
Captains log, supplemental.
Getting home was a bit easier said than done. While we were flung backward on the fold with the engines out, with the warp field activated , we over shot. Fortunately only by a few weeks, Ensign Elfan realized the situation and cut power before we went too far. Still the stress burned out the dilithium that the Chief had gotten from Luna , as well as severely damaged the warp coils. Luckily by that time there were other ships that had come to investigate, three more had vanished else when as well before Admiral Stern forbade any vessel getting within ten thousand km of the anomaly. The Admiral was also rather , well, pissed at how we got into this mess in the first place. Reportedly when she contacted Starfleet logistics she was cursing a streak so blue it was giving off Cherenkov radiation. So when we get back to space dock (being towed by the USS Tunguska, our drive is pretty much slagged at this point) we'll either have a full function parts replicator system, or the next new ship that comes out of the shipyard. There was a bit of flak about me bringing my family over, but Mirra was right, the temporal prime directive doesn't technically apply to an alternate universe that had already been tampered with by others. Mom's recovered, and my baby sister (geez that's a weird thought still) is due in a few more months. They're probably going to settle back near Tallahassee once we get back to earth, and my little brother is already working on holodeck programs using shows and movies from our home time. He says he's getting the hang of it, and wants me to test out the Firefly program. So once all these reports are done, going to have dinner with the folks, then spend a few hours at a shindig with Captain Tightpants.
"he's as dangerous as a ferret with a chainsaw."
"Hold still," Samantha Beresford snaps at me. I can't help but flinch a little as the cold mist from the applicator brushes my closed eyelids. "And the legs," she adds, sternly.
I open my eyes to glower at her, but I see the need. The fashion for female clothing, in this time period, at this place, tends towards knee-length skirts; leg-concealing trousers or long dresses are a possibility, but they're unusual enough to attract attention... which is the last thing we want.
So Samantha applies the plastiskin spray to my lower legs, while I pick up the hat. The hat has a curly brim, with artificial flowers and fruits and a half-veil; it is complicated and fussy with decoration, so much so that no one will spot a pair of Andorian antennae poking through it... we hope. The half-veil makes it look as if I'm trying to hide the scars on my face... people will respect that, and won't stare too hard. That's the theory, at least.
I put on the hat, and the neat grey jacket which goes with the skirt, and I step into the shoes. At least I don't have to wear those extraordinary, punitive high heels. I am too tall already, a few extra inches would be a bad move. Samantha has sprayed my hands already, but I draw on a pair of gloves, then pick up my shoulder bag.
I look around the room. It's a small room and a crowded one, in one of those buildings they call tenements; it was all we dared take. Soledad Kleefisch, exhausted after another night shift, is still sleeping on the couch; F'hon Tlaxx is sitting by the window, looking out at the city. His face, like mine, is covered in human-coloured plastiskin; the wig covering his bald Bolian head looks ridiculous. Zazaru, too, hasn't escaped Samantha's sprayer; somehow, she looks younger now that her Trill spots are covered up. She is working on the sensor apparatus. I reach into the shoulder bag, touch my tricorder, reassuring myself that it's still there. Zazaru looks up.
"I'm... still working on it, sir," she says, softly. "If you can give me a baseline reading from your tricorder, I may be able to triangulate...."
"If I'm far enough away," I say, "and if we're close enough to the source.... Well, I'll be at least a kilometer away, and staying more or less still for an hour or so... will that give you time?"
Zazaru shrugs helplessly. The sensor device is a bodged-up machine, the best we could manage with what we had. We aren't entirely sure it works at all. "I'm getting a feed from Sirip's tricorder now," she says. Sirip is working at the city's docks; a simple woolen cap, pulled down at the sides, is all we have to hide his Vulcan appearance.
"I'll be off, then," I say.
"Take care," says Samantha. "Seriously, sir," she adds in an undertone. "If you were to get hit by a car, and taken to a hospital...."
First contact would come early, and the timeline would be hopelessly compromised. "I won't get hit by a car," I promise her.
---
Six floors down, and out the door, and here I am; the human city of New York, stardate... I can never remember how to convert stardates to pre-contact format. The Earth date is October 12th, 1948. The sky is a clear blue, the air comfortably cool. There's not a jet contrail in all the sky; no shuttles, no air trams, even the sight of a propeller-driven craft is unusual enough to make people look up. The humans all look... human. Their clothes are weird, complicated, old-fashioned; half of them have little burning cylinders stuck in their mouths. A drug, nicotine, an addictive substance that's socially acceptable here and now. They breathe the drug in with the smoke of the burning; the by-products cause all sorts of diseases, and the smell is repulsive.
There are a lot of smells. The city is crowded with internal-combustion vehicles, and it is full of people, full to the brim and beyond, it sometimes seems. There are odours of people, of industry; odours of foods, from a dozen different culinary traditions; odours of animals, and sewage, and I don't know what else. It is a crazy place. I don't know how so many people can manage, here, without modern conveniences. When we first arrived, I kept doing double-takes, looking at those towering buildings and remembering, suddenly, they were built without industrial replicators or anti-gravs....
The streets are crowded, and few people spare me a second glance, which is as I want it. Let them ignore the tall woman with the silly hat and the scarred face... let them not realise I'm not human, or that the bag on my shoulder contains technology enough to turn their world upside down. I have hours to kill, while I traverse the city and - hopefully - gather the data Zazaru needs. I walk, steadily and purposefully, through the melee of humanity. It is busy and loud and smelly and incredibly alive.
In other circumstances, I'd think myself lucky to see it.
It takes too long to walk from the Lower East Side to Central Park. I have a little currency, enough for a bus fare. I sit silently in a corner, nobody notices me.
The Park is a lovely sight, a patch of greenery in all this urban exuberance. It must look even lovelier in summer, though I hope I'm not still around to see it. It's not my final destination, though. That lies a couple of city blocks to the south, a comparatively small building among the skyscrapers, but quite grand and ornate enough for me. It even raises a faint smile of recognition, when I arrive. I've been to Carnegie Hall before. That is, I will have been to Carnegie Hall before... in the future.
I have to be somewhere reasonably far off, to give Zazaru a decent baseline for triangulation. And I saw this particular performance was coming up... why not, I thought, enjoy myself, while I do what's necessary at the same time? So, I buy a ticket, and I make my way into that resplendent concert hall. It's not particularly full, but I make sure I sit at the back, in any case. I don't want anyone asking me to remove my hat.
The orchestra makes that weird, not-discordant, not-organized sound that they make, tuning up. The rustle of programmes and the murmur of conversation dies away. At the back of the hall, unseen by anyone, I break into a huge grin as the stately opening chords sound, and the voices of the chorus ring out in those words I know so well:-
Hearken to me, gentlemen, come and ye shall hear,
A tale of the boldest brethren, that ever born y were,
The one of them was Adler young, th' other King Estmere....
---
Holst, Shostakovich, and Aaron Copland. Kind of an eclectic mixture, but when I'm marooned in the wrong time zone and scanning for exotic chronitons, that's the sort of music that takes my mind off things. I'm still humming quietly and happily to myself when I get off the bus, on my way back to the apartment.
Then a voice behind me says, "Well, well, Miss Shoal! You sound in a good mood this evening."
I turn. The human behind me is tall and heavily built, wearing a dark blue paramilitary-styled uniform, and carrying a sidearm; his face is all one big friendly grin, though. "Officer Murphy. Hello. Yes, I've - I've been to a concert -"
"Call me Pete," he says, "I'm off duty now. It's a good thing to see you looking cheerful, though! Most days, you look like you've the weight of the world on your shoulders."
We tried to get to know local law enforcement; it was a calculated risk, we didn't want to attract attention, but we didn't want to arouse suspicions either. Pete Murphy... is local law enforcement, basically. People like him, and he seems to like us, which is good. Now, he steps forward and takes my arm. "Let me walk you home," he says. "The nights are getting shorter, and we don't want you walking into any trouble, now, do we?"
I have my phaser in my bag next to my tricorder, and besides, I've spent most of my career not so much walking into trouble as sprinting into it. This is not the time to say that, though. "Thanks, Pete," I say.
"Any time," he says. We stroll along the darkening street, arm in arm. Pete is a very big man, taller than me, and I'm a head taller than the average human female in this time and place. Another complication.... "Truth to tell," he says, "I don't mind this at all. And I'd like to get to know you a little better, Miss Shoal, or may I call you Teela? That's your name, isn't it?"
"Close enough, I guess," I say.
"Ah, am I not saying it right? That's one thing I wondered at, you see, I never could place your accent...."
"I'm from a long way away," I say, "you wouldn't know it."
"Well, now, why can't I be the judge of that? Why don't you tell me anyway?"
What harm can the name do? "Gimel Vessaris," I say.
He laughs. "You're right, then, I don't know it... Somewhere in Europe, maybe?" His friendly eyes narrow slightly. "Is it, maybe, the same place you got those scars?"
"That's right," I say. "In the war." No need to specify which war.
"You're still a fine-looking woman," he says, "and there's many around here who'll be jealous of me for this. And you should smile more often... you've a lovely smile."
I tense, and try not to let him see it. Complications... this is one complication I hadn't expected. "I enjoyed the music," I say, neutrally.
"You should enjoy yourself more," he says. "You know the Rosenbaums' little girl, in the apartment below yours? She's got names for all your little... gang. There's the doctor lady, the pretty lady, the serious lady, the big fellow, the bad wig fellow. Do you know what she calls you? The sad lady. Now, why should you be sad, Miss Teela?"
"I don't know," I say. "I never thought of myself as sad." We tried to be on good terms with the neighbours, too. Human adults... they see what they expect to see. But human children are curious, and they watch.
"I can't figure you out, Miss Teela," says Pete. "I mean, I fancy myself a good judge of character... and I know you and your friends are good people, I'm sure of that... but I just can't figure you out."
"Maybe there's nothing to figure," I say.
"I don't believe that for a minute," he says. "But here you are, in the greatest city in the world, the greatest country... we licked Hitler, we licked the TRIBBLE, and even though FDR's gone, I reckon we could still lick the whole world if we wanted to. So, here you are at the heart of the world, and you've got friends around you, you've got talent - old McCutcheon says you're the best teller he's ever had at his bank - so what would it take to keep that smile on your face?"
I don't know what FDR is. Federal Deposit Rationing? Those words all seem to be important. "I guess I'm just - busy, Pete. Things on my mind, you know how it is." He means well, I know it, but now I am desperate for this conversation to end. I look up. We're on the right street, nearly at the tenement building....
"You shouldn't let stuff get you down, Miss Teela," Pete is saying, but my attention isn't on him. The windows. The windows on the sixth floor are dark. It is dusk, the lights should be on. "Now, if you need a shoulder to cry on...." His voice tails off; he's noticed I'm not listening. He follows my gaze.
"The lights ought to be on," I say. "They'd need light to work by...."
"Something's wrong, maybe," says Pete. "Well, now, I guess I'd better see you all the way home, then."
I have a dreadful trapped feeling. How do I get out of this? I hope that it's just a burned-out filament in these archaic incandescent lightbulbs... but I know it's not. I let Pete lead me up the stairs. My hand reaches carefully into my shoulder bag, touches the butt of my phaser.
The door is ajar, the rooms beyond dark and vacant, the furniture disarranged. Zazaru's sensor device is gone; the contents of Samantha's medical kit are strewn over the floor. Pete draws in a sharp breath. "I'll call this in," he says.
"No!" I say. "No, Pete - you can't. Let me -" I'm trapped. "Let me explain." I take a deep breath. "I'll need your help."
"I should call the precinct," Pete says obstinately.
"You mustn't. I -" My eyes rove wildly round the room, until I see what I need. "I'll explain. And you'll know why you mustn't. Pete, I'm going to have to show you something -"
"Show me what?" Pete's voice is angry now. I reach down, and pick up the solvent spray.
"The real me. Pete, promise me you won't scream, or faint."
"Scream and faint? Now what do you take me for?" Pete demands, but I'm already spraying the solvent across my face, and for good measure I rip away the hat with my free hand. There is a faint prickling sensation as the plastiskin reacts and oxidizes to nothing.
Pete doesn't scream, or faint, but his eyes are wide and round as saucers.
"That's why you mustn't call the precinct," I say.
---
"We're explorers," I say, while Pete very slowly makes his way to the couch, not looking away from my face the whole time. "We were out in space, tracking an anomaly - something odd that showed up on our scanners. It caught our shuttlecraft, pulled it through a time distortion - I'm not just from outer space, Pete, I'm from the future as well." Pete sits down on the couch, hard.
"We arrived in New York about six weeks ago," I continue. "We did our best to settle in, got basic living quarters, took some basic jobs... we had some diamonds, we used them for an initial stake." No point telling him we made the diamonds in the shuttle's replicators. "We've been trying, ever since, to find the source of the anomaly. Something brought us here, Pete, and it wasn't natural. Someone in New York has... well, a time machine."
Pete finds his voice. "Holy Mary, Mother of God," he says. "And here was me thinking I was a good judge of character."
"You're a fine judge of character, Pete, just not as good a judge of species. Listen." I cross the floor, take his hands in mine. He doesn't react, but he doesn't pull away. Maybe that's a good sign.
"We've been scanning, trying to find the time machine. My guess is, the others have succeeded, and whoever built it detected our scanning beam and came for them. Pete, I have to find them. We could - the whole timeline could be in jeopardy. And they're my crew, and my friends."
"Your... crew?" he says slowly. "Are they all like you?"
"No," I say. "I'm the only Andorian here. Samantha and Soledad - the doctor lady and the pretty lady - they're as human as you are. Zazaru - serious lady - can pass with a little makeup. Sirip, the big guy, we just had to hide his ears. F'hon - well, the bad wig covers a multitude of sins. He's blue, though, like me, so we have to paint him up, too."
"Why?" he says. "I mean, why... why are you hiding? Why not go to the government, or...?"
"Because we daren't change history," I say. "This is the past, for us, and anything we do here can change that. My guess is, somebody wants to change that. Pete, a couple of hundred years from now, your people, and mine, and a thousand others are going to do wonderful things. We're going to go out into the galaxy and make a civilization there, a place of freedom, and justice, and infinite horizons. We can't risk doing anything that would change that. Even being here is a danger.... Pete, you can't tell the precinct, you can't tell anyone. Not ever. But here and now, I need your help."
He is quiet for a long worrying moment, then says, "What did you say you were, again?"
"Andorian. My people come from Andoria, a planet of the star you call Procyon."
"And... the others... you called them your crew?"
"Yes. I'm an officer in Starfleet, commanding the United Star Ship King Estmere. We were on the way back to the ship, when... it happened." I smile. "If my ship was here, we'd track down the bad guys and deal with them in no time at all."
"What's she like? Your ship?"
My smile grows broader. "You should see her, Pete. Half a mile long, and since we had the new gear put in, she's gleaming bright from stem to stern... fast enought to cross a star sector before you've had time to blink, and as for firepower... finest ship in Starfleet."
Astonishingly, he gives a shaky laugh. "Well, whatever else you are, you're navy, all right," he says. "Never met a navy guy yet who didn't serve on the finest ship in the fleet."
---
When I turn on the lights, something gleams on the cheap sideboard. Samantha's data monocle. She sets it facing the door, maybe it was running.... Pete is still sitting on the couch, his expression still dazed, but there's a little more colour and animation in his face. Maybe this will work out. Maybe. Too many maybes....
"What's that?"
"Data monocle. Um, a sort of...." They don't have electronic computers yet, not outside a few academic and military institutes. "Sort of like a camera, I guess." I look around. A PADD has scooted half-way under the couch. I fish it out, start to set up the connections. "It might have caught what happened."
It did. A whole lot of nothing for the first hour or so; I fast-forward through it while Pete gapes at the images. Sirip comes back, there is another spell of nothing... and then the door bursts open.
I can't see everything, but I see disruptor beams flash, and I pray they were set on stun. The gunmen are hulking brutes, apparently human... but I know how little that might mean. The one thing I have is, before the shooting starts, one of them says, quite clearly, "Mr. Manning wants a word with you guys."
I look at Pete. His face is thoughtful. "Manning," he says. "I know that name."
I wait for him to explain. "Cyrus Manning," he goes on. "Big shot, so they say, and only come to town lately. There've been all sorts of rumours about the guy, and there's some precinct captains would dearly love to see what's inside that big place of his out in Queens. And, well, no one sees him. I don't know of anyone who's ever seen him." He looks sidelong at me.
"Sounds like a good place to start, then." I stand up. "Let's go."
"Mother of God!" Pete surges to his feet. "Not like that, girl, you'll start a riot."
"Oh. Yes." I look around. "Plastiskin applicator. That one there. And I'll need my hat."
---
We hail a cab. It'll eat most of my reserves of currency, but maybe I won't need them again. And the roaring and jerking of the internal combustion drive will take years off my life, but never mind that.
We settle into the back seat, and Pete gives the driver an address. Then, quietly, he says to me, "I've got a whole lot of questions, Miss Teela."
"I'll bet. And I can't answer them all. I daren't. I've told you too much already."
"Miss Teela. Are you... are you even a woman?"
"Sort of. Andorians have four sexes. I'm... one of the female ones."
He shakes his head. "Every time I think I might get a handle on this, you pitch me another curve ball."
"I'm sorry, Pete," I say. "Um.... if it's any help, I have no clue what that means."
"You don't have baseball, where you come from?"
"We don't."
He explains about baseball. It takes the rest of the trip.
---
Cyrus Manning's place is a big brown block, ten stories tall. There's a night watchman on duty. Pete talks his way past him with a phony story putting me in the role of a wronged woman out to make an "arrangement with Mr. Manning". It's kind of a good improvisation, at that. I'm starting to warm to Pete.
The night watchman lets us into the building's elevator, and I say to Pete, "Stop two floors below where he tells us, we'll walk up."
He nods. "Makes sense, I guess."
The interior of the building is... off. It's all impeccably furnished, with the facilities of a big hotel, maybe... but there is no sign of occupation, no sign it's ever been used. It's like a stage set. My skin is crawling with nerves, under my fake human complexion. The night watchman says, sixth floor. We get off at the fourth, and look for a staircase. When we find the stairwell, I pull out my tricorder. Perhaps I can risk some passive scans -
"What's that?" Pete asks.
"Scanning device," I say.
I don't have time to say anything else. Above us, a door crashes open, a big figure silhouetted against light beyond.
I move as quick as I can, my hand diving into the bag, dropping the tricorder, coming out with the phaser. The stairwell lights up with orange light and sick green as the two of us fire, together. He misses. I don't. I take the stairs up, three at a time, while Pete gasps, "What the hell -?"
"Pete. I'm a monster from outer space. Of course I've got a death ray."
I reach the landing, kick the inert body over onto its back. "Or, if you really want a monster...."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," mutters Pete, looking down at fangs and warts and dead black eyes. "What is it?"
"Nausicaan," I tell him.
Pete boggles. "Those build time machines?" he says. "I would have thought... well, that one doesn't look bright enough. But I shouldn't judge on looks, maybe?"
"You'd be right, though, this time. Nausicaans... most likely just hired muscle. Goon squads."
Pete looks sharply at me. "You sound like you don't like them."
"I don't." I point to my face, to the scars. "One of them did that."
"With one of those ray guns?" I nod. Pete looks at my face, at the disruptor in the dead Nausicaan's hand, at the scar the beam cut into the brickwork. "Your head must be a lot harder than it looks, Miss Teela."
"I was lucky." I take the Nausicaan's gun, flip it, offer it butt-first to Pete. "Take it. It'll be more effective, but you just pull the trigger, same as your thirty-nine."
Pete accepts the weapon gingerly. "Um," he says. "My Police Special? It's a .38, actually."
I frown. "Thirty-nine's an important number, isn't it? I'm sure I've heard that somewhere." I look down the corridor the Nausicaan came from. The lights are on, but there's no sign of life. Stage set, again. We make our way down the corridor, weapons out, nerves taut, jumping at shadows. I don't dare risk a scan, not now.
At the end of the corridor, an imposing set of double doors, the sort of thing that announces whoever's behind this is important. My antennae quiver. Motion behind those doors, two people at least, maybe more. I gesture to Pete, and he gets the idea. We move to flank the doors. I take a deep breath -
And I explode into action. Kick in the door, dive, and shoot. The first Nausicaan guard takes my beam full in the chest, and falls. The other has time to get off a shot at me, but it goes wild, and then Pete's shot takes him down. I get to my feet. The air is sour with the smell of scorched flesh, the feel of expended energies.
Two Nausicaan guards flanking a huge, imposing desk, and behind the desk -
Pete gasps. "That's Cyrus Manning? No wonder he never shows his face."
The Ferengi, ridiculous in a 1940s business suit, snarls, "You're not so handsome yourself, hew-mon."
I take a deep breath. "No," I say. "Nice guess, Pete, and it's what you're meant to think, but no. This is a Ferengi, and just another mercenary. Absolutely mercenary. A Ferengi'd sell you his own mother for ten strips of gold-pressed latinum."
"Ridiculous!" the Ferengi growls. "For my mother - no less than fifty bars!"
"But -" Pete gestures with the gun; I start to wish I'd shown him where the safety was. "But - well, you can paint your skin, but he can't - I mean, those ears, that nose - he can't hide -"
"We had to improvise," I explain. "They came here on purpose, and they came prepared. Holo-emitters, Pete, a perfect disguise. This guy can look like - like Rita Hayworth, if he wants to." Things are falling into place in my head. "The only reason Cyrus Manning never appears... must be if he's got just too much to hide. Like, say, a completely non-human appearance, and life support requirements - like, if he can't breath Earth's air, or live at Earth temperatures." The Ferengi turns pale, and I know I'm on the right lines. Time to run a bluff, to act like I know my guess is right. Temporal tech, non-human, life support, there are several species it could be, but one is most likely -
I ram the emitter grid of my phaser right into the Ferengi's forehead.
"Where's the Tholian?"
---
The top two floors of the building have been gutted, making space for the gantries and the scaffolding that support a huge glass box, filled with the glowing mist that is Tholian air. Beneath it are devices, some familiar - data consoles and the like - some less so.
And there is a framework of white metal with glimmering force field lines across it, and behind that, five familiar faces, and my heart lifts to see them alive and unharmed. Sirip looks faintly embarrassed, though. Well, so he should, a Starfleet security officer knocked cold by a couple of Nausicaan goons in holo-emitters.
I shove the Ferengi ahead of me and mutter, "Keep an eye out," to Pete. Then I call out, loudly. "Show yourself!"
For an instant, there is no answer; then there is a skittering sound from the glass box. I'm relieved. If the Tholian had had time to get into an EV suit of its own... there's no way I have the equipment to take on one of those, now.
The Tholian emerges from the mist, and I hear Pete gasp. It's a big one, I'd guess commander level at least. Its glowing eyes gaze down on us, and one foreclaw reaches out to tap on the inside of the glass. There is a chittering, squeaking sound: Tholian speech.
An expressionless voice says, <Vice Admiral Shohl.>
"Release my people," I say, and I raise the phaser.
<If you fire that weapon,> the voice says, <you will release Tholian atmosphere directly into this area. You will not survive the resulting explosion.>
"Neither will you, or your technology here," I say, "which means the timeline is preserved. And that's what matters."
Of course, I'm bluffing. Probably. I'm betting the Tholian won't call it, though.
<As a gesture of goodwill, then,> the voice says. A claw fondles a control crystal. The forcefield lines wink out.
"Sorry, skipper." F'hon is the first to speak, as they step out of the cage. "I guess we messed up."
"Don't worry about it." I shove the Ferengi into the cage. "Turn the field back on."
<That is unnecessary ->
"Turn it back on!"
The orange lines come back, and the Ferengi looks daggers at me through them. I ignore him, and walk out to where I can look at the Tholian again. "Congratulations," I say, "you've brought peace to the galaxy."
<Explain.>
"The war with the Klingons will end. They, the Romulans, the Cardassians, the Dominion, even the damned Hirogen will drop everything, now - at least long enough to wipe out the Tholian Assembly. Self-preservation. If you're tampering with the time lines, everyone has to stop you. We could probably even get the Borg to join the fight."
<Even if you return to your own time to make a report,> the Tholian says, <that need not necessarily occur. This is a unique opportunity - and I am acting outside the consensus of the Assembly in exploiting it.>
"You're a rogue agent?" Sirip and Soledad have found weapons, are watching the big room's entrances. I almost begin to think I might be in control of this situation. Almost. "Convince me."
<The data consoles hold all the records of my research station,> the Tholian continues. How I wish I could read Tholian expressions... the mechanical voice conveys nothing beyond the bare words. <You will see that much of my equipment is Ferengi in origin. Daimon Rabb, here, has supplied most of the funding for my project - I have had no official support from the Assembly. And the subspace inclusion that allowed me access to the past was, and remains, unique.>
From behind the forcefield, Rabb says, "Tholians are worse than hew-mons when it comes to smelling profit!"
Zazaru is scanning a Tholian console, brow furrowed in concentration. "He might be telling the truth, sir," she says. "There's a small asteroid near the epicentre of the subspace disturbance that swallowed our shuttle. And it reads within a light-minute of King Estmere's last recorded position -"
"He saw us coming and he panicked," I say. "All right. What's our best option for fixing this?"
<That is not in your hands,> the Tholian voice says. <It is now in the hands of your human associate.>
---
I turn to Pete. He has put down the disruptor pistol, and he has picked something up, a cylinder of metal with a gleaming control panel set in its side. He stares at the Tholian, and I stare at him.
Crystal feet scratch and squeal on the glass floor as the Tholian scuttles over to look down on him. <I do not know your name, human,> the voice says. <I am Inyrene, and I would like to make a proposition to you.>
"Pete," says Pete. "Pete Murphy. Patrolman Pete Murphy."
<Patrolman Murphy. Admiral Shohl has undoubtedly painted a glowing portrait of life in the Federation of her future to you. Might I propose an alternative vision? My intention has always been to bring together human drive and ingenuity, Tholian technical mastery, and Ferengi commercial acumen at the right place and in the right time. Together, we could rewrite history, obliterating centuries of destructive warfare, and making this world, this city, the centre of the greatest commercial empire that the galaxy has ever seen. No politicial ideologies vying for supremacy, merely trade and commerce, free, unfettered, with your planet at the heart of it all.>
The heart of the world. My mouth goes dry.
<The device in your hands,> the Tholian continues, <is a chroniton inverter. It is set to a directional beam at present, though it can be converted to a spherical field. Activate the device, and the subspace inclusion which brought us to your world will be reverted. In practical terms - point the end of the device at something from the future, press the button, and that object or person vanishes, back to the future.>
"And you think I should point it at Miss Teela, do you?"
<Have you seen her true face?>
Pete looks at me, now. "There's nothing else, underneath the blue," I tell him. "I don't know what I can do to convince you of that...."
"So," Pete says, "I've got to choose between the blue lady with the feelers, or the big chandelier up there, have I?"
<That is, essentially, the choice.>
"Well, now," says Pete. "Miss Teela's not been entirely straight with me, has she? But I guess I understand why - she doesn't want to mess things up by changing history. I can sort of see how that might work."
<I want to change history. For the better.>
"See, I reckon I'm a good judge of character," says Pete. "Miss Teela and her friends, they came here, they settled down into ordinary jobs, good workers too, from all I've heard. Good neighbours, as well. But you, and this guy here with the ears? Every time I hear about Cyrus Manning, he's been linked to half the dirty rackets in the city."
"Your hew-mon regulations get in the way of profit!" shouts the Ferengi.
"I don't know about visions of the future," Pete continues, obstinately, "but Miss Teela and her people are decent folks. And I guess, when it comes down to it, I'm on the side of the decent folks."
He raises the cylinder, points it at Inyrene, presses the glowing stud at the side. There is a thunderclap of displaced air, and the Tholian vanishes, his whole life support box going with him.
Rabb wails. "Oh, shut up, you," says Pete, and presses the button again. Then he lowers the device, looks at me, and says, "So did I do the right thing?"
"I think so, Pete," I say. I look him in the eye. "I... hope I can justify your faith in me. Thanks, Pete."
He lets out a deep breath, shakily. "So what happens now, then?"
Time to take charge. "Zazaru, download everything from the data consoles before we send them back. Then we'll sweep the building, spray it with that thing so that every bit of future technology's gone. Then... some of us go back to the apartment, do the same there. The rest of us catch a few hours' sleep, we'll need it."
"You're not going straight after him?" Pete seems amazed.
I smile. "That thing will send us back to the moment in the future we left. We can spend as long as we like cleaning up, here, we'll arrive at the same time Inyrene does." I step forward, take a closer look at the device. "It's rather like... remember that thing Franklin Drake fitted on the old Sita?"
"The thing you were specifically told not to look at?" Zazaru smiles, for the first time in six weeks.
"That's the one. We'll have to fit it into the shuttlecraft, then we can all go back home. Pete - you could give it to one of the others, you'll need some rest." I smile. "Tomorrow morning, we're going on a boat trip."
---
She stands there, monumental, in the light of a grey watery dawn. Behind her, the buildings of the city are taller and grander, but the concept she embodies is larger than all of them.
"If you have to build a big green statue," I say aloud, "Liberty's a good thing to build one to."
"Why are we here?" Pete is a little green himself. Not a good sailor, it seems.
"Well," I say, "when our shuttle arrived, we couldn't leave it on display, could we? So we set its holo-emitters to generate... ah, you don't need the technical details. We turned it invisible." I lead the way towards one of the buttresses of the massive statue. "A wise man once said... first rule of active camouflage: park somewhere you'll remember."
The seven of us are alone in the dawn light. Pete starts as I key the command sequence on my tricorder, and the entry ramp lowers, a doorway opening in thin air. He gazes at the interior of the shuttle. "So that's what the future looks like, is it?"
"Some of it." I turn to the others. "Get that thing installed and set for a spherical field. And set up the call to the King Estmere on automatic - I want her moving as soon as we hit our own time." There are two nice warm cells in Facility 4028 just waiting for Inyrene and Rabb.
Pete stands silently while the others move. Finally, he speaks. "Could I... could I go with you?"
I shake my head. "It's impossible, Pete."
"Because I'd change history? I'm not that important."
"Everyone's important. Besides... the reverter only affects things that come from the future. You're not from our time... if we turned it on, the shuttle would just disappear around you. At best, you'd fall into the bay."
"It's too cold a day for swimming, all right," he says resignedly. "I guess this is goodbye, then."
I snap my fingers. "That reminds me." I turn to the shuttle and yell, "Currency!"
"Currency?" Pete seems nonplussed.
"We made our own clothes and things," I explain, "but we couldn't manufacture money, could we? It's... unethical." I hastily collect green notes, little brown and silver discs. I'm already starting to forget what each one's worth. I hand the whole lot to Pete. "We can't take it with us, and we don't need it anyway. Give it to the Rosenbaums, they're always short of money. Tell them it's a - what's their word for it? - a matzoh."
He snorts with laughter. "I think you mean a mitzvah, Miss Teela."
"Whatever." On an impulse, I step up to him, and kiss him, briefly, on the mouth. Human lips are cool, but not unpleasant... not in the least. I step back.
"Be a good person in the future, Miss Teela," he says.
"Stay a good man in the past, Pete," I reply.
I step aboard the shuttle. The entry ramp closes, shutting out my last sight of this world. The next time it opens, Pete Murphy will have been dead for centuries.
I turn to my command. "Thrusters to takeoff levels. Ready impulse engines. Activate the reverter on my mark. Let's go, people."
The shuttle lifts off. Into the future, into our home.
The man was frantic with his words, almost hysterical. His eyes were wide and blood-shot while his white hair was disheveled. The lab coat he wore was of this time and not from the 25th century. The man looked between the man aiming a pistol at his chest to his right and the swirl of impossible insanity to his left. The vortex was a discordance of sound, light and weather that was both rapturous and repulsive to look at, and the man in the lab coat looked at it dreadfully.
"No doctor, you don't."
The Section 31 agent was a hardened veteran of these events. All of them say the same thing and almost of them end the same way: death. These travelers would rather die in a time frame they never existed in, yet insist on being a part of. And why not? They left their own time to find something new sometime else. But that is not permitted. Not natural. You deal with the cards you are dealt with - anything else, temporally speaking, is just running away from your own existence. And these runners force other people to leave their own time to chase them - hunt them - down.
Just. Like. Now.
The sphere of beautiful terror pulsed in the alleyway and made this little corner of New York City the worst place to be. Kathryn Beringer watched the scene unfold and tried to remain calm. She failed as she looked over her shoulder every few seconds hoping no one would stumble upon them in some way. It was enough that one man was trying to live his own life when he shouldn't, much less having two people from the future drag him back, dead or alive.
"Kyle, listen to me," Kathryn said. "Your work on personal Temporal Teleportation worked! Look at your achievement." She pointed at the globular beast.
Kyle looked away from his delightful child of intellectual effort, to the menacing pistol, then to Kathryn, a pained expression on his face. "They took it from me to use as a weapon!" He pointed at the man with the gun, his face snarling.
The man with the pistol was ironically becoming impatient with how long this process was taking. "Kyle Retarius, I'll say again: enter the portal and return to your own time."
Kathryn rolled her eyes in frustration. The agent was dismissive of every suggestion she made while on this 'journey' and she was beyond annoyed with him. "Kyle, focus on me. I'm your Captain. We've been through a lot since the Academy, you can trust me. Trust me when I say Starfleet needs you; I need you to come home."
The scientist lowered his arm and looked at Kathryn. His face transformed from hate to sadness. He nodded as the luminescent ball pulsed again. He looked up to the night sky at the immense buildings towered above. "Did you ever love me?"
The agent looked sideways to Kathryn. "Is he serious?"
Kathryn ignored him and took a step forward, her hand outstretched. "Can you forgive me for being honest with you?"
Doctor Retarius looked at Kathryn with resignation. "You didn't answer my question."
The agent stepped forward with Kathryn, his wrist band beeping as if a timer expired. "We don't have time for this. Doctor, you must enter the portal."
"Kyle. I - "
Suddenly, a hover car appeared above them and slowly passed over the alleyway. All three looked up, and it was the agent that recovered from the surprise the fastest, stepped forward and yelled at the man. "Doctor, you are being ordered to enter the portal!"
Klye Retarius lept away from the agent and drew a pistol. Kathryn recognized the Type 2 Phaser and gathered her wits. "No, don't!"
A blue phaser beam appeared into the night and missed the agent by centimeters. The agent responded with his own purple-colored beam. It connected at Kyle's chest. He screamed as he disintegrated. Within seconds he was gone forever.
Kathryn stood rigid. The hovercar appeared again, this time with blue light swirling and flashing at various points on its fenders. The agent tapped his wristband, grabbed Kathryn at the waist and jumped into the ball of temporal chaos.
A beam of light from the car probed into the alleyway, itself now dark as if no one was ever there.
---
Kathryn appeared on the transporter pad. Alone.
Science officer Margaret Retarius stood next to the transporter consol. Her hands knotted together with knuckles white. When she saw Kathryn she looked around the pad chamber as if to expect someone to appear from behind the Captain. After several extremely long seconds, Margaret's face changed from hesitating expectations to the realization of reality. She broke down and collapsed to the floor sobbing.
Looking out the window of a transporter room in Earth Spacedock Kathryn could see the bright lights of New York City through the clouds. She huddled next to Margaret.
"I'm so sorry, there wasn't enough time to save your brother or bring him back."
The Orion started making noise about readings. With a grunt, Bravok dropped his hand and stared at her.
"What is it?"
"Something is happening with the anomaly. It's putting out-"
Suddenly Bravok found himself standing outside on some planet. It was night, and towers rose up all around him, illumating the streets with their artificial light. Some form of vehicles moved along the bustling streets. What was this? What planet? There were many humans walking around, but there were various other creatures, all bipedal, most alot shorter than the humans. But they were all seemed to be moving around in groups. The smaller aliens were clutching bags of something, and eating items from them.
Someone walked past and shouted.
"Nice costume."
Bravok snarled.
"This is the uniform of the Klingon Defence Force. It is not some mere costume."
"Woah. Whatever you say dude."
The human walked off. Bravok took out his communicator.
"N'Nesh. Respond. This is Captain Bravok to the I.K.S. Praxis. Respond."
There was no reply. Bravok growled and pocketed his communicator. Deciding the best thing to do was to investigate, he began walking along the street. One of the vehicles screeched to a stop, almost hitting him.
"Watch where ya going buddy. Ya almost got killed!"
"And you should watch where you're piloting. Where am I?"
"I aint got time for drunken louts."
The car drove off. Bravok walked further along. This was clearly a Terran settlement. Could it be Earth? He had never been to it, but it could be. How did he get here?
He finally decided enough was enough. This building had lights on, and seemed to be open. He walked into the lobby of something called a 'hotel' and marched up to the woman at the desk.
"You. Human wench. Where am I?"
The young woman blinked and smiled.
"Welcome to the Park Avenue Royal Hotel Sir. I take it you are here for the Halloween Party?"
"Party? Halloween? Don't play your human games with me."
"Of course Sir. No offense was intended. I can see now you are playing in character. The party is just through the doors on your right."
Bravok looked over at the large wooden doors, then back to the woman. He leaned in closer.
"What is this place? What city? What planet?"
The woman kept her smile, though it was becoming obvious she had no patience for playing along fully.
"This is New York. On planet Earth."
Bravok just grunted, then moved towards the door. As he passed by the bar, he paused and looked up at the monitors. There was some kind of information cast being broadcast, and the date it read was-
He was bumped by someone from behind. Bravok spun to see a squat little man in a long coat. He seemed very nervous and made no apology as he shuffled away towards the party door. Bravok turned back to the screen. The date read October 31st 1992. Well, that wasn't good. Somehow, he had gone back in time. By Khaless's Beard, would he never be free from time jumps?
As the music from the party started singing that rythym was a dancer, there was a loud bang, followed by screaming and another loud bang. Bravok frowned. That didn't sound good. Not at all.
Despite having discovered he was lost in time, Bravok didn't care about preserving the past. After all, he had already wiped his original timeline from existence. It's not like he cared for this one. He ran towards the door, smashing through them. The Squat Guy was holding a shotgun at the crowd, two of the partygoers were on the floor where they had been shot. The sudden entry scared the Squat Guy, causing him to spin around and shoot Bravok.
Most of the shots missed, but some of the blast hit him in his left shoulder, spinning him around and down. He clutched the wound with his right hand, his blood seeping between his fingers.
"I... I....I didn't wa-wa-want to. But I will NOT be taken as a joke. Not now. Not ever again."
As the Squat Guy turned back towards the crowd, Bravok slipped his right hand down to his belt. In one fluid motion, he pulled his d'k tahg and launched it at Squat Guy. The blade hit him in his chest, close to his heart. Squat Guy dropped his gun and staggered back, clutching the knife's blade. Bravok wasted no time and charging up to his feet and forwards, raising his fist and driving it with all of his might at Squat Guy's jaw. The impact shattered his mouth, the crack from the shattering bones heard by all over the music. Squat Guy collapsed to the ground in agony, but Bravok didn't let up. He leapt on him, quickly grabbing his head and twisting it, ending the threat.
Slowly, the crowd started to compose themselves. They started edging closer when the fire alarm started blaring. Everyone stampeded out of the room, eager to get out of the horror. Everyone but Bravok and one other. As he stood, he saw a thin human male standing by the Fire Alarm button. He was dressed in some weird jumpsuit that looked like it was made of wires. When they were alone, the human started clapping.
"Well done. I knew you were the one."
Bravok pulled his knife out of Squat Guy and advanced towards this new human.
"Start talking. Or I'll gut you where you stand."
"Easy there. You can call me Daniels. Let's just say I'm responsible for making sure the timeline keeps it's course. One of the people in this room tonight is an ancestor of a Klingon female. An ambassador in your time, named K'Ehleyr. Some people from my time wanted her never to be born, which would have lead to Duras becoming Klingon Chancellor, and drastically altering the timeline. They put an agent back here to make sure that shooter had access to the weapon and opportunity to kill her ancestor. One of the projected timelines indicated a party guest, in a costume that matches your description, was able to disarm the shooter. Ideally, I was hoping you would stop him before he killed those two, but at least you achieved the primary objective."
"So you sent me back here? How did you know? I'm not even meant to be part of the timeline you took me from."
"No. When the Enterprise C returned to her time, you were meant to return as well. But when I saw your description, I knew you had to be the person here today, so I stepped in and crossed you over. The original Bravok never amounted to anything significant in the grand scheme of things, and he had no children, so disruption was minimal. We're done here, I can send you back to the Praxis."
"Can you return me to my original timeline?"
Daniels paused a moment.
"No. I'm afraid that timeline does not exist anymore. All I can do is return you to the future of this timeline."
"Very well human. But watch your records. The name Bravok will become one well known in the years to come."
Bravok suddenly found himself back on his bridge. N'Nesh was still blabbering about the anomaly. Bravok got to his feet and simply stormed off the bridge.
In 1992, Daniels shook his head slowly. Klingons were too tempermental to recruit fully. Sometimes, you just have to point them at the problem and hope for the best. And whoever had set these events in motion were still out there. Temporal incursions were stepping up lately. He hoped this wasn't going to escalate into a Temporal Cold War.
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
Dark hair, tucked modestly under a plain scarf, with eyes of the same deep brown shade. A long oval of a face with a sharp jaw and chin, and a knowing smile that threatened to become a toothy, triumphant grin. Vibrantly middle-aged, by the standards of their own time. Dressed simply, as they were, to avoid notice. She'd been waiting for them when they returned to their arrival point - a back alley in what had once been a poor neighborhood, then a Sanctuary District, and remained such for all practical purposes even after the walls came down - to distribute newly-acquired currency and information and make plans for the next stage of their operation. Waiting to step out from a shadowed doorway and proclaim confidently that the three of them were time travellers from the future.
"You might be able to fool the regular satellites, even the military ones, but the Beta-9 picked you up as soon as you made orbit. And when you beamed down, you might as well have sent up a flare." She smirked and crossed her arms, considering the away team. "So, lemme guess... Starfleet, right? Twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth?"
Kyle Sinclair looked at his officers, then shrugged. "I suppose there's no point trying to deny it. Yes, we're Starfleet. From 2409."
"Captain, I advise that--" Sarat's cautionary words were interrupted by a peal of laughter from the strange woman, who'd just gotten her first good look at the olive-tan Vulcan.
"The hat! You guys and your little hats, you're so precious." She clapped her hands, which happened to be gloved like his. "Take it off. C'mon, I wanna see. I'll show you mine if you show me yours." She leered and waggled her brows suggestively.
Slowly, with great dignity, Sarat reached up and removed his cap. The stranger squealed with delight. "I knew it!" Honoring her bargain, she untied her scarf and shook out her hair, letting it fall to her shoulders. Combined with her suddenly gleeful mood, it made her seem much younger.
Sinclair decided it was time to take the initiative. "I'm afraid you have us at a disadvantage, Miz...?"
"Rain. Just Rain, as in 'right as'. Do they still say that when you come from?" Sinclair nodded; she smiled and went on, addressing all three of them. "So here's the deal. I'm not here to stop you or blow your cover or anything. I just want to borrow your captain for a little while. It'll be fun and I promise to return him with his virtue intact."
Kyle managed to keep a straight face, ignoring Sarat's raised eyebrow and Adray's slight flush. (A particularly close observer might have noted that it did not extend to the thin coat of plastiskin that covered her spots.) "I'm afraid we have rules about that sort of thing, Ms. Rain. We're not allowed to interfere."
She dismissed his objection with a wave of her hand, stepping closer until they were face to face. "I know all about your Prime Directive, Temporal and otherwise. I swear to you, I'm not asking you to do anything that isn't meant to happen. Trust me." There was a long pause, and then Sinclair finally gave a wary nod.
It was Adray's turn to speak up. "Captain, we're on a tight schedule here. We don't have time for this."
"There's always time to do the right thing." Rain's tone was still light, but her expression was utterly serious.
Sinclair looked between the two women, feeling a bit like the rope in a tug of war. "It's all right." Turning fully to his science officer and friend, he spoke quietly to her. "Liss, I know you and Sarat can handle this just fine on your own. And if you do run into any trouble, just..." He held up his commbadge, set to silently alert him, then tucked it away again. "Meanwhile, I'm going to try to gather a little information myself," he finished, flicking his eyes to indicate the mysterious stranger.
Adray nodded reluctantly, then frowned. "Just be sure information is the only thing you gather. Sir." Sinclair rolled his eyes but nodded, eliciting a small but genuine smile from the Trill.
Staten Island was not on the mission itinerary; in fact, it was not expected that the away team would have to leave Manhattan. And so it was that Kyle found himself completely lost as Rain led him through areas of the St. George Terminal not open to the public, past conveniently vacant security checkpoints, and down to the docks where the great ferries floated in the oil-slick waters of the Upper Bay. The sun had set hours ago, and a shift change was in progress - the perfect opportunity. An equipment locker supplied them both with hard hats and safety vests with NYDOT markings, making them look almost as if they belonged there. They moved quickly but quietly, with Sinclair keeping a lookout, boarding the first ferry and making their way to the engine room. There, Rain went to a junction box attached to the massive turbine and unlocked it with a much smaller and more advanced gadget that lit up and hummed briefly. Placing it on a convenient surface, she opened the box and plunged her arms in up to the elbows.
"Normally I'd have another set of hands - or paws - but while I was waiting for you, my assistant got himself picked up by Animal Control." Rain grimaced, intent on whatever she was doing to the engine. "After we're done here, I'll go spring him from the pound and then tease him mercilessly for at least a week."
"Right," Sinclair replied, having understood only every other word of that. "So are you going to explain to me what we're doing here?"
"As usual... gumming up the works for a good cause. Here, take these." She dropped a few small square objects into his hastily cupped hands. "Or throw 'em overboard, whatever."
He stared at the control chips that she'd just pulled out of the engine's guts, then looked up at her with dawning amazement and admiration. "So you're the reason why the ferries weren't running that morning!"
"Got it in one." She closed the cover quietly and started leading him back the way they came. "Some will have problems and have to turn back; some, like this one, won't start at all. So tomorrow at 10:44 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, a few thousand people who would have been on the island..."
"Weren't," Sinclair finished, tucking the chips away in his vest pockets. "Very neat. I'm impressed." It was the best sort of intervention, easily mistaken for coincidence and equipment failure rather than deliberate action. In fact, he knew from his own pre-mission research that it had been - a minor footnote to a much greater tragedy, of interest only to a few historians.
"Thank you. Like to think I've learned a few tricks in fifty years." She caught the surprised look he threw her and smiled. "How old would you say I am?"
Sinclair coughed politely. "One thing I've learned is to never answer that question."
Rain laughed. "Smart man. Let's just say that in addition to being exciting and personally rewarding, my job offers great healthcare." They emerged from the bowels of the ferry, crossing the gangplank and heading for the next. "My boss and I, we could pass for... well, not sisters, but classmates. And she's old enough to be my mother."
Coming around a corner, they didn't see the security guard until he was less than a dozen paces away. Sinclair forced himself to keep his head down and his pace steady, wiping at his hands with a grimy rag he'd picked up along the way, thinking of long shifts and Jeffries tubes and replacing EPS conduits. His companion began chattering about some recent sporting event whose rules and players were utterly unfamiliar to him.
"Evenin'," the man said, his gaze and flashlight flicking only briefly over them. Sinclair returned the half-hearted greeting with a grunt and nod of his own and kept walking. After thirty seconds, he finally let himself relax and turned to Rain just as she finished her tale of the epic contest between the "Nicks" and the "Pistons".
"Fifty years?"
"Yeah." She grinned, and there was pride in it, but also other things; weariness, and maybe a little sadness too. "A wrench in the gears here, a report leaked to the net there. Bobbi and me, we held it back as long as we could, but..." She sighed, looking her true age for the first time since they'd met. "At least we gave everyone a few more decades. Long enough for some kids to be born and grow up and old people to die in peace. And maybe it won't be as bad as it might have been. Easier to pull ourselves up from, once we meet the Vulcans and all. For real, I mean."
"I think you're right." He smiled. "And it's... amazing and humbling to think of all you must have done. And if you've done it right, no one will ever know."
She shrugged. "The Klingons, I hear, have a saying: the stars see everything, and they remember. Well, you can't even see the stars here," she added wryly, waving at the opaque dome over the city, glowing faintly amber with reflected light. "But I like to think they're watching just the same. I used to watch them, before I got mixed up in all this. Fair's fair." They shared a chuckle at that.
The rest of the hour passed quickly, with Sinclair assisting Rain in minor acts of sabotage while listening to deliberately vague and partly redacted tales of a half-century of adventures behind the scenes - along with her assistant and her enigmatic superior - to prevent or delay global war. They were carefully draining most of the oil out of an engine when she finally ran out of stories, or at least the ones she could tell him.
"That's what makes it worth it," she finished. "The people. The ones I've helped, the ones I've met along the way... even the ones like you. I mean, look at you!" She turned to him and gestured wildly. "You're it, the future, the proof that it all works out in the end."
Kyle looked away, his cheeks warming, feeling unworthy of such praise but reluctant to disappoint. "Where I come from... it's not perfect. It's actually a pretty troubled time."
"I've never known any that weren't. It's times like these that test us, show who we really are." She finished TRIBBLE the cap back on and borrowed his rag to wipe her hands with. "But it gets better, right? And that doesn't happen on its own. It gets better because we make it so." She handed the rag back and checked some device strapped to her wrist. "And we are done. Just in time for you to get back to your crew, and me to get my furry pal out of the joint."
Sinclair nodded, following her up and out into the open air again. "Are you... I mean, are you going to be okay?"
"Aren't you sweet." She grinned, reaching up to lift off his hard hat so she could ruffle his hair. "Don't worry about me. Bobbi and I have our own ride out of here. Like I said, the people we work for take care of their own. And when the shooting and bombing stops, they'll be needing someone to help the survivors pick up the pieces. How's that for job security?" Again, her light words and tone were at odds with her sober expression.
"Any regrets?"
"One." She sighed again, tilting her head back to look up at the patchy nightglow. "I never got to see Saturn."
Adray and Sarat were waiting right where he'd left them, behind the ancient brownstone long abandoned to squatters and decay. (A faded sign on the wall, barely legible through the stains and scratches and graffiti of latter days, identified it as the "21st Street Mission.") They perked up as he approached, not quite standing to attention. Relief was plain on Lissa's face, and even Sarat wore a look of solemn approval along with the knit cap that had so amused Rain.
"Mission accomplished, sir."
"Glad to hear it. Did you get everything?"
Lissa nodded, then qualified, "Almost. Some of the books on the list were already checked out, but we got all the ones that weren't. And then we beamed in after closing time and tagged all the really rare ones that were locked up - enough to fill a shuttle or two. No one should notice they're missing before..." She trailed off, reluctant to say out loud what they all knew.
Sarat came to the rescue, breaking the brief silence. "And I was able to download the library's entire electronic archive to my tricorder - a total of 4.74 kiloquads."
Kyle stared. "That's all?"
Sarat cocked his head and one eyebrow. "The sum of human knowledge was much smaller in this era, Captain. It was, as you have said, a simpler time."
Sinclair smiled in rueful acknowledgement. "Well then, I think we can declare this part of Project Alexandria a success. Let's signal for--"
"'Scuse me." The man who'd interrupted was in even worse condition than the buildings around them, wrapped in layers of shabby and dirty clothing against the chill of the April night and shivering anyway, cheeks covered with stubble, hair lying in slack curls atop his head. "'Scuse me, sirs, ma'am, but I was just wonderin' if you could spare any change. Tryin' to get bus fare, see." He cracked a weak smile when he was not immediately dismissed, showing yellow teeth and not enough of them. "Please?"
Sinclair looked at the beggar - poor, hungry, hopeless, and possibly diseased, everything that his own century had managed to finally abolish, at least on Earth - and made a decision. He turned to his people. "How much cash do we have left?" They looked back at him dubiously, then began going through their pockets. He collected it all, the coins and paper slips bearing the faces of men long dead even in this century, and presented it to the scruffy man. "Listen. You take this and you buy a ticket. Anywhere you like, as long as it's far away from here and you leave tonight."
"Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!" Bowing and babbling in gratitude, clutching the money tightly, the man turned and hurried off with a shambling gait.
Lissa cleared her throat. "Captain, are you sure that was a good idea?"
"No, I'm not," Kyle admitted, still watching the panhandler as he shuffled away. Maybe he'd do as he was told; maybe he'd just go drink himself into a stupor, and still be there tomorrow when a second sun dawned over the city. There were limits to what they could do, and in the end it wasn't Kyle's choice to make. "But I am sure of something a wise woman said to me earlier. 'There's always time to do the right thing.'"
There is an old story in which a man walks along a beach. Lying on the sand, tossed up by the surf and stranded by high tide, are many small fragile creatures. Most of them will surely die in the hot sun before the waters return.
The man comes across another beachcomber - a man, a woman, a child - who is bending down and picking up the helpless castaways and hurling them back into the ocean. The man dismisses this as futile folly, for the beach is long and there are far too many to save them all. "What difference does it make?" he asks. "What does it matter?"
For answer, the second picks up another of the tiny creatures and smiles. "It matters to this one," he/she says, and throws.
Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.
-- Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a)
"Let me help."
-- Bonner the Stochastic, 2030
"It's a great riff, Captain. Listen, Kelix the Elder built his famous theme and variations for piano around it." Lenira's fingers mapped out the chords against her lap.
Captain Tusgra Broy checked that her translator was off before answering. "But he's been playing it for three hours now. He's intoxicated and fixated, it's more entertaining to him than to any of us. Trill or Human piano?"
"Trill, of course, but scored for an ensemble with cello and galzik." The xenobiologist found old Earth almost as interesting as the jungle they were supposed to be surveying. Tusgra just found it exhausting. It was no wonder that telepathy evolved to be rare among humans with their history of urbanization. Small blessings, she supposed. In pre-contact Rixx they'd be sussed out in minutes.
"Sussed out?" Gods, was she starting to think like them? At least engineering officer Patrick had found them a tolerable hideout. In a room of humans attempting to be art, a Trill and Betazoid attempting to be human passed as a couple from India, or Brazil, or Spanish Harlem. And the silver foil that covered every inch of the walls and ceiling provided them with a bit of security. The "Factory" looked more like a studio and lounge to her.
Patrick was the decoy in a mini-dress, a style of Starfleet uniform that Tusgra was happy to leave before her time, but it was considered by their hosts to be "drag." He was chatting up their host, a nervous and repressed empath with a wig that looked like an albino tribble. Another man was setting up a device on a tripod and pointing it at the pair. Curiosity, interest, and an intense focus on light and shadow, but no hostility. Ahh, a scanning device.
"Ensign," Tusgra whispered to Karin. "Can you jam that scanner?"
Lenira mock yawned and looked in her clutch purse. "I detect no active electronics, just a primitive em emitter bolted to the top."
"How does it work then? Oh, optical-chemical image capture."
"Short-burst holographic x-ray should do the trick. Not that much more than the residual atomic dust in the air. It would spoil the whole film roll though."
"Necessary loss, Ensign. Do it."
"Yes, Captain."
She sighed, took off the sunglasses she wore to hide her eyes, and pinched her nose. She wasn't trained for first-contact or temporal missions, but here she was, a hundred years before first contact with humans, searching for a Dominion agent. They'd taken subways and busses the length of the island with no luck. Somehow, they ended up here to retrench while the crew of the Slonczewski solved the problem.
She felt someone sit down next to her on the couch. Another labyrinthine flirtation? No, just curiosity and anxiety. She put the sunglasses on before opening her eyes, and saw a thin, balding, and pale man who looked smaller than he was. "Good evening, I'm Klaus."
She reached into her pocket to tap the translator on. "I'm Tusgra Broy." She introduced herself, taking care not to add her rank or title. "I'm not from around here."
"I know, I'm an alien myself." That translation made her start a bit. "I'm from Germany. I come here to sing opera, but I've not had much luck with it..." He was running circles around the what he wanted from her, silly human.
"I wish you luck. We're just passing through."
"I noticed that your companion, she called you 'captain,' I think. I'm not fluent in your language. And you two are so relaxed together, so I was wondering..."
Tusgra sighed and caught the question mid-vocalization. With historical taboos he could be hinting at it for another hour. "We're not lovers. She's my... assistant. We serve, served together." Tusgra blushed as she tried to twist the truth. "In the navy." There was a war going on, wasn't there. Of course, humans always had a war somewhere in their history.
"My apologies," Klaus frowned, disappointed. He was about to stand up when Tusgara put a hand on his shoulder.
"I'm not remotely offended. We don't have a problem with homosexual relationships it's just not a relationship I want to have... with a subordinate." Tusgra tried to shut her mouth but her culture, honesty, and anger got the best of her. Most of the day she'd been hearing vocal and non-vocal insults. "Soon, the human race will grow up and realize you've got bigger problems to worry about than your own diversity. When you reach the stars, this sort of thing becomes..."
Tusgra shut her mouth, and looked around. Evidently such pontificating wasn't something worthy of notice in this crowd.
"So, you're a futurist!" Klaus said. Tusgra bit her lip in frustration. She said too much. "I'm a big fan of science fiction myself." Klaus nodded enthusiastically.
She was relieved by the device beeping in her pocket. She pulled out the text communication device disguised as a pager. "I need to go," she said.
"Yes, I see, you have someplace to go." Klaus nodded at her. "Perhaps we can talk again." Karin and Patrick were already moving toward the door.
"Have a good evening, Klaus."
The three of them left the building, and went into an alley about a half-block away. Tusgra tapped her hidden communicator, "This is Broy."
Her Tactical Officer, Anthi answered. "We've found the shuttle, with the device..."
"...and?" Tusgra didn't need to be in the same room to know there was something more to the situation.
"It's 300 klicks away from your location. The good news is I can beam you there."
"Do it," Tusgra said.
They didn't notice a thin, balding, and pale man pass by the entrance to the alley, and turn toward the glimmer of the transporter with astonishment.
"Sir," ensign Aara, the Athena's Orion comms officer said, "Admiral Blaze is hailing us. Or, more specifically, you."
"Put her through to the ready room." Bryan said, sighing heavily.
The 1st Assault Fleet's co-leader, and Bryan's direct superior, appeared on the console in front of him.
"Greetings Bryan," She said with a faint smile.
"Ley. What do you need?" he responded tiredly.
"There have been some anomalous readings coming from a star that's going supernova approximately twelve Light Years from New Romulus. Could you check it out, make sure that it's no threat?"
"Send us the coordinates. We'll be there as soon as possible."
"Sent. Good luck Bry." With that, she closed the channel.
"Helm," he called out, tapping the intercom button on the ready room console, "Set a course for the coordinates the Equinox just forwarded. Best speed."
The ship began to hum faintly as she accelerated to her maximum warp velocity. Suddenly, the space outside appeared to fluctuate with a faint, pulsing, blue color as the Asynchronous warp field activated, pushing the ship all the way to warp 20.
"Sir, we've arrived in the Azure sector." Athena, the ship's AI, called out several hours later.
"Good. Anything else?" Bryan responded.
"Actually, yes. You have a new message." She said.
"Thank you Athena. I'll take it in here."
"No problem sir."
Bryan pulled up the message on his terminal. The title simply read "New year's resolution." Even though he all ready knew what the message he wrote to himself said, he opened it anyways. All the message said was "Remember your promise to her, Bryan." There wasn't anything else to the message, but there didn't need to be, for the intent of the single sentence immediately reminded Bryan of what he needed to do.
Bryan tapped his combadge and said "Helm, divert course to the Azure Nebula"
"Are you sure? Admiral Blaze said-"
"Dwayne, " I interrupted him, "Leyla's orders can wait. Set a course for the Azure Nebula, now.
"Yes, sir, diverting course."
The bulkheads groaned faintly as the ship changed its course ever so slightly. Though, built to withstand the strain of high warp maneuvers, the turn still put noticeable stress on the hull, hence the noises structural supports attempting to compensate.
"Athena, what's out ETA?" Bryan asked.
"Ten minutes at present speed, sir," the ship said.
"Very good. Could you please inform Commander Zera that I would like to see her in observation?"
"Right away."
The room was silent for a few seconds before the AI finally said anything again.
"Done, sir."
"Good." Bryan said calmly.
"Sir, a question, if I may?"
"Open door policy, Athena. Go ahead."
"Are you finally going to propose to her?"
Bryan smiled as he rested his face into the palm of his hand. " A bit nosy aren't you?"
"Of course," the AI said, laughing a little.
"Well, in that case, you'll just have to find out later, just like the rest of the crew."
Bryan stood at the window of the main observation room, observing the stars rushing past the ship when Ibalei entered the room. Though her scars from the battle with their mirror counterparts had all ready healed, she still walked with a slight limp.
"You needed me sir?" She said cheerfully.
"Yes, I did." Bryan responded, smiling a little. "Athena? How much longer?"
"Now, sir." Athena responded.
The entire observation room was tinted blue by the light of the nebula. Ibalei stood there, speechless at what she saw. Her eyes, grey as a stormy sky, were tinted slightly by the light. She walked over to the window and simply stared.
After standing there for a minute, she quietly said "It's beautiful. I never imagined..."
"Imagined what?" Bryan asked.
"That I'd ever be able to see it. At least not without being given my own command."
"I keep my promises, Ibalei."
"I know, I know. It's just...I've never seen anything so beautiful."
"Not even when you look in the mirror in the mornings?"
"I- What?"
Bryan looked into her eyes as he prepared to ask her the hardest question he would ever ask. But, even as he opened his mouth to speak, alarms blared, and Six of Nine, the Athena's chief engineer and second officer, came on the intercom and said in an extremely distressed voice "Red alert! Temporal anomaly detected right off the bow! Evasive action!" Even as she finished her sentence, however, the entire room became enveloped in darkness.
Bryan got up from the floor and looked around. The room, especially considering the speed of the impact, was surprisingly intact. Ibalei was already up and shaking herself off from the impact as well.
"Ibalei, are you all right?" He asked, visibly concerned.
"Yea, don't worry, I'm fine." She said, a little shaken, but otherwise unharmed.
"Six," Bryan said, tapping his combadge, "Give me a damage report."
"No real damage to report other than the starboard nacelle is flooded. Looks like the Neutronium armor held." The liberated Borg said.
"Go back a second. The starboard nacelle is flooded?" Bryan said, visibly concerned.
"Yes sir."
"Athena?" Bryan asked, his intended question quite obvious to the AI.
"It's flooded because we're currently sitting approximately one hundred kilometers off of the coast of New York city." The AI muttered with a touch of annoyance.
"...New York city?"
"Yes sir. And, judging by the ship floating above us, I'd say we're some time in the early 21st century. Before you ask, the ship I'm talking about is a United States of America Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier. Specifically, the Nimitz herself."
"What are they doing?"
"Judging by this lightly encrypted radio chatter, I'd say they're trying to figure out exactly what we are."
Bryan sighed. "Well, temporal prime directive just went out the window. Cut all exterior lights. Put a field over the breach in the starboard nacelle, we'll need to find a way to pump it out if we want to get out of here. Ibalei, I think it's time for a night on the town."
She smiled slightly as they left the room to the turbolift.
They beamed into a dark alleyway, somewhere in the heart of the Big Apple, wearing traditional clothing one would expect for the time. Bryan looked around the area, then looked back at Ibalei and realized her hair was still up in a ponytail, her "spots," courtesy of being a Trill, easily visible running down the side of her face and neck.
"You might want to let your hair down." Bryan whispered to her.
"But-" She started.
"Ibalei, we haven't even really developed true space-faring vehicles yet this point in our history, and we most certainly have never consciously met a Trill. You would probably get locked up in an isolated cell in some dark corner of the planet, knowing how flexible Earth's governments during this time were."
"Right, sorry." She said, obviously embarrassed.
"Don't worry about it. I still think you're the most beautiful women in the galaxy," Bryan responded, smiling as Ibalei blushed faintly. "Come on, let's head down to the docks. See if we can find something there to pump out the water."
Bryan sat in the bed in the apartment he and Ibalei had rented several weeks earlier. The pair had lived there for a brief time, attempting to find a way to purchase the pumps they needed to clear the Athena's nacelle. So far, they had no luck. Though the Athena's replicators were functioning, the primary one, used for replicating components, large scale equipment, and, most importantly, water pumps to prevent flooding.
"Hey there Bryan." Ibalei said cheerily as she entered the apartment.
"Ibalei. Good to see you again." Bryan responded, getting up from the bed and kissing her gently on the cheek. "Any luck getting what we needed?"
"You Humans used to be more stingy than the richest Ferengi," She said sarcastically. "Nobody would even think about selling me one."
"Reading peoples minds again, Ibalei?" Bryan laughed.
"I didn't need to. It's pretty obvious." The Trill retorted, smiling and laughing as well.
"Was there anything else?" Bryan asked.
"There is some good news. I found some parts down at the docks we might be able to use to make our own pump. Plus, it'll be much more efficient than the ones most ships these days use."
"Well, I say we head back down to the docks and tag the parts for transport aboard the Athena." Bryan said.
"Indeed." She responded, smiling broadly.
The pair left the apartment and walked through the rapidly darkening streets of New York city. They looked just like any other couple you might see, holding hands, talking, and laughing. By the time they reached the docks, it was completely dark, though the docks were still busy as usual.
"This might complicate things a little." Bryan said, carefully observing the situation.
"Please, remember who your talking to," Ibalei responded sarcastically. "I all ready hid the parts we need in a few boxes nearby."
"You always think of everything, don't you?" Bryan laughed.
"Of course," she said, smiling and laughing herself.
She led him to a darkened alleyway, well away from any lighting and prying eyes, and filled with boxes.
"So, which ones are we taking?" Bryan asked.
"Well, I marked the ones we were going to use with an element that should be visible," she said, as she pulled out her tricorder and tapped in a few commands, "now."
She was right, as several of the boxes had a faint stripe on them that glowed a bright purple. The two got to work, silently tagging each of the crates for transport.
When they finally finished, several minutes later, Bryan pulled his combadge out of his pocket, tapped it, and said quietly, "Athena, two plus cargo for transport." At that, the faint hum of the transporter enveloped him as they were beamed out.
"Sir, we've got the pump working now," Six of nine said as she entered the ready room.
"Good," Bryan responded, looking up briefly. "How long do you expect it to take to get the nacelle working again?"
"Half an hour. A full hour at the most."
"Good. That will be all, Six. Get that nacelle up and running again"
"Yes, sir," the Borg said. With that she walked out of the room, speaking into her combadge to relay Bryan's orders. Bryan stood up and walked over to the window, looking out into the ocean. Eventually, Ibalei stepped into the room and walked up beside him.
"Quite a view, huh?" she said.
"The ocean has always been full of mysteries," Bryan responded. "We still don't understand it completely."
"That reminds me, was there something you were going to say before we got sent back here by whatever that anomaly was?"
"Yes, actually. I-"
"Sir," Athena called out, "We've got a submersible vessel closing on our position."
Bryan paused. The only way for the submarine's crew to be able to view the ship would be if they put on diving suits, which they more than likely had on board.
"Dwayne," Bryan said, tapping his combadge, "fire up the impulse engines. Try to get us away from that submarine."
"Aye sir." The helmsman responded.
"Aara, sound yellow alert."
"Right away sir." The Orion answered.
"Six, get everyone you have working on pumping and fixing the nacelle. I want to be able to warp out of here within the next ten minutes. Understood?"
"On it sir," the liberated Borg said in reply.
The Athena's hull groaned faintly as the impulse drive powered up for the first time in almost a month. The ship gradually began to rise from being half buried in sand and sediment. Once free from her burial, however, she glided though the water as easily as if it were space. The crew of the submarine didn't even have time to react, as the Athena sped away from them at speeds unimaginable for a vessel of her size during that time period.
"It feels good to be home," Bryan said as he sat back into the captain's chair for the first time since the crash.
"Agreed," Ibalei said, taking her place in the chair to Bryan's right.
"Helm, take us up and out of the atmosphere. Full impulse," Bryan called out.
The ship rose majestically through the clouds and into space once more. The last bit of water trailed away from the breach in the starboard side nacelle, and it finally glowed back to life after a month of sitting dormant.
"Sir, we have warp capability," Six said enthusiastically.
"Good. Helm, get us out of here. Maximum warp," Bryan said, obviously relieved to be back in space, "Now then, does anyone have an idea for how to get us back home?
"Actually sir, I had a thought," Ibalei said. "But first, do we still have that chroniton torpedo on board?"
"Kerry?" Bryan called to the Athena's chief Tactical officer.
"Yes, we do sir." Kerry responded.
"What's your plan Ibalei?" Bryan said, turning back to his first officer.
"Well I figure that if we can get the torpedo to detonate with the correct frequency within a wormhole or a similar anomaly, that we could theoretically get right back to where we're supposed to be. Both the time and the place."
"And you're sure this will work?"
"Not completely sure, but nothing is ever certain, is it?"
"Point. Give Avalrez the frequency. She and Thryiss can work on the Torpedo together. Where's the nearest anomaly we can use?"
"Well, we could try to imbalance our warp drive to simulate the effect right here," Six said from her station.
"Good. Work on that with Athena, Six. I want you two to make sure that you get the balance perfect."
"Aye sir."
"As for the rest of you, normal duty shift from her on out. Secure from yellow alert and get some rest. We will begin with the gamma shift. I'll be in my quarters if you need me."
"Sir, we're almost set to return to our own time," the Athena's AI said over the intercom in Bryan's quarters.
"Good. We're on delta shift now, correct?" Bryan asked
"Yes sir."
"Tell Aara to sound general quarters. I want everyone at their stations and ready just in case this goes south."
"Right away sir."
Alarms blared as Bryan stepped out of his quarters and into a hallway. He passed by groups of crewmen moving hurriedly to their stations and some MACO troopers who were already in their full combat gear and ready for anything. After about thirty seconds, he finally came to a turbolift, which opened to greet him. As he stepped in, he proceeded to call out "Bridge," and the turbolift sped upward. When it finally arrived the Athena's chief of Security, Justin, who was already in full MACO combat gear as well, called out "Admiral on deck!" and Ibalei, who had been sitting in the central chair, moved over to the first officer's chair and allowed Bryan to take the seat.
"Status?" He called out.
"All systems go, sir," Athena responded. "We can begin the attempt whenever you're ready."
Bryan tapped the intercom button on his chair. "Attention all hands, this is the Amiral speaking. By now, you all have heard that we have a plan to get back to our own time. It's a long shot, and it may not even work. Despite this, I know you all will do your duties to the very best of your abilities, as you always do. Good luck to you all. Admiral Valot, out."
"Nice speech, sir," Ibalei said.
"Thanks. Shall we begin?"
"Waiting for your orders, sir," Athena said.
"Good. Ibalei, seeing as how this was your plan, I want you to carry it out. You have the con."
"Aye, sir, I have the Con," She responded. "Dwayne, take us into warp. Athena, set warp factor to exactly sixteen."
"Aye sir." the Helmsman and AI said at the same time.
Outside the window, space suddenly glowed a bright blue, as the imbalanced warp dirve activated and threw the Athena into a newly formed wormhole.
"Thryiss, fire the torpedo...Now!"
The modified chroniton torpedo sped away from the tube, detonating about half a kilometer away. Suddenly, the ship shuddered as it became enveloped in darkness once again.
When Bryan came too, the Bridge was once again enveloped in the soft blue light of the Azure nebula. He looked around the bridge, and saw the others beginning to pick themselves up off of the floor as well.
"Status?" he asked.
"All systems are operational, sir." Athena said, "Present year is 2412, just a minute or two after we were sent back in time."
"Nice work, Ibalei," Bryan said, turning to his First Officer.
"Thank you, sir," the Trill responded, smiling faintly.
Bryan began to put his hand into his pocket when a small, metallic hoop brushed up against it. He was all of a sudden reminded of what he had intended to do, but still had not had the chance to carry out. He looked into Iablei's deep grey eyes, steeled his resolve and prepared himself.
"Ibalei, the fiasco this little excursion turned into has reminded me of something I've been meaning to do for some time now, but could never find the right circumstances to do it in," he said walking towards her.
"What's that?" she asked curiously.
Bryan held her hands in his. "I've known you for about six years now, and we've served together on the same boat for close to three. In that time, I have come to care about you, as a crewmate, as a friend, and, recently, as the first women I've truly ever loved. You are beautiful, smart, funny, and a million other things. And I would like to be one of them. Commander Ibalei Zera," Bryan pulled the small ring out of his pocket, "Will you marry me?"
The Trill stared for a moment, unable to believe what was happening. Tears began to well up in her stormy eyes as she looked into Bryan's. She opened her mouth to answer, but instead saying anything, she reached around Bryan, brought him closer to her, and the pair kissed, right in the middle of the Athena's bridge. Bryan immediately knew her answer even before her mind joined his, and whispered one word in the middle of their brief moment: "Yes."
Commanding officer: Odyssey class U.S.S. Athena
Admiral of the 1st Assault Fleet
Join date: Some time in Closed Beta
Captain's Log, Stardate 844521:
The Da Vinci is en route back to Starfleet Command after monitoring a unique subspace anomaly in the Mintaka system. The area of space around Mintaka III "folded in on itself," to use Ensign Sann's words, and, for roughly twelve standard hours, this area of space became subject to unique tachyon fluctuations until the anomaly finally dissipated. Ensign Sann has hypothesized that these fluctuations may be indicative of some sort of temporal instability, and similar emissions from solar flares picked up by long-range scanners suggest that the anomaly may have been caused in some fashion by Mintaka's sun.
We have already forwarded the data to Memory Alpha for analysis. If Ensign Sann's hypothesis is correct, then I feel that further studies of the Mintaka system could very well add much to what we know about temporal astrophysics. We have done several shipwide diagnostics since leaving the Mintaka system, and Chief Engineer Adim assures me that there are no irregularities that might have been caused by our proximity to the subspace fold. As soon as we resupply at Starfleet command and get new orders from Admiral Quinn, the Da Vinci will be ready for anything. In the meantime, I feel that the crew has earned some much-needed R&R.
Lieutenant Arkos Nair, commander of the U.S.S. Da Vinci. gave a sour expression as he ended the log's playback. There was a human term he had come to be aware of during his visits to the Sol System: "famous last words." Many Humans had some strange notion that saying something positive about one's health, fortune, or continued good luck would inevitably tempt fate in some catastrophic way. Arkos had always thought this was a foolish, irrational belief, but he had to admit that his prior confidence about there being no irregularities on the ship felt fairly ironic now.
"Still no response, K'Nera?" he asked the woman standing at the tactical station directly behind his chair.
K'Nera, Chief Tactical and First Officer of the Da Vinci. shook her head, the motion causing her stalk-like Andorian ears to sway like dandelions in a breeze. "Still nothing, Captain," she replied. "No transmissions from Starfleet or from any ships in the area. And if Ensign Sann is right, there's no Starfleet down there to contact."
Nearby, Ensign Neazri Sann, the chief science officer, pored over the scanner log, her spotted Trill face illuminated slightly by the flickering amber glow of cycling data. "I can confirm it now, Captain," she said, her voice betraying a tremor of excitement. Her obvious eagerness where all things scientific were concerned did much to set her apart from K'Nera's more businesslike personality. "The tachyon pulse that hit us once we entered the Sol System is identical to the subspace fold in the Mintaka system. Somehow, we seem to have taken a part of the anomaly with us."
Arkos groaned. This had just gone from bad to worse with a single diagnostic. He knew he should have had the Da Vinci scan the anomaly from the furthest edges of the system, but then the sensor returns would have been poor at best. Not for the first time, he mused, his curiosity had gotten the better of him.
On the viewscreen, the azure, emerald-flecked orb that was Earth rotated peacefully below him, pinpricks of light marking its greenery like motes of dust. Unlike all of the other times he had been to Earth, however, the Earth Spacedock was mysteriously absent.
"So," he breathed, "what you're saying is...we've gone back in time?"
Sann turned to face him, brushing some of her light brown hair back from her brow. "Or, potentially, forward in time," she replied. "If this is a temporal anomaly, then there really is no telling when it could have propelled us in the timestream, or how far back or forward."
Arkos sighed. "Well, I think we can rule out having gone forward in time," he muttered. "Otherwise, we would have found up spacedocks, or starships, or any indication whatsoever of advanced technology."
"Barring some sort massive ecological and/or societal collapse, that is," K'Nera added. She winced, then, when she remembered what she had read about the conditions of Arkos' homeworld and how it had come to be that way, and realized how indelicate her statement had been. "Sorry sir," she added.
Arkos gave her a slight shrug, as a subtle indicator that there was no harm done. "Thank you, K'Nera, for being the voice of optimism," he grumbled, before turning to another station. "Adim, any idea how the anomaly could have piggybacked onto the ship?" He was already going over several possibilities in his mind, but one of the duties of commanding a ship was to let the professionals on the ship have their say first and feel like they were important members of the bridge. Always remember, he recalled Admiral Quinn telling him, you're now a Captain first, and an engineer second.
Adim frowned as he pored over his own console. Like K'Nera, he was an Andorian, with the distinctive blue skin, antennae-ears and white hair of his race, though this hair extended down into a distinguished beard that covered the lower portion of his face. Like Arkos, Adim was an engineer by profession and by interest, and he was a damn good one at that.
"No idea," he replied. "My only guess is...particles emitted by the anomaly could potentially have gotten caught up in our warp drive manifold, which might explain why I didn't notice them at first." There was a noticeable undercurrent of frustration to Adim's tone, expression and movements. Adim blamed himself, Arkos realized, for what had happened, as he was the one who had run the earlier diagnostic and had given the Da Vinci a clean bill of health. Arkos didn't blame Adim personally, but he nonetheless made a mental note to give Adim some important duties to make him feel like he was redeeming himself.
"Keep at it, then," he ordered. "I want you to work closely with Ensign Sann to figure out how we got here, and more importantly, how we got back. If we've been shunted back...or forward...in time, then our top priority is finding a way get back to our own timeline before we break something." He glanced back at Sann. "We know where we are, so any idea of when?"
Sann quickly returned to her console. "Sensors are picking up several large habitations on the surface...overall population appears to be roughly one billion...no indication of electrical discharge or similar power outputs...moderate traces of diffused coal in the atmosphere..." She glanced up from her console at Arkos. "Matching historical records seem to suggest that this is Earth, circa 1886."
K'Nera frowned. "1886? I'm a little rusty on my Earth history. Is there anything significant about that year?"
Arkos leaned over and tapped at the console embedded in his armchair, and did a quick perusal of Memory Alpha records. "Hmm...use of steam and combustion power...automated vehicles slowly picking up in use...electrical engineering is a recent phenomenon by this point..." He glanced up at the image of Earth. "Interesting. From a developmental standpoint, it looks like Earth was on the eve of a technological renaissance in this period. An 'age of invention,' if you will."
For a brief moment, the responsible captain in him took a backseat as the engineer in him took over. Before the Fall and before its regression into its dark age, Nar-Etulis had gone through several similar ages of invention throughout its history, each period advancing the Korda people scientifically and culturally. He had to admit, he was curious to see what early human innovation was like, and how this age of invention affected their own people so early on. Please, let there be an excuse to send down an away team...
"Captain," Sann suddenly spoke, "I'm detecting unusual electromagnetic readings from the surface...too high to be a natural phenomenon...too densely concentrated to be made by any of the technology of this time period."
Arkos bolted upright. "Source?"
There was a short pause. "North American continent...harbor district...New York City."
Though Adim, Sann and K'Nera couldn't see it, the ghost of a smile had crept upon Arkos' blue-grey lips.
He stood up from his chair. "K'Nera, prepare an away team," he said as he strode towards the turbolift. "Adim, I need you to create holo-emitters to make us all look human. Sann, replicate us some period-appropriate clothing. I'll meet you all in the Transporter Room when you're done." As the turbolift hissed open, he glanced back at the bridge crew before stepping in. "Oh, and Adim...maybe hats for you and K'Nera? Just a suggestion."
******
The preparations for the away team mission didn't take long at all. Adim was able to jury-rig some holo-emitters in the space of a few minutes, and Sann didn't have much difficulty replicating period-specific clothing- complete with walking sticks for the men and handbags and umbrellas for the women. The actual disguising of the crew was a fairly simple affair as well: thanks to the physiological similarities between Humans and Trill, the only thing Sann needed to do was temporarily clear away the spots running down the sides of her neck with an imager. Adim and K'Nera, similarly, only needed to holographically transition their skin from blue to the peachy colour most Humans had, and switch their hair from white to black. They still needed hats to cover up their antennae, however-- K'Nera wore a bonnet which, as she grumpily complained, bent her antennae downward unpleasantly. Adim got off easier, as Sann gave him a tall, cylindrical monstrosity that she referred to as a "top hat."
It was Arkos who needed the most work, as Korda had even fewer physiological similarities to Humans than either Trill or Andorians. The holographic emitter hid his grey skin and the silver-blue highlights and at the back of his skull and replaced them with an average human flesh tone, and disguised the bony ridges running horizontally on either side of his upper skull, and the vestigial cluster of tendril-like growths at the corner of each cheek, replacing them with smooth and unbroken epidermis. He was replaced, overall, with the image of a bald human, roughly twenties to thirties, with handsome facial features. Admittedly, Arkos would have liked for his human facade to have hair (the novelty of it was intriguing), but after spending almost ten minutes trying to pick a colour, Adim's patience had worn out and he skipped that detail entirely.
K'Nera was, of course, continuously reminding Arkos of Prime Directive protocols all the way to the transporter room, even after they were all disguised and wearing suitably archaic clothing. The Prime Directive was clear enough most of the time, but in the rare instance of a temporal anomaly, it was especially stringent-- even the slightest bit of interference could drastically alter the timestream, and reality as they knew it (not to mention end their collective careers). They all agreed that their mission was clear: beam down to New York City, investigate the abnormal energy reading, and, if the source was something that didn?t belong in this time period, fix things as quickly and as inconspicuously as possible. To draw even less attention, only the four of them would be beaming down, while the Da Vinci would remain on standby in high orbit under Ensign Coulton.
Despite his knowledge of the Prime Directive, and despite being the responsible captain that he knew he was, Arkos had to keep reminding himself, all the way to the transporter room, not to act like a tourist...
*****
That sentiment lasted exactly ten minutes before Arkos found himself marvelling at living Human history.
19th-century New York was, in many ways, a more alien environment than anything else the Da Vinci crew had encountered in their short career. Gaslight lamps, paved cobblestones, walking sticks, genteel mannerisms, horse-drawn carriages and steam-driven streetcars were in abundance, and the gender-specific dress code-- buttoned up shirts, pants, coats, brass timepieces and absurd hats for the men, and corsets, frilly dresses and even more absurd hats for the women-- caused much confusion and awkward walking for the away team. K'Nera especially muttered several swear words about the uncomfortable combination of corset, frilly hat and odd shoes, though for some reason Sann seemed to be actually enjoying her attire.
Arkos and the rest of the away team remained as aloof as possible, mimicking the mannerisms of the people around them to blend in. Thankfully, Sann, with her background studies in Human history, was immensely helpful in telling them how to act. As they made their way to the side of the anomaly, Arkos took what time he had to spare to marvel at their surroundings, observing as much of the architecture, technology, and customs of the era as time and discretion allowed. New York City of 19th Century Earth was not an unpleasant place, he eventually concluded, but it was a stark reminder of how far the Human race had come in terms of hygiene-- the littered trash, outdated sewers, industrial pollution and occasional horse-droppings were a far cry from the practically glittering cityscape of 23rd-Century San Francisco, where the only thing you risked stepping in was the gardener's liverwort.
Still, it was the small things-- the printed newspapers, the gaslight lamps, the street organ grinders and their pet simians, and the public parks-- that really struck a chord with Arkos as bygone artefacts of history. It made him want to return to Nar-Etulis all the more now, to immerse himself in his own world's rich past. No, he thought bitterly, that's beyond changing now.
Eventually, their readings and uncertain navigation of New York's streets took them to the harbourfront district and the seemingly omnipresent smells of sea spray, fish and ship oil. To everyone's surprise, the harbourfront was more densely populated than they had first suspected-- people were bustling to and fro across the wharfs, vendors were serving out snacks and drinks, and red, blue, and white flags and streamers were flying everywhere. The entire area seemed like the focal point of some sort of celebration.
As they negotiated the crowd and walked the wooden floorboards of the harbourfront, the away team eventually found themselves looking at a large offshore structure that appeared to be mounted on an artificial island of some sort. The structure itself was quite tall, roughly a hundred and fifty feet or so, and, curiously, was covered with a very large series of canvasses and drapes. The general outline of whatever lay underneath that canvas did not look like a traditional building. The four of them leaned against the railing of the harbourfront walkway, doing their best to look inconspicuous. To better fit in, Adim, looking rather genteel under his top hat, glimpsed through a nearby pintle-mounted set of binoculars to get a better look. He cursed when he discovered that he could not magnify the vision without inserting some sort of coin.
"Sann, what can you make from that structure?" Arkos asked, both hands placed on his cane as he adopted a pose he'd seen some upper-class human males use in this timeline.
Sann discreetly took a tricorder reading as she pretended to look in a pocket mirror. "I'm detecting heavy amounts of copper under those drapes...some steel components...dimensions are not static at all..." She paused and suddenly smiled. "It's the Statue of Liberty, sir."
Adim blinked. "The what?"
"A large copper statue built in the late 19th Century, as a gift to the United States of America from France," Sann explained. "It's full name is the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, though sometimes it's simply referred to as 'Lady Liberty.' It has immense historical significance as an American landmark-- it was seen as a monument to the American ideals of life and liberty, and was usually the first thing seen by immigrants crossing the Atlantic. It was destroyed during World War III, rebuilt in 2063, and its remade version is still standing in our timeline."
Arkos gazed up at the veiled form. He had to admit, he was curious now to see what it looked like under the drapes. "Impressive," he said. "The Federation could use something similar to to greet its own refugees, I think." At the back of his mind, he began to ponder the logistics of a gigantic spaceborne statue...
K'Nera peered intently over the rails of the walkway at the shrouded colossus. "That's some gesture of friendship," she mused. "But why is it in drapes?"
Sann shrugged. "Well...if this is the year that I think it is...then we've arrived right on the eve of the Statue's unveiling."
Adim finally gave up on the binoculars and stared up at the statue as well. "So, right on the eve of a major historical event," he muttered. "Our timing couldn't be better. What about the energy signature? Any idea where it's originating from?"
Sann's expression darkened, and she glanced back at her tricorder. "Well..." She bit her lower lip. "The energy source appears to be...inside the statue."
If Arkos recalled human terminology correctly, what happened next was commonly called an "awkard moment of silence."
"You can't be serious," K'Nera moaned.
The Trill shook her head. "The readings are accurate," she replied. "The Statue of Liberty is the origin point of...whatever it is that we scanned from orbit."
"So, the mysterious energy signiature is inside a historically significant landmark," Arkos muttered. "One that is probably heavily guarded, and that we can't intrude on anyway without potentially altering history." He took a deep breath, and wondered how much the universe hated him today. "K'Nera, suggestions?"
The Tactical Officer folded her arms and stared up at the statue as though meeting some unspoken challenge from the metal titan. "We wait until nightfall," she said. "We'll be better able to infiltrate the Statue that way, and any modern technology we're forced to use will is less likely to be seen."
Adim stroked his beard. "Makes sense," he said. "That would also give me time to head back to the ship and jury-rig some useful equipment for the job. I think some sound dampeners would work."
Arkos nodded. "Then we're agreed," he said. "We head back to the ship and reconvene here in roughly four hours. We?re going to try to solve this problem with as little noise or fuss as possible."
K'Nera raised a hand. "Will we still have to wear historical costumes, Captain?" she asked, glancing down at the corset that had been bothering her since they first arrived.
"I'm afraid so, K'Nera," Arkos replied, giving her a sheepish grin. "Sorry, Ensign, but historical continuity takes precedence."
"Dammit."
*****
Time stamp: 247.6
Temporal Agent Tyler: Starting from the beginning preferably.
Wraith: But I already told you-
Temporal Agent Johnson: Listen, we need to make sure we have all the details. Sometimes retelling it helps people remember the small things they might have missed.
Wraith: Fine...
Johnson: I don't think I've ever seen a Vulcan get this annoyed before.
Wraith: I've already asked you to lay off that.
Note: Johnson shifts in his chair grinning
Johnson: Start again from when you encountered the anomaly.
Wraith: I was in in one of the jefferies tubes helping Devon whe-
Tyler: Chief Fine?
Wraith: Yeah, Chief Fine. We were in one of the jeffries tubes doing some routine inspections when the wave hit us.
Tyler: The wave? Could you clarify for the record?
Wraith: That's what it looked like. Just like a rush coming from down the tube, not quite water, but some kind of fluid rushing at us.
Johnson: The report said they found you on top of... Chief "Fine"
Note: The young man seemed to give Agent Johnson an angry look at the way he phrased her name.
Tyler: Continue please.
Wraith: When I saw the wave coming I just kind of put myself between, I didn't really think about it. When we came too the medical team was checking on us.
Johnson: Then what happened?
Wraith: They told us where we were, some how the whole ship had been pulled back to Earth, a place called New York City. Back in the past, 18 something.
Tyler: 1821. September 1st to be a little more specific.
Wraith: We'd crash landed in the water out side of the city. The anomaly caused a storm so I don't think any one saw the ship, but hitting the water as hard as we did apparently flooded the surrounding area. The Captain called for the senior staff so I stayed in sick bay talking to Fizi, the nurse. A while later Dev... Chief Fine-
Tyler: Call her what you want, that last time was just for the record.
Wraith: Devon called me on the comm to come back to engineering. We needed to finish systems check and make sure nothing was effected. The ship was still under water and we needed to make sure it could leave if need be.
Johnson: Underwater?
Wraith: Yeah, a little reinforcement to the structural inte-
Tyler: We know it's possible, but we just want to know what happened while you were there. Tell us again about the energy reading.
Wraith: Once sensors were back online the bridge picked it up. I don't really know much about it other than what I've heard.
Johnson: Gossiping on a high security Star Ship? That's the kind of thing that gets peopled killed.
Wraith: What does that even mean?
Tyler: Children please....
Wraith: Captain Donovan told me during dinner. He invites me every now and then with some of the senior staff.
Johnson: Like a pet Augie?
Note: Another angry look due to Johnson's attempt to illicit a response. It's possible that Johnson is amused by making a Vulcan angry.
Wraith: I've proven myself as part of the crew, any time I'm asked to eat with the staff I've earned it.
Tyler: BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND...
Wraith: From what I was told, there was energy readings similar to the star we were studying. Normally the Geist doesn't handle science missions, but Mr. Sabin asked to take a few readings to send a report to the Science division. The Captain agreed saying something about an old bat named Jane getting a laugh out of him sending science data. Before it started causing the subspace folds it emit a weird radiation, the same kind they were picking up from some where in the city.
Johnson: So at what point were you given permission to leave the ship?
Wraith: I wasn't really... At first it was just a few science teams going out into the storm, they went in dressed like the locals. After a few hours though one of the groups went missing so he started sending out security teams.
Johnson: He risked contamination to the time stream?
Note: Wraith stands suddenly at this point, Agent Johnson jumps back surprised but smiles.
Wraith: He'd do what he could to protect his crew...
Note: Both men return to their seats but continue glaring at each other.
Wraith: The townsfolk couldn't see the teams carrying phaser rifles, so they needed to used Type I phasers. But what they found was a little too much for Type I's.
Johnson: The Ghosts?
Wraith: The ghosts... I guess the locals had a few stories about recent hauntings in the area around the bay. Some of the people there mentioned people disappearing around the area where the team did so it seemed a likely place to start. As the storm got worse he recalled every one and sent out a more prepared team. The weather kept most people indoors, so site to site transport was an option which allowed bigger guns. I was given permission to head out with the team because chances were we wouldn't be spotted by any one.
At first it seemed like the just a bunch of empty warehouses along the bay. The storm was causing too much interference for the tricorders to do any long range scans so the team went building by building. It was about the third warehouse when they picked up the signal from the earlier team. We moved in quick and quiet but there was nothing, not a peep.
Johnson: Those pointy ears of yours let you down?
Wraith: What? How do you even have a job with that kind of talk? No wonder you're stuck in here asking to hear about other people getting to do the one thing you're not allowed to do.
Note: Johnson was the one giving the dirty look this time.
Wraith: They team was alive, but barely. Mr. Edison was examining them and said nothing was wrong with them which was usually the first indicator that there was something very wrong. He started going deeper with his ocular implants and found a cerebal cordic deafish...Diffish..
Tyler: Cerebral Cortex deficiency of bio-electric neural energy.
Wraith: That's the one.
Johnson: Not very often we get a Vulcan in here who's bad with science, I take it that you didn't grow up on the home world?
Wraith: Technically I didn't grow up anywhere. It's a good thing too, looking at the way you've been doing it I'd say I dodged the phaser on that one.
Johnson: Watch it you assimilated son of a bi-
Tyler: AGENT! I think maybe you should step out for a few minutes.
Note: As Agent Johnson left Wraith smiled smugly and gave a half wave.
Tyler: You'll have to forgive Agent Johnson, He's obviously a bit touchy with the initial report. Please continue.
Wraith: From what the away teams gathered from the few locals out in the storm, beggars had been found dead in the area, most people assumed it was some thing called Cholera.
Tyler: It's an unpleasant Bacterial infection. There was an outbreak of it a few years after your infraction.
Wraith: They just figured it was the Cholera, but when regular people went missing rumors started about the haunting. Even the police started staying away.
Tyler: All the signs pointing to the Devidians?
Wraith: That's the team thought as well, but as Edison said, the more normal something looks the less normal it probably is. The issue Edison was having was that there were no signs of the what they use to time travel.
Tyler: No Triolic waves?
Wraith: Exactly, none of the science was there. It just didn't seem like the previous encounters on record. Something wasn't sitting right and then it hit us.
Tyler: The Solution?
Wraith: No... it was a stun grenade actually, federation made. Had Edison and I been near the rest of the team we might have been been killed.
Johnson: From a stun grenade? Not likely.
Wraith: No, from the shots fired immediately afterward. Disruptor I think.
Johnson: You think?
Wraith: Well there was something off about it. It wasn't killing the security team, but it seemed more like they were being shocked. Mr. Edison said later that it was like it disrupted the nervous system but didn't kill them.
Tyler: Our interview with Simon Edison shows that you couldn't pinpoint where the shots were coming from?
Wraith: No, we were under fire from multiple directions but Edison was only picking up one life form. From what little cover we could find I was able to see some one rush out to the unconscious crew and start to attach something to one of the team, a large thin spike he put into the back of the neck.
Johnson: Like a hypospray?
Tyler: More like a hypodermic syringe. What happened next?
Wraith: He put it into his own neck. Edison stinks the spike was drawing the energy some how so I don't think it was like a needle, more like a tool for working with power conduits. I was able to hit him in the shoulder as he went to the next member of the team. The phaser was only set to stun, but it didn't seem to effect him at all. I pushed it to maximum but it was only a slight distraction.
Tyler: And when did you switch the beam to kill?
Wraith: I didn't, I gave it to Mr. Edison and ran in. He was reaching for the next crewman and I couldn't let that happen. I tackled him but he was stronger than any human I've seen. What ever he was doing to the others and him self was making him stronger and faster, and who knows what else.
Johnson: Are you sure it wasn't an android or hologram? Are you sure you weren't just jumping to conclusions about who and what it was? And when did you start the fire?
Wraith: The fire started from the blind firing turrets he'd set up, and what ever the old building was used for it went up pretty quick. I wasn't able to get the spike from him before the building began falling apart. I suppose I was lucky really, when he kicked me off of him it threw me clear of the debris that crushed him. I could hear him screaming as it burned, smell... what was going on as the building came down around us as we were beamed out.
Tyler: And you're sure it was Johnson?
Wraith: I'd never seen him before you two came to take statements, but after Edison recognized Johnson on the bridge Dr. E'Saul ran more tests to confirm the blood from my uniform wasn't from a clone or mirror copy, she did however find small signs of chronitons and the strange energy signature from the star meaning it was Johnson, just older.
Johnson: I still don't believe it, it's too crazy.
Tyler: Even with the level of classifications and red tape on this one it does seem far fetched.
Wraith: Am I free to go then?
Tyler: I suppose so, there's nothing else.
Note: At this point Wraith stands up and heads to the door.
Johnson: Try to keep those pointy ears out of trouble, and if you come across the tooth fairy, Ronald Reagan, or anything else feel free to skip the report. I'd appreciate never seeing you again.
Note: Wraith stopped in the door way and smirked
Wraith: Well if not Agent, we'll always have New York.
Perhaps I should explain more clearly.
The Compulsion was on its way back to Sol system after completing a scientific tour of the Delta Volanis cluster, a successful if lengthy mission which my crew were eager to be done with. We had calculated a timestamp map of the death and collapse of a local star, deactivated a poorly-contained and hastily-ejected warp core which had landed on a pre-industrial world, and retained several intriguing (and, according to my second science officer, "adorable") biological samples from an uninhabited rogue planet. We were worn. The duty officers were longing for wide-open vistas, the loving arms of friends and family, and free time. That is their right - but I do not share their sentiments. I do not think I can. I am their captain, and the Compulsion has become my home; as such I regarded the end of the mission with a kind of melancholy. Here I would be forced by regulations to meander on a world that did not belong to me, or maybe had once, a long time ago. I cannot remember. I never will.
My means of taking my mind off the matter was work, as it had always been. I was reviewing the findings from our tour of duty when the announcement sounded that we were approaching Earthdock Station and our short transwarp journey was soon to be ended. I looked up through the windows of my ready room and could see it: the open space before us, the imagined stars, the boredom, the hunger, the long and empty hours.
There was a jolt. The entire ship seemed to stretch out, to the width of a hair and the length of the universe. I was lifting my hand to my communicator and my elbow stretched out into infinity. I thought: something went horribly wrong with the transwarp circuit. I thought: we debarked into an active black hole. I thought: I'm going to die here and never know half of what I seek. I'm dead; this is the prelude. And then the universe snapped back into position, my hand slammed against my communicator and before I could so much as register the world before me, I was jabbering out those eternal words: "Status report!"
"We've encountered some sort of massive transwarp disruption, Captain." Osroe Judun, my chief science officer, kept her voice carefully calm in this crisis - but could not control its pitch, which was high and panicked. "Source unknown at this time. We appear to be intact, with full hull integrity and only a few bumps and bruises from the jolt. But sir-"
"I know," I said, "I can see it."
There was no way we were in the Sol system. We had been shunted out of transwarp directly above an ice planet orbiting a cold and distant white star. There were signs that it had been inhabited once - several space stations, likely huge and impressive in their prime, squatted listing in space around the world, slowly completing their decaying orbits. The planet itself was an impenetrable ball of wind-scored white ice and tempestuous clouds of sweeping snow. I was immediately at my console, tapping in commands to begin a preliminary analysis of this world; there is at times too much of the scientist in me and not enough of the captain. I had just finished confirming the presence of a breathable - if unpleasant - atmosphere when my chief tactical officer hailed me over private comms.
"Sir, I think we have a problem," grumbled Lyell. "Some of the cargo shifted and a bunch of the specimen cases cracked. We've got most of the little flightless bird guys, and none of the water monsters leaked, but those big carnivores? Ambush hunters? With the teeth? Unaccounted for. This is why we got most of the birds, I figure." Lyell was rough on the protocol at times - comes from the Maquis background, I always figured, and the hoops she had to jump through to overcome that fact - but she was scrappy, determined, and could do a lot with a little. We sparred, but I trusted her with my safety. I quickly determined how far the beasts could have gotten since the crash, using the data we had already gathered on their planet's indiginous species, and ordered a lockdown of all threatened areas. I trusted Lyell to get the ship back to sane condition, and redoubled my efforts to the more immediate problem.
Though the planet showed signs of habitation in the past, there were few power sources still active. What was there was distributed very widely and putting out a lot of energy, however. Preliminary scans showed seven major landmasses beneath the ubiquitous coating of snow and ice, and each source was located on what would have been a major population center, judging by the structures present beneath the frozen crust. Something was awfully familiar about the shape of the land and the distribution of the structures - though with my own dilapidated and borrowed memories, this was hardly an unusual feeling. Try going through your life cobbling together a personality from scraps of memories stolen from unwilling victims and see how much deja vu you can stand, gentle reader. I was far more interested in those energy readings.
The signatures were confused, to say the least, like a cross between a massive data storage bank and a holodeck. If it was data storage, then those industrious humans managed to condense an enormous amount of data into a very small space - I judged the source to be no larger than twenty by twenty feet on a cube, with enough room to hold the Compulsion's computer, the minds of all its crew and still have space for a cruiser or fifty. Whatever was providing the power would have to have city-sized heatsinks or risk boring down through all the ice it was inevitably resting on. There were fifteen in total, dotted like shy stars along the buried land, and just as I was judging what room could be cleared out so we could beam one of these things on board, Osroe hailed me again, with insistence.
"I've got news, captain, and it's... confusing. I just scanned one of the derelict stations on the far side of the planet. It's powerless, it's irreparable, it's suffered incredible damage, but it's unmistakeable." She seethed a breath so potent I could hear it through my communicator. "It's Earth, sir. It's Earth Spacedock. We made it back to Sol system just fine, sir. We're where we need to be. It's just the when that's the issue."
I was on the bridge in seconds. The gang was all there, my bridge crew - orphans, all of us, now in time as well as space. Osroe and Seichu were cuddled over the scientific consoles, jabbing fingers at odd readings here and there and talking over one another with crackling insistence. Lyell was screaming into a communicator like an old-Earth drill sergeant, organizing search teams and coordinating a relief medical team in case the worst did happen. T'Pame looked calm, almost bored, in that typically Vulcan way - I suppose she was having the least interesting day, being a combat engineer with nothing having exploded yet. I felt a brief spurt of pride from somewhere, someone I had eaten, before diving full-force into my command role and calling Osroe, Seichu and T'Pame to the front.
"Science officers, on task," I ordered. "You're absolutely certain this is Earth?" Osroe nodded excitedly, her loose blonde hair feathering over her dark Trill spots - but it was Seichu who spoke first. "We've arrived at the correct physical coordinates, sir, but at the wrong time. Tectonic shift matches no known Earth records and vulcanism is quite subdued. Given the state of the planet and its parent star, it's safe to assume that we've traveled forward in time - though the exact magnitude of the shift is as of yet unknown." Seichu delivered her report with clipped accuracy, hands behind her back like the consummate professional the ensign was becoming. "Osroe, that's your job," I ordered. I still remembered the paper on tachyon movement in temporal space that earned her a place on my crew. "Determine the magnitude of our jump. Seichu, you've no doubt noticed those energy readings below the ice crust - see what you can make of them, and if you can, link with their computers and gather as much relevant data as you can. T'Pame, you're up. I need a ship status report up to and during the transwarp event."
"Sir," she began. "Ship readings normal before entering transwarp. Upon review, there was a slight emission of subspace particles coming from a location within the ship. Transwarp event occurred approximately point eight-three-eight seconds later, relative time. It is safe to assume these events are related. I am currently working on determining the location of this particle emission, but it is difficult, given the relatively short timeframe and limited available information."
"Keep at it. Lyell? Animals?" She swiveled, holding one blue hand over her communicator as if hiding a conversation. "Still out there, captain. We've got three of them on the loose, and caught a growl over by engineering not two minutes ago. No attacks yet, but I have teams sweeping the ship and I'm replicating bait as we speak." She drew her hand away and began barking into her shoulder once more.
I leaned back in my chair, collating the information I had into something that made sense. We had experienced a transwarp event as a result of subspace particles emitted from inside the ship during transit. We emerged where we were going - Earth - but an unknown number of years in the future. My ship was full of deadly predators stalking the Jefferies tubes for inattentive ensigns. And in the intervening period, Earth had been abandonned and frozen over, becoming an uninhabited ball of ice and wind - save for those few, drattedly enigmatic data storage nodules squatting on its long-buried surface.
"Right," I decided, "Cull my previous orders. Away team. We're investigating those power readings the fast way. You, you, and you." I swiveled my chair around, pointing at excitable Osroe, languid T'Pame and fierce Lyell. "Seichu, you're welcome if you'd like, but if I recall correctly, you're not too fond of this kind of environment." The girl came from a hot world - high vulcanism, closest to the sun - and her people not only tolerated fire but worshipped it. While she was not as orthodox - or as violent - as the rest of her kind, she would not withstand this new Earth comfortably.
"Sir," she stated, looking up through the light-haze of her console screen. It was always hard to tell mood with Seichu - her features were humanlike enough, but her firey red-gold coloring made it difficult to read her emotions unless she told you what they were. "I will respectfully decline. If this is indeed the future of Earth, then it is no longer the place I have come to cherish. It has been overcome with the white evil, and even as I struggle to understand it, I pray for it, and long to light many fires for its salvation."
"Then you're our support. Monitor the security situation and be ready to beam us out if things go sideways. The rest of us, suit up - temperatures are below fifty Celsius out there. Lyell, suit's needed only if you want to blend in." The fierce Andorian smiled - she was already out of her chair, and halfway to the turbolift. "We meet at the transport room in five minutes. Let's be quick about this, people. Being stranded makes me nervous. I've grown to like all of you, and I would hate to have to eat anyone." I stood slowly, and smiled in a way that I hoped was open and reassuring.
No one looked reassurred.
I was first in the transporter room. My usual outfit - a moving, shifting, purring suit of living leather - was often enough to handle most environmental oddities, but this might be a little out of his usual comfort zone, so I had on a cold-weather skinsuit overtop. I had my mask down, and resembled the implacable force of mnemonic oblivion that my people might once have been engineered to become. Lyell followed - in Starfleet standard uniform, armed with phaser rifle and a handful of grenades. It figured; the Andorian was probably looking forward to playing in the snow. T'Pame was next, armored, with a small hand phaser, tricorder and portable repair kit - smart girl, that Vulcan, though ineffably serious. If this WAS Earth's future, then there would be some technology down there that we would recognize - and possibly repair. Osroe almost overstayed her time limit, appearing in a body-concealing suit of armor, with hand phaser and tricorder at the ready. The pretty Trill had invoked some archaic dress code and managed to get a miniskirt approved for everyday apparel; I figure she just forgot how to put on pants.
With a nod, a handshake, and one last look at our piece of the past, I said the word, and we were beamed down to the snow-crusted ruins of old New York.
Oh, how things change. I remember New York, from about five different angles - New York at night, running and giggling through the old subway stations; New York in the morning, a blur of businesslike efficiency. I had never been, bodily, but the people whose memories I ate, they gave New York unwillingly to me. It was unrecognizeable. We were standing on a shelf of compacted snow, immediately sinking up to our knees in loose white powder. The buildings, shining and new in my own world, had enjoyed time enough to turn brown and grey and list onto their sides, heavy with a coat of thick white snow. And the snow was still falling, obscuring the world in a blanket of rough precipitation, so that the old monuments looked like weathered giants in the distance, all grey and still and forlorn. Apart from the wind, it was absolutely silent; apart from the near-vanished sun, it was absolutely lightless. My New York was a bustle of smells and sounds and, most importantly, lights - lights that kept you up while you slept, lights that turned night into day, lights that followed you where you walked, spewing advertisements and watching for your safety and sometimes calling you by name. This was the graveyard where light laid down to die. It was hard to believe, looking at the place where humanity once crowded the thickest, that this world had ever been inhabited.
But Osroe had her tricorder, and was pointing off into the distance, between two buildings that had sunk into one another so close they appeared to be kissing. "That way," she said, her voice crackling over our winter suit comms, and after confirming with a tricorder reading of my own, we trudged off through the monuments of old glories like ants crawling up a thighbone.
We tried to keep level, but the city seemed determined to keep us on an upward path. Those few hard, metal plates our feet kept encountering - little metal stepping stones through uncertain terrain - turned out to be the very tops of streetlights, buried completely in the endless and unmelting snow. Both Osroe's readings and my own confirmed that the energy source was below us as well as ahead, but we figured it easier to melt or climb our way to it once we were almost on top of it than try a straight course at ground level. Our tricorders might have kept us on target, but we would have lost all other bearings, and might have found ourselves behind a steel or concrete wall with more ice to burrow through and more time lost. And a good thing too - because while all the other non-humans might not have recognized it, I've eaten a human or two in my past, and when the great needle shape of the Empire State Building rose from the snowdrift ahead of us, I recognized it for what it was - and mourned.
It was a fine, fine thing once. An old structure, once falling apart, but reinforced and rebuilt with the finest technology of every time since its inception. Now it was a corpse. No one had cared, in incalculable years, to repair it. The windows were long-since smashed in by hail, or wind, or time. The spire, the topmost antenna - it had snapped off long ago, and a great drift of snow had built itself along the eastern side. It seemed a hermit drawing a blanket over itself. It seemed a monument to the dead city, the dead Earth. And it was where the energy reading was coming from, buried deep in the base of the structure, underneath the coating of ice.
We didn't even have to use our phasers. We simply walked up to one of the broken windows and crawled in. The floor had been an office, once. Chairs, of an awkward wheel-less design (possibly hover) were crowded against the corner, and the walls were coated in an iridescent substance like flash-frozen oil. T'Pame was on that immediately, taking samples, sending spurts of power that made the whole thing shimmer and glow like cuttlefish skin. When flickers of light and sound began to run over our feet, we figured it out: a massive holodeck, somehow condensed into a skin-thin wallpaper covering that took the place of an entire business-worth of supplies. More tools, more time, and more power spurts - T'Pame managed to get a few voices to synth, but they were broken and far-away, like ghosts rushing through the empty spaces. She withdrew her tools and shook her head. It was too far gone, too badly damaged to do anything.
We continued. The elevators were an obvious trap. They stretched down like the maws of great, confused worms, speckled at their perigee with spots of disinterested snow. Some floors were near-impassable, only on the stairs - the great glacier flow had oozed in through the broken windows and coated everything with deep ice. It got colder, darker, and more still the deeper we descended, if that was even possible. The outside changed hue, from lazy white to dirty grey to, finally, a deep glacier blue. Offices opened up into restaurants, clubs, entertainments, the tourist attractions that people loved New York for, back when there were people. There was nothing other than the white puffs of our own breath in the air and the deep, groaning cracks of the glacier world shifting around us.
The tricorders only registered that the energy source was on level when we were at the bottommost floor, what would have been the sub-basement - a total darkness, deep and cold, flecked with spots of drifting snow. Lyell had unshouldered her phaser rifle, breathing hard in compounded anxiety. T'Pame found what would have been a light fixture - something only slightly more advanced than what we worked with back home - and with some fiddling managed to get the whole system back online. The hum of power only underscored the tremendous quiet we had all grown used to - when the lights flickered it sounded like an avalanche, and we all stopped stock still until the tremor eased.
We were slow, we were cautious, we were nervous - but we met no one, no one at all, and it took us no time at all to reach our goal. As if it were possible twice in one day, time seemed to stop when we saw it. It was unlike anything we had expected.
It was a cube of hard, black, crystalline material, twenty-five feet on a side, glowing from within with a dull light that changed colors. It was like one huge cut crystal of smoky quartz, defined from within by a trillion trillion minuscule flaws, each glinting with the light of our instruments and sending tiny runners of excited luminescence back towards its shifting core. The room was warm here, warmer than we had expected, enough for me to withdraw the mask of my leather suit, even for Osroe to wiggle free of her hefty gloves. T'Pame, Osroe and I were immediately at our tricorders, taking readings, comparing notes and swearing at the impossibility of it all as Lyell took up position by the sole entrance and watched the quiet beyond for signs of movement.
I do not know how long we took down there - it was unlike anything I had ever seen. The whole block was like a massive computer condensed down into the smallest possible space. More, it was generating its own power, and efficiently. Even the waste heat was contained within the insulated space and reused. It used no fuel that we could tell, seeming to run on a perpetual reaction with no defined time of collapse. There was no sound, no input, nothing apart from the uncanny knowledge that we were inhabiting a room with an impossible amount of information and nothing else existed upon the Earth.
Before long, the purpose began to become clear. Allowing for a certain amount of storage space for a single consciousness, this box had room within it to store one billion, six hundred thousand such consciousnesses - with room enough to spare to run a continuous virtual simulation and contain all known scientific and cultural records that would have been generated between our time and this. The readings I had received which were so much like our own holodeck were confused by being looped back within its own program. The computer was creating a simulation for itself - and one billion people were living within it. Who knows how long they had been there? Who knows what they were doing in there? Free from all worries of hunger, death or disease - free even from time, capable fo speeding the progress of their civilization to the point where a century passes in the exhalation of our mortal lungs...
It was Seichu who interrupted us, signalling me through the communicator. "I have the results of some calculations Lieutenant Osroe began before she left," Seichu began. "Judging by the state of the Sun and the decay rate of Earthdock Station, I speculate that roughly forty-two thousand, eight hundred years have passed since our time of departure to the present date."
"Yeah," I said, half-distracted by a computational capacity reading that could not possibly be right, "that just about holds up with what we're finding here."
"Furthermore," she continued, "Security teams One and Five have found and recaptured the predatory lifeforms taken from the Delta Volanis rogue, and that has shed some light upon our predicament. The subspace particle emission detected by engineer T'Pame originated from the creatures themselves. Evidently it is used in their method of hunting, as they leap across brief windows of subspace through an as-yet unknown organic means to ambush their prey. The interactions between this localized region of subspace and the transwarp conduit caused the transwarp event we have experienced. Furthermore, we have been able to replicate this event in computer simulations. It seems the news is evil."
"Do continue," I said. I had dropped my tricorder for the moment - this concerned us all, but most importantly myself. I have never had much luck taking my usual nourishment from replicated food.
"The transwarp event did not send the ship forward in time as we had anticipated. It drastically reduced our speed relative to the progress of the universe - to, say, forty-two thousand eight hundred years. Roughly. There is no convenient anomaly present to send us back to our own time. If we replicate the transwarp event, we will travel the same distance in the same time, but we will only be able to travel forward into the future, never back where we belong."
I slumped against a patch of debris. I forgot to pick up my tricorder. I called Osroe, Lyell and T'Pame to me and delivered the news. And that's where we are now - lost, stranded in a dead future with no means of getting home.
There are four of us, discussing what to do. Given the eighty-six crew members of the Compulsion, their combined mnemonic output would sustain me for twenty-six years, four months, if I drained each of them dry and then killed them before they could turn. I might as well strip naked and stride into the snow. Who ever thought it would come to this kind of a decision? I would die before I did that. Who had to die to place that loyalty within me?
But Lyell has a suggestion. Practical, simple, leave the details to us eggheads - stereotypical Lyell. We screwed up. It was our mistake and inattentiveness that caused this to happen. So we put the decision out of our hands. If those people in the box - if they're still people - are advanced enough to do this, then they would be advanced enough to think of a solution to our problem. It couldn't hurt, right? What other options do we have? And even if there's no way to interface our machinery with the box, we have a Vulcan and a Mnemophage right here among us, psychics galore, ready and able to fuse our psyches with the alien minds of one billion, six hundred thousand collective maybe-humans living immortal, unchanging lives within an unbreakable future machine.
I am already pulling my suit away from my head. My hair draws away from my feeding tendril, the long tentacle of brain matter that permits a more selective transfer of memories back and forth between mnemophage and victim, as opposed to the gross involuntary sucking that happens with skin-to-skin contact. The air is cold on my bare, jaundiced skin - this spotty, always-hungry thing that I have become. Because even if I fail and die, I will be dead, and the Compulsion can live and continue and figure out another angle without the constant threat of their captain either becoming insensible or feeding on them, one by one.
I am touching the tip - the very tip - of my extruded brain to the smooth, cold surface of this all-too-human machine.
I feel...
I remember...
Everything I am given is taken away. Story of my life. Story of all of us. But we always have... I can't remember.
Light surrounds me. Noise. Smells. Someone is walking on the floor above my head. My feeding tendril is touching a filing cabinet. Someone is telling a replicator to make a minty raktajino. Someone is trying to sell me souvenirs. Osroe is laughing quick girlish laughter - I look to the side, and she is swirling, her blonde hair a banner. She is wearing a miniskirt, shorter than ever before, practically a belt. Absolutely against regulations, that.
"Sir?" croaks Seichu over my communicator, but I am too busy tucking my brain back into my hair.
"I think we're home, Seichu. Come on down. Light your fires." I try not to encourage the girl's burden of faith, but what do I care? I'm happy. And regardless of what she burns - we always have New York.
****************
Cripes, that was long. Sorry.
*****
Later that night, at roughly ten o'clock PM, standard Terran time, Arkos and the rest of away team attempted to break into the Statue of Liberty.
Under cover of darkness, they managed to get close enough undetected to the wharf railing to set up one of Adim's sound dampeners, so that they would have less chance of alerting any of the night watchmen patrolling the dockyards. From there, it was a simple matter of slipping into one of the manner small boats tethered to the dock and start rowing towards the artificial island. Throughout the entire affair, Arkos tried not to dwell on the fact that this, the most interesting moment in his entire career Starfleet, involved the stealing and piloting of a tiny little rowboat while dressed in an overcoat, satin pants and a "bowler hat," or whatever it was that Sann had called his headgear.
As they neared the island mounting of the Statue, they half expected to see guardsmen lining the edges of the concrete structure keeping watch, or spotlights or something similar scanning the waterline. Instead, however the entire island was eerily silent. They had anticipated some difficulty in dealing with the guards-- especially since any confrontation with the local authorities could accidentally expose the lot of them as extraterrestrials-- but instead the whole affair seemed unnervingly easy. It was no trouble at all for them to moor the rowboat to the edge of the island and make their way up the walkways.
They were still expecting guards near the base of the island as they walked up, and true enough, the guards were there, all dressed in the archaic uniforms of what Arkos guessed was the New York constabulary. Only, in this case, they were also all sprawled across the ground motionlessly, some of them snoring quite loudly.
"Well," Arkos muttered, breaking the silence. "this was unexpected. Sann, any idea why they're all asleep?"
The Trill pulled her tricorder free from her purse and scanned the unconscious guards. "No sign of any toxins in their bloodstream," she said, "though I am...reading...several irregularities..." She yawned suddenly. "...in their...neural...emissions..."
Arkos frowned, and was about to ask his science officer if there was anything wrong, when he noticed just how heavy his eyelids felt. He blinked a few times and made a deep exhalation through his nose as he noticed, for the first time, how sleepy he was. He was obviously overworking himself, he figured, and as Captain he had every right to getting a bit of shut eye and relaxing himself...
A small part of his brain panicked, then, as he heard K'Nera and Adim yawn as well, and he realized just how unnatural it was for them all to be feeling sleepy at once, at a spot where a bunch of human guards were already dozing at their posts. No, you idiot, you're in danger! he mentally screamed to himself. Stay awake! You've fallen into some sort of trap! By that point, though, he was already closing his eyes, his body succumbing to an exhaustion it hadn't even realized it felt until now. Just a few moments to rest his eyes, that would be all...
He was ripped back, violently, into reality as something pressed against his arm, and caught fire inside of him. His eyes shot back open, and he let out a ragged, surprised gasp as he snapped back upright, nearly losing his balance as the world flooded back into life around him. "Where...whassat...whaaat?" he gasped, his mouth fumbling lethargically with words.
He whirled around in Sann's direction, and saw her press a hypopspray into Adim's arm. The Andorian jolted for a second before blinking rheumily. Nearby, K'Nera was rubbing her own arm and glancing around at the world with bewilderment, clearly having already received a hypospray injection.
"Relax, this is just a bit of adrenaline," Sann said, putting the hypospray back in her purse. She then blushed in embarrassment. "Actually...forget what I said, please don't relax. That would be completely counter-productive."
Arkos gaped at his subordinate. "You've injected me with ADRENALINE?" Then his brain adjusted to the invigorating surge, and put two and two together. His rage cooled in the face of understanding. "We almost fell asleep..."
Sann nodded, before looking down at her tricorder. "There appears to be some sort of resonance wave coming from inside the Statue," she said. "It seems specifically formulated to affect neural waves and trigger sleep functions."
K'Nera blinked in confusion, obviously still a bit dizzy from the confusion, obviously still a bit dizzy from the combination of near-sleep and the sudden adrenaline rush. "Wait...resonance wave? Are you saying something inside the statue put all these guards to sleep?"
Sann nodded. "And it almost did the same to us," she replied. "Though this adrenaline sample will probably keep us awake for another ten minutes, at best."
"So we should hurry, then," Adim muttered darkly. "Whatever is inside the Statue is already a danger to the timeline if it can do something like this."
Arkos nodded. "K'Nera, take point," he said, pulling out his own tricorder. The small device hummed, and quickly confirmed everything that Sann had told him: there was definitely a strong wave of soliton-based particles being channelled outwards from inside the statue, and it was definitely synonymous with the energy readings they had detected earlier. More worrisome, however, was the fact that the wave seemed to be steadily increasing in frequency and distance...
"I'm detecting life signs inside, Captain," Sann said as she continued her own scans. "About twenty in the lower levels of the statue, all unconscious. I'm also detecting four near the head of the statue..." She frowned suddenly.
"Is something the matter, Ensign?" Arkos asked.
"Yes, there is...those four life signs are exhibiting active mental cognition...but none of them are human."
****
The interior of the Statue of Liberty was cold, stygian, and poorly lit by a few candles and gas burners here and there, casting uncomfortable shadows onto the verdigris walls. An endless maze of walkways, support struts and platforms punctuated the interior, all of which had evidently been used by workers as they put the finishing touches on the Statue?s interior. Those workers were still there, asleep at their stations, tools still clutched in their hands as they lay sprawled all platforms, floors, or even entangled amidst ladders. Whatever it was that had happened here, these workers had been unaware of it until it had been too late.
Moving as quietly as they could, the away team made their way up the long, winding staircase that spiralled around the statue?s inner walls like some malformed vertebrae. The nearby pulley elevator looked like it would make too much noise, and quite frankly, they were in too much of a hurry. As they carefully stepped over sleeping workers, they gradually heard voices at the top?voices engaged in a murmured conversation. Arkos noticed something else, however: a deep bass hum that caused his skin to tingle, and got more loud and more vibrant as they approached.
The sight greeted them at the top of the stairs confirmed Arkos' suspicions: a pylon of some sort, constructed from some sort of iridiescent emerald material, stood at the centre of the room, pallid vermilion light playing along its surface like luminous veins. The deep hum was being emitted by this device, so potent now that Arkos could feel its vibrations in his bones. The room itself was spacious, wide openings in the walls exposing the fluttering canvas outside. Surrounding this green pillar were four figures, all of whom, at first glance, appeared to be human. They were wearing the dust-stained coveralls they had seen being used by the other workers, but it was what they were doing that was odd. One of them was standing in front of the pillar and waving his hands as though manipulating it somehow, and the other three were kneeling around it, as though...praying to it? They were all mouthing a long, droning incantation in some tongue the artificial translator couldn?t articulate, their chants seeming to mirror the deep hum of the pylon.
Arkos took a quick look at his tricorder, and noted, with distaste that whatever this thing was, it was generating too much electromagnetic interference to gain a proper reading. He glanced to K'Nera and gave her a nod. "It looks like we'll have to do this the hard way," he whispered.
K'Nera nodded, and pulled out her hand phaser. The rest of them did the same. Knowing that they were waiting on his signal, Arkos set his weapon to stun and sprang over the last few steps of the walkway into full view of the strangers, pointing the phaser at them. "Drop what you're doing, now!" he barked, in what he hoped was a suitably authoritative tone. His team sprang behind him with their own phasers drawn, though Arkos was faintly aware that they all looked a little out of place, wearing 19th-Century Earth clothing and wielding futuristic weapons.
The strangers jumped in alarm at Arkos' sudden appearance, the three chanters springing to their feet as one of them shouted something that sounded like ?Intruders!? The one standing by the pillar seemed oblivious, even as one of his friends reached into his pocket and pulled out some sort of firearm...
Arkos fired, the amber beam of the phaser nailing the man in the abdomen before he could point his weapon, dropping him like a stone. Another chanter got a bead on him and fired: an emerald beam hissed his way, only to wash harmlessly around him as his personal shield kicked in. K'Nera brought him down in turn with a perfectly aimed chest-blast. The third chanter yelled something incomprehensible and fired wildly at the group. Adim ducked, the blast punching a hole through his top hat and propelling it halfway across the room, exposing his antennae to the world. He and Sann both retaliated at the same time, stunning the chanter with direct hits to the forehead and shoulder.
The man at the pillar was the only one left, waving his arms ever more frantically. It was then that Arkos noticed the holographic interface hovering in front of him in a ghostly green light. "Defilers!" the man screamed, almost hysterically. "Bend knee to the goddess!"
Arkos was about to tell the man to stop what he was doing and back away slowly, when the device hummed even more loudly. Another, more intense, wave of lethargy washed over Arkos. His vision blurred, and his knees buckled as he was overcome by the powerful need for sleep. "Oh kylken..." he slurred, voicing a choice swear word from his homeworld as he fell to his knees.
His world was drowned out by the deep, bass hum of the device. Through his blurred vision, he could see its green, hazy outline becoming the sole point of light in the world as everything else became darkness?
And then there was a loud bang, and for the second time that night, Arkos snapped awake.
He figured out what had happened only after the dust and debris had cleared. His gut instinct quickly told him that K'Nera, despite the overwhelming power of the device, had kept her wits about her and had thrown a photon grenade, destroying the alien device in a single potent blast. The second thing his gut instinct told him was that K'Nera had actually brought a photon grenade on this mission without informing him. He decided to wait until after they were back on the Da Vinci before he reprimanded her, however, seeing as she had just saved his life.
The alien pylon was in pieces, chunks of glass-like material scattered across the room. The green lights on each piece throbbed weakly, slowly dimming as the individual components shut down and died. The man who had been operating the device lay sprawled on his back, his outfit singed and several solid chunks of the machine embedded in his chest and torso like shrapnel. Arkos winced. He didn't need advanced medical training to know that this man had been fatally wounded.
More noticeable, however, was the fact that the man had changed. Whatever technology had been disguising him had obviously been damaged, as his once-human face was replaced by a bald head with vibrant red skin. His facial features seemed Human, but the crown of perfectly pointed horns around his head indicated otherwise.
"A Sikkoran," K'Nera muttered, recognizing the alien's physiology.
The name quickly rung a bell. From what Arkos knew, the Sikkorans were a reclusive race in the galactic south-east of the Regulus Sector Block. Their race was known for being extremely religious as a whole, and, for a time, they had aggressively tried to convert neighbouring races to their belief system, even going so far as to attack and subjugate worlds to spread their faith. Starfleet had intervened more than a century ago and put a stop to this aggression, and since then, the Sikkorans had been confined to their homeworld in a state of self-imposed isolation.
And now, here they were here on historic Earth, disguised as Humans, with a secret device in the Statue of Liberty that they clearly attached some religious significance to. The truth dawned on Arkos quickly, even as he stepped over the wounded Sikkoran. The man's breathing was heavy, and it was clear he wouldn't last long.
"My name is Captain Arkos Nair, of the Federation starship Da Vinci," he said, remembering standard protocols when dealing with wounded enemies. "Hang on. We're going to take you back to our ship and heal you."
The Sikkoran's amber eyes flashed and locked Arkos in a fierce gaze. "Nnno..." he rasped, black liquid bubbling up the corner of his mouth. "I will not be touched...by unbelievers." He spat up at Arkos, the wad missing him by a considerable distance. "I pity you...you who will never...know the Goddess' love..."
The Sikkoran went still then, his gaze moving past Arkos and settling there. Sann edged up and scanned the Sikkoran with her medical tricorder, and nodded silently to Arkos. He sighed.
"Adim, arrange for the Sikkorans and all of the debris to be beamed back to the Da Vinci," he said. "K'Nera, make sure the other three are put in the brig. I want to make sure that absolutely no trace of what happened here is left behind."
K'Nera nodded. "Understood, Captain." She paused, then. "What do you think they were doing here, sir?"
Arkos glanced at the unconscious, still living Sikkorans. "Isn't it obvious?" he replied. "After Starfleet stopped the Sikkorans...'crusade'...more than a century ago, they must have been looking for a chance at revenge. And what better way to get revenge than to try to convert Earth to their belief system, long before the Federation has even existed?"
The Andorian looked at the destroyed pieces of the machine, understanding finally dawning on her. "So this machine is some sort of mental control device..."
"...and through it, they could have imposed worship of their religion," Arkos finished with a nod. "And from there, they not only would have been able to manipulate the Humans, but would have been able to influence the Federation at its creation hundreds of years later. If not for us, Ensign, they would have drastically altered history."
As he scanned the wreckage of the device and marked its pieces for transport, Adim glanced at Arkos. "But...Captain, they specifically mentioned a 'goddess,'" he said. "What did they mean by that?"
Arkos' face became grim. "What do you think?"
*******
On October 8, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was unveiled to the world.
The unveiling was met with great fanfare. Marching bands played all across New York City, the "Star Spangled Banner" playing proudly at every avenue. Confetti and ticker tape rained from every window, and flags and banners were waved excitedly. The United States Navy formed a great nautical parade and made a gun salute, and President Grover Cleveland made a rousing speech about this monument to America's founding values. As the great sheets were pulled free, Lady Liberty was revealed in all her glory, standing with her gleaming, lit torch like a new sun, her verdigris body shining brightly in the sunlight, her serene, knowing face framed by a magnificent spiked crown.
Only four people, far back in a more secluded area of the harbourfront, weren't cheering. They were the only people in the audience who knew that that was no crown, but a ring of horns.
"To think," Arkos mused as he munched on an Earth snack-- the vendors had called it a 'hot dog.' "All those people out there, cheering and enjoying their day, are cheering an alien goddess, and they don't even know it."
"It could have been worse, Captain," K'Nera replied as she leaned against the railing. "They could have actually been bowing down in worship instead of just cheering."
The thought horrified Arkos more than he knew it should Maybe he was prejudiced, but there was much about the Sikkorans' fanaticism that reminded him too much of the Penitents and their own crazed dogma. "Well, let's count this as a victory for rationality, reason, and all those other nice things, then," he said, scarfing down the last of the hot dog. "Adim, status report on your progress?"
"Ensign Sann and I have managed to isolate the temporal particles and have re-aligned the nacelles appropriately," Adim replied. "We're ready to return to our timeline when you say so, Captain."
He nodded. "We'd better be off then," he muttered. "I just know that the Department of Temporal Affairs is going to add hours to the interrogation if we stay here too long." He glanced back at the Statue of Liberty, noting how majestically the Sikkoran goddess rose over the New York Harbour. "You know...it really is a nice statue."
He tapped his comm badge. "Away team to Da Vinci. Four to beam up. Energize."
Commander Frank Keith Lamont sat in the small cabin of the Captain's Yacht, and brooded. He hated these sorts of missions, where the most exciting part of the mission happened, according to the Admiral studying the sensor readouts, almost ten years before they got here. The remains of a Luna-sized moon were scattered into a ring-like system around the Jovian planet, and the remains were slowly falling into the Jovian's atmosphere.
For the life of him, Frank couldn't fathom why he'd been brought on this mission.
"Something bothering you, Commander?" said Admiral "Sam Bright," not looking up from the display.
Frank stiffened slightly. "Your Betazoid senses detecting something, Sir?"
"You know I don't use them without permission, Mr. Lamont," said the Admiral, still not looking up. "I didn't need to, anyway. The fact that you haven't said anything since we dropped out of warp says volumes."
There was a brief silence.
Sam set the scanners to continue to catalog the moon's debris, and turned to face the Commander. "Go ahead and speak freely, Frank. What's going on?"
Frank sat back in his chair, still tensed. "Why did you bring me on this mission, Samuaal?"
The Admiral gave a half-smile in appreciation for Frank's use of his given name as opposed to the "Terranized" version. "I thought you needed to relax a bit, and get back to what Starfleet's all about. It's not all fighting and training. I mean, look out there," he motioned towards the transparent aluminum viewscreen, "and tell me what you see."
Frank sighed, and decided to humor the Admiral. "What's left of a moon that probably got too close to that Jovian and got torn apart by the big planet's gravity. Went inside its..." he searched for the word, "something limit."
"The Roche limit," Sam said, wordlessly forgiving his security officer for his lack of knowledge of the sciences. "That's right. But this is a recent phenomenon. Something happened that pushed that moon too close. I want to find out what happened, and why the moon suddenly got pulled in. But that's beside the point, Frank. You have to look at the beauty of this galaxy. You need to relax some more. You can't be 'on' all the time... what are you looking at?" Samuaal turned around and looked in the direction Frank was squinting.
The Yacht started to shake as a small glowing light got closer in the orbital path.
Frank's hands started to input the commands for emergency evasive, but as the ship began to swerve out of the way, the glowing light expanded, looking like a torn and fractured version of the wormhole near Deep Space Nine, and engulfed the small ship.
Lights flickered as the inertial dampeners went into overdrive, protecting the inhabitants of the small vessel as best it could as the ship was buffeted back and forth, side to side.
Then, just as quickly as it started, it subsided, leaving the Yacht drifting in a strange, warm glow. And then, as if realizing the "gravity" of the situation, starting to fall.
Sam picked himself up, gingerly touching a gash on his head from when he hit the panel going down. He looked out the viewscreen at a world much different than the one just out there. This one was covered with blue water, except for the part almost directly below, gravitationally speaking, which was obviously a series of islands, covered with a city. Three things were immediately obvious: it was a city well into the Information age, which was incongruous with the second thing, which was that it was completely dark. Third, and most troubling, was that it was getting bigger.
Frank cursed and slammed the console. Thankfully, the engines kicked into life, and the craft wheeled around and started to ascend, back towards a dissipating orange glow, and a white hole in the sky, swirling and jagged.
Sam ran a scan for a Federation Locator Beacon, and got nothing. Fearing the worst, he started running a scan for local pulsars.
Frank, meanwhile, let loose a curse. "That can't be right,"
"What do you mean?" Sam said. He was having trouble concentrating; a rising wave of panic was emanating from the city below.
"I'd swear that was New York City, but the buildings weren't right. Some of those buildings aren't there any more. Haven't been since..." he looked at the last flickers of the strange glow that had heralded their entrance. "Since the third World War."
Sam's eyes widened, and expanded his search to check for temporal drift from the pulsars. Finally, the computer spat out an answer: Earth, local date mid 21st century. He simply replied "Location and date appear to be right for that. I think."
Frank squinted at his Admiral.
"I nearly flunked Pre-Federation History," Sam said defensively. "Don't tell anyone you know that."
"I didn't hear a thing," Frank said, and returned to his console. "If I were to hazard a guess, that glow was the remnants of the first strike against the East Coast of the United States. The Eastern Coalition detonated a couple of high-altitude fusion bombs, creating a series of EMPs that fried most of the electronics across the nation."
The roaring wave of panic from below was nearly crippling to Samuaal Brait as he gripped his console, and tried to focus on what the sensors were telling him about that hole in spacetime. "Would that fusion blast have been about 310 kilometers above the surface?"
"I think so, why?"
"Because if so, that blast might have torn open that hole we fell through," Sam said. He shook his head and redoubled his efforts to block out the fear emanating from the dark city below.
Frank whistled, unaware of the emotions pummeling his commanding officer. "I didn't know the Eastern Coalition had fusion bombs big enough to do that."
"It might have been just random chance," Sam said through gritted teeth.
A blip on Frank's console made him look down. "I've got about a hundred aircraft coming in from all sides," He gave a somber look out the window, looking down at his home planet. "I think it just started... they haven't had a chance to evacuate the major cities yet..."
"I know..."
Frank noted the tones of sorrow and pain in the Admiral's voice. "Sir, that hole?"
"Hole? ...right, hole," Sam focused on the sensors. "We have to get that thing closed. If one of those chunks of moon comes through the hole, Earth's going to have even bigger problems than a war."
"Think we can use some kind of graviton pulse from our deflectors or tractor beam? Push it out of orbit?"
"Maybe... I'm detecting some kind of event horizon on the hole?" He ran a few more scans. "Frank, I think I have a solution right up your alley. We'll blast it shut."
"I don't follow."
"We need to detonate a micro-quantum torpedo right at the event horizon, and use our shields to push the resulting explosion towards the end of this hole back in the Delta Volanis cluster."
"And how are we going to get back to our time?"
"That's the tricky part: We detonate the torpedo inside our shields to do it. Best way to get the shields in the right shape."
"Well that'll be interesting."
"You have a better idea?"
"If you can't think of any within the next two minutes, the airspace over the coast will become one big furball of human air and spacecraft, and we'll be spotted."
"Humans had military spacecraft at this time?"
"Not many, but both sides pretty much came to the conclusion that this was the time to throw everything at the enemy. No matter how experimental. They're launching everything."
"Alright, let's get into position and close that hole."
The ship started its final approach, then turned around to face the ground, flying backwards into the gaping hole, so its micro-quantum torpedo launcher would be able to fire.
Samuaal and Frank looked down at the once great city, brought low by the electromagnetic pulse. Samuaal had seen the great buildings that had replaced the ones that were to fall in the coming days, weeks, and months, while Frank had done reports on the battle tactics used in the Third World War, but nothing could prepare them for the actual images of a city in panic, as their world started to fall apart before their eyes.
Frank glanced at his controls. "Ten seconds to the event horizon."
Sam looked back at the controls. "Diverting Emergency Power to the Shields, reinforcing the Structural Integrity Field."
"Torpedoes ready."
"Brace!"
The white edges of the hole in spacetime appeared on the edge of the transparent aluminum right as the Micro-Quantum torpedo fired. A fraction of a second later, the torpedo detonated.
* * * * *
Samuaal Brait's eyes flickered open, revealing the ceiling of the Catherine's sickbay, and the concerned face of his ship's EMH looking down at him.
"How are you feeling, Admiral?"
Sam groaned and tried to sit up. "I'm fine," he managed to mumble before falling back again.
The EMH slowly guided him back onto the biobed. "You suffered a major concussion and multiple lacerations, Admiral. With all due respect, you're not fine."
"What about...?" he mumbled, the emotions of those in New York still replaying in his mind.
"We closed the hole," said Frank from an adjacent biobed. "I managed to signal a distress beacon before I passed out. Judging by the fact that we're still here, there must have been minimal impact to the timeline."
Sam groaned and leaned back. "Great. Another visit from the Department of Temporal Investigations... they still haven't forgiven me for the Gateway incident."
"Any visit from any Federation official can wait until you've both back on your feet," the EMH pointed out.
Sam chuckled.
"Now can I get you anything to help you relax?"
Sam looked at the EMH. "A PADD so I can fill out my report to Starfleet Command, please."
When he got the PADD, he opened up a separate tab, and accessed the ship's library's records on Earth's Third World War.
"You were right, by the way," Mr. Lamont said, shifting in the biobed, trying to relieve some of the ache.
"About what, Commander?"
"I do need to get out more."
If you would still like to make an entry, feel free to! I will unstick this, though, as I am preparing to post #39.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=