In the deathly silence of the weapons store, the sudden screeching and grating sound is a mind-numbing shock. I clap my hands to my ears, and turn around, trying to identify the source of the noise - but it seems impossible; the noise is everywhere, all about me, echoing off the impossible limits of this space.
Dimly, I become aware of Thyvesh's voice. I concentrate, make out the words he is shouting: "- the door! The door is in motion -"
I have lost my bearings, in among all the glowing columns of light with the deadly devices inside them. Thyvesh, though, seems to know where he is going. I follow him as he runs between the columns -
The sudden silence is almost as nerve-shattering as the noise itself. Thyvesh does not slow down, though. He runs with almost frantic urgency, picking his way unerringly between the columns of light. The artifact - the door - comes into view, now. It is spinning, churning. It rotates on some unguessable axis, aspects of it revolving into view from unknown dimensions.... The sight is disturbing.
"Not yet," Thyvesh gasps. He is out of breath. "Not this time. Not yet."
"Thyvesh." I am panting, myself. "Thyvesh, what happened?"
"He is -" Thyvesh swallows loudly, and a shudder runs through his body. "My counterpart, he is using the Na'kuhl ship's temporal technology to probe the door. To try and interface with it, activate it, remotely."
"As you can?"
He laughs, long and wildly. "Oh, yes. As I can. Very much as I can."
I study the thing. Its movement seems to be slowing. "He did not succeed."
"No. Not this time. But we did not succeed, either. When we tried. Or did not."
His mind must be wandering into alternative timelines again. "When did we try? What did we try?"
"The console. On the station. The console - it is for managing the door."
So much, I had already gathered. "When we - were not here - before," I murmur.
"Yes." Thyvesh clutches at his head. "So many different timelines."
Too many to be helpful to us now. "What can we do?"
"I must - try harder. To keep control. I am here, now, and I can hold the door from this side." But there is doubt in his voice. Whatever his counterpart is trying, it is taking a toll on Thyvesh.
I put my hand on his shoulder, feel his trembling. "Thyvesh. Is there anything I can do to help?"
His tremors increase. With a sudden shock, I realize he is laughing. "Yes," he says. "No. You will know what to do, when the moment comes. You always did."
He turns to face me. His eyes are wild. "You will know. And I trust you. I trust you to betray me."
The shifting metal shapes of the impossible door suddenly speed up, and a faint screaming sound makes itself audible as surfaces grind together. The shapes spin and twist and slide into new configurations -
- and suddenly the door is a door, a rectangular opening, twice the height of a man, filled with a swirling blackness -
Thyvesh moves, quickly, too quickly. I have no time even to think of offering resistance, before he seizes me by the shoulder and thrusts me through the door.
---
I spin into the darkness, and it enfolds me, and for a time I know nothing. I do not even know how long a time - if such a concept can even be said to have meaning....
Then there is light, dazzling my eyes, and weight, and noises, and a foul smell of burning.
I drop to a crouch, rubbing my eyes, trying to get my bearings. Where has Thyvesh thrown me, where and when? - There is smoke in the air, metal deck plates under my feet. The place seems vaguely familiar....
Metal floor - metal walls - metal shapes of consoles. The control room of the Denobulan station - the very place we fled from, when the Na'kuhl ship arrived. The smoke in the air - I gather my wits. There is a release of energy, Thyvesh said, when the door is opened. This room must have been filled with a burst of heat and lightning, just as I arrived.
It has worked to my favour, I think. There is a smouldering shape on the floor nearby, humanoid, dressed in what was once heavy red body armour. A Na'kuhl, blasted down by the force from the door. The only one here, though? I could never be that fortunate.
The equipment - the equipment is rugged, it is superficially scorched, but undamaged. Or perhaps Thyvesh has sufficient fine control to direct most of the energy at the Na'kuhl? - In any case, the most important thing, the console, is still functional. The Na'kuhl have not tampered with it. Not yet, at least.
Somewhere far off, there are noises. Distant, but horribly familiar. The shrill sounds of energy weapons.
Fighting. There is fighting, somewhere on the station. I stand up, turn to the station's control console. I must decipher Thyvesh's purpose, find out why he has sent me here, determine the meaning of his cryptic comments.
First, though, I must find out who is fighting whom, and which side - if any - I am on. The familiar sense of practicality grips me as I engage the internal sensors. First, of all things, I must survive.
"It must be some peasant ceremony of welcome," I say airily. The Na'kuhl glares at me. "You really shouldn't have gone to all the trouble," I tell him. He glares some more.
Behind him, a pale-green line of chronoplasma stabs through the twilight, shooting up at the stars. There is an ominous warbling of Klingon disruptors in the background as well. I don't know what's in those big hexagonal buildings, but clearly it's worth fighting over. I'm itching to go take a look, but me and my landing party are currently surrounded by Na'kuhl guards with itches of their own, mostly in their trigger fingers, and I'm not sure how far my bluff with the Organian will carry me.
"Reading multiple Klingon and Na'kuhl life signs," says Kara Grant. The Na'kuhl are looking daggers at her tricorder, too. "Weapons fire - well, obviously. There's a few other life signs, I think mostly Klingon auxiliaries... and one other." She frowns. "Suliban, maybe? It's hard to tell with all this sensor interference."
"There is a local difficulty," a fresh, harsh voice says from behind me. I turn around. Another Na'kuhl is striding towards us. This one looks... well, confident. Important. The ones we've seen so far are obviously just grunts, like the three security guards I've got backing up me, Kara and T'Pren - but this Na'kuhl moves with a definite arrogance in her stride, even though I can't read any rank insignia on her uniform. She has those weird facial markings that make it look like her eyes are bleeding. Maybe this makes her dead sexy by Na'kuhl standards. It's not doing anything for me, though.
"Captain Veronika Grau, USS Harrier," I say. "Call me Ronnie, everyone does. What's with all the running around and shooting, then?"
"I am Luga." She fixes me with a glare from her red eyes. "You should not be here. There is a local difficulty, and I cannot guarantee your safety."
"Don't worry, I can't guarantee yours either. We'd gathered you were cosy with the Klinks, so what's brought all this on?"
"There is a local difficulty," she repeats. Somewhere nearby, someone vents a dying scream in a locally-difficult sort of way.
"Sounds like it," I say. "Well, maybe we can help? Starfleet is famous for its ability to resolve difficulties with goodwill and diplomacy." Behind me, Yeoman Harris makes a sort of stifled noise. He was one of the ground troops during that Sircab IV incident, which was not notable for goodwill.
"This is not a matter for Starfleet or the Federation," says Luga.
"Oh, but it is," I say. "Under the terms of the Organian treaty, undeveloped worlds like this belong to whoever can develop them most effectively. And if the Klingons are planning any development, we're entitled to come see what they're doing, and put in a counter-offer if we feel like it."
Luga gives me a very nasty look. "This planet lies outside the regions specified in the Organian peace treaty."
"That is not technically correct," says T'Pren. "According to our charts of the isoenergetic ionization fields in this sector -"
"Your measurements are incorrect," Luga snaps.
"Yeah, well," I say, "setting boundaries in space is always kind of a fraught issue, isn't it? We could argue about iso-whatevers for a long time, but the reality is, this is a world in the fringes of our mutual frontier, and whatever the ionization readings say, the fact is, it's governed by the treaty because the Organians are taking a direct interest."
"So I gather." I didn't think it was possible for her to look any uglier, but she manages it. "Where is your Organian observer?"
"Clefune? Around and about. Probably in several places at once, you know what Organians are like.... I'm surprised he isn't making all your weapons red hot already, come to think of it. Maybe he's waiting for us to take a hand ourselves."
"We do not need your help in dealing with this -"
"Local difficulty? You wouldn't get it anyway. Under the terms of the treaty, we'd probably have to side with the Klingons, against you. Don't worry, I'm not anxious to start it. I'd prefer it if people stopped shooting, in fact. Much less strain on my nerves."
She snorts, and eyes me in a way that I don't like at all. I probably know more about the Na'kuhl than I should, maybe more than most people in this current Starfleet, because I must be the last person alive who managed to stay awake through all of Admiral Reed's reminiscences... but knowing about them makes me painfully aware of what I don't know. Are these idealistic Na'kuhl, out to preserve their timeline and their civilization, or are they the ground-down, cynical terrorists that Reed and the old Enterprise ran into? And, technically, whatever sort of Na'kuhl she is, Luga is from my future. So what does she know about me, that makes her give me funny looks?
"You may soon get your wish." She looks down at her wrist, where she is wearing some sort of monitoring device that's probably better than my ship's entire sensor suite. "I think the firing is dying down. The localized dispute between the Klingons and our support units will soon be resolved, and you can then discuss the arrangements under the Organian treaty with Captain Kirza. I am sure you will find her just as reasonable as we have." Her thin lips are very tight. "I may have issues of my own to raise with Captain Kirza -"
Then there is a strange humming sound in the air, and a faint, shimmering rainbow glow steals through the Priyanapari twilight.
Kara raises her tricorder. "I'm getting some very strange readings -"
The rainbow light flickers and intensifies, illuminating the large hexagonal buildings. The shooting has stopped. On the outskirts of the area, I notice brief silent flickers of Klingon transporter beams.
The rainbows fade away. And so do the buildings under them. Luga's mouth drops open. So does mine, but I close it quick. I move next to Kara and peer at her tricorder screen.
"Quantum-entangled temporal anomaly?" I sound clever, there. It's just because I spent a lot of time studying the theory behind the Stygmalian Rift and whatever went on inside it. I know temporal malarky when I see it, and I'm looking at some now.
"It... could be, sir," says Kara.
"That is my suspicion also." T'Pren has a tricorder out herself. "Something was linked to those buildings at a subchronal causative level. That - influence - has now been removed. In its absence -"
The big buildings themselves have become... absent. Some Na'kuhl, who were sheltering behind them, now stand up and look a bit stupid. There is a clatter and a crash as a lean-to structure, with nothing left to lean against, falls over.
I run things around in my head. I'm not sure I like the answers. There was something here, there was a "local difficulty" over it between the Klingons and the Na'kuhl... and now that something isn't here any more. And the Na'kuhl are still around, while the Klingons beamed out. Conclusion: whatever it is, the Klingons have it.
I squint into the gathering darkness. Or do they? Because the buildings may have vanished, but they've left something behind....
I stroll off towards it, whatever it is. One of the Na'kuhl guards blocks my path; I keep on strolling. He gives me a look that's redolent of loathing, and steps aside. You can go anywhere if you can fake enough confidence.
I get within about twenty yards of the thing, then stop. I look at it.
It's a complex metal thing, quite a bit taller than me, and formidably complicated. In fact - I frown. Maybe it's the dimness of the light - I would have to arrive at local nightfall, wouldn't I? - but I can't quite follow the lines of the thing; it's as if part of it shoots off in some direction that I can't visualize. The sensation is... disturbing.
"Shoo-in for the Turner Prize," I mutter. Then I call out, loudly, "So what's this, then?"
"None of Starfleet's concern." Luga's voice; she is coming towards me, moving with all the confidence that I've been trying to project, only I'm not sure she's faking it. "This - artifact - is an anomaly, true, but we are not able to analyse it more specifically -"
"So stand back and let the Starfleet experts have a go," I suggest. It earns me another glare. If looks could kill, I'd at least be severely maimed by now.
"Starfleet has no expertise in this area," Luga hisses.
"Well, we won't know until we've tried, will we? In any case -"
I had some plans for how that sentence was meant to end, but I have to put them on hold, because at that moment a tall, lean figure comes bursting through the ranks of the Na'kuhl, barges right into me, and knocks me down. I have a brief glimpse of green scaly skin - Suliban? - and then the figure leaps towards the artifact, while I sprawl on the ground.
The thing seems to revolve in some peculiar sort of way, its many components shifting into unsettling new configurations. The Suliban is jumping at it - no, not at it, into it. The artifact has shaped itself into something with a man-sized doorway in it, and the Suliban is heading straight into that opening.
There is a brilliant flash of light, painful on my dark-adapted eyes. I swear under my breath, and try to stand up. I blink through vivid after-images.
"Who was that masked man?" I ask. Nobody answers.
Kara and T'Pren have come up, are aiming their tricorders at the artifact, are industriously scanning away. Several of the Na'kuhl seem to be doing the same. There is no trace of the Suliban, anywhere in sight.
Luga is standing a little way from me, looking intently at the artifact. There is a new look on her leathery face, and after a moment or two, I figure out what it is. So far, she's done arrogant, angry, contemptuous, and hostile. But now she's doing something else entirely. Now, she looks worried.
Yes, Ronnie, you need to start worrying. Because they're playing with something that can rewrite time, so even the thing you don't know yet is hiding in your head can't help you now.
Luga had never seen Chrog so angry. His rage had passed through the stage of ranting, and now showed itself as a sort of deadly, white-hot calm. "You have no idea what you are doing," he hissed into the portable communicator.
On the viewscreen, Kirza's expression was unrepentant. "I know exactly what I am doing. We have the Nhandesson weapon, now, and if our alliance is to continue, it will be on much more equal terms."
"You do not know how to operate the weapon." Chrog's tone was almost reasonable. Luga suspected that someone was about to die, very soon. She regretted that the little communications hut offered no space to edge cautiously away from him.
"How true," said Kirza. "Though I fancy we have learned more from you than you suspect - we are not quite so easily distracted with shiny weapons as some would like to believe." Luga hissed through her teeth. "However, given the range and effectiveness of this device, I imagine you would prefer it, too, if we did not operate on the basis of trial and error. The time-space continuum in this star system is battered enough already. So. You are the experts in temporal technology, you will provide us with instruction. I look forward to using this thing. I might start by cancelling out the damned Organians and their peace treaty! - I will give you an hour to compose yourselves and prepare your technicians. Hov'etlh out." The screen went blank.
Chrog took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then exhaled. "I believe I commented," he said, "on the undesirability of forming partnerships with other species - What are you doing?"
Luga was pawing frantically at her clothing. "A listening device," she hissed through clenched teeth. "The damned Klingon must have planted some sort of bug on me -"
"You are scanned regularly as a security measure!" Chrog snarled.
"For transtator signatures!" Luga screeched back. She held something up to the light; a tiny bulbous thing with a hair-fine dangling antenna - at first glance, it might even be mistaken for a hair. "This, this, it must be -"
Chrog consulted his wrist scanner. "Electronic. A passive receiver, echoing and modulating a background carrier wave in EM frequencies. Ingenious, if primitive. In this time period, of course, the Klingons were very keen on surveillance." He leaned close to the bug and spoke clearly and distinctly. "They must have enjoyed the sight of all those clean, smooth foreheads!"
Luga gave a wordless snarl and threw the bug down to the floor. She drew her chronoplasma pistol, made a swift adjustment, and took aim. "I wish this was your face, Kirza," she said, and fired. The bug flared and vanished, leaving nothing behind but a scorch mark on the floor.
Chrog was continuing to scan. "No sign of any more of those," he said. "Well. Such trustworthy allies the Klingons are...."
"What are we going to do?" Luga asked.
"Stall them. The operation of the anti-time weapon is complex, we can baffle them with science for as long as we like. That does not concern me... unless Kirza grows impatient and starts pressing buttons at random. What bothers me more is the other one."
"Thyvesh?"
"Am I expected to believe it was a coincidence that he chose this moment of distraction to make a break for his temporal portal? We must have that thing properly analyzed. I want to know where he has gone."
"To the Suliban weapons cache, presumably." Luga's face grew thoughtful. "In point of fact... the artifact is under constant observation, though the Klingons' attack may have proven a distraction. But it may be possible for us, now, to extract a temporal signature and - just possibly - to extrapolate Thyvesh's destination coordinates from it."
"You think so?"
"It is possible. And, with that information, we should be able to find our own way to that weapons cache."
Chrog stepped to the door of the hut, opened it a crack, and peered through. "The Federation would seem to be in the way," he said sourly.
"Captain Grau is having a field day, setting up monitoring devices with her science teams," said Luga. She joined Chrog at the door, and they both looked out. The dark Priyanapari night was pierced with the glare of floodlights, as science teams from the Harrier surrounded the artifact with sensor probes and mobile computer workstations. Na'kuhl troops stood around, watching them, their frustration almost palpable.
"Well," said Luga, "they have twenty-third century Starfleet equipment - it will be easy enough to subvert that. Grau may run her sensor analyses, and we will take her results. Since we cannot affect her without risking the wrath of one or both of her invisible companions... she may as well be of some use to us."
"What is the status of those - things?" Chrog asked.
"Unknown. We think the Rift entity is not yet at home in linear time, but we cannot chance being wrong. As for the Organian -" Luga shrugged. "We have no means to track an Organian. Very possibly, as Grau suggested, the creature is everywhere. One might hope, at least, it is spending some time with Captain Kirza. If her threats provoke the Organian into taking direct action... well, it would simplify matters."
"Kirza and the Organian," muttered Chrog. "Neither one worries me as much as Thyvesh."
---
"Thyvesh."
Thyvesh crouched beneath one green-glowing column. His fingers trembled as he took the holo-display unit from its hiding place. There was not much time, now.
"Thyvesh."
The voice - did it sound closer, now? Strange, that it sounded so - different. But, of course, it would sound different, to him. Because normally, he only heard it from inside his own head.
The holo-display unit had a closed compartment in its base. It was a standard commercial model, a thing for storing old messages, old images - souvenirs, mementoes. He opened the compartment.
From a pocket of his ragged clothes, he took a small metal object. A Romulan rank badge, in the form of a raptor... but twisted, deformed by some sort of pressure, and stained with dark-green markings of dried-up Vulcanoid blood.
"I know you are here. And you know that I know - how could you not?"
Thyvesh put the badge into the compartment, closed it, put the holo-display on the floor. He owed it to her, after all, he thought. He had lied to her, about being safe, about his counterpart being unable to get in. A white lie, a necessary lie, but still a lie. He owed her the truth.
Whatever the truth might be.
"I will find you. You cannot hide forever."
Thyvesh reached out, with his hands, with his mind. Alternative timelines, paths through time and space, cascaded through his altered brain. An infinite series of alternatives, he was so tired of them all - He found the line he wanted, focused his mind on it, concentrated. The holo-display shimmered briefly under his hand, and then it was gone.
So. No more reason to delay, then. He heaved a sigh, and stood up.
"Thyvesh - ah. There you are."
He turned around, slowly. His younger self was there, looking - eager, and neat, and efficient, in his military-styled outfit. How had he ever been able to be so neat and efficient? In his hand, the younger Thyvesh held an obvious weapon - a gun, but with a strange parabolic emitter dish instead of a barrel, and a complex control panel behind it that flared out to cover his hand and wrist.
"White-3741," he muttered. "Sairish's neural override weapon."
"You recognize it," the younger Thyvesh said. "That is good. You know what it does. You know what I can do with it. What I will do with it." He raised the weapon and took aim. "You will not die, but you may wish you had - unless you tell me."
He had to go through the motions. "Tell you what?"
"You know what."
"I know. But I remember - I asked me to say it -"
"You asked me." The younger Thyvesh smiled. "I know what you mean. Very well. You are able to use the door - without being in its physical proximity. You can operate freely in time and space. You can go anywhere, anywhen that you wish." For the first time, he looked faintly uncertain. "You seem to have wished to go to some very - grubby - times and places. Never mind. I assume there is a reason, that I will find out in due course. But now, now, you will tell me that secret. You will explain to me how to do it. I can think of - many uses - for the technique." He sighted carefully at Thyvesh, and adjusted the weapon's complex controls.
How was it possible? That he had ever been so - so dynamic, so driven, so certain of himself? It was all a part of his past, now. But the past - the past was never more than an instant away.
"You will tell me," his younger self said, with absolute conviction.
Thyvesh looked him in the eye. "Yes," he said, "I will. I did."
"I think it's just a skeleton crew," says Zula. She is fiddling with her tricorder and looking intent. "The Na'kuhl evidently came here, left a small force in possession, and went on to Priyanapari. Probably no more than a dozen of them."
"Weel, it could be worse," I say, "but, on th' ither hand, there's nae but two of us."
"We could get back in the Scorpion and head back to the Leacock," says Zula. She has a resigned air, like she already knows what I'm going to say next.
"If the Na'kuhl ken we're here, an' yon station has ony weapons, they'll be shootin' at us all the way, and Ah cannae guarantee we willnae get hit, an' yon Scorpion's no' gannae stand up tae station-mounted weaponry. Nae. We're jist gannae have tae make quality count mair than quantity, hen." I grin at her. "Ye kent verra weel Ah wis gannae say that, am Ah right?"
She rolls her lovely eyes expressively, and checks her phaser. "There's a bit of sensor fuzzing already going on," she says, "but I'm reading at least three of them coming towards this location. I'd guess they heard the shots."
I grunt. Na'kuhl are tricky, and that ship commander will have left some reasonably competent people behind. And this station is bleak, it's not got much going for it in the way of cover - even if I knew the layout, which I don't, I reckon I'd still be pushed for somewhere to hide. "Let's gae in an' say hello, then," I say, and raise my rifle to firing position.
We edge through the doorway, into a long empty corridor. I was right, there's nothing much to hide behind. We play leapfrog from doorway to doorway down the corridor, one covering while the other moves. The doors, when they open at all, open onto bleak little cubicles with virtually empty interiors. Stripped and abandoned. We're coming up on an intersection now -
And three red-clad figures come around the corner with weapons ready and determination in their little red eyes. Zula fires first, the golden beam of her phaser streaking out and splashing away from a heavy-duty personal shield. The Na'kuhl don't even bother with demands for surrender. Pale green bolts of chronoplasma blast from their hand weapons.
Zula suddenly flares and vanishes in a blast of light.
I yell, wordlessly, and fire the sniper rifle. The tritanium slug goes right through the first Na'kuhl's shield and into his head. He drops. The other two are shooting, but I'm already moving. I don't know how they train these Na'kuhl insurgents, but their tactical doctrine evidently doesn't have methods for dealing with a vengeance-crazed Scot coming at them, shouting "Creag an tuire!" and firing a TR-116B from the hip. Holes perforate the wall of the corridor, and two Na'kuhl bodies, and then I'm at the intersection, and the enemies are down on the deck.
And Zula - is nowhere. Damn it.
All right. I have to live through this. And deliver some payback to the damn Na'kuhl, too. I look around and get my bearings. They must have registered us by now, they will be converging on this point - if I was them, where would I start converging from? I sprint down the corridor, to another intersection. I hear booted footsteps on the deck plating, and I crouch down.
A chronoplasma bolt snaps over my head. The rifle sneezes once, twice, three times, and an oncoming Na'kuhl staggers, dropping her weapon as her hands go, uselessly, to the gaping holes in her torso. She falls, but there are three others behind her -
Something whizzes past me along the floor, zips towards the Na'kuhl. Spinning lines of energy slam into them around shin height, tripping them and sending them tumbling to the floor. I shoot one of them as he tries to regain his feet, roll away from a badly-aimed return shot, take out the shooter with my next round. A beam of golden light fixes itself on the last Na'kuhl, clawing at her personal shield. I fire, one last time, and she drops.
I turn to face Zula. "Dinnae iver dae that tae me again," I say.
"I don't think I will." Her eyes are very wide. "Wow, you really laid into them, didn't you?"
"Ah wis highly motivated, hen." My own fault, though, really. I should have known she'd have some Intelligence trickery on her; feigned disintegration and tripwire drones will be only part of her arsenal. "Is there ony mair o' th' wee beggars?"
"Oh, yes." She points. "Looks like some sort of concourse, that way. It'll give us more space to manoeuvre, at least. But they'll definitely have us on scan, now, and no way my tricorder will get through their sensor spoofing -"
I run through the maxims of Sun Tzu in my head, consider whether I'm in debatable ground or deadly ground, decide to settle for "ground where I'm going to kill a bunch of Na'kuhl" instead. "Let's be gaein', then," I say to Zula.
We head down another bleak corridor – and the door at the end hisses open before we even get near it. I send a slug through the doorway on general principles, but there’s no red-clad figure standing there – only movement, some humped shape shuffling along the ground -
“Crawler mines!”
I hit my transporter buffer and pull out a couple of breather masks. I toss one to Zula, and she catches it one-handed while spraying the floor with phaser fire. I jam the mask over my mouth, just in time, as the first mobile gas mine goes up in a cloud of greenish fug. My shield stops most of the blast, and the breather protects my lungs, but a trace of the vile chemical reek gets through, and my eyes sting and burn.
It’s supposed to slow us down. Well, I don’t let it. I toss a concussion grenade through the doorway, follow it while the echoes of the blast are still dying away, screaming at the top of my voice and firing shot after shot. There are confused sounds ahead of me. I barrel through the doorway.
I’m in a big empty-ish space, with consoles sticking out of the floor like random islands, and a whole lot of tubing and piping and wiring decorating the walls. Not a concourse, then, more likely the station’s main engineering section. My spirits lift a little. If we can clear the Na’kuhl out of here, we’ve gone a long way towards taking the station entirely.
Of course, the Na’kuhl know that, and are acting accordingly. Chronoplasma beams stab through the air towards me. I duck and weave, manage to dodge some, take the rest on my shield, shoot back. Phaser light slams into one target as Zula follows me into the fray. I drop that one with my next shot, but the rest of the Na’kuhl have gone to ground, taking cover behind consoles.
There are thumps and blasts of green smoke as more gas mines go up. The smog is making it hard to see. “Ye pin ‘em doon an’ Ah’ll gae after th’ mines guy!” I yell at Zula.
She rakes the consoles with phaser fire – it won’t hit anyone, but it should make them keep their heads down. “You’re still doing the damn accent now?” she yells back at me. The controller for the crawler mines must be somewhere nearby; I crouch down and edge around a console myself.
“Ah’m a wee Scots lassie frae Inverness!”
“Then you should be speaking Gaelic, not Lallans Scots!” The breather mask slightly muffles her indignation. I hear movement. I pop my head over the console and bang off a couple of rounds. Sparks fly from something on the wall, hopefully not something vital. Someone is shuffling, nearby.
“Anyway, your parents moved away from Inverness when you were four years old!” I just hope this is confusing the Na’kuhl. “To the south of England! You went to school at freaking Roedean!”
I duck and roll round the next console, and suddenly I’m face to face with a Na’kuhl, and he has a crawler mine controller in his hands. And then he has the butt of my rifle in his face, hard, and he goes sprawling on the floor. OK, good, if we can take a prisoner, that’ll help -
The blast knocks me off my feet, and the world fills with green smoke. The chemical reek gets worse, and there’s a nasty whiff of something else besides it. I paw at the breather with one hand, making sure it’s still in place. The mines guy fell on one of his own crawler mines, and it detonated. Damn it. So much for prisoners.
“Ye’ve been readin’ up on me? Ah’m flattered,” I call to Zula.
“It’s in your personnel record!”
“Is that th’ one that ends at Caleb IV? Ye dinnae want tae rely on that, hen.”
There’s no immediate answer. I peek out of cover, in the direction where I hope Zula is. She’s there, and so’s a Na’kuhl injector lieutenant, and they are locked together in a grim wrestling match. I swear quietly to myself. It’s going to take finesse, picking off the Na’kuhl without hitting Zula instead -
I needn’t have worried. Zula breaks loose from the Na’kuhl woman’s hold, seizes her right hand and jams it into her throat. The Na’kuhl lets out a despairing wail as the injector blasts her with the toxins she’d meant for Zula, and then she goes limp and lifeless. Zula drops her, ducks back from a chronoplasma bolt, and snaps a phaser shot back. I turn in that direction.
There is a shifting, flickering, half-visible shape there, scuttling from one console to another. Another Na’kuhl, using one of those temporal gadgets to fuzz his position in space-time, so he looks like multiple shadowy images instead of a single solid person. I squint down the rifle, sighting carefully. There’s a way around this, but it needs steady aim and quick reflexes.
The moment comes. I squeeze the trigger. For just an instant, several versions of the temporally-fuzzed Na’kuhl’s head are all lined up, and the rifle slug passes through all of them, including whichever one is temporarily real. The Na’kuhl falls heavily to the deck, shadowy images coalescing into one inarguable corpse. The hole through his head, compounded of several alternate paths the bullet might have taken, is quite exceptionally messy.
There are no more shots, no more explosions. There is no more movement. That was the last one.
I stand up. The air is still smogged with toxic gas, there are holes and scorch marks over the walls and the consoles, there are trickles of sparks and smoke coming from a number of places, there are urgent beeping sounds which are probably alarms. The Na’kuhl are down. I grin at Zula; she can’t see it through my breather, but I grin anyway.
“Wha’s like us?” I ask. “Damn few, and they’re a’ deid.”
---
There’s a control room a couple of levels up. We need to get to that – first, to clean out any remaining Na’kuhl, second, to get a proper idea of how much damage we’ve done to the station and how to go about fixing it.
“My tricorder’s acting crazy,” Zula mutters, as we lope towards the control room door.
“Mair sensor spoofing?”
“I don’t think so. There was, but then there was – some sort of energy release.”
“Whit sort?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Zula gives her tricorder a thump. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m reading – well, it’s hard to tell, but there’s definitely at least one life sign.”
“Och, we can handle one.” I ready the rifle as we come up on the control room door. It’s blank and anonymous like all the other doors in this place. And it isn’t locked; it slides open as I approach.
And I charge through it with another cry of “Creag an tuire!”
I have a brief glimpse of consoles, of a body lying inert on the floor, and then my attention is concentrated on one moving shape, and I am whipping the rifle up towards it, while at the same time finding myself staring at close range into the barrel of a nasty-looking nanite disruptor pistol.
Somehow, we manage not to shoot each other. We just stare, for one frozen moment.
“Doesn’t anyone ever get the urge to redecorate?” I grumble.
The mask-like face of T’Mev’s Rigelian exec doesn’t show much expression at the best of times, and this is clearly not the best of times. “Standard doctrine with captured temporal vessels,” Commander Teadoursi explains, “is to interfere as little as possible with the construction or the environmental details. Just in case some aspect of it is… important.”
I glance around at the interior of the Virgo. It’s like every other Na’kuhl ship, at least as far as I know; rounded organic shapes in blood-red colour, like being trapped inside the intestines of some vast creature. In places, rounded domes of control consoles protrude from the floor or the walls, usually glowing green. The diseased and ulcerated intestines of some vast creature. It’s no wonder the Na’kuhl are peculiar.
“So what’s this bit?” I ask. Teadoursi’s face remains studiously neutral. I’m over here, officially, in case I’m needed for information about some aspect of the Priyanapari situation. In practice, I’m pretty sure they want me because, if the temporal interference takes an unhealthy turn in that system, the discrepancies will show up immediately when my memories change. I have a strong suspicion that my previous accounts of what happened have been preserved in some temporally shielded archive, and any new versions I might suddenly remember will be carefully cross-checked and compared. Assuming I don't drop dead or vanish in the process, I suppose.
I don't like any part of this. My entire memory, maybe my personality, could be re-written at the drop of a hat. And I wouldn't know about it. Or the person I would be, who would no longer be me, wouldn't know about it.
So, to take my mind off the whole God-awful business, I asked for a tour of the ship. And since I'm a senior officer, Teadoursi got kind of stuck with showing me around. I don't think she appreciates it much, though, with the Virgo doing nothing but orbiting the blasted ruins of 25th-century Priyanapari, I reckon she should be glad of a distraction herself.
Now she peers at the giant glowing bubble I'm pointing at. "This is the anti-chroniton transmission module," she says. "If we need to send a message to the team in the past - and I do mean need - then this is what we'd use."
I frown. "You'd have to send any messages to the Leacock, then? I mean, they're the only ship that'd have the facilities to receive...." Which strikes me as a weak point, especially since we know someone in that system can knock seven bells out of the Leacock already.
"No," says Teadoursi, "we can modulate the anti-chroniton pulses to transduce them into any pattern of electromagnetic or subspace radiation at the destination point." I'm sure that would sound impressive, if I had any clue what it meant. "For example...." She taps at the glowing surface, and the data scrolling across it suddenly whirls and reorganizes itself. "That's set on Starfleet data-transfer protocols for the twenty-third century," she says. "A message we sent now would be picked up on any open tricorder's data subchannel and displayed as text. That -" she points to something "- indicates the destination time-track and space-time location."
I look where she's pointing, and my one good eye goes very wide. "That looks - very straightforward."
She looks closer. "The coordinates are intelligently resolved by the system - presented in as simple a format as we can manage it. I must admit, the coordinate strings aren't usually truncated that effectively - that's a very short one. And also palindromic, I notice."
"Memorable," I say. Highly memorable, in fact. If I can trust my memory.
"Yes, I suppose -" Something chimes, a loud, urgent, high-pitched sound. Teadoursi's eyes narrow. "Excuse me a moment, sir. There's a temporal flux warning - possibly nothing, but I'd better check -" She stalks off towards another console.
Oh, boy.
I look at the indicators on the glowing dome, and I swallow hard. Something tells me the next few seconds are going to be important.
I flex my fingers.
Technically, I haven't been warned not to fiddle with anything. The assumption, obviously enough, is that fiddling with poorly-understood temporal technology, in the middle of a time-travel crisis, is an idea so intrinsically bad that even I won't have it. Which makes sense. Except where nothing about this whole business makes sense.
I take a deep breath, and start tapping away at the console. I can't deny I'm nervous - so nervous, I'm having to ramp up the controls on my still-Borgified fingers to stop them trembling. But I can't figure out what else I'm meant to do -
On the screen, the simple, brief message takes shape. I take another deep breath. My fingertip comes down on the icon that means send.
---
Ronnie
"You will accomplish nothing here," Luga hisses at me. She looks like she enjoys a good hiss.
I walk around the artifact one more time, keeping a safe distance. Luga follows me, making swearing-under-her-breath noises. The metal - thing - stands out in the Priyanapari night, illuminated by all the floodlights we could beam down and pour on it. The various metal components are spinning and churning, and there is a continuous faint grinding noise. I still can't work out where some of those components are spinning to. This thing extends into multiple dimensions, and it's been hyper-active ever since that Suliban ran into it.
The Na'kuhl aren't answering questions about the Suliban. Or the artifact. Or, indeed, anything much.
I don't know about this situation. The Klingons won whatever fight they were having down here, but that's as far as things went; the Klingon ship and the massive Na'kuhl battlecruiser are still in orbit around the planet, and aren't shooting at each other. Maybe I can chalk it up to my calming influence? - Yeah, right.
"What's it for?" I ask Luga. She glares at me and doesn't answer. "Oh, come on," I continue. "If you don't know, surely you'd be better off pooling your resources with us, so we can both find out? And if you do know, you can tell me why I shouldn't mess with it."
"The technology is quite beyond your limited comprehension."
"Yeah, but you can still tell me what it does. Besides eat Suliban. Or break your guy's arms." One of the Na'kuhl got too close, earlier, and was clipped by a randomly spinning metal rod. Straightforward accident, as far as I can tell, but I've been keeping a respectful distance ever since.
"Under the terms of the Organian treaty, worlds and resources in the neutral buffer zone are up for grabs, to go to whichever side can best develop them. If you guys brought the Klingons in on this, then you've got to let us in, too. Never mind your subsequent disagreements with the Klingons. And just what was it that they grabbed, anyway?"
"That is no longer your concern, or ours."
Cutting their losses? The Na'kuhl clearly need the Klingons for some reason... enough to make them forgive the attack? Or maybe whatever the Klingons took was important enough that they had to forgive them.... In any case, it's quite definitely my concern, but short of knocking Luga over the head and dragging her back to the Harrier for interrogation, I don't see any way to get answers out of her. And Starfleet frowns on kidnapping and torture. Which is fair enough, really.
But all it leaves me to fall back on is... legalisms. And I'd rather fall back on a pile of broken glass. "You've got some agreement in place with the Klingons, yes? And they have to abide by the Organian treaty, so that means you are covered by it as well." I hold up my tricorder, which has the data libraries all cued up. "If you want to see the relevant clauses -"
I stop talking, because at that moment a message pops up on the tiny screen. It's come through on the standard data subchannel - except no one has any business sending me stuff on that channel - and it doesn't have an origin code - and the text simply reads:-
You're not doing any good there. Beam back to the ship, things are about to get busy. Remember this code: AA0702DC-CD2070AA. Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Yer pal, Cassandra.
I have no clue what the palindromic code means, but Cassandra gives me furiously to think. The Trojan prophetess Cassandra, you see, was cursed by Apollo so that she prophesied truly, but nobody believed a word she said... ignoring her always turned out badly. So if Cassandra is sneaking into my tricorder to send me warnings, I am taking them seriously, and the god Apollo can take his curses and get stuffed. Come to think of it, didn't Jim Kirk deal with Apollo, a couple of years back, anyway?
"OK, you know what?" I say to Luga. "Forget it. Forget all the relevant clauses. Me and my team are going to follow your no doubt sound and well-intentioned advice." I turn away while her jaw is still dropping. "Landing party!" I bellow. "Assemble for beam-out!"
I give them their due, they come running and don't ask questions. I pull out my communicator and snap it open. "Grau to Harrier. Landing party requires immediate transport. Confirm and beam us up when ready."
Kara Grant looks a bit mystified, but she keeps her mouth shut. T'Pren has a quirky eyebrow that looks like she'll want some explanations back on the ship, but never mind. "So," I say to Luga, "see you around and about, then. Bye now."
The expression on her leathery face has changed, from startled to suspicious. She can smell a rat when someone shoves it up her nose, she knows there's some reason for my abrupt change of heart. She will be speculating very hard about what's made me run back to the Harrier.
And, as the transporter sparkle gathers around me, that's pretty much what I'm doing myself.
---
Ronnie
OK, so now Teadoursi has an expression, all right. I make a mental note: this is how Rigelians do aghast.
"Trust me," I say cheerily, "I know what I'm doing." Just as I said in the message.
Teadoursi finds her voice. "Do you have any idea what you might have done -?"
I give her a knowing look. "Yeah. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think I do. That alarm of yours? The temporal flux warning?"
"It - cut out," she says.
"Yeah, it would have done. Because that was the sound of a predestination loop closing. Like the sound of one hand clapping, I guess. The alarm sounded, because the time line was about to destabilize, if I didn't do what I was supposed to do." I point at the screen. "Somebody sent me that message. And I'm damned if I can see who else might have done it. I recognized that damn code of yours -"
I spent ages, puzzling over that code. I never worked out what it might have meant, but it preyed on my mind until I finally gave up on it. To see it, now, after all these years -
Of course, that entire chain of memories might only now have popped into my head. Whatever. The point is, it worked. I think.
"The timelines did stabilize," Teadoursi says grudgingly.
"Of course they did," I say, as smugly as I can manage.
"Please don't do anything like that again, sir. Not without consultation and a cross-check from a temporal observatory." And the way she says that, it sounds heartfelt.
"Relax. I think I've done enough. Probably." I cast my mind back. "Though just after that message, stuff got worrying -"
---
Ronnie
"What's it all about, sir?" Kara asks as we jump into the turbolift.
"Hell if I know. Bridge." The lift capsule hums into life. "Someone sent me an anonymous warning message on my tricorder's data channel. I didn't get where I am today by ignoring anonymous warning messages." Let's not go into how I did get where I am today.
"The nature of this message?" asks T'Pren. I flip open the tricorder and show her the screen. Her eyebrow remains resolutely quirked. Can't say I blame her.
The turbolift doors hiss open. "OK," I say as we make our way onto the bridge, "we definitely need a more nuanced alarm system. This is well past yellow, shading to a pretty ruddy sort of orange, but still not actually red." I can see Win roll his eyes at me as I take the centre seat. "Get me a read on our presumed-hostiles," I say, "and someone get comms up to the Leacock in case we need to yell for help."
"What's it all about, sir?" Win asks.
"Oh, hell, is that question of the day? I don't know. I got a warning message that says there's gonna be trouble. My guess is, it'll come from one or both of those battlewagons - "
"Hov'etlh is moving off station," Stulk interrupts me.
"Possibly that one, then. Where's she headed?"
"Impulse drive is active - reaching hyperbolic speed." She's breaking orbit, away from the planet. Maybe taking her ill-gotten gains back to the Empire? I swallow, hard. "We might need to stop her. And I don't think we can do that all by ourselves. Where's that line to the Leacock?" Because Kirza's horrendously-overclocked D7 will pick its teeth with the Harrier if we get in a fight right now.
My gaze strays to the armrest of my chair, to the slot holding Caird's magic data cart.
"Incoming hail from the Klingons," Kara reports.
Oh, joy. "On screen."
Kirza's face, when it appears, is all one solid gloat. "Captain Grau," she purrs at me. "You are no doubt wondering what artifacts I have recovered from the planet's surface."
"Crossed my mind, yeah," I say. "All well with you and your Na'kuhl friends? Did you kiss and make up?"
She ignores that. "Under the terms of the Organian treaty," she says, "I should inform you of my discoveries. And I take great pleasure in telling you, we have found something that will render the Organian treaty irrelevant. My scientists, and my Na'kuhl friends, have already made headway in deciphering the control interface."
"Control interface of what?"
Kirza's smile is almost too big for her face. "Of a weapon. It was fatal for the culture which built it, but we have more advanced shielding, thanks to the Na'kuhl. By we, of course, I mean the Empire. You have no defences at all."
"Red alert," I snap at Win.
Kirza laughs. "Sound whatever alarms you wish. They will all be useless. Let me give you time to contemplate your situation, Captain Grau. I intend to destroy every threat to the Empire in this system, starting with the most important, and working down. Your pathetic vessel is, naturally, last on my list. I will attend to you after I have finished with the Leacock. But first - Well. The weapon has many interesting capabilities. It can be wielded with finesse. I am even able to identify unique individual targets - a capacity that I will now demonstrate." She gestures imperiously. "Organian! Show yourself!"
There is a hot wind and a glare of light, and Clefune is suddenly standing on my bridge. "Captain Kirza," he says, "I must warn you that you are in grave danger of committing a treaty violation, and that I personally do not appreciate -"
"Enough!" roars Kirza, and makes another commanding gesture.
Clefune stiffens. A strange glow gathers around him, a shimmering aura like cascading rainbows. Then he flares with intolerable light, and explodes.
A shower of sparks falls to the deck where the Organian was standing.
"She is forcing our hand," hissed Chrog. "I said we should have kept this world to ourselves -"
"It was an error to involve her," Luga said wearily. "I accept that. But the damage is done, now.... I only hope that she will act relatively predictably."
Inside the tiny research hut, the two of them stared at the monitor screen. "She is already making errors," Chrog said.
"The Organian? I think the Nhandesson weapon includes modes specifically for the destruction of Organians - the Nhandessons are within the Organian sphere of influence, they may have chafed at Organian restraints just as the Klingons do now -"
"I do not mean that." Chrog's finger stabbed at the screen. "She is breaking orbit, setting course to intercept the Leacock, leaving the Harrier to its own devices."
"So? The Harrier cannot defeat the Hov'etlh, she can deal with it at her leisure once she has destroyed the Leacock -"
"Assuming the Harrier stays to be dealt with! But Grau is no idiot - she will warp out as soon as she can, to return with a Starfleet task force in support! And the Organians will not stop her - they may even help her!"
Luga sighed deeply. "Then the solution is obvious. The Strange Attractor must engage the Harrier before Grau can escape. I suppose it is desirable in other ways - Grau's premature extinction will disrupt the timeline significantly -"
"You think the Rift entity will permit her destruction?"
"In this timeframe, it may not have sufficient control, sufficient awareness of linear spacetime, to protect her. In any case, we must take the risk." Luga shrugged. "A pity. It is a distraction, and our teams have finally finished their analysis -"
"Analysis of what?" Chrog demanded.
"Thyvesh's space-time coordinates. When he fled through the doorway, he left a resolvable trail. We have deciphered it -"
"Show me." Chrog was suddenly at her elbow, looming over her.
Luga tapped at the screen controls; images formed - graphs and diagrams. "There. Outside normal space-time, of course - but we knew that already. A trajectory can be plotted - but we must deal with the Harrier first -"
"You deal with the Harrier," said Chrog. Luga turned to stare at him. "Grau and Kirza are not our main concern. We are here for one purpose - to claim the powers of Priyanapari. Thyvesh's weapons cache. That is where he must have gone, that is where these coordinates lead... so that is where I must go."
"But the Harrier -"
"Deal with the Harrier. Activate an external portal to these coordinates - I will take an auxiliary craft, while you remain in this time zone to clean up. With luck, the Leacock will damage Kirza's ship sufficiently that you can eliminate her as well. She has proved worse than useless." Chrog raised his wrist communicator. "Strange Attractor. Beam up all landing parties, and ready an assault shuttle."
---
The portal looked - different, somehow, Chrog thought. He peered through the transparent aluminium of the assault shuttle's canopy. Behind him, the assault team went through the noisy ritual of checking their weapons - chronoplasma guns, demolitions gear, gas charges and crawler mines -
Different. Dimmer, a darker blue than usual. This one led through strange reaches of the continuum indeed.
"Commencing insertion," the pilot reported. Chrog reached for the main comms console. "We are going in," he said.
"Confirmed," Luga's voice replied. "We have the Harrier on positive track. Three minutes to weapons range."
"And Kirza?"
"Will come within range of Leacock in another fifteen."
"I hope they kill each other." White noise began to surge over the speakers, as the shuttle nosed into the temporal portal. "Inserting now. Chrog out."
The shuttle was wrapped in a dim, fluctuating indigo glow. Chrog stared pensively at it for some time, then turned his attention to the navigation console. "Low energy subspace environment," he muttered. The pilot turned his head. "We could, in theory, make interstitial warp jumps from here to... anywhere."
"Or nowhere," the pilot replied.
"We run no risks, if we can plot the coordinates with sufficient precision. And I can. I have expertise in such matters." Chrog bent his head over the navigation console, his leathery features intent with concentration. The pilot looked hard at him for a moment, then turned back to the helm.
It was hard to say how much time passed, in this dim limbo, but eventually the pilot spoke again. "We have a problem."
"What is it?" Chrog asked.
"We are approaching the coordinates you provided... but we are not reaching them. Our... velocity... reduces as we approach. Our speed is inversely proportional to our proximity."
Chrog snorted. "A simple dimensional folding, intended as some sort of barrier. I suppose it provides me with an ideal opportunity for a demonstration."
"A demonstration of what?"
Chrog smiled. "Interstitial warp jumps. We cannot pass through the space between us and our destination - not in less than an infinite amount of time. So, we will not pass through it - we will go around it."
"You are going to activate the warp drive inside the temporal portal?" The pilot sounded alarmed.
"For a brief moment, yes. There is no danger. I had considered this possibility, even." Chrog entered a series of commands on the navigation panel, his hands moving swiftly, assuredly. "There. Set the engines for a single pulse, one point five microseconds at warp two." Reluctantly, the pilot complied. "Engage."
Space and reality juddered, and the indigo void became a single blinding glare - and then the scene beyond the canopy changed, and the shuttle landed on solid ground with a sudden jolt. Chrog smiled. "You see?"
They were in a vast space, filled with glowing cylinders of light. Chrog stood up. "Check environmentals."
The pilot moved automatically to comply. "Where are we?"
"Where we intended to be. Thyvesh's destination." Chrog's finger stabbed out. "Look. There."
He was pointing at something that was not a glowing cylinder, but a complex arrangement of metallic parts. "The... other side... of Thyvesh's doorway?" the pilot asked.
"Without a doubt," said Chrog with satisfaction.
"You must be right," said the pilot. "Environmentals are... nominal. No life signs."
"Thyvesh must have moved on. No matter. We can investigate without his assistance." Chrog checked his pistol, moved to the shuttle's main hatch. "Open up."
The hatch hissed open. Chrog strode out, followed more cautiously by the assault squad. "Containment force cells," he said, as he strode towards the nearest cylinder. "Containing what?"
"Thyvesh talked about the Suliban weapons systems. An arsenal of temporal and genetic devices," the pilot said nervously.
"That seems obvious. And we must never discount the obvious." Chrog studied the green-glowing column before him. There was an object floating inside it; a package, he thought. His eyes narrowed. A package... containing a data module, and something else - a medical injector?
"Scan the field frequencies and find a counter-harmonic. Open it. I want to inspect this more closely."
The troopers were spreading out, cautiously, studying the glowing columns. Apart from the dull sound of their footsteps, the rattle of their gear, the swishing of their clothing... apart from that, the silence was absolute. A science lieutenant stepped up beside Chrog, and aimed a scanner at the column.
"Sir!" someone called. Chrog turned. One of the troopers was waving at him, urgently. "Over here!"
Chrog moved. As he approached, he could see - something - lying on the floor at the trooper's feet. He slowed, and looked down.
It was a corpse. It was roughly humanoid, but the first thing that struck Chrog was an impression of incredible age. It was desiccated, mummified, dressed in dusty rags. Chrog looked closely. The withered skin might once have been scaled, the forehead bore traces of a triple ridge.... "Thyvesh," he said. "Well."
"But how long -?" the trooper began to ask.
"That question is meaningless, here," said Chrog. "It might be instructive to know what he died of - but if it was long ago, in this time frame, then whatever killed him is no longer a threat." He shook his head. "Always assuming that it was not mere old age, or starvation."
"Sir!" The science lieutenant called out. "I have access."
Chrog strode back to the green column. The light had not, apparently, changed, but it offered no resistance as he reached inside and pulled out the package. He scanned the datapad rapidly. "Not even encrypted," he commented.
"It was concealed behind a force barrier in a region outside time and space," the science lieutenant said. "They may have thought that enough security."
"And yet, here we are," said Chrog. "Interesting. Multiple DNA recombinants, and a generic transcriptase carrier... a sort of taster menu of the Suliban genetic enhancements. Increased strength, rapid healing, body plasticity, upgraded reaction times - all in a package deliverable into any carbon-based creature's genome." He lifted the medijector in his hand, studied it. "Open another of these columns. If this is what is in one of them... this is a treasure trove indeed."
The science lieutenant went to stand by the next nearest column. This one was not green, but a pale yellowish colour. Inside it, Chrog could see nothing but a datapad. There was a faint whining sound as the lieutenant probed the column with his scanner; then he reached into the light and took out the datapad.
He studied it for a moment. A faint frown creased his leathery features.
Then he dropped the datapad to the floor, turned around, drew his chronoplasma pistol, and shot the nearest trooper through the head.
Chrog cursed and drew his own weapon. The science lieutenant calmly sighted on another of his comrades, aimed and fired. Someone uttered a shocked curse. "Set for stun!" Chrog shouted, but two of the troopers were shooting back already, their heavy miniguns blazing with plasma fire. The science lieutenant's personal shield flared, wavered, and failed; bolts of pallid green light seared deep into his body, and he fell.
"A trap," Chrog snarled. "A damnable trap."
"Sir -" The troopers were gathering around him, staring in shock at the bodies.
"We should have been more careful. I should have been -" Chrog bit back an oath. "We will investigate, but we will take precautions. We will find a more secure location -"
He looked around him. Nothing but glowing columns of light, and the churning shape of the doorway....
"And we cannot consider this place secure.... So. We make another interstitial jump, and prepare automated devices to probe this place."
"Interstitial jump?" The pilot sounded doubtful. "Where to, sir?"
"I have plotted it already. A location we have already secured... and it is, even, close at hand. By the standards of this part of the continuum. The Denobulan station. We will link up with our caretaker force there, and use that as our base."
Rummaging around through the Keter-class storage spaces of SCP Containment Site-19 isn't exactly the safest of hobbies, no.
wonder if they'll find Abel.
I'd have to go double-check the revised writeup on SCP-076-2, but wasn't his sarcophagus moved to an Armed Reliquary Site after the Pandora's Box disaster?
I'm pretty sure sticking your hand in an unknown weapon's containment field is on the Evil Overlord List, but the Na'kuhl have always been lamentably ill-read.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Carolyn Caird's exec is a harassed-looking bald chap with an elaborate earring in one ear and an extraordinarily thick and bulbous nose. I can't blame him for looking harassed, just now. I'm feeling that way myself.
"Hov'etlh is inbound to your coordinates," I tell him, "ETA about fifteen minutes. I'd try and catch up, give you a hand, except I can't match that souped-up impulse drive of Kirza's." At least, not without doing something... that I may need to do anyway. "In any case, I doubt we'd make much difference. Can you handle them?"
He gives a glum nod. "Probably. We got enough of a read during our last encounter to assess her capabilities... and our modifications should give us enough of an edge. Probably." His glum voice strengthens as he adds, "In any case, sir, you should probably warp out and get backup from Starfleet Command."
"Probably. Yeah. OK, Commander Igoolet, I'll see you on the flip side. Harrier out." I don't know what sort of a name "Igoolet" is... Turkish, maybe? His face vanishes from the screen, to be replaced by the image of Priyanapari. He doesn't look Turkish. But, then, what would I know, anyway?
I know one thing; I'm not going to be peacably firing up the warp drive and skedaddling back to K-22 for the cavalry. "What's the status of the Na'kuhl ship?" I ask.
Win bends over the scanner readout. "Drives are online. Raising shields, coming about... heading isn't clear yet...."
"Straight for us, and loaded for bear," I say. "Damn. I think we're out of options here. Go to red alert, and, well -"
I pick Caird's data cart up, weigh it in my hand, then decisively ram it into the reader slot in my armrest.
For a moment, nothing seems to happen, except the wailing of the red alert. Then Thiras Ythill turns his head sharply towards me, his antennae stiff and standing out like ramrods. I've never seen Andorian antennae do that. "What in the Infinite's name did you do?" he asks.
"Having an effect, is it?"
"Warp core just overrode all safeties... but the coils are transferring power to the main grid at about sixteen times higher than normal design spec. Sir, the drive readouts are going off the clock -"
"Phaser banks are fully charged," T'Pren reports.
"I didn't ask for that!" Though, mind you, nice to have, with the Na'kuhl battlewagon rattling its sabres at us.
"No, sir. Automated. I think, sir, they will remain fully charged for... numerous normal firing cycles. Shield frequencies, too, are...." She quirks a blonde eyebrow. "Fascinating."
"Sensor range just tripled," says Win. "Targeting locks for the torpedo tubes...." His voice trails off.
"Structural integrity is off the clock too," Ythill reports.
"Oh, boy." We just got a massive, and I mean massive, boost to my ship's capability. And I figure we have about thirty seconds left to work out how to use it.
"Kara. Send a signal to the Na'kuhl ship, standard Starfleet make-nice-and-what-are-you-doing. Stulk, T'Pren, bring us about, at half our usual impulse speed and thruster capacity. After which -" I fiddle with the little console repeater on my chair, sketching in a course on the tac plotter. "Let's try this."
"Hailing on all frequencies," Kara Grant reports. "No response -"
Below me, the engines have woken up with their usual rising hum... only, this time, the tone keeps on rising, increasing to a sort of wail that resonates throughout the ship.
"Weapons range in ten seconds," says Stulk.
"And those plasma banks are hot," Win adds.
"OK, so let's hope this works," I mutter. On the screen, the Na'kuhl battlecruiser is an ominous bat-winged blood-red blotch. I count down in my head. "Lock phasers, fire as they bear. Hit it."
The Na'kuhl ship's plasma weapons flare green across the sky -
- and the Harrier is already moving, surging forwards at her suddenly enormous full impulse speed.
The Na'kuhl plasma beams burn through empty space, and the ship explodes towards me in the viewer. For a moment, I think we're going to collide. Then T'Pren hits the phasers, and the grunt and hum as the banks discharge is a sudden shriek instead. Bolts of golden light stand out against the enemy ship's red hull, and there is a sudden glare as the Na'kuhl's shield wavers and fails. The golden beams reach through, to rake white-hot molten scars across the enemy hull.
Harrier hurtles past the Na'kuhl. "Hard about! Ready photon torpedoes!"
"Fascinating," says T'Pren. "The increased field-jacketing on the phaser beams has reduced the frequency of the Cherenkov side-emissions -"
"Later." I think she's trying to explain why our phasers are suddenly orange instead of blue. I'm sure it's very interesting - fascinating, even - but I don't need to know about it just now. The Na'kuhl were going for a quick kill, diverting most of their power output to weapons, leaving their shields comparatively weak. Only now their quick kill has missed, and they'll be reconfiguring for a slugging match, instead. And, even with my ship's new power levels, we're still smaller and more fragile than a stonking great Na'kuhl warship. If we get in a slugging match, we're going to lose.
Our photon torpedoes streak out of the tubes - to crash into the Na'kuhl's aft shields, and stop dead. Figures. Software hacks can't boost the output of a photon warhead - I start to rack my brains. Or can they?
Green flames lick towards us from the Na'kuhl ship's aft arrays. Now, it's the turn of our shields to flare. I check the readings. Under that barrage, they should have gone down instantly - as it is, they're holding, just, though some energy's bleeding through -
There is a sudden bang, and a shower of sparks shoots from one of the bridge consoles. "Damage control!" I yell.
"It's OK." Ythill's antennae are still stiff and outstretched. "The energy from the Na'kuhl's shots - it's being dissipated, spread through the power grid. That was just a transient overload on one relay. Resetting now. It's... fine." He doesn't sound like he believes it.
"Phasers. Fast as they can cycle. Keep hitting them."
"We can target individual subsystems on their ship," says Win. "If we can knock out their shield emitters -"
Green flames stab at us again, and the Harrier shakes and lurches. "Try it!" I yell. Another bang from another console. I don't know if I'll ever get used to this. Freaky golden phaser beams claw at the Na'kuhl's shields, but I was right, they've reinforced them, and we're not punching through to the hull any more.
The constant wailing from the engines, the screams of the phaser discharges, aren't making it any easier to think. But I have the vague shadow of an idea -
Then the wailing gets worse, with a buzzing, grating tone underneath it, a vibration which runs through the ship and makes my bones judder inside me.
"Uh-oh," says Ythill.
"Uh-oh what?"
"It's the Na'kuhl weapons," says Ythill. "They've got a temporal component - it's throwing off the timing on the new set-up. The structural integrity field is starting to desynchronize with the warp relays -"
We are starting to shake ourselves apart. Just great. "Hard about, one eight zero mark three. Come in on his flank. T'Pren, target those shield emitters. Stulk, ramp up the compression fields on the photon launchers - override the safeties, crank up the coils as high as they'll go."
"You want me to supercharge the next launch?"
"It should be enough to punch a torp through their shields!"
"Or rip the launchers right out of the saucer!" the Tellarite snaps back at me.
"Yeah, well, we ran out of safe ideas a while back!"
Stulk shakes his head in disbelief. But his thick fingers are moving swiftly on the weapons controls -
"Turn completed. Locking phasers on the enemy's shield emitters." T'Pren's Vulcan calm is very welcome, just now.
"Let 'em have it!"
The phasers shriek once more. There are more spatters of sparks from different parts of the bridge. On the viewer, the Na'kuhl ship is haloed in brilliant light.
Then the halo turns into an expanding shimmer of auroral light - and is gone.
"Torpedo! Now!"
The noise is heart-rending. Harrier bucks and jumps, and for a moment I think Stulk was right, that the overload has torn the torpedo tubes right out of the ship.
But a point of dazzling light streaks across the screen, and into the hull of the enemy ship.
There is a brief pinpoint of light, and then a tiny dark circle on the red hull - and then the Na'kuhl is backlit by a blast of flame and light. The entrance wound of the overcharged torpedo is tiny - but the detonation, deep inside the battlecruiser, has torn a chunk of its guts out, spraying flame and debris and escaping atmosphere through an exit hole I could fly my ship through without touching the sides.
But the Na'kuhl ship is still moving - somehow. It's not dead yet. And the grating scream that surrounds me... sounds as if the Harrier is coming apart.
"Na'kuhl is turning," Win reports. "I'm getting energy readings - I don't recognize them -"
But it's clear what the Na'kuhl is doing, now. Ahead of the ship, a funnel of blue-white light is forming. They've triggered a temporal portal - they're trying to escape into time.
I blink at the whirling lights on the screen. "Full power to shields!" I yell. "And dump whatever we can into structural integrity!"
The battlecruiser is visibly struggling to reach the portal - struggling, and failing. Tremors run through the ship, lightnings crawl along the blood-red hull. The bow of the ship touches the edge of the portal... and visibly deforms, twisting and stretching, streamers of fragments breaking away from it. Another convulsive shudder runs through the Na'kuhl ship's hull - and then it goes, breaking apart in a cloud of flame and shrapnel that suddenly flares white-hot as the core blows.
The viewscreen whites out. The Na'kuhl ship is dead. The problem now is not to follow it.
"Scram the warp core!" I yell. "Shut it down! Open the vents on the Bussard collectors! Vent the warp plasma to space!" If we can clear that colossal overload by blasting the energized plasma out of the nacelles -
The Harrier jolts. All the lights go out. The shrieking engines suddenly die. For a moment, I'm sitting in the dark, wondering if I'm dead too.
Then red emergency lights come on. There's a fair amount of smoke on the bridge, but no more exploding consoles. "Status?" I manage to ask.
"We're -" Ythill swallows, and starts again. "Main plasma manifold blew. We're... We don't have main power, but the overload cleared itself. Like you said, sir, the plasma vented to space. We can replace the manifold, step the core back to normal output...."
"How long?" I ask.
"Hours, sir," says Ythill gloomily.
"OK." I feel light-hearted. And light-headed. "That's fine. We've still got auxiliary power, right? And it's going to take a lot more than a few hours to fix the Na'kuhl ship." I turn to Win. "If the Leacock can handle Kirza, we should be fine, right?"
"I'm trying to get a scan reading now, sir," says Win. "So far.... This is weird."
Uh-oh. "Weird how?"
"I'm not reading any traces of combat. No energy discharges, no debris...." Win's face clears. "I have one ship on positive track. Confirmed ID. It's the Leacock."
"There is significant damage to the control relays." T'Laihhae points to a control console, which I have to admit is showing a worrying number of blinky lights. "That may not be important, however."
"Unless we want to keep breathing," Zula mutters. T'Laihhae affects not to hear her. She goes over to another console, one with even more blinky lights - one that looks subtly different from the others in the control room.
"The key issue," she says, "is this control console, here. It interacts directly with Thyvesh's doorway - the time-space artifact that connects Priyanapari to the Suliban weapons cache. I believe I understand how to use it. And I believe I understand how Thyvesh wants me to use it."
"How's that?" I ask. I look harder at the console. "Yon's pretty advanced temporal tech, hen. An' it disnae luik familiar tae me -"
"It should be familiar to me," says T'Laihhae. "Apparently, I built it. In another timeline."
"Och, ye clever wee thing. An d'ye ken how tae work it in this one?"
There is a millisecond flash of smile. "I believe so." Then her impassive face turns troubled for a second. "I understand how it is meant to be used, too. Thyvesh intends me to betray him."
"Say whit?"
"I believe his intention is that I should destroy his life's work and leave him stranded outside the time-space continuum." Her face looks positively bleak. "At some point, Thyvesh learned how to manipulate the doorway without being in its physical presence. This device... replicates that ability. Only it is mechanical, it does not depend on Thyvesh's powers of concentration, and it will not flinch from things he could not do, himself."
"Such as?" asks Zula.
"Destabilizing the doorway. Permanently. It would rip the artifact out of its current location at Priyanapari, and the effect on the other side - the artificially created temporal inclusion that holds the weapons cache - should be cataclysmic. For the contents of that inclusion."
"An' where's Thyvesh? - dinnae tell me. Inside yon temporal inclusion." I look hard at T'Laihhae. "Ye're awfae rough on yer friends, hen."
She doesn't answer for a moment. When she does speak, her voice sounds strained. "I have always trusted Thyvesh - he has always shown himself to be worthy of trust. I feel I must trust him, even now. Whatever he has planned -"
A shrill warble sounds from another console. I turn and look, but Zula is already there. "Alert from the docking bay," she says. "Vessel inbound."
"An' whit are the chances it'll be friendly? - Dinnae answer that." I pick up my sniper rifle and check it. "Let's hear the worst, then."
Zula presses a switch, and a viewscreen lights up. Feed from a security camera in the docking bay... showing a big red thing swooping through the force shield to settle on the hangar deck. The colour, and the organic shapes of the design, betray its origins immediately.
"Na'kuhl assault shuttle," says Zula. "Trying to get a read on life signs now -"
"Aye," I say, "an' they'll be daein' the same, an' their tech is way better than oors, an' anyway they'll hae spotted the Scorpion as soon as they came in range. Crivens." A bunch of Na'kuhl reinforcements, just now, is not something we needed.
"Five of them," Zula says. She frowns. On her, it looks cute. "That's below normal complement for those assault craft - they must have taken casualties."
The shuttle is down, the hatch is opening. Red-armoured shapes are moving. There's not many of them, as Zula says, but at least two of them are carrying heavy-duty chronoplasma miniguns, and all of them will be angry and alert. This isn't going to be easy.
One Na'kuhl strides down the landing ramp, holding something in one hand. It looks like a hypospray. One of their injector operatives, maybe? He raises his other hand, touches a wrist control -
And a voice sounds. "To the two humans and one Romulan now aboard this station. I am Chrog, commander of the Na'kuhl resistance vessel Strange Attractor. Surrender now, and I might show mercy. Make me hunt for you, and I will show none."
The voice comes from everywhere at once. He's using one of those broadcast systems that turn every flat surface in range into a resonating speaker. Showy. And effective.
T'Laihhae is on the comms console. "This is Admiral T'Laihhae of the Romulan Republic," she says. Her tone is completely stress-free - urbane, almost. "We have complete control of this station's facilities. You would be well advised to depart immediately."
Chrog's laughter echoes around us. "That would be most intimidating," his voice says, "if I did not already know all the capabilities of this station. Such as they are. Very well, you have chosen death. I will make it interesting." On the screen, we can see him as he suddenly drives the hypospray into his own throat. "I have often wondered what it would be like to have superpowers."
"Whit's he on aboot?" I ask under my breath.
T'Laihhae mutters something indistinct. "He must have obtained access to the Suliban weapons. That hypo must have contained a genetic enhancement."
My eyes go wide at that. "He cannae ken how tae use it, though, can he?"
T'Laihhae frowns. "It depends on how extensively they have researched the weapons cache. I spent some time there with Thyvesh.... I cannot claim any extensive knowledge, though." Her dark eyes have turned very calculating.
"Aye, weel, we cannae stay here and let him catch us, am Ah right?"
"It would be unwise." T'Laihhae checks her disruptor pistol. "It would also be preferable, I think, to minimize any further damage to the station's systems."
"Tell that tae th' guys wi' th' miniguns," I say. "Right, then. Let's gae break some heids."
I run for the door, followed by the sound of Zula sighing.
---
"I'm scrambling comms." Zula's voice sounds tinny in my ear. "And I've got as much sensor spoofing going as I can, but don't rely on it." Na'kuhl gear is better than ours.
The question is, what do they expect us to do? I thought about that for, well, some seconds. As far as I know, Chrog doesn't know about T'Laihhae's magic console, so they don't know we've got any pressing need to stay on this station... so, they'll expect us to make a break for the docking bay, grab our ships, and get out of Dodge.
So now we are circling around the observation gallery above the docking bay, trying to figure out where Chrog's people are waiting to ambush us, so that we can ambush them. We've split up, using our combadges to talk, and hoping the Na'kuhl aren't good enough to crack our encryption....
The bleak gallery doesn't offer much in the way of cover. I sidle along it, crouching low so I can't be seen from the docking bay. We think at least one of them's stayed with the shuttle. It would be the sensible thing to do. Never bet against your opponent being sensible, unless they're me.
I sidle all the way to the end of the gallery, where it stops at the housing for the docking bay's force field generators. I pause. To one side of me, there's a stairwell, leading to another entrance to the bay. If I were a Na'kuhl, that's the sort of place I might station a sentry, to pick off anyone heading for the shuttles that way.
I peek quickly round the edge of the door. I'm thinking along the right lines; there's a Na'kuhl trooper one flight of steps beneath me, facing away from me, covering the dock-level door with his minigun. I smile. I raise the rifle to my shoulder, take careful aim, and fire.
The tritanium slug hits him between the shoulder blades, and he goes forward on his face. Good.
Then he swears and gets up again. Less good.
I pull the trigger again, and yell, "They've got heavy duty armour on!" into my combadge. Zula and T'Laihhae need to know, and I've already sort of given myself away. Pale green chronoplasma bolts come streaking upwards towards me, and I duck back round the doorway, though not before one of them makes my personal shield flare and waver.
The bolts slam into the wall... the one with the field generators behind it. Sparks fly. Then the lights flicker, and there is a piercing warble of an alarm from somewhere nearby. It doesn't quite cover the sound of heavy Na'kuhl boots coming up the stairs towards me.
He comes through the doorway at a rush, spraying fire in random directions. More sparks fly. I scream "Creag an tuire!", firing the rifle from the hip. More plasma bolts splash off my shield, and I feel the burn as some of the heat bleeds through - and then, somehow, I hit a weak point in the battle armour, and the Na'kuhl goes down in a heap.
The lights are still flickering, and the alarms have gone from a warble to a steady piercing whine. That can't be good.
I kick the Na'kuhl trooper's minigun away from him, in case he's not quite dead, and then take the stairs at a run. Safe bet I've attracted attention here, and need to be somewhere else. I get to the bottom, ignore the door to the docking bay, and take off down an adjacent corridor. I get about a dozen steps before the lights go out completely.
I blink. Emergency lights kick in... not red, pale violet instead. Denobulan eyes must be different from human ones, that way. They don't light up anything I want to see. Chrog is standing at the end of the corridor, flexing his arms, grinning at me. I point the rifle at him.
"I think we can do without that," he says, and reaches for it.
He's a dozen metres away at least, but his hands reach out and grab the rifle, and pull. Even elongated as they are, his arms are still strong enough to pull the gun out of my grip. His grin gets broader. He holds the rifle across his chest, and flexes his arms again. The rifle groans and creaks and bends into a nice neat U shape.
"Aw, jings," I say, and run for the docking bay door.
Chrog's laughter pursues me. "Keep running!" he shouts. I reach the door, and it fails to slide open in front of me. There's a panel on the wall beside it; I slam at what I hope is an override switch.
Air gusts around me, and the door opens, and there is a low keening noise which says atmosphere leak. I dive through anyway, into the docking bay, and a world of cold.
Pressure. The force field at the entrance must have been compromised, air is leaking out. Failsafes should have kicked in - but we don't know how this station works, we don't know how well it works, and the gunfight in main engineering must have done more damage than we'd thought. It is very cold, and the thin air is pulling at my chest and making my pulse hammer in my ears. There's another door, at the other side of the bay - I have to get to that -
I run, and it's like I'm running in a dream; sounds are muffled, and the awful emptiness is pulling at me from all sides. Movement. Nearby. A turret on the Na'kuhl shuttle is turning, the muzzles of plasma guns trying to point at me. I duck down, hope they can't depress far enough to get me in their line of fire. The other door must be thirty metres away. No distance, really, I could cover it in a few seconds - normally - if I could breathe -
My combadge is saying something, I don't know what, I can't hear properly over the buzzing in my ears. And there is something else - a voice behind me.
"Keep running."
I turn and glance back, across the freezing deck. Chrog is behind me. The thinning atmosphere doesn't seem to be bothering him at all. Something else is moving. The shuttle. The access hatch is opening.
I have a phaser pistol in my transporter buffer. Doubt it'll do any good. But I have a few other things besides, and I pull one of them out now.
The assault shuttle's hatch is open, and another Na'kuhl is coming out, a pistol in his hands, a sealed helmet on his head. Should have brought one of those myself. I am maybe fifteen metres from the door, now. I concentrate, summon up whatever's left in my muscles, pick up the pace. Fifteen metres - ten - five.
I spin around and yell, "Catch!" at Chrog, and throw the grenade.
Give him credit, he doesn't try to catch it. He dives to one side, but the neutronic grenade has a nice big blast radius, there's no way he can dive far enough. The grenade goes up in a bright colourless flash. The other Na'kuhl is caught in the blast too, I watch him arc upwards, over the hull of the shuttle. The blast wave is slightly weaker when it hits me, weak enough that my shield can cope. It shoves me hard into the wall, and I fumble for the door controls, and fight the wind as the door opens for me -
I'm through, into the next corridor. My chilled lungs suck in oxygen eagerly, too eagerly - I double up in a coughing fit. The main lights are still off. Somehow, I straighten up, start to stagger down the corridor. I need a weapon. I touch the controls for the transporter buffer, hidden in the braid of my left cuff. The phaser pistol materializes, and drops through my numbed fingers. I swear, and bend down to pick it up.
When I straighten up again, I hear the door hiss open behind me. Wind gusts about me - the docking bay must be nearly in vacuum by now. "I did not appreciate that." Chrog's voice sounds thick. Maybe the soft vacuum and the neutronic explosion have hurt him.
Hey, I'm an optimist.
I turn around and aim the phaser. He doesn't bother grabbing it, he just makes a fist and hits me from ten metres away. Stars explode in my vision, and suddenly I'm flat on my back and don't know how I got there. I've dropped the phaser. I'd like to stand up and get it, but my body doesn't want to cooperate.
Heavy footsteps lumber towards me. I grit my teeth, and see more stars. My body needs to cooperate, whether it wants to or not. I roll over, gather myself, get my legs under me.
Something heavy thuds to the floor beside me. The noise is startling, it would make me jump, if I could jump. As it is, I manage to stagger to my feet.
Dim shapes in front of me resolve into familiar figures. Zula. T'Laihhae. And another shape, lying on the floor beside me. I stare down. Chrog's face is livid and suffused, and beneath his red armour, his body is bulging and misshapen. Zula's hand is on my shoulder, supporting me.
"Ye've got th' ither two, then,"I croak.
Zula nods. T'Laihhae is kneeling by Chrog, a tricorder in her hand. "What got him?" I ask. "The grenade, or the air loss? And why'd it tak' sae long?"
"Biochemical imbalances," says T'Laihhae. "The Suliban genetic enhancements were usually provided by their - future ally. There was always a temporal component in their administration. Very likely, the tailored retrovirals were implanted early in development, possibly even in utero. Simply dosing himself with them was not enough - it has provoked a massive auto-immune reaction to the altered cells. And every time he drew on his new abilities, the process accelerated."
"Should've read the manual," I mutter. I look down. Na'kuhl aren't pretty, by human standards, even at the best of times. The look of this one's face... well, let's just say it's not the best of times.
I take a deep breath. Somehow, I manage not to cough.
"Aye, weel," I say. "That jist leaves us where we were before, am Ah right? We need tae figure oot some way tae get your friend Thyvesh -"
I don't get any further before T'Laihhae draws her disruptor pistol and shoots me in the head.
Before the body has time to drop, I swing the gun round to cover the other one. Her eyes are wide, her body tense. I have one moment to explain myself, before she launches herself at me.
"Set to stun," I say. "We have no more time for discussion. Get her to your fighter. Can you use the same route that brought you here?"
She stares hard at me, at the gun, at her commander's unconscious body on the floor. "The hangar deck is depressurized -"
"I can restore the force field. Temporarily. The gunfire, and the explosion, have further damaged the power mains. Get her to your fighter."
She stoops and gathers Caird up in her arms. "If you've hurt her," she hisses, "I'll have your guts for it, Admiral."
"I hope you will have the opportunity." I holster the gun. There is an emergency workstation by the doorway; I activate it, start to tap in the commands I need.
Gunfire ruptured an electroplasma main, and Caird's neutronic grenade finished the job. I can restore the force field by cross-circuiting a structural integrity generator - but it robs the station's overall SI field of power it needs, especially as I create a pressure imbalance by bleeding air from a reservoir to replenish the hangar bay - there are too many factors to juggle, and not enough resources.
There is a sound like a vast door slamming, and the deck beneath me quivers. "Hangar deck is repressurized. I do not know how long it will hold. Go."
She has Caird in a fireman's carry. She looks hard at me. "What about you?"
"I will follow. As soon as I can." I will use the gig's navigation console to retrace the path Thyvesh took, back to the Messalina. I hope. The Starfleet woman bites her lip, then heads for the door, shooting me one last dubious glance over her shoulder, before she goes.
And I turn, and run.
---
I run towards the console, and the station trembles around me. I have a vague feeling, in the back of my mind, that I have done this before... though I know I have not. Except perhaps in a dream, a dream of a memory that no longer exists -
I have no time for this.
The station is trembling, a deep humming tone seeming to sing through the structure, as I dash through the doorway and into the control room. The console is there. I am in time. Just.
Now, to consider what I must do -
I could set the console to send a... a jamming signal, I suppose, would be the best analogy. Only this will only last as long as the console does, and the console will only last as long as the station, and the station... is not healthy. I think, furiously. The console, and one side of the door, are outside normal space-time... but if the console's own subjective timeline ends, surely its effect on the door must end too?
I do not know. I would have to be well versed in temporal mechanics, to know for sure. What I am sure of - is that I can take no risks. Whatever I do now, I must end this.
My mouth goes dry as I start to punch in commands.
Extend the radius of the console's operation, so that it covers the whole of the station - I can do that. Then, there is a built-in... tropism. An affinity between the console and the door. I can use that, too. My fingers are trembling. This should work -
I enter the last command, and set the time delay. Five minutes. In the current time frame of the station. The procedure will execute in five minutes. I have that long to get clear.
I run.
My boots clatter on the trembling deck. Five minutes. I only hope the station will last another five minutes. I dare not trust the turbolifts. I find a ladder, scramble down it, hand over hand.
A sudden jolt leaves me sprawling on the deck at the foot of the ladder. Four minutes. I am one level above the hangar deck. I run for the next accessway, and the lighting flickers. Too much damage to the power mains. I suppose it is fortunate that I only reactivated one of the fusion reactors - if the station had been at full power, it would have blown up by now.
I do not bother with the next ladder, I simply drop through the accessway and onto the lower deck. Time is running out. But the door to the hangar is in sight, now, and I run to it.
And it does not open.
I check the status panel next to it. The force field is failing again, the air pressure has dropped - the doors are sealed as a safety precaution. Three minutes. I open up the panel, short out the sensors, crank the hydraulics manually. Air whistles, then screams, around the slowly opening door. Two minutes. If that.
I plunge through the door, with a cold wind gusting at my back, and my ears pop. The air pressure is low, so very low - it is like being on the peak of a high mountain. I feel a dreadful void opening in my chest, hear a buzzing in my ears, while other sounds go dim and dull and dead.
The Scorpion fighter is gone - Caird and her companion should be on their way to safety. The gig is still there. I fumble with my wrist communicator, send a command override to the gig's computer. The access hatch opens, beckoning me, welcoming. I have lost track of time. I move through a strange, empty, cold world, a hollow ache in my chest, a dreadful fuzziness in my vision.
I reach the open hatch, clamber inside, hit the control. The hatch hisses shut. Air and heat surround me as the gig's interior repressurizes. I blink away the encroaching dizziness, stumble to the pilot's seat.
"Combat -" The word catches in my throat, and I choke and cough. "Combat emergency. Immediate lift-off." The main console is a maze of dancing lights before my eyes. One minute. Less.
The gig lifts. I grab the flight stick, aim the nose of the little ship outwards, away from the station. Seconds, only. I push the thrusters to maximum, blink away the tears from my frigid eyes, inhale deeply. Thyvesh's course coordinates. They are still on the autopilot. I engage the reverse sequence, and slump back in the chair. There is nothing more I can do.
Ahead of me, there is only blackness. After a short time, I reach out, activate a viewscreen, call up reverse angle. Behind me, there is also blackness. The station is gone, as if it had never been.
I smile to myself at that. After all, it had never been.
The gig is travelling along the path Thyvesh set, a path that leads through dimensions I was never meant to see. All around me is an infinite and uncaring nothingness. An ultimate trackless waste. We would need.... What would we need, to explore this? Someone who could see as Thyvesh sees, someone who could find the rare oases of reality in this endless desert of unformed space-time.
I try to think how long it took, when we came here... but does time mean anything in this bizarre realm? The autopilot bleeps quietly to itself from time to time. No alarm sounds, but I do not know if that is meaningful - I could be going home, or I could be drifting forever in a space outside the universe. I find I am almost too tired to care.
Then, suddenly, there is light.
The forward viewports fill with stars and grey-green light - there is a world out there, a planet, poor in vegetation, perhaps, but not the blasted ruin of Priyanapari that I left behind me. And there is other light - blue and shifting, and beyond it, a dire green glow pulsing at the heart of a nest of thorns.
Messalina, and she has locked on a tractor beam. I reach for the comms console.
"This is T'Laihhae calling Messalina," I say. "I have returned... I hope."
I look daggers at T'Laihhae. "Ah can listen tae a reasoned argument, ye ken," I tell her. "There wisnae ony need tae stun me."
She is unrepentant. "There was no time for discussion. The damage to the station was too severe." She gives me a brief flicker of a smile, even. "At least your companion will not need to demand my intestines."
Ronnie Grau mutters something darkly. We're in a conference room on Earth Spacedock, for what might be an after-action debrief session - if we're sure the action is over. T'Mev has the chronographic reports, Ronnie and I have transcripts of our previous debriefing session - either a century and a half ago, or a day ago, it depends on your perspective - Tylha Shohl is there poring over the feedback from the Harrier's upgrade, and T'Laihhae, hopefully, has brought some explanations.
Tylha's antennae have been twitching for some time, and now she speaks. "This doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I can see the performance data, including the desynchronization issue -"
"Damn near shook the ship apart," Ronnie grumbles.
"- and I can work out a way to fix it," Tylha continues, "so why didn't I? I mean -"
"Because that desynchronization thing," says Ronnie, "hadn't happened when you made the original software hack. Sure, that data is a century or so old now, but it didn't exist, day before yesterday. I hate these temporal shenanigans," she adds with feeling. "What else have we got that didn't exist until just now?" She looks daggers at me. "There was the whole debrief with you and Starfleet Command -"
"Aye," I say cheerfully, "weel, we handled yon jist fine, am Ah right?"
"I didn't actually get cashiered," says Ronnie, "so that's something."
"Oh, face facts, Ronnie," says Tylha, "your disciplinary record was never anything to write home about, was it? - I could do something with this," she continues, staring at the PADD in her hand. "Maybe pull an old Constitution-class spaceframe from the mothball yards, see if I can install these software mods on some up-to-date systems...."
T'Mev clears her throat. "We have reports from our temporal observatories," she says, "which may clarify the questions that have been posed. We can confirm, for example, that the temporal intervention has been broadly successful."
"How broadly?" Ronnie asks.
"Your timeline has not been significantly affected, barring only the resolution of the predestination paradox that you, yourself, created. We can confirm the termination of the Na'kuhl agents' personal timelines, and that of their ship. And, most significantly, Priyanapari is now a marginally habitable class L world, with no temporal anomalies or unusual relics, except for a single crater on its surface - evidence of an explosion, in the twenty-third century."
"Which would hae wiped oot all traces o' th' Na'kuhl camp," I say. I turn back to T'Laihhae. "So how exactly did ye dae it?"
"The damage to the station was extensive," T'Laihhae says. "I could not afford, I believed, simply to set up a - a jamming signal - with the console. So, I used it in another manner. Since it was keyed to Thyvesh's doorway, I was able to relocate it, with only a modest outlay of energy, so that its coordinates coincided with the doorway's location." She gives another flash of smile. "In plain terms, I crashed the space station into the Suliban weapons cache."
"Oh," I say, because I can't immediately think of anything else.
"And that worked?" asks Ronnie.
"The weapons cache itself was not terribly extensive. The energy release, when the station started to occupy the same space-time point, was more than sufficient to vaporize both. Some of the energy, in fact, bled through the other side of the doorway, on Priyanapari. Enough to destroy the physical aspect of the door, there, in the explosion whose relic we see today."
"Which leaves us with only a couple of loose ends," says Ronnie, "but damn, they're nasty ones. Thyvesh. Clefune. Kirza."
"I am... almost certain," says T'Laihhae softly, "that Thyvesh was in the vicinity of the doorway when I destroyed it. It... it seems to be the solution he required." And she turns her face away from the rest of us.
"There was considerable concern over the apparent demise of an Organian," T'Mev says.
"Oh, yeah," says Ronnie, "I kind of noticed that, in the debriefing."
"In the current timeline," T'Mev continues, "this was allayed, some two months later, by a communication from the Organians themselves. A joint conference was arranged between Federation, Imperial and Organian dignitaries, to provide a list of - as the Organians put it - suggested projects for joint endeavours."
"I remember that," Ronnie says, and she pulls a face. "I remember it now.... The only time the Organians showed their faces, after the initial treaty signing. They brought us a whole long list of planets and asteroids, with details of the resources we could use... I don't think either side got through even a tenth of them before the Genesis crisis."
"And then, after the Praxis explosion, diplomatic relations between Federation and Empire were on an entirely different footing in any event," says T'Mev. "The Organians listed two hundred and seventy-seven possible projects in the sector, with another eight hundred and fourteen suggested secondary targets. They also provided, in an appendix, a list of the other habitable and marginal worlds in that region of space. Priyanapari appears on that last list."
"They buried it," says Ronnie. "They deliberately drew attention away from it. The clever little -"
"Both Federation and Empire were keen to show cooperation with the Organians," says T'Mev. "The joint conference was, in fact, regarded as a diplomatic success. I have a visual record of the final session -" She taps on her own PADD, and an image forms on the conference room's viewscreen.
"Haud on a wee minute," I say.
"Oh," says Ronnie.
"Is that who Ah think it is? Only Ah didnae get a verra guid look at him -"
"Oh, yeah," says Ronnie. "I never forget a face."
She stands up, goes to the screen, and taps on it. The Klingon ambassadors are on the left side of the picture, the Federation on the right, and in the middle are a group of undistinguished-looking humanoids in mediaeval clothes. Ronnie's finger is prodding at one of them.
"That's Clefune," she says. "Or maybe another Organian who's built the same body? - But it's got to be sending some kind of message, anyway. That Clefune... survived... somehow? Maybe?"
"But if Clefune survived...." Ronnie shakes her head. "So what did happen to Kirza?"
"Imperial records show her lost on a mission on the Federation borders," says T'Mev. "A formal diplomatic inquiry was made - and a subspace message from the Organians, in response, informed them that no treaty violation had occurred. The Empire was not disposed to question the Organians more closely."
"So... what did happen?" Ronnie asks again.
"Ah checked the Leacock's sensor logs," I say. "The Hov'etlh wis closin' at max impulse when she jist... blinked oot. Nae trace. Ah'm guessin' Kirza hit th' wrong button on her temporal weapon, an' it backfired on her." I shrug. "But it's nae mair than a guess."
---
Afterwards, once we've all agreed what bits we're never allowed even to think about again, I make my way down the corridors and lift shafts of Earth Spacedock, down towards where the Leacock is docked. I feel tired. After-action reports will do that for me.
But my spirits lift as I see a tall blonde figure leaning against the bulkhead by the docking port. Even in twenty-fifth century coveralls, Zula's a welcome sight.
"Hi, hen," I say.
"Did it all go well?" she asks.
"Oh, aye. Paperwork, it's nae but a chore, after all.... Ah hear tell ye had some words wi' yon trigger-happy Romulan. Thanks fer that, ony road."
"If anyone gets to shoot you," says Zula, "it's going to be me. You are still trouble." She touches the key panel, and the door slides open. We stroll on together, into the docking tube.
"Ah'm th' fun sort of trouble, though. Admit it."
"Oh, sure." She snorts. "If you want your fun dangerous, unpredictable, and damn near incomprehensible."
"Aye, weel." I shoot her a quick glance as we carry on walking down the tube. "Ye ken aboot th' accent? Ah wis nae but a wee bairn when we moved tae England... an', weel, iverythin' wis strange and new, except th' way mah parents spoke... Ah had t' hae somethin' tae hang on tae, ye ken? An' Ah wis teased fer it at school - och, ye can guess that - an' that jist made me hang on all the harder." My voice grows a little soft. "When ye've had sae many things ta'en away... ye hang on tae what ye can. An', weel, Ah'm a lang way frae home, these days."
"Yes," says Zula. "Yes, I guess I understand." She lowers her voice, too. "And some things are worth hanging on to."
We've reached the end of the tube, where the docking collar fits snugly onto the yellowish ceramic coating of the Leacock's hull. Zula reaches for the airlock's control panel, but drums her fingers on the hull, instead.
"You're still trouble, though," she says. "And you're my commanding officer, now - I mean, OK, Starfleet guidelines are just that, they're guidelines, but it'd still be, well, improper...."
I don't say anything. Because, sometimes, I'm not stupid.
Zula sighs. "I get off duty at 2300, and I'm going straight to my quarters," she says. "I guess, if you leave your propriety outside my door, you can pick it up again in the morning."
"What happened?" Kirza screamed at the blank screen. She rounded on Kuruth. "What is wrong with the viewer? Where is our targeting lock?" She clutched at the armrest of the command chair. "My tactical repeater is blank -"
"Trying to reacquire target," said Kuruth. "Checking circuitry -"
"Sir -" Kingrol began.
"We will be in range of the enemy in seconds!" roared Kirza. "I need sensors! Fix this!"
"Sir -" Kingrol said again.
"What?"
Kingrol swallowed. "There was a surge in the temporal circuitry -"
"A surge? What does that mean?"
"It is possible that -"
Kingrol got no further. A hot wind started to blow across the Hov'etlh's bridge, and the ruddy light was suddenly augmented by a blinding glare that hung in the air -
"You!" Kirza reached instinctively for her disruptor - then let it go with a yelp of pain, as it turned intolerably hot in her hand.
Clefune glared at her. "You caused me personal inconvenience," he said. "More than that, you occasioned me actual physical distress. Actual pain. I had quite forgotten how unpleasant that was."
"Give me a chance," snarled Kirza, "and I will remind you." She bared her teeth at the Organian.
"I have no desire to be reminded further," said Clefune. "And your behaviour has been - has been impermissible. So I have taken action. I have used your temporal device to remove you to a place where you can do no further damage. I will now use it myself, to return to my own time - and I will fuse the circuitry in the process. You will not be able to restore it, I assure you. You may consider this -" he drew himself up, haughtily "- a condign punishment for your disgraceful actions." And, with a final dismissive sniff, he vanished again in a glare of light.
There was a sudden explosion, and a console erupted in a torrent of sparks. Kingrol cursed.
"Status," snapped Kirza, as she stooped to retrieve her disruptor.
"He... did not lie," said Kingrol. "That was a secondary surge in the control circuits. The Nhandesson weapon... it has melted."
"What of our status? Get those sensors back!"
"Sensors are operative," said Kuruth. "The screen is blank only because... there is nothing to see."
"What do you mean?" Kirza demanded.
Kuruth swallowed. "I have background radiation on scan," he said slowly. "Consistent with one source. Proton decay."
"Explain yourself."
"For proton decay to be detectable... we must be in a place where there is nothing else left. A place so old that there is nothing else left. The Organian... he has transported us into the ultimately far future. To the end of the universe."
"Leave out the poetry! How far in the future?"
Kuruth shrugged. "It is meaningless. Quintillions, sextillions of years. So vast a span of time as to be... unimaginable." His voice suddenly broke. "Except that we do not need to imagine it, we can see it...."
"Sextillions of years." Kirza stared into the empty blackness on the viewscreen. The corner of her mouth twitched.
"Some time track where the universe underwent continual expansion," Kuruth continued in a broken monotone. "Vaster and vaster, emptier and emptier, for all eternity...."
"Do you know what this means?" Kirza asked. Her mouth was still twitching.
"No way back," said Kingrol in a dead voice.
"No," said Kirza. "Do you know what it means?" Her voice was high-pitched, on the verge of cracking. "It means we are alone. At the end of time. All there is, is us...." She threw back her head and laughed. "It means I am triumphant! I am the last, the only, the ultimate commander! All hail! All hail Kirza, daughter of K'Var, of the House of Karav! All hail Empress Kirza, ruler of the universe! All hail!"
Kuruth and Kingrol exchanged glances. Quietly, stealthily, they and the other officers left their posts, left the bridge, left their captain alone with the empty screen and her laughter.
After the debriefing, I make my way back to the Messalina and my quarters. I am tired, and deeply troubled over the unanswered questions we still have.
I am not so tired that I do not immediately spot the object lying on my bed.
I remain quite still for a second, then draw out my tricorder, slowly and carefully. The object does not respond as I activate the scanning function. It is what it appears to be... a small commercial holo-emitter, suitable for mementoes or messages. There is a trace of organic material, but nothing that registers as harmful.
But how did it get there? I take a nervous step towards the bed, then another. The emitter does not react. I reach out, holding my breath, and touch its playback control.
Thyvesh's image, transparent and faintly luminous, appears in the air over the emitter.
"By the time you see this," his voice says, "I will be dead. It is unfortunate, but it cannot, now, be avoided. I tried to avoid it, the first time."
His voice sounds stronger and more certain than I remember it. Perhaps it is the knowledge of his impending death that makes him concentrate.
"The first time someone found the weapons cache at Priyanapari, it was a Tal Shiar Commander working for a General Vorkov, who wanted a political advantage against a rival named Hakeev. This Commander found the doorway, attracted my attention, and compelled me, by - methods I will not describe - to comply with her wishes. She was ruthless. She was clever. Her name was T'Laihhae i-Kanai tr'Aellih."
I feel the blood drain out of my face.
"She drove me to acquire my current levels of awareness, to enhance my sensitivity to the chroniton streams. She thought it would make me a better tool. She was right, I suppose - but the enhanced sensitivity also gave me more control over the doorway. I used that. I went back to a decision point, took a step.... I planted suspicion in Vorkov's mind, made him take a step that turned T'Laihhae against him. Turned you against him. Together, we built the console, and used that to circumvent the original you. Then I went back, to teach the techniques that she had made me learn, to an earlier me, before I ever met her. With your time-track and mine subverted, the original events at Priyanapari - simply never happened."
I stare dumbly at the image. The voice continues.
"I wanted to go on, but... it is not possible. That is what I discovered. The increased sensitivity to the time streams... forced me to an awareness. To the awareness that there was no way the Suliban could win. For all our weapons, all our ingenuity. We could divert the time stream, we could blast whole civilizations into nonexistence... but we could only work with what we had, and what we had was not enough. For the Suliban to become the dominant galactic power, we would have to change things... too much. Either make the galaxy a wrecked thing, not worth the trouble of dominating... or make the Suliban into something that was no longer Suliban. That simple knowledge... that was enough to break my earlier self. To break me. To know that, whatever I did, however I tried, the cause to which I had given my life - was futile."
His voice drops. "I knew, even then, that something else would happen. That there would be more meddlers in time, that the archive would be uncovered again. And I knew... it would have to end, and I would have to end along with it. I knew your abilities. I knew you would find some way to destroy the archive. And I knew... I know, now... that my own timeline would have to turn to a closed circle, somewhere within it."
He takes a deep breath. "As I make this recording, I know my younger self is looking for me. He will demand that I teach him the awareness techniques which disillusioned me to the point of madness. I know that, when I do so, he will realize what I realized. He will lash out, will kill me, in response. I welcome it. I have lived a long life, and much of it several times over. It needs to end."
His voice is so low that it is barely audible. "Goodbye, T'Laihhae. I will not ask for your forgiveness."
The image winks out.
I stand there, staring at the emitter, for a long time. I do not know what I feel about this. I do not know how to feel about this. I have always thought of Thyvesh as a friend. Now I know... that he made me what I am. That he set up the situation in which I betrayed another friend to execution... that, without him, I would have been - what? Something which I now despise - but that I would not have despised, without him -
I do not know what to feel. I think, perhaps, I never will.
I pick the emitter up, and feel something rattle inside it. There is a compartment in it - often the case, with these commercial gadgets; a little space for a trinket, a physical memento. I find the compartment, open it.
The rank badge drops into my hand. It is a conventional enough raptor, but twisted, crushed and bent. There are old, dried bloodstains on it. I close my hand around it, and my fingers fit perfectly. My badge. My blood. From the time when I took it off, crushed it, dropped it into the dust.
From the day that Thyvesh made me.
He took two Romulan soldiers, made one a corpse, made another a hero of the Republic. Perhaps it is best that he is dead. Because nobody should have that much power.
I trusted him. And, in the end, I left him to his death, and destroyed his life's work forever. Justice, perhaps? Betrayal wrapped around betrayal, and the last treason is also the first.
I put the badge back in the compartment, and close it. I find an empty shelf and put the holo-emitter on it. Then I go to my bed, lie down, and stare at the ceiling. I am desperately tired, but sleep will be a long time coming.
Comments
In the deathly silence of the weapons store, the sudden screeching and grating sound is a mind-numbing shock. I clap my hands to my ears, and turn around, trying to identify the source of the noise - but it seems impossible; the noise is everywhere, all about me, echoing off the impossible limits of this space.
Dimly, I become aware of Thyvesh's voice. I concentrate, make out the words he is shouting: "- the door! The door is in motion -"
I have lost my bearings, in among all the glowing columns of light with the deadly devices inside them. Thyvesh, though, seems to know where he is going. I follow him as he runs between the columns -
The sudden silence is almost as nerve-shattering as the noise itself. Thyvesh does not slow down, though. He runs with almost frantic urgency, picking his way unerringly between the columns of light. The artifact - the door - comes into view, now. It is spinning, churning. It rotates on some unguessable axis, aspects of it revolving into view from unknown dimensions.... The sight is disturbing.
"Not yet," Thyvesh gasps. He is out of breath. "Not this time. Not yet."
"Thyvesh." I am panting, myself. "Thyvesh, what happened?"
"He is -" Thyvesh swallows loudly, and a shudder runs through his body. "My counterpart, he is using the Na'kuhl ship's temporal technology to probe the door. To try and interface with it, activate it, remotely."
"As you can?"
He laughs, long and wildly. "Oh, yes. As I can. Very much as I can."
I study the thing. Its movement seems to be slowing. "He did not succeed."
"No. Not this time. But we did not succeed, either. When we tried. Or did not."
His mind must be wandering into alternative timelines again. "When did we try? What did we try?"
"The console. On the station. The console - it is for managing the door."
So much, I had already gathered. "When we - were not here - before," I murmur.
"Yes." Thyvesh clutches at his head. "So many different timelines."
Too many to be helpful to us now. "What can we do?"
"I must - try harder. To keep control. I am here, now, and I can hold the door from this side." But there is doubt in his voice. Whatever his counterpart is trying, it is taking a toll on Thyvesh.
I put my hand on his shoulder, feel his trembling. "Thyvesh. Is there anything I can do to help?"
His tremors increase. With a sudden shock, I realize he is laughing. "Yes," he says. "No. You will know what to do, when the moment comes. You always did."
He turns to face me. His eyes are wild. "You will know. And I trust you. I trust you to betray me."
The shifting metal shapes of the impossible door suddenly speed up, and a faint screaming sound makes itself audible as surfaces grind together. The shapes spin and twist and slide into new configurations -
- and suddenly the door is a door, a rectangular opening, twice the height of a man, filled with a swirling blackness -
Thyvesh moves, quickly, too quickly. I have no time even to think of offering resistance, before he seizes me by the shoulder and thrusts me through the door.
---
I spin into the darkness, and it enfolds me, and for a time I know nothing. I do not even know how long a time - if such a concept can even be said to have meaning....
Then there is light, dazzling my eyes, and weight, and noises, and a foul smell of burning.
I drop to a crouch, rubbing my eyes, trying to get my bearings. Where has Thyvesh thrown me, where and when? - There is smoke in the air, metal deck plates under my feet. The place seems vaguely familiar....
Metal floor - metal walls - metal shapes of consoles. The control room of the Denobulan station - the very place we fled from, when the Na'kuhl ship arrived. The smoke in the air - I gather my wits. There is a release of energy, Thyvesh said, when the door is opened. This room must have been filled with a burst of heat and lightning, just as I arrived.
It has worked to my favour, I think. There is a smouldering shape on the floor nearby, humanoid, dressed in what was once heavy red body armour. A Na'kuhl, blasted down by the force from the door. The only one here, though? I could never be that fortunate.
The equipment - the equipment is rugged, it is superficially scorched, but undamaged. Or perhaps Thyvesh has sufficient fine control to direct most of the energy at the Na'kuhl? - In any case, the most important thing, the console, is still functional. The Na'kuhl have not tampered with it. Not yet, at least.
Somewhere far off, there are noises. Distant, but horribly familiar. The shrill sounds of energy weapons.
Fighting. There is fighting, somewhere on the station. I stand up, turn to the station's control console. I must decipher Thyvesh's purpose, find out why he has sent me here, determine the meaning of his cryptic comments.
First, though, I must find out who is fighting whom, and which side - if any - I am on. The familiar sense of practicality grips me as I engage the internal sensors. First, of all things, I must survive.
"It must be some peasant ceremony of welcome," I say airily. The Na'kuhl glares at me. "You really shouldn't have gone to all the trouble," I tell him. He glares some more.
Behind him, a pale-green line of chronoplasma stabs through the twilight, shooting up at the stars. There is an ominous warbling of Klingon disruptors in the background as well. I don't know what's in those big hexagonal buildings, but clearly it's worth fighting over. I'm itching to go take a look, but me and my landing party are currently surrounded by Na'kuhl guards with itches of their own, mostly in their trigger fingers, and I'm not sure how far my bluff with the Organian will carry me.
"Reading multiple Klingon and Na'kuhl life signs," says Kara Grant. The Na'kuhl are looking daggers at her tricorder, too. "Weapons fire - well, obviously. There's a few other life signs, I think mostly Klingon auxiliaries... and one other." She frowns. "Suliban, maybe? It's hard to tell with all this sensor interference."
"There is a local difficulty," a fresh, harsh voice says from behind me. I turn around. Another Na'kuhl is striding towards us. This one looks... well, confident. Important. The ones we've seen so far are obviously just grunts, like the three security guards I've got backing up me, Kara and T'Pren - but this Na'kuhl moves with a definite arrogance in her stride, even though I can't read any rank insignia on her uniform. She has those weird facial markings that make it look like her eyes are bleeding. Maybe this makes her dead sexy by Na'kuhl standards. It's not doing anything for me, though.
"Captain Veronika Grau, USS Harrier," I say. "Call me Ronnie, everyone does. What's with all the running around and shooting, then?"
"I am Luga." She fixes me with a glare from her red eyes. "You should not be here. There is a local difficulty, and I cannot guarantee your safety."
"Don't worry, I can't guarantee yours either. We'd gathered you were cosy with the Klinks, so what's brought all this on?"
"There is a local difficulty," she repeats. Somewhere nearby, someone vents a dying scream in a locally-difficult sort of way.
"Sounds like it," I say. "Well, maybe we can help? Starfleet is famous for its ability to resolve difficulties with goodwill and diplomacy." Behind me, Yeoman Harris makes a sort of stifled noise. He was one of the ground troops during that Sircab IV incident, which was not notable for goodwill.
"This is not a matter for Starfleet or the Federation," says Luga.
"Oh, but it is," I say. "Under the terms of the Organian treaty, undeveloped worlds like this belong to whoever can develop them most effectively. And if the Klingons are planning any development, we're entitled to come see what they're doing, and put in a counter-offer if we feel like it."
Luga gives me a very nasty look. "This planet lies outside the regions specified in the Organian peace treaty."
"That is not technically correct," says T'Pren. "According to our charts of the isoenergetic ionization fields in this sector -"
"Your measurements are incorrect," Luga snaps.
"Yeah, well," I say, "setting boundaries in space is always kind of a fraught issue, isn't it? We could argue about iso-whatevers for a long time, but the reality is, this is a world in the fringes of our mutual frontier, and whatever the ionization readings say, the fact is, it's governed by the treaty because the Organians are taking a direct interest."
"So I gather." I didn't think it was possible for her to look any uglier, but she manages it. "Where is your Organian observer?"
"Clefune? Around and about. Probably in several places at once, you know what Organians are like.... I'm surprised he isn't making all your weapons red hot already, come to think of it. Maybe he's waiting for us to take a hand ourselves."
"We do not need your help in dealing with this -"
"Local difficulty? You wouldn't get it anyway. Under the terms of the treaty, we'd probably have to side with the Klingons, against you. Don't worry, I'm not anxious to start it. I'd prefer it if people stopped shooting, in fact. Much less strain on my nerves."
She snorts, and eyes me in a way that I don't like at all. I probably know more about the Na'kuhl than I should, maybe more than most people in this current Starfleet, because I must be the last person alive who managed to stay awake through all of Admiral Reed's reminiscences... but knowing about them makes me painfully aware of what I don't know. Are these idealistic Na'kuhl, out to preserve their timeline and their civilization, or are they the ground-down, cynical terrorists that Reed and the old Enterprise ran into? And, technically, whatever sort of Na'kuhl she is, Luga is from my future. So what does she know about me, that makes her give me funny looks?
"You may soon get your wish." She looks down at her wrist, where she is wearing some sort of monitoring device that's probably better than my ship's entire sensor suite. "I think the firing is dying down. The localized dispute between the Klingons and our support units will soon be resolved, and you can then discuss the arrangements under the Organian treaty with Captain Kirza. I am sure you will find her just as reasonable as we have." Her thin lips are very tight. "I may have issues of my own to raise with Captain Kirza -"
Then there is a strange humming sound in the air, and a faint, shimmering rainbow glow steals through the Priyanapari twilight.
Kara raises her tricorder. "I'm getting some very strange readings -"
The rainbow light flickers and intensifies, illuminating the large hexagonal buildings. The shooting has stopped. On the outskirts of the area, I notice brief silent flickers of Klingon transporter beams.
The rainbows fade away. And so do the buildings under them. Luga's mouth drops open. So does mine, but I close it quick. I move next to Kara and peer at her tricorder screen.
"Quantum-entangled temporal anomaly?" I sound clever, there. It's just because I spent a lot of time studying the theory behind the Stygmalian Rift and whatever went on inside it. I know temporal malarky when I see it, and I'm looking at some now.
"It... could be, sir," says Kara.
"That is my suspicion also." T'Pren has a tricorder out herself. "Something was linked to those buildings at a subchronal causative level. That - influence - has now been removed. In its absence -"
The big buildings themselves have become... absent. Some Na'kuhl, who were sheltering behind them, now stand up and look a bit stupid. There is a clatter and a crash as a lean-to structure, with nothing left to lean against, falls over.
I run things around in my head. I'm not sure I like the answers. There was something here, there was a "local difficulty" over it between the Klingons and the Na'kuhl... and now that something isn't here any more. And the Na'kuhl are still around, while the Klingons beamed out. Conclusion: whatever it is, the Klingons have it.
I squint into the gathering darkness. Or do they? Because the buildings may have vanished, but they've left something behind....
I stroll off towards it, whatever it is. One of the Na'kuhl guards blocks my path; I keep on strolling. He gives me a look that's redolent of loathing, and steps aside. You can go anywhere if you can fake enough confidence.
I get within about twenty yards of the thing, then stop. I look at it.
It's a complex metal thing, quite a bit taller than me, and formidably complicated. In fact - I frown. Maybe it's the dimness of the light - I would have to arrive at local nightfall, wouldn't I? - but I can't quite follow the lines of the thing; it's as if part of it shoots off in some direction that I can't visualize. The sensation is... disturbing.
"Shoo-in for the Turner Prize," I mutter. Then I call out, loudly, "So what's this, then?"
"None of Starfleet's concern." Luga's voice; she is coming towards me, moving with all the confidence that I've been trying to project, only I'm not sure she's faking it. "This - artifact - is an anomaly, true, but we are not able to analyse it more specifically -"
"So stand back and let the Starfleet experts have a go," I suggest. It earns me another glare. If looks could kill, I'd at least be severely maimed by now.
"Starfleet has no expertise in this area," Luga hisses.
"Well, we won't know until we've tried, will we? In any case -"
I had some plans for how that sentence was meant to end, but I have to put them on hold, because at that moment a tall, lean figure comes bursting through the ranks of the Na'kuhl, barges right into me, and knocks me down. I have a brief glimpse of green scaly skin - Suliban? - and then the figure leaps towards the artifact, while I sprawl on the ground.
The thing seems to revolve in some peculiar sort of way, its many components shifting into unsettling new configurations. The Suliban is jumping at it - no, not at it, into it. The artifact has shaped itself into something with a man-sized doorway in it, and the Suliban is heading straight into that opening.
There is a brilliant flash of light, painful on my dark-adapted eyes. I swear under my breath, and try to stand up. I blink through vivid after-images.
"Who was that masked man?" I ask. Nobody answers.
Kara and T'Pren have come up, are aiming their tricorders at the artifact, are industriously scanning away. Several of the Na'kuhl seem to be doing the same. There is no trace of the Suliban, anywhere in sight.
Luga is standing a little way from me, looking intently at the artifact. There is a new look on her leathery face, and after a moment or two, I figure out what it is. So far, she's done arrogant, angry, contemptuous, and hostile. But now she's doing something else entirely. Now, she looks worried.
And I suspect I need to start worrying, too.
On the viewscreen, Kirza's expression was unrepentant. "I know exactly what I am doing. We have the Nhandesson weapon, now, and if our alliance is to continue, it will be on much more equal terms."
"You do not know how to operate the weapon." Chrog's tone was almost reasonable. Luga suspected that someone was about to die, very soon. She regretted that the little communications hut offered no space to edge cautiously away from him.
"How true," said Kirza. "Though I fancy we have learned more from you than you suspect - we are not quite so easily distracted with shiny weapons as some would like to believe." Luga hissed through her teeth. "However, given the range and effectiveness of this device, I imagine you would prefer it, too, if we did not operate on the basis of trial and error. The time-space continuum in this star system is battered enough already. So. You are the experts in temporal technology, you will provide us with instruction. I look forward to using this thing. I might start by cancelling out the damned Organians and their peace treaty! - I will give you an hour to compose yourselves and prepare your technicians. Hov'etlh out." The screen went blank.
Chrog took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then exhaled. "I believe I commented," he said, "on the undesirability of forming partnerships with other species - What are you doing?"
Luga was pawing frantically at her clothing. "A listening device," she hissed through clenched teeth. "The damned Klingon must have planted some sort of bug on me -"
"You are scanned regularly as a security measure!" Chrog snarled.
"For transtator signatures!" Luga screeched back. She held something up to the light; a tiny bulbous thing with a hair-fine dangling antenna - at first glance, it might even be mistaken for a hair. "This, this, it must be -"
Chrog consulted his wrist scanner. "Electronic. A passive receiver, echoing and modulating a background carrier wave in EM frequencies. Ingenious, if primitive. In this time period, of course, the Klingons were very keen on surveillance." He leaned close to the bug and spoke clearly and distinctly. "They must have enjoyed the sight of all those clean, smooth foreheads!"
Luga gave a wordless snarl and threw the bug down to the floor. She drew her chronoplasma pistol, made a swift adjustment, and took aim. "I wish this was your face, Kirza," she said, and fired. The bug flared and vanished, leaving nothing behind but a scorch mark on the floor.
Chrog was continuing to scan. "No sign of any more of those," he said. "Well. Such trustworthy allies the Klingons are...."
"What are we going to do?" Luga asked.
"Stall them. The operation of the anti-time weapon is complex, we can baffle them with science for as long as we like. That does not concern me... unless Kirza grows impatient and starts pressing buttons at random. What bothers me more is the other one."
"Thyvesh?"
"Am I expected to believe it was a coincidence that he chose this moment of distraction to make a break for his temporal portal? We must have that thing properly analyzed. I want to know where he has gone."
"To the Suliban weapons cache, presumably." Luga's face grew thoughtful. "In point of fact... the artifact is under constant observation, though the Klingons' attack may have proven a distraction. But it may be possible for us, now, to extract a temporal signature and - just possibly - to extrapolate Thyvesh's destination coordinates from it."
"You think so?"
"It is possible. And, with that information, we should be able to find our own way to that weapons cache."
Chrog stepped to the door of the hut, opened it a crack, and peered through. "The Federation would seem to be in the way," he said sourly.
"Captain Grau is having a field day, setting up monitoring devices with her science teams," said Luga. She joined Chrog at the door, and they both looked out. The dark Priyanapari night was pierced with the glare of floodlights, as science teams from the Harrier surrounded the artifact with sensor probes and mobile computer workstations. Na'kuhl troops stood around, watching them, their frustration almost palpable.
"Well," said Luga, "they have twenty-third century Starfleet equipment - it will be easy enough to subvert that. Grau may run her sensor analyses, and we will take her results. Since we cannot affect her without risking the wrath of one or both of her invisible companions... she may as well be of some use to us."
"What is the status of those - things?" Chrog asked.
"Unknown. We think the Rift entity is not yet at home in linear time, but we cannot chance being wrong. As for the Organian -" Luga shrugged. "We have no means to track an Organian. Very possibly, as Grau suggested, the creature is everywhere. One might hope, at least, it is spending some time with Captain Kirza. If her threats provoke the Organian into taking direct action... well, it would simplify matters."
"Kirza and the Organian," muttered Chrog. "Neither one worries me as much as Thyvesh."
---
"Thyvesh."
Thyvesh crouched beneath one green-glowing column. His fingers trembled as he took the holo-display unit from its hiding place. There was not much time, now.
"Thyvesh."
The voice - did it sound closer, now? Strange, that it sounded so - different. But, of course, it would sound different, to him. Because normally, he only heard it from inside his own head.
The holo-display unit had a closed compartment in its base. It was a standard commercial model, a thing for storing old messages, old images - souvenirs, mementoes. He opened the compartment.
From a pocket of his ragged clothes, he took a small metal object. A Romulan rank badge, in the form of a raptor... but twisted, deformed by some sort of pressure, and stained with dark-green markings of dried-up Vulcanoid blood.
"I know you are here. And you know that I know - how could you not?"
Thyvesh put the badge into the compartment, closed it, put the holo-display on the floor. He owed it to her, after all, he thought. He had lied to her, about being safe, about his counterpart being unable to get in. A white lie, a necessary lie, but still a lie. He owed her the truth.
Whatever the truth might be.
"I will find you. You cannot hide forever."
Thyvesh reached out, with his hands, with his mind. Alternative timelines, paths through time and space, cascaded through his altered brain. An infinite series of alternatives, he was so tired of them all - He found the line he wanted, focused his mind on it, concentrated. The holo-display shimmered briefly under his hand, and then it was gone.
So. No more reason to delay, then. He heaved a sigh, and stood up.
"Thyvesh - ah. There you are."
He turned around, slowly. His younger self was there, looking - eager, and neat, and efficient, in his military-styled outfit. How had he ever been able to be so neat and efficient? In his hand, the younger Thyvesh held an obvious weapon - a gun, but with a strange parabolic emitter dish instead of a barrel, and a complex control panel behind it that flared out to cover his hand and wrist.
"White-3741," he muttered. "Sairish's neural override weapon."
"You recognize it," the younger Thyvesh said. "That is good. You know what it does. You know what I can do with it. What I will do with it." He raised the weapon and took aim. "You will not die, but you may wish you had - unless you tell me."
He had to go through the motions. "Tell you what?"
"You know what."
"I know. But I remember - I asked me to say it -"
"You asked me." The younger Thyvesh smiled. "I know what you mean. Very well. You are able to use the door - without being in its physical proximity. You can operate freely in time and space. You can go anywhere, anywhen that you wish." For the first time, he looked faintly uncertain. "You seem to have wished to go to some very - grubby - times and places. Never mind. I assume there is a reason, that I will find out in due course. But now, now, you will tell me that secret. You will explain to me how to do it. I can think of - many uses - for the technique." He sighted carefully at Thyvesh, and adjusted the weapon's complex controls.
How was it possible? That he had ever been so - so dynamic, so driven, so certain of himself? It was all a part of his past, now. But the past - the past was never more than an instant away.
"You will tell me," his younger self said, with absolute conviction.
Thyvesh looked him in the eye. "Yes," he said, "I will. I did."
"I think it's just a skeleton crew," says Zula. She is fiddling with her tricorder and looking intent. "The Na'kuhl evidently came here, left a small force in possession, and went on to Priyanapari. Probably no more than a dozen of them."
"Weel, it could be worse," I say, "but, on th' ither hand, there's nae but two of us."
"We could get back in the Scorpion and head back to the Leacock," says Zula. She has a resigned air, like she already knows what I'm going to say next.
"If the Na'kuhl ken we're here, an' yon station has ony weapons, they'll be shootin' at us all the way, and Ah cannae guarantee we willnae get hit, an' yon Scorpion's no' gannae stand up tae station-mounted weaponry. Nae. We're jist gannae have tae make quality count mair than quantity, hen." I grin at her. "Ye kent verra weel Ah wis gannae say that, am Ah right?"
She rolls her lovely eyes expressively, and checks her phaser. "There's a bit of sensor fuzzing already going on," she says, "but I'm reading at least three of them coming towards this location. I'd guess they heard the shots."
I grunt. Na'kuhl are tricky, and that ship commander will have left some reasonably competent people behind. And this station is bleak, it's not got much going for it in the way of cover - even if I knew the layout, which I don't, I reckon I'd still be pushed for somewhere to hide. "Let's gae in an' say hello, then," I say, and raise my rifle to firing position.
We edge through the doorway, into a long empty corridor. I was right, there's nothing much to hide behind. We play leapfrog from doorway to doorway down the corridor, one covering while the other moves. The doors, when they open at all, open onto bleak little cubicles with virtually empty interiors. Stripped and abandoned. We're coming up on an intersection now -
And three red-clad figures come around the corner with weapons ready and determination in their little red eyes. Zula fires first, the golden beam of her phaser streaking out and splashing away from a heavy-duty personal shield. The Na'kuhl don't even bother with demands for surrender. Pale green bolts of chronoplasma blast from their hand weapons.
Zula suddenly flares and vanishes in a blast of light.
I yell, wordlessly, and fire the sniper rifle. The tritanium slug goes right through the first Na'kuhl's shield and into his head. He drops. The other two are shooting, but I'm already moving. I don't know how they train these Na'kuhl insurgents, but their tactical doctrine evidently doesn't have methods for dealing with a vengeance-crazed Scot coming at them, shouting "Creag an tuire!" and firing a TR-116B from the hip. Holes perforate the wall of the corridor, and two Na'kuhl bodies, and then I'm at the intersection, and the enemies are down on the deck.
And Zula - is nowhere. Damn it.
All right. I have to live through this. And deliver some payback to the damn Na'kuhl, too. I look around and get my bearings. They must have registered us by now, they will be converging on this point - if I was them, where would I start converging from? I sprint down the corridor, to another intersection. I hear booted footsteps on the deck plating, and I crouch down.
A chronoplasma bolt snaps over my head. The rifle sneezes once, twice, three times, and an oncoming Na'kuhl staggers, dropping her weapon as her hands go, uselessly, to the gaping holes in her torso. She falls, but there are three others behind her -
Something whizzes past me along the floor, zips towards the Na'kuhl. Spinning lines of energy slam into them around shin height, tripping them and sending them tumbling to the floor. I shoot one of them as he tries to regain his feet, roll away from a badly-aimed return shot, take out the shooter with my next round. A beam of golden light fixes itself on the last Na'kuhl, clawing at her personal shield. I fire, one last time, and she drops.
I turn to face Zula. "Dinnae iver dae that tae me again," I say.
"I don't think I will." Her eyes are very wide. "Wow, you really laid into them, didn't you?"
"Ah wis highly motivated, hen." My own fault, though, really. I should have known she'd have some Intelligence trickery on her; feigned disintegration and tripwire drones will be only part of her arsenal. "Is there ony mair o' th' wee beggars?"
"Oh, yes." She points. "Looks like some sort of concourse, that way. It'll give us more space to manoeuvre, at least. But they'll definitely have us on scan, now, and no way my tricorder will get through their sensor spoofing -"
I run through the maxims of Sun Tzu in my head, consider whether I'm in debatable ground or deadly ground, decide to settle for "ground where I'm going to kill a bunch of Na'kuhl" instead. "Let's be gaein', then," I say to Zula.
We head down another bleak corridor – and the door at the end hisses open before we even get near it. I send a slug through the doorway on general principles, but there’s no red-clad figure standing there – only movement, some humped shape shuffling along the ground -
“Crawler mines!”
I hit my transporter buffer and pull out a couple of breather masks. I toss one to Zula, and she catches it one-handed while spraying the floor with phaser fire. I jam the mask over my mouth, just in time, as the first mobile gas mine goes up in a cloud of greenish fug. My shield stops most of the blast, and the breather protects my lungs, but a trace of the vile chemical reek gets through, and my eyes sting and burn.
It’s supposed to slow us down. Well, I don’t let it. I toss a concussion grenade through the doorway, follow it while the echoes of the blast are still dying away, screaming at the top of my voice and firing shot after shot. There are confused sounds ahead of me. I barrel through the doorway.
I’m in a big empty-ish space, with consoles sticking out of the floor like random islands, and a whole lot of tubing and piping and wiring decorating the walls. Not a concourse, then, more likely the station’s main engineering section. My spirits lift a little. If we can clear the Na’kuhl out of here, we’ve gone a long way towards taking the station entirely.
Of course, the Na’kuhl know that, and are acting accordingly. Chronoplasma beams stab through the air towards me. I duck and weave, manage to dodge some, take the rest on my shield, shoot back. Phaser light slams into one target as Zula follows me into the fray. I drop that one with my next shot, but the rest of the Na’kuhl have gone to ground, taking cover behind consoles.
There are thumps and blasts of green smoke as more gas mines go up. The smog is making it hard to see. “Ye pin ‘em doon an’ Ah’ll gae after th’ mines guy!” I yell at Zula.
She rakes the consoles with phaser fire – it won’t hit anyone, but it should make them keep their heads down. “You’re still doing the damn accent now?” she yells back at me. The controller for the crawler mines must be somewhere nearby; I crouch down and edge around a console myself.
“Ah’m a wee Scots lassie frae Inverness!”
“Then you should be speaking Gaelic, not Lallans Scots!” The breather mask slightly muffles her indignation. I hear movement. I pop my head over the console and bang off a couple of rounds. Sparks fly from something on the wall, hopefully not something vital. Someone is shuffling, nearby.
“Anyway, your parents moved away from Inverness when you were four years old!” I just hope this is confusing the Na’kuhl. “To the south of England! You went to school at freaking Roedean!”
I duck and roll round the next console, and suddenly I’m face to face with a Na’kuhl, and he has a crawler mine controller in his hands. And then he has the butt of my rifle in his face, hard, and he goes sprawling on the floor. OK, good, if we can take a prisoner, that’ll help -
The blast knocks me off my feet, and the world fills with green smoke. The chemical reek gets worse, and there’s a nasty whiff of something else besides it. I paw at the breather with one hand, making sure it’s still in place. The mines guy fell on one of his own crawler mines, and it detonated. Damn it. So much for prisoners.
“Ye’ve been readin’ up on me? Ah’m flattered,” I call to Zula.
“It’s in your personnel record!”
“Is that th’ one that ends at Caleb IV? Ye dinnae want tae rely on that, hen.”
There’s no immediate answer. I peek out of cover, in the direction where I hope Zula is. She’s there, and so’s a Na’kuhl injector lieutenant, and they are locked together in a grim wrestling match. I swear quietly to myself. It’s going to take finesse, picking off the Na’kuhl without hitting Zula instead -
I needn’t have worried. Zula breaks loose from the Na’kuhl woman’s hold, seizes her right hand and jams it into her throat. The Na’kuhl lets out a despairing wail as the injector blasts her with the toxins she’d meant for Zula, and then she goes limp and lifeless. Zula drops her, ducks back from a chronoplasma bolt, and snaps a phaser shot back. I turn in that direction.
There is a shifting, flickering, half-visible shape there, scuttling from one console to another. Another Na’kuhl, using one of those temporal gadgets to fuzz his position in space-time, so he looks like multiple shadowy images instead of a single solid person. I squint down the rifle, sighting carefully. There’s a way around this, but it needs steady aim and quick reflexes.
The moment comes. I squeeze the trigger. For just an instant, several versions of the temporally-fuzzed Na’kuhl’s head are all lined up, and the rifle slug passes through all of them, including whichever one is temporarily real. The Na’kuhl falls heavily to the deck, shadowy images coalescing into one inarguable corpse. The hole through his head, compounded of several alternate paths the bullet might have taken, is quite exceptionally messy.
There are no more shots, no more explosions. There is no more movement. That was the last one.
I stand up. The air is still smogged with toxic gas, there are holes and scorch marks over the walls and the consoles, there are trickles of sparks and smoke coming from a number of places, there are urgent beeping sounds which are probably alarms. The Na’kuhl are down. I grin at Zula; she can’t see it through my breather, but I grin anyway.
“Wha’s like us?” I ask. “Damn few, and they’re a’ deid.”
---
There’s a control room a couple of levels up. We need to get to that – first, to clean out any remaining Na’kuhl, second, to get a proper idea of how much damage we’ve done to the station and how to go about fixing it.
“My tricorder’s acting crazy,” Zula mutters, as we lope towards the control room door.
“Mair sensor spoofing?”
“I don’t think so. There was, but then there was – some sort of energy release.”
“Whit sort?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Zula gives her tricorder a thump. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m reading – well, it’s hard to tell, but there’s definitely at least one life sign.”
“Och, we can handle one.” I ready the rifle as we come up on the control room door. It’s blank and anonymous like all the other doors in this place. And it isn’t locked; it slides open as I approach.
And I charge through it with another cry of “Creag an tuire!”
I have a brief glimpse of consoles, of a body lying inert on the floor, and then my attention is concentrated on one moving shape, and I am whipping the rifle up towards it, while at the same time finding myself staring at close range into the barrel of a nasty-looking nanite disruptor pistol.
Somehow, we manage not to shoot each other. We just stare, for one frozen moment.
“Captain Caird,” says T’Laihhae. “Jolan tru.”
“Doesn’t anyone ever get the urge to redecorate?” I grumble.
The mask-like face of T’Mev’s Rigelian exec doesn’t show much expression at the best of times, and this is clearly not the best of times. “Standard doctrine with captured temporal vessels,” Commander Teadoursi explains, “is to interfere as little as possible with the construction or the environmental details. Just in case some aspect of it is… important.”
I glance around at the interior of the Virgo. It’s like every other Na’kuhl ship, at least as far as I know; rounded organic shapes in blood-red colour, like being trapped inside the intestines of some vast creature. In places, rounded domes of control consoles protrude from the floor or the walls, usually glowing green. The diseased and ulcerated intestines of some vast creature. It’s no wonder the Na’kuhl are peculiar.
“So what’s this bit?” I ask. Teadoursi’s face remains studiously neutral. I’m over here, officially, in case I’m needed for information about some aspect of the Priyanapari situation. In practice, I’m pretty sure they want me because, if the temporal interference takes an unhealthy turn in that system, the discrepancies will show up immediately when my memories change. I have a strong suspicion that my previous accounts of what happened have been preserved in some temporally shielded archive, and any new versions I might suddenly remember will be carefully cross-checked and compared. Assuming I don't drop dead or vanish in the process, I suppose.
I don't like any part of this. My entire memory, maybe my personality, could be re-written at the drop of a hat. And I wouldn't know about it. Or the person I would be, who would no longer be me, wouldn't know about it.
So, to take my mind off the whole God-awful business, I asked for a tour of the ship. And since I'm a senior officer, Teadoursi got kind of stuck with showing me around. I don't think she appreciates it much, though, with the Virgo doing nothing but orbiting the blasted ruins of 25th-century Priyanapari, I reckon she should be glad of a distraction herself.
Now she peers at the giant glowing bubble I'm pointing at. "This is the anti-chroniton transmission module," she says. "If we need to send a message to the team in the past - and I do mean need - then this is what we'd use."
I frown. "You'd have to send any messages to the Leacock, then? I mean, they're the only ship that'd have the facilities to receive...." Which strikes me as a weak point, especially since we know someone in that system can knock seven bells out of the Leacock already.
"No," says Teadoursi, "we can modulate the anti-chroniton pulses to transduce them into any pattern of electromagnetic or subspace radiation at the destination point." I'm sure that would sound impressive, if I had any clue what it meant. "For example...." She taps at the glowing surface, and the data scrolling across it suddenly whirls and reorganizes itself. "That's set on Starfleet data-transfer protocols for the twenty-third century," she says. "A message we sent now would be picked up on any open tricorder's data subchannel and displayed as text. That -" she points to something "- indicates the destination time-track and space-time location."
I look where she's pointing, and my one good eye goes very wide. "That looks - very straightforward."
She looks closer. "The coordinates are intelligently resolved by the system - presented in as simple a format as we can manage it. I must admit, the coordinate strings aren't usually truncated that effectively - that's a very short one. And also palindromic, I notice."
"Memorable," I say. Highly memorable, in fact. If I can trust my memory.
"Yes, I suppose -" Something chimes, a loud, urgent, high-pitched sound. Teadoursi's eyes narrow. "Excuse me a moment, sir. There's a temporal flux warning - possibly nothing, but I'd better check -" She stalks off towards another console.
Oh, boy.
I look at the indicators on the glowing dome, and I swallow hard. Something tells me the next few seconds are going to be important.
I flex my fingers.
Technically, I haven't been warned not to fiddle with anything. The assumption, obviously enough, is that fiddling with poorly-understood temporal technology, in the middle of a time-travel crisis, is an idea so intrinsically bad that even I won't have it. Which makes sense. Except where nothing about this whole business makes sense.
I take a deep breath, and start tapping away at the console. I can't deny I'm nervous - so nervous, I'm having to ramp up the controls on my still-Borgified fingers to stop them trembling. But I can't figure out what else I'm meant to do -
On the screen, the simple, brief message takes shape. I take another deep breath. My fingertip comes down on the icon that means send.
---
Ronnie
"You will accomplish nothing here," Luga hisses at me. She looks like she enjoys a good hiss.
I walk around the artifact one more time, keeping a safe distance. Luga follows me, making swearing-under-her-breath noises. The metal - thing - stands out in the Priyanapari night, illuminated by all the floodlights we could beam down and pour on it. The various metal components are spinning and churning, and there is a continuous faint grinding noise. I still can't work out where some of those components are spinning to. This thing extends into multiple dimensions, and it's been hyper-active ever since that Suliban ran into it.
The Na'kuhl aren't answering questions about the Suliban. Or the artifact. Or, indeed, anything much.
I don't know about this situation. The Klingons won whatever fight they were having down here, but that's as far as things went; the Klingon ship and the massive Na'kuhl battlecruiser are still in orbit around the planet, and aren't shooting at each other. Maybe I can chalk it up to my calming influence? - Yeah, right.
"What's it for?" I ask Luga. She glares at me and doesn't answer. "Oh, come on," I continue. "If you don't know, surely you'd be better off pooling your resources with us, so we can both find out? And if you do know, you can tell me why I shouldn't mess with it."
"The technology is quite beyond your limited comprehension."
"Yeah, but you can still tell me what it does. Besides eat Suliban. Or break your guy's arms." One of the Na'kuhl got too close, earlier, and was clipped by a randomly spinning metal rod. Straightforward accident, as far as I can tell, but I've been keeping a respectful distance ever since.
"Under the terms of the Organian treaty, worlds and resources in the neutral buffer zone are up for grabs, to go to whichever side can best develop them. If you guys brought the Klingons in on this, then you've got to let us in, too. Never mind your subsequent disagreements with the Klingons. And just what was it that they grabbed, anyway?"
"That is no longer your concern, or ours."
Cutting their losses? The Na'kuhl clearly need the Klingons for some reason... enough to make them forgive the attack? Or maybe whatever the Klingons took was important enough that they had to forgive them.... In any case, it's quite definitely my concern, but short of knocking Luga over the head and dragging her back to the Harrier for interrogation, I don't see any way to get answers out of her. And Starfleet frowns on kidnapping and torture. Which is fair enough, really.
But all it leaves me to fall back on is... legalisms. And I'd rather fall back on a pile of broken glass. "You've got some agreement in place with the Klingons, yes? And they have to abide by the Organian treaty, so that means you are covered by it as well." I hold up my tricorder, which has the data libraries all cued up. "If you want to see the relevant clauses -"
I stop talking, because at that moment a message pops up on the tiny screen. It's come through on the standard data subchannel - except no one has any business sending me stuff on that channel - and it doesn't have an origin code - and the text simply reads:-
You're not doing any good there. Beam back to the ship, things are about to get busy. Remember this code: AA0702DC-CD2070AA. Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Yer pal, Cassandra.
I have no clue what the palindromic code means, but Cassandra gives me furiously to think. The Trojan prophetess Cassandra, you see, was cursed by Apollo so that she prophesied truly, but nobody believed a word she said... ignoring her always turned out badly. So if Cassandra is sneaking into my tricorder to send me warnings, I am taking them seriously, and the god Apollo can take his curses and get stuffed. Come to think of it, didn't Jim Kirk deal with Apollo, a couple of years back, anyway?
"OK, you know what?" I say to Luga. "Forget it. Forget all the relevant clauses. Me and my team are going to follow your no doubt sound and well-intentioned advice." I turn away while her jaw is still dropping. "Landing party!" I bellow. "Assemble for beam-out!"
I give them their due, they come running and don't ask questions. I pull out my communicator and snap it open. "Grau to Harrier. Landing party requires immediate transport. Confirm and beam us up when ready."
Kara Grant looks a bit mystified, but she keeps her mouth shut. T'Pren has a quirky eyebrow that looks like she'll want some explanations back on the ship, but never mind. "So," I say to Luga, "see you around and about, then. Bye now."
The expression on her leathery face has changed, from startled to suspicious. She can smell a rat when someone shoves it up her nose, she knows there's some reason for my abrupt change of heart. She will be speculating very hard about what's made me run back to the Harrier.
And, as the transporter sparkle gathers around me, that's pretty much what I'm doing myself.
---
Ronnie
OK, so now Teadoursi has an expression, all right. I make a mental note: this is how Rigelians do aghast.
"Trust me," I say cheerily, "I know what I'm doing." Just as I said in the message.
Teadoursi finds her voice. "Do you have any idea what you might have done -?"
I give her a knowing look. "Yeah. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think I do. That alarm of yours? The temporal flux warning?"
"It - cut out," she says.
"Yeah, it would have done. Because that was the sound of a predestination loop closing. Like the sound of one hand clapping, I guess. The alarm sounded, because the time line was about to destabilize, if I didn't do what I was supposed to do." I point at the screen. "Somebody sent me that message. And I'm damned if I can see who else might have done it. I recognized that damn code of yours -"
I spent ages, puzzling over that code. I never worked out what it might have meant, but it preyed on my mind until I finally gave up on it. To see it, now, after all these years -
Of course, that entire chain of memories might only now have popped into my head. Whatever. The point is, it worked. I think.
"The timelines did stabilize," Teadoursi says grudgingly.
"Of course they did," I say, as smugly as I can manage.
"Please don't do anything like that again, sir. Not without consultation and a cross-check from a temporal observatory." And the way she says that, it sounds heartfelt.
"Relax. I think I've done enough. Probably." I cast my mind back. "Though just after that message, stuff got worrying -"
---
Ronnie
"What's it all about, sir?" Kara asks as we jump into the turbolift.
"Hell if I know. Bridge." The lift capsule hums into life. "Someone sent me an anonymous warning message on my tricorder's data channel. I didn't get where I am today by ignoring anonymous warning messages." Let's not go into how I did get where I am today.
"The nature of this message?" asks T'Pren. I flip open the tricorder and show her the screen. Her eyebrow remains resolutely quirked. Can't say I blame her.
The turbolift doors hiss open. "OK," I say as we make our way onto the bridge, "we definitely need a more nuanced alarm system. This is well past yellow, shading to a pretty ruddy sort of orange, but still not actually red." I can see Win roll his eyes at me as I take the centre seat. "Get me a read on our presumed-hostiles," I say, "and someone get comms up to the Leacock in case we need to yell for help."
"What's it all about, sir?" Win asks.
"Oh, hell, is that question of the day? I don't know. I got a warning message that says there's gonna be trouble. My guess is, it'll come from one or both of those battlewagons - "
"Hov'etlh is moving off station," Stulk interrupts me.
"Possibly that one, then. Where's she headed?"
"Impulse drive is active - reaching hyperbolic speed." She's breaking orbit, away from the planet. Maybe taking her ill-gotten gains back to the Empire? I swallow, hard. "We might need to stop her. And I don't think we can do that all by ourselves. Where's that line to the Leacock?" Because Kirza's horrendously-overclocked D7 will pick its teeth with the Harrier if we get in a fight right now.
My gaze strays to the armrest of my chair, to the slot holding Caird's magic data cart.
"Incoming hail from the Klingons," Kara reports.
Oh, joy. "On screen."
Kirza's face, when it appears, is all one solid gloat. "Captain Grau," she purrs at me. "You are no doubt wondering what artifacts I have recovered from the planet's surface."
"Crossed my mind, yeah," I say. "All well with you and your Na'kuhl friends? Did you kiss and make up?"
She ignores that. "Under the terms of the Organian treaty," she says, "I should inform you of my discoveries. And I take great pleasure in telling you, we have found something that will render the Organian treaty irrelevant. My scientists, and my Na'kuhl friends, have already made headway in deciphering the control interface."
"Control interface of what?"
Kirza's smile is almost too big for her face. "Of a weapon. It was fatal for the culture which built it, but we have more advanced shielding, thanks to the Na'kuhl. By we, of course, I mean the Empire. You have no defences at all."
"Red alert," I snap at Win.
Kirza laughs. "Sound whatever alarms you wish. They will all be useless. Let me give you time to contemplate your situation, Captain Grau. I intend to destroy every threat to the Empire in this system, starting with the most important, and working down. Your pathetic vessel is, naturally, last on my list. I will attend to you after I have finished with the Leacock. But first - Well. The weapon has many interesting capabilities. It can be wielded with finesse. I am even able to identify unique individual targets - a capacity that I will now demonstrate." She gestures imperiously. "Organian! Show yourself!"
There is a hot wind and a glare of light, and Clefune is suddenly standing on my bridge. "Captain Kirza," he says, "I must warn you that you are in grave danger of committing a treaty violation, and that I personally do not appreciate -"
"Enough!" roars Kirza, and makes another commanding gesture.
Clefune stiffens. A strange glow gathers around him, a shimmering aura like cascading rainbows. Then he flares with intolerable light, and explodes.
A shower of sparks falls to the deck where the Organian was standing.
Oh, boy.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
"It was an error to involve her," Luga said wearily. "I accept that. But the damage is done, now.... I only hope that she will act relatively predictably."
Inside the tiny research hut, the two of them stared at the monitor screen. "She is already making errors," Chrog said.
"The Organian? I think the Nhandesson weapon includes modes specifically for the destruction of Organians - the Nhandessons are within the Organian sphere of influence, they may have chafed at Organian restraints just as the Klingons do now -"
"I do not mean that." Chrog's finger stabbed at the screen. "She is breaking orbit, setting course to intercept the Leacock, leaving the Harrier to its own devices."
"So? The Harrier cannot defeat the Hov'etlh, she can deal with it at her leisure once she has destroyed the Leacock -"
"Assuming the Harrier stays to be dealt with! But Grau is no idiot - she will warp out as soon as she can, to return with a Starfleet task force in support! And the Organians will not stop her - they may even help her!"
Luga sighed deeply. "Then the solution is obvious. The Strange Attractor must engage the Harrier before Grau can escape. I suppose it is desirable in other ways - Grau's premature extinction will disrupt the timeline significantly -"
"You think the Rift entity will permit her destruction?"
"In this timeframe, it may not have sufficient control, sufficient awareness of linear spacetime, to protect her. In any case, we must take the risk." Luga shrugged. "A pity. It is a distraction, and our teams have finally finished their analysis -"
"Analysis of what?" Chrog demanded.
"Thyvesh's space-time coordinates. When he fled through the doorway, he left a resolvable trail. We have deciphered it -"
"Show me." Chrog was suddenly at her elbow, looming over her.
Luga tapped at the screen controls; images formed - graphs and diagrams. "There. Outside normal space-time, of course - but we knew that already. A trajectory can be plotted - but we must deal with the Harrier first -"
"You deal with the Harrier," said Chrog. Luga turned to stare at him. "Grau and Kirza are not our main concern. We are here for one purpose - to claim the powers of Priyanapari. Thyvesh's weapons cache. That is where he must have gone, that is where these coordinates lead... so that is where I must go."
"But the Harrier -"
"Deal with the Harrier. Activate an external portal to these coordinates - I will take an auxiliary craft, while you remain in this time zone to clean up. With luck, the Leacock will damage Kirza's ship sufficiently that you can eliminate her as well. She has proved worse than useless." Chrog raised his wrist communicator. "Strange Attractor. Beam up all landing parties, and ready an assault shuttle."
---
The portal looked - different, somehow, Chrog thought. He peered through the transparent aluminium of the assault shuttle's canopy. Behind him, the assault team went through the noisy ritual of checking their weapons - chronoplasma guns, demolitions gear, gas charges and crawler mines -
Different. Dimmer, a darker blue than usual. This one led through strange reaches of the continuum indeed.
"Commencing insertion," the pilot reported. Chrog reached for the main comms console. "We are going in," he said.
"Confirmed," Luga's voice replied. "We have the Harrier on positive track. Three minutes to weapons range."
"And Kirza?"
"Will come within range of Leacock in another fifteen."
"I hope they kill each other." White noise began to surge over the speakers, as the shuttle nosed into the temporal portal. "Inserting now. Chrog out."
The shuttle was wrapped in a dim, fluctuating indigo glow. Chrog stared pensively at it for some time, then turned his attention to the navigation console. "Low energy subspace environment," he muttered. The pilot turned his head. "We could, in theory, make interstitial warp jumps from here to... anywhere."
"Or nowhere," the pilot replied.
"We run no risks, if we can plot the coordinates with sufficient precision. And I can. I have expertise in such matters." Chrog bent his head over the navigation console, his leathery features intent with concentration. The pilot looked hard at him for a moment, then turned back to the helm.
It was hard to say how much time passed, in this dim limbo, but eventually the pilot spoke again. "We have a problem."
"What is it?" Chrog asked.
"We are approaching the coordinates you provided... but we are not reaching them. Our... velocity... reduces as we approach. Our speed is inversely proportional to our proximity."
Chrog snorted. "A simple dimensional folding, intended as some sort of barrier. I suppose it provides me with an ideal opportunity for a demonstration."
"A demonstration of what?"
Chrog smiled. "Interstitial warp jumps. We cannot pass through the space between us and our destination - not in less than an infinite amount of time. So, we will not pass through it - we will go around it."
"You are going to activate the warp drive inside the temporal portal?" The pilot sounded alarmed.
"For a brief moment, yes. There is no danger. I had considered this possibility, even." Chrog entered a series of commands on the navigation panel, his hands moving swiftly, assuredly. "There. Set the engines for a single pulse, one point five microseconds at warp two." Reluctantly, the pilot complied. "Engage."
Space and reality juddered, and the indigo void became a single blinding glare - and then the scene beyond the canopy changed, and the shuttle landed on solid ground with a sudden jolt. Chrog smiled. "You see?"
They were in a vast space, filled with glowing cylinders of light. Chrog stood up. "Check environmentals."
The pilot moved automatically to comply. "Where are we?"
"Where we intended to be. Thyvesh's destination." Chrog's finger stabbed out. "Look. There."
He was pointing at something that was not a glowing cylinder, but a complex arrangement of metallic parts. "The... other side... of Thyvesh's doorway?" the pilot asked.
"Without a doubt," said Chrog with satisfaction.
"You must be right," said the pilot. "Environmentals are... nominal. No life signs."
"Thyvesh must have moved on. No matter. We can investigate without his assistance." Chrog checked his pistol, moved to the shuttle's main hatch. "Open up."
The hatch hissed open. Chrog strode out, followed more cautiously by the assault squad. "Containment force cells," he said, as he strode towards the nearest cylinder. "Containing what?"
"Thyvesh talked about the Suliban weapons systems. An arsenal of temporal and genetic devices," the pilot said nervously.
"That seems obvious. And we must never discount the obvious." Chrog studied the green-glowing column before him. There was an object floating inside it; a package, he thought. His eyes narrowed. A package... containing a data module, and something else - a medical injector?
"Scan the field frequencies and find a counter-harmonic. Open it. I want to inspect this more closely."
The troopers were spreading out, cautiously, studying the glowing columns. Apart from the dull sound of their footsteps, the rattle of their gear, the swishing of their clothing... apart from that, the silence was absolute. A science lieutenant stepped up beside Chrog, and aimed a scanner at the column.
"Sir!" someone called. Chrog turned. One of the troopers was waving at him, urgently. "Over here!"
Chrog moved. As he approached, he could see - something - lying on the floor at the trooper's feet. He slowed, and looked down.
It was a corpse. It was roughly humanoid, but the first thing that struck Chrog was an impression of incredible age. It was desiccated, mummified, dressed in dusty rags. Chrog looked closely. The withered skin might once have been scaled, the forehead bore traces of a triple ridge.... "Thyvesh," he said. "Well."
"But how long -?" the trooper began to ask.
"That question is meaningless, here," said Chrog. "It might be instructive to know what he died of - but if it was long ago, in this time frame, then whatever killed him is no longer a threat." He shook his head. "Always assuming that it was not mere old age, or starvation."
"Sir!" The science lieutenant called out. "I have access."
Chrog strode back to the green column. The light had not, apparently, changed, but it offered no resistance as he reached inside and pulled out the package. He scanned the datapad rapidly. "Not even encrypted," he commented.
"It was concealed behind a force barrier in a region outside time and space," the science lieutenant said. "They may have thought that enough security."
"And yet, here we are," said Chrog. "Interesting. Multiple DNA recombinants, and a generic transcriptase carrier... a sort of taster menu of the Suliban genetic enhancements. Increased strength, rapid healing, body plasticity, upgraded reaction times - all in a package deliverable into any carbon-based creature's genome." He lifted the medijector in his hand, studied it. "Open another of these columns. If this is what is in one of them... this is a treasure trove indeed."
The science lieutenant went to stand by the next nearest column. This one was not green, but a pale yellowish colour. Inside it, Chrog could see nothing but a datapad. There was a faint whining sound as the lieutenant probed the column with his scanner; then he reached into the light and took out the datapad.
He studied it for a moment. A faint frown creased his leathery features.
Then he dropped the datapad to the floor, turned around, drew his chronoplasma pistol, and shot the nearest trooper through the head.
Chrog cursed and drew his own weapon. The science lieutenant calmly sighted on another of his comrades, aimed and fired. Someone uttered a shocked curse. "Set for stun!" Chrog shouted, but two of the troopers were shooting back already, their heavy miniguns blazing with plasma fire. The science lieutenant's personal shield flared, wavered, and failed; bolts of pallid green light seared deep into his body, and he fell.
"A trap," Chrog snarled. "A damnable trap."
"Sir -" The troopers were gathering around him, staring in shock at the bodies.
"We should have been more careful. I should have been -" Chrog bit back an oath. "We will investigate, but we will take precautions. We will find a more secure location -"
He looked around him. Nothing but glowing columns of light, and the churning shape of the doorway....
"And we cannot consider this place secure.... So. We make another interstitial jump, and prepare automated devices to probe this place."
"Interstitial jump?" The pilot sounded doubtful. "Where to, sir?"
"I have plotted it already. A location we have already secured... and it is, even, close at hand. By the standards of this part of the continuum. The Denobulan station. We will link up with our caretaker force there, and use that as our base."
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Carolyn Caird's exec is a harassed-looking bald chap with an elaborate earring in one ear and an extraordinarily thick and bulbous nose. I can't blame him for looking harassed, just now. I'm feeling that way myself.
"Hov'etlh is inbound to your coordinates," I tell him, "ETA about fifteen minutes. I'd try and catch up, give you a hand, except I can't match that souped-up impulse drive of Kirza's." At least, not without doing something... that I may need to do anyway. "In any case, I doubt we'd make much difference. Can you handle them?"
He gives a glum nod. "Probably. We got enough of a read during our last encounter to assess her capabilities... and our modifications should give us enough of an edge. Probably." His glum voice strengthens as he adds, "In any case, sir, you should probably warp out and get backup from Starfleet Command."
"Probably. Yeah. OK, Commander Igoolet, I'll see you on the flip side. Harrier out." I don't know what sort of a name "Igoolet" is... Turkish, maybe? His face vanishes from the screen, to be replaced by the image of Priyanapari. He doesn't look Turkish. But, then, what would I know, anyway?
I know one thing; I'm not going to be peacably firing up the warp drive and skedaddling back to K-22 for the cavalry. "What's the status of the Na'kuhl ship?" I ask.
Win bends over the scanner readout. "Drives are online. Raising shields, coming about... heading isn't clear yet...."
"Straight for us, and loaded for bear," I say. "Damn. I think we're out of options here. Go to red alert, and, well -"
I pick Caird's data cart up, weigh it in my hand, then decisively ram it into the reader slot in my armrest.
For a moment, nothing seems to happen, except the wailing of the red alert. Then Thiras Ythill turns his head sharply towards me, his antennae stiff and standing out like ramrods. I've never seen Andorian antennae do that. "What in the Infinite's name did you do?" he asks.
"Having an effect, is it?"
"Warp core just overrode all safeties... but the coils are transferring power to the main grid at about sixteen times higher than normal design spec. Sir, the drive readouts are going off the clock -"
"Phaser banks are fully charged," T'Pren reports.
"I didn't ask for that!" Though, mind you, nice to have, with the Na'kuhl battlewagon rattling its sabres at us.
"No, sir. Automated. I think, sir, they will remain fully charged for... numerous normal firing cycles. Shield frequencies, too, are...." She quirks a blonde eyebrow. "Fascinating."
"Sensor range just tripled," says Win. "Targeting locks for the torpedo tubes...." His voice trails off.
"Structural integrity is off the clock too," Ythill reports.
"Oh, boy." We just got a massive, and I mean massive, boost to my ship's capability. And I figure we have about thirty seconds left to work out how to use it.
"Kara. Send a signal to the Na'kuhl ship, standard Starfleet make-nice-and-what-are-you-doing. Stulk, T'Pren, bring us about, at half our usual impulse speed and thruster capacity. After which -" I fiddle with the little console repeater on my chair, sketching in a course on the tac plotter. "Let's try this."
"Hailing on all frequencies," Kara Grant reports. "No response -"
Below me, the engines have woken up with their usual rising hum... only, this time, the tone keeps on rising, increasing to a sort of wail that resonates throughout the ship.
"Weapons range in ten seconds," says Stulk.
"And those plasma banks are hot," Win adds.
"OK, so let's hope this works," I mutter. On the screen, the Na'kuhl battlecruiser is an ominous bat-winged blood-red blotch. I count down in my head. "Lock phasers, fire as they bear. Hit it."
The Na'kuhl ship's plasma weapons flare green across the sky -
- and the Harrier is already moving, surging forwards at her suddenly enormous full impulse speed.
The Na'kuhl plasma beams burn through empty space, and the ship explodes towards me in the viewer. For a moment, I think we're going to collide. Then T'Pren hits the phasers, and the grunt and hum as the banks discharge is a sudden shriek instead. Bolts of golden light stand out against the enemy ship's red hull, and there is a sudden glare as the Na'kuhl's shield wavers and fails. The golden beams reach through, to rake white-hot molten scars across the enemy hull.
Harrier hurtles past the Na'kuhl. "Hard about! Ready photon torpedoes!"
"Fascinating," says T'Pren. "The increased field-jacketing on the phaser beams has reduced the frequency of the Cherenkov side-emissions -"
"Later." I think she's trying to explain why our phasers are suddenly orange instead of blue. I'm sure it's very interesting - fascinating, even - but I don't need to know about it just now. The Na'kuhl were going for a quick kill, diverting most of their power output to weapons, leaving their shields comparatively weak. Only now their quick kill has missed, and they'll be reconfiguring for a slugging match, instead. And, even with my ship's new power levels, we're still smaller and more fragile than a stonking great Na'kuhl warship. If we get in a slugging match, we're going to lose.
Our photon torpedoes streak out of the tubes - to crash into the Na'kuhl's aft shields, and stop dead. Figures. Software hacks can't boost the output of a photon warhead - I start to rack my brains. Or can they?
Green flames lick towards us from the Na'kuhl ship's aft arrays. Now, it's the turn of our shields to flare. I check the readings. Under that barrage, they should have gone down instantly - as it is, they're holding, just, though some energy's bleeding through -
There is a sudden bang, and a shower of sparks shoots from one of the bridge consoles. "Damage control!" I yell.
"It's OK." Ythill's antennae are still stiff and outstretched. "The energy from the Na'kuhl's shots - it's being dissipated, spread through the power grid. That was just a transient overload on one relay. Resetting now. It's... fine." He doesn't sound like he believes it.
"Phasers. Fast as they can cycle. Keep hitting them."
"We can target individual subsystems on their ship," says Win. "If we can knock out their shield emitters -"
Green flames stab at us again, and the Harrier shakes and lurches. "Try it!" I yell. Another bang from another console. I don't know if I'll ever get used to this. Freaky golden phaser beams claw at the Na'kuhl's shields, but I was right, they've reinforced them, and we're not punching through to the hull any more.
The constant wailing from the engines, the screams of the phaser discharges, aren't making it any easier to think. But I have the vague shadow of an idea -
Then the wailing gets worse, with a buzzing, grating tone underneath it, a vibration which runs through the ship and makes my bones judder inside me.
"Uh-oh," says Ythill.
"Uh-oh what?"
"It's the Na'kuhl weapons," says Ythill. "They've got a temporal component - it's throwing off the timing on the new set-up. The structural integrity field is starting to desynchronize with the warp relays -"
We are starting to shake ourselves apart. Just great. "Hard about, one eight zero mark three. Come in on his flank. T'Pren, target those shield emitters. Stulk, ramp up the compression fields on the photon launchers - override the safeties, crank up the coils as high as they'll go."
"You want me to supercharge the next launch?"
"It should be enough to punch a torp through their shields!"
"Or rip the launchers right out of the saucer!" the Tellarite snaps back at me.
"Yeah, well, we ran out of safe ideas a while back!"
Stulk shakes his head in disbelief. But his thick fingers are moving swiftly on the weapons controls -
"Turn completed. Locking phasers on the enemy's shield emitters." T'Pren's Vulcan calm is very welcome, just now.
"Let 'em have it!"
The phasers shriek once more. There are more spatters of sparks from different parts of the bridge. On the viewer, the Na'kuhl ship is haloed in brilliant light.
Then the halo turns into an expanding shimmer of auroral light - and is gone.
"Torpedo! Now!"
The noise is heart-rending. Harrier bucks and jumps, and for a moment I think Stulk was right, that the overload has torn the torpedo tubes right out of the ship.
But a point of dazzling light streaks across the screen, and into the hull of the enemy ship.
There is a brief pinpoint of light, and then a tiny dark circle on the red hull - and then the Na'kuhl is backlit by a blast of flame and light. The entrance wound of the overcharged torpedo is tiny - but the detonation, deep inside the battlecruiser, has torn a chunk of its guts out, spraying flame and debris and escaping atmosphere through an exit hole I could fly my ship through without touching the sides.
But the Na'kuhl ship is still moving - somehow. It's not dead yet. And the grating scream that surrounds me... sounds as if the Harrier is coming apart.
"Na'kuhl is turning," Win reports. "I'm getting energy readings - I don't recognize them -"
But it's clear what the Na'kuhl is doing, now. Ahead of the ship, a funnel of blue-white light is forming. They've triggered a temporal portal - they're trying to escape into time.
I blink at the whirling lights on the screen. "Full power to shields!" I yell. "And dump whatever we can into structural integrity!"
The battlecruiser is visibly struggling to reach the portal - struggling, and failing. Tremors run through the ship, lightnings crawl along the blood-red hull. The bow of the ship touches the edge of the portal... and visibly deforms, twisting and stretching, streamers of fragments breaking away from it. Another convulsive shudder runs through the Na'kuhl ship's hull - and then it goes, breaking apart in a cloud of flame and shrapnel that suddenly flares white-hot as the core blows.
The viewscreen whites out. The Na'kuhl ship is dead. The problem now is not to follow it.
"Scram the warp core!" I yell. "Shut it down! Open the vents on the Bussard collectors! Vent the warp plasma to space!" If we can clear that colossal overload by blasting the energized plasma out of the nacelles -
The Harrier jolts. All the lights go out. The shrieking engines suddenly die. For a moment, I'm sitting in the dark, wondering if I'm dead too.
Then red emergency lights come on. There's a fair amount of smoke on the bridge, but no more exploding consoles. "Status?" I manage to ask.
"We're -" Ythill swallows, and starts again. "Main plasma manifold blew. We're... We don't have main power, but the overload cleared itself. Like you said, sir, the plasma vented to space. We can replace the manifold, step the core back to normal output...."
"How long?" I ask.
"Hours, sir," says Ythill gloomily.
"OK." I feel light-hearted. And light-headed. "That's fine. We've still got auxiliary power, right? And it's going to take a lot more than a few hours to fix the Na'kuhl ship." I turn to Win. "If the Leacock can handle Kirza, we should be fine, right?"
"I'm trying to get a scan reading now, sir," says Win. "So far.... This is weird."
Uh-oh. "Weird how?"
"I'm not reading any traces of combat. No energy discharges, no debris...." Win's face clears. "I have one ship on positive track. Confirmed ID. It's the Leacock."
"One ship? So where's the Hov'etlh?"
Win shakes his head. "No idea, sir."
"There is significant damage to the control relays." T'Laihhae points to a control console, which I have to admit is showing a worrying number of blinky lights. "That may not be important, however."
"Unless we want to keep breathing," Zula mutters. T'Laihhae affects not to hear her. She goes over to another console, one with even more blinky lights - one that looks subtly different from the others in the control room.
"The key issue," she says, "is this control console, here. It interacts directly with Thyvesh's doorway - the time-space artifact that connects Priyanapari to the Suliban weapons cache. I believe I understand how to use it. And I believe I understand how Thyvesh wants me to use it."
"How's that?" I ask. I look harder at the console. "Yon's pretty advanced temporal tech, hen. An' it disnae luik familiar tae me -"
"It should be familiar to me," says T'Laihhae. "Apparently, I built it. In another timeline."
"Och, ye clever wee thing. An d'ye ken how tae work it in this one?"
There is a millisecond flash of smile. "I believe so." Then her impassive face turns troubled for a second. "I understand how it is meant to be used, too. Thyvesh intends me to betray him."
"Say whit?"
"I believe his intention is that I should destroy his life's work and leave him stranded outside the time-space continuum." Her face looks positively bleak. "At some point, Thyvesh learned how to manipulate the doorway without being in its physical presence. This device... replicates that ability. Only it is mechanical, it does not depend on Thyvesh's powers of concentration, and it will not flinch from things he could not do, himself."
"Such as?" asks Zula.
"Destabilizing the doorway. Permanently. It would rip the artifact out of its current location at Priyanapari, and the effect on the other side - the artificially created temporal inclusion that holds the weapons cache - should be cataclysmic. For the contents of that inclusion."
"An' where's Thyvesh? - dinnae tell me. Inside yon temporal inclusion." I look hard at T'Laihhae. "Ye're awfae rough on yer friends, hen."
She doesn't answer for a moment. When she does speak, her voice sounds strained. "I have always trusted Thyvesh - he has always shown himself to be worthy of trust. I feel I must trust him, even now. Whatever he has planned -"
A shrill warble sounds from another console. I turn and look, but Zula is already there. "Alert from the docking bay," she says. "Vessel inbound."
"An' whit are the chances it'll be friendly? - Dinnae answer that." I pick up my sniper rifle and check it. "Let's hear the worst, then."
Zula presses a switch, and a viewscreen lights up. Feed from a security camera in the docking bay... showing a big red thing swooping through the force shield to settle on the hangar deck. The colour, and the organic shapes of the design, betray its origins immediately.
"Na'kuhl assault shuttle," says Zula. "Trying to get a read on life signs now -"
"Aye," I say, "an' they'll be daein' the same, an' their tech is way better than oors, an' anyway they'll hae spotted the Scorpion as soon as they came in range. Crivens." A bunch of Na'kuhl reinforcements, just now, is not something we needed.
"Five of them," Zula says. She frowns. On her, it looks cute. "That's below normal complement for those assault craft - they must have taken casualties."
The shuttle is down, the hatch is opening. Red-armoured shapes are moving. There's not many of them, as Zula says, but at least two of them are carrying heavy-duty chronoplasma miniguns, and all of them will be angry and alert. This isn't going to be easy.
One Na'kuhl strides down the landing ramp, holding something in one hand. It looks like a hypospray. One of their injector operatives, maybe? He raises his other hand, touches a wrist control -
And a voice sounds. "To the two humans and one Romulan now aboard this station. I am Chrog, commander of the Na'kuhl resistance vessel Strange Attractor. Surrender now, and I might show mercy. Make me hunt for you, and I will show none."
The voice comes from everywhere at once. He's using one of those broadcast systems that turn every flat surface in range into a resonating speaker. Showy. And effective.
T'Laihhae is on the comms console. "This is Admiral T'Laihhae of the Romulan Republic," she says. Her tone is completely stress-free - urbane, almost. "We have complete control of this station's facilities. You would be well advised to depart immediately."
Chrog's laughter echoes around us. "That would be most intimidating," his voice says, "if I did not already know all the capabilities of this station. Such as they are. Very well, you have chosen death. I will make it interesting." On the screen, we can see him as he suddenly drives the hypospray into his own throat. "I have often wondered what it would be like to have superpowers."
"Whit's he on aboot?" I ask under my breath.
T'Laihhae mutters something indistinct. "He must have obtained access to the Suliban weapons. That hypo must have contained a genetic enhancement."
My eyes go wide at that. "He cannae ken how tae use it, though, can he?"
T'Laihhae frowns. "It depends on how extensively they have researched the weapons cache. I spent some time there with Thyvesh.... I cannot claim any extensive knowledge, though." Her dark eyes have turned very calculating.
"Aye, weel, we cannae stay here and let him catch us, am Ah right?"
"It would be unwise." T'Laihhae checks her disruptor pistol. "It would also be preferable, I think, to minimize any further damage to the station's systems."
"Tell that tae th' guys wi' th' miniguns," I say. "Right, then. Let's gae break some heids."
I run for the door, followed by the sound of Zula sighing.
---
"I'm scrambling comms." Zula's voice sounds tinny in my ear. "And I've got as much sensor spoofing going as I can, but don't rely on it." Na'kuhl gear is better than ours.
The question is, what do they expect us to do? I thought about that for, well, some seconds. As far as I know, Chrog doesn't know about T'Laihhae's magic console, so they don't know we've got any pressing need to stay on this station... so, they'll expect us to make a break for the docking bay, grab our ships, and get out of Dodge.
So now we are circling around the observation gallery above the docking bay, trying to figure out where Chrog's people are waiting to ambush us, so that we can ambush them. We've split up, using our combadges to talk, and hoping the Na'kuhl aren't good enough to crack our encryption....
The bleak gallery doesn't offer much in the way of cover. I sidle along it, crouching low so I can't be seen from the docking bay. We think at least one of them's stayed with the shuttle. It would be the sensible thing to do. Never bet against your opponent being sensible, unless they're me.
I sidle all the way to the end of the gallery, where it stops at the housing for the docking bay's force field generators. I pause. To one side of me, there's a stairwell, leading to another entrance to the bay. If I were a Na'kuhl, that's the sort of place I might station a sentry, to pick off anyone heading for the shuttles that way.
I peek quickly round the edge of the door. I'm thinking along the right lines; there's a Na'kuhl trooper one flight of steps beneath me, facing away from me, covering the dock-level door with his minigun. I smile. I raise the rifle to my shoulder, take careful aim, and fire.
The tritanium slug hits him between the shoulder blades, and he goes forward on his face. Good.
Then he swears and gets up again. Less good.
I pull the trigger again, and yell, "They've got heavy duty armour on!" into my combadge. Zula and T'Laihhae need to know, and I've already sort of given myself away. Pale green chronoplasma bolts come streaking upwards towards me, and I duck back round the doorway, though not before one of them makes my personal shield flare and waver.
The bolts slam into the wall... the one with the field generators behind it. Sparks fly. Then the lights flicker, and there is a piercing warble of an alarm from somewhere nearby. It doesn't quite cover the sound of heavy Na'kuhl boots coming up the stairs towards me.
He comes through the doorway at a rush, spraying fire in random directions. More sparks fly. I scream "Creag an tuire!", firing the rifle from the hip. More plasma bolts splash off my shield, and I feel the burn as some of the heat bleeds through - and then, somehow, I hit a weak point in the battle armour, and the Na'kuhl goes down in a heap.
The lights are still flickering, and the alarms have gone from a warble to a steady piercing whine. That can't be good.
I kick the Na'kuhl trooper's minigun away from him, in case he's not quite dead, and then take the stairs at a run. Safe bet I've attracted attention here, and need to be somewhere else. I get to the bottom, ignore the door to the docking bay, and take off down an adjacent corridor. I get about a dozen steps before the lights go out completely.
I blink. Emergency lights kick in... not red, pale violet instead. Denobulan eyes must be different from human ones, that way. They don't light up anything I want to see. Chrog is standing at the end of the corridor, flexing his arms, grinning at me. I point the rifle at him.
"I think we can do without that," he says, and reaches for it.
He's a dozen metres away at least, but his hands reach out and grab the rifle, and pull. Even elongated as they are, his arms are still strong enough to pull the gun out of my grip. His grin gets broader. He holds the rifle across his chest, and flexes his arms again. The rifle groans and creaks and bends into a nice neat U shape.
"Aw, jings," I say, and run for the docking bay door.
Chrog's laughter pursues me. "Keep running!" he shouts. I reach the door, and it fails to slide open in front of me. There's a panel on the wall beside it; I slam at what I hope is an override switch.
Air gusts around me, and the door opens, and there is a low keening noise which says atmosphere leak. I dive through anyway, into the docking bay, and a world of cold.
Pressure. The force field at the entrance must have been compromised, air is leaking out. Failsafes should have kicked in - but we don't know how this station works, we don't know how well it works, and the gunfight in main engineering must have done more damage than we'd thought. It is very cold, and the thin air is pulling at my chest and making my pulse hammer in my ears. There's another door, at the other side of the bay - I have to get to that -
I run, and it's like I'm running in a dream; sounds are muffled, and the awful emptiness is pulling at me from all sides. Movement. Nearby. A turret on the Na'kuhl shuttle is turning, the muzzles of plasma guns trying to point at me. I duck down, hope they can't depress far enough to get me in their line of fire. The other door must be thirty metres away. No distance, really, I could cover it in a few seconds - normally - if I could breathe -
My combadge is saying something, I don't know what, I can't hear properly over the buzzing in my ears. And there is something else - a voice behind me.
"Keep running."
I turn and glance back, across the freezing deck. Chrog is behind me. The thinning atmosphere doesn't seem to be bothering him at all. Something else is moving. The shuttle. The access hatch is opening.
I have a phaser pistol in my transporter buffer. Doubt it'll do any good. But I have a few other things besides, and I pull one of them out now.
The assault shuttle's hatch is open, and another Na'kuhl is coming out, a pistol in his hands, a sealed helmet on his head. Should have brought one of those myself. I am maybe fifteen metres from the door, now. I concentrate, summon up whatever's left in my muscles, pick up the pace. Fifteen metres - ten - five.
I spin around and yell, "Catch!" at Chrog, and throw the grenade.
Give him credit, he doesn't try to catch it. He dives to one side, but the neutronic grenade has a nice big blast radius, there's no way he can dive far enough. The grenade goes up in a bright colourless flash. The other Na'kuhl is caught in the blast too, I watch him arc upwards, over the hull of the shuttle. The blast wave is slightly weaker when it hits me, weak enough that my shield can cope. It shoves me hard into the wall, and I fumble for the door controls, and fight the wind as the door opens for me -
I'm through, into the next corridor. My chilled lungs suck in oxygen eagerly, too eagerly - I double up in a coughing fit. The main lights are still off. Somehow, I straighten up, start to stagger down the corridor. I need a weapon. I touch the controls for the transporter buffer, hidden in the braid of my left cuff. The phaser pistol materializes, and drops through my numbed fingers. I swear, and bend down to pick it up.
When I straighten up again, I hear the door hiss open behind me. Wind gusts about me - the docking bay must be nearly in vacuum by now. "I did not appreciate that." Chrog's voice sounds thick. Maybe the soft vacuum and the neutronic explosion have hurt him.
Hey, I'm an optimist.
I turn around and aim the phaser. He doesn't bother grabbing it, he just makes a fist and hits me from ten metres away. Stars explode in my vision, and suddenly I'm flat on my back and don't know how I got there. I've dropped the phaser. I'd like to stand up and get it, but my body doesn't want to cooperate.
Heavy footsteps lumber towards me. I grit my teeth, and see more stars. My body needs to cooperate, whether it wants to or not. I roll over, gather myself, get my legs under me.
Something heavy thuds to the floor beside me. The noise is startling, it would make me jump, if I could jump. As it is, I manage to stagger to my feet.
Dim shapes in front of me resolve into familiar figures. Zula. T'Laihhae. And another shape, lying on the floor beside me. I stare down. Chrog's face is livid and suffused, and beneath his red armour, his body is bulging and misshapen. Zula's hand is on my shoulder, supporting me.
"Ye've got th' ither two, then,"I croak.
Zula nods. T'Laihhae is kneeling by Chrog, a tricorder in her hand. "What got him?" I ask. "The grenade, or the air loss? And why'd it tak' sae long?"
"Biochemical imbalances," says T'Laihhae. "The Suliban genetic enhancements were usually provided by their - future ally. There was always a temporal component in their administration. Very likely, the tailored retrovirals were implanted early in development, possibly even in utero. Simply dosing himself with them was not enough - it has provoked a massive auto-immune reaction to the altered cells. And every time he drew on his new abilities, the process accelerated."
"Should've read the manual," I mutter. I look down. Na'kuhl aren't pretty, by human standards, even at the best of times. The look of this one's face... well, let's just say it's not the best of times.
I take a deep breath. Somehow, I manage not to cough.
"Aye, weel," I say. "That jist leaves us where we were before, am Ah right? We need tae figure oot some way tae get your friend Thyvesh -"
I don't get any further before T'Laihhae draws her disruptor pistol and shoots me in the head.
Before the body has time to drop, I swing the gun round to cover the other one. Her eyes are wide, her body tense. I have one moment to explain myself, before she launches herself at me.
"Set to stun," I say. "We have no more time for discussion. Get her to your fighter. Can you use the same route that brought you here?"
She stares hard at me, at the gun, at her commander's unconscious body on the floor. "The hangar deck is depressurized -"
"I can restore the force field. Temporarily. The gunfire, and the explosion, have further damaged the power mains. Get her to your fighter."
She stoops and gathers Caird up in her arms. "If you've hurt her," she hisses, "I'll have your guts for it, Admiral."
"I hope you will have the opportunity." I holster the gun. There is an emergency workstation by the doorway; I activate it, start to tap in the commands I need.
Gunfire ruptured an electroplasma main, and Caird's neutronic grenade finished the job. I can restore the force field by cross-circuiting a structural integrity generator - but it robs the station's overall SI field of power it needs, especially as I create a pressure imbalance by bleeding air from a reservoir to replenish the hangar bay - there are too many factors to juggle, and not enough resources.
There is a sound like a vast door slamming, and the deck beneath me quivers. "Hangar deck is repressurized. I do not know how long it will hold. Go."
She has Caird in a fireman's carry. She looks hard at me. "What about you?"
"I will follow. As soon as I can." I will use the gig's navigation console to retrace the path Thyvesh took, back to the Messalina. I hope. The Starfleet woman bites her lip, then heads for the door, shooting me one last dubious glance over her shoulder, before she goes.
And I turn, and run.
---
I run towards the console, and the station trembles around me. I have a vague feeling, in the back of my mind, that I have done this before... though I know I have not. Except perhaps in a dream, a dream of a memory that no longer exists -
I have no time for this.
The station is trembling, a deep humming tone seeming to sing through the structure, as I dash through the doorway and into the control room. The console is there. I am in time. Just.
Now, to consider what I must do -
I could set the console to send a... a jamming signal, I suppose, would be the best analogy. Only this will only last as long as the console does, and the console will only last as long as the station, and the station... is not healthy. I think, furiously. The console, and one side of the door, are outside normal space-time... but if the console's own subjective timeline ends, surely its effect on the door must end too?
I do not know. I would have to be well versed in temporal mechanics, to know for sure. What I am sure of - is that I can take no risks. Whatever I do now, I must end this.
My mouth goes dry as I start to punch in commands.
Extend the radius of the console's operation, so that it covers the whole of the station - I can do that. Then, there is a built-in... tropism. An affinity between the console and the door. I can use that, too. My fingers are trembling. This should work -
I enter the last command, and set the time delay. Five minutes. In the current time frame of the station. The procedure will execute in five minutes. I have that long to get clear.
I run.
My boots clatter on the trembling deck. Five minutes. I only hope the station will last another five minutes. I dare not trust the turbolifts. I find a ladder, scramble down it, hand over hand.
A sudden jolt leaves me sprawling on the deck at the foot of the ladder. Four minutes. I am one level above the hangar deck. I run for the next accessway, and the lighting flickers. Too much damage to the power mains. I suppose it is fortunate that I only reactivated one of the fusion reactors - if the station had been at full power, it would have blown up by now.
I do not bother with the next ladder, I simply drop through the accessway and onto the lower deck. Time is running out. But the door to the hangar is in sight, now, and I run to it.
And it does not open.
I check the status panel next to it. The force field is failing again, the air pressure has dropped - the doors are sealed as a safety precaution. Three minutes. I open up the panel, short out the sensors, crank the hydraulics manually. Air whistles, then screams, around the slowly opening door. Two minutes. If that.
I plunge through the door, with a cold wind gusting at my back, and my ears pop. The air pressure is low, so very low - it is like being on the peak of a high mountain. I feel a dreadful void opening in my chest, hear a buzzing in my ears, while other sounds go dim and dull and dead.
The Scorpion fighter is gone - Caird and her companion should be on their way to safety. The gig is still there. I fumble with my wrist communicator, send a command override to the gig's computer. The access hatch opens, beckoning me, welcoming. I have lost track of time. I move through a strange, empty, cold world, a hollow ache in my chest, a dreadful fuzziness in my vision.
I reach the open hatch, clamber inside, hit the control. The hatch hisses shut. Air and heat surround me as the gig's interior repressurizes. I blink away the encroaching dizziness, stumble to the pilot's seat.
"Combat -" The word catches in my throat, and I choke and cough. "Combat emergency. Immediate lift-off." The main console is a maze of dancing lights before my eyes. One minute. Less.
The gig lifts. I grab the flight stick, aim the nose of the little ship outwards, away from the station. Seconds, only. I push the thrusters to maximum, blink away the tears from my frigid eyes, inhale deeply. Thyvesh's course coordinates. They are still on the autopilot. I engage the reverse sequence, and slump back in the chair. There is nothing more I can do.
Ahead of me, there is only blackness. After a short time, I reach out, activate a viewscreen, call up reverse angle. Behind me, there is also blackness. The station is gone, as if it had never been.
I smile to myself at that. After all, it had never been.
The gig is travelling along the path Thyvesh set, a path that leads through dimensions I was never meant to see. All around me is an infinite and uncaring nothingness. An ultimate trackless waste. We would need.... What would we need, to explore this? Someone who could see as Thyvesh sees, someone who could find the rare oases of reality in this endless desert of unformed space-time.
I try to think how long it took, when we came here... but does time mean anything in this bizarre realm? The autopilot bleeps quietly to itself from time to time. No alarm sounds, but I do not know if that is meaningful - I could be going home, or I could be drifting forever in a space outside the universe. I find I am almost too tired to care.
Then, suddenly, there is light.
The forward viewports fill with stars and grey-green light - there is a world out there, a planet, poor in vegetation, perhaps, but not the blasted ruin of Priyanapari that I left behind me. And there is other light - blue and shifting, and beyond it, a dire green glow pulsing at the heart of a nest of thorns.
Messalina, and she has locked on a tractor beam. I reach for the comms console.
"This is T'Laihhae calling Messalina," I say. "I have returned... I hope."
I look daggers at T'Laihhae. "Ah can listen tae a reasoned argument, ye ken," I tell her. "There wisnae ony need tae stun me."
She is unrepentant. "There was no time for discussion. The damage to the station was too severe." She gives me a brief flicker of a smile, even. "At least your companion will not need to demand my intestines."
Ronnie Grau mutters something darkly. We're in a conference room on Earth Spacedock, for what might be an after-action debrief session - if we're sure the action is over. T'Mev has the chronographic reports, Ronnie and I have transcripts of our previous debriefing session - either a century and a half ago, or a day ago, it depends on your perspective - Tylha Shohl is there poring over the feedback from the Harrier's upgrade, and T'Laihhae, hopefully, has brought some explanations.
Tylha's antennae have been twitching for some time, and now she speaks. "This doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I can see the performance data, including the desynchronization issue -"
"Damn near shook the ship apart," Ronnie grumbles.
"- and I can work out a way to fix it," Tylha continues, "so why didn't I? I mean -"
"Because that desynchronization thing," says Ronnie, "hadn't happened when you made the original software hack. Sure, that data is a century or so old now, but it didn't exist, day before yesterday. I hate these temporal shenanigans," she adds with feeling. "What else have we got that didn't exist until just now?" She looks daggers at me. "There was the whole debrief with you and Starfleet Command -"
"Aye," I say cheerfully, "weel, we handled yon jist fine, am Ah right?"
"I didn't actually get cashiered," says Ronnie, "so that's something."
"Oh, face facts, Ronnie," says Tylha, "your disciplinary record was never anything to write home about, was it? - I could do something with this," she continues, staring at the PADD in her hand. "Maybe pull an old Constitution-class spaceframe from the mothball yards, see if I can install these software mods on some up-to-date systems...."
T'Mev clears her throat. "We have reports from our temporal observatories," she says, "which may clarify the questions that have been posed. We can confirm, for example, that the temporal intervention has been broadly successful."
"How broadly?" Ronnie asks.
"Your timeline has not been significantly affected, barring only the resolution of the predestination paradox that you, yourself, created. We can confirm the termination of the Na'kuhl agents' personal timelines, and that of their ship. And, most significantly, Priyanapari is now a marginally habitable class L world, with no temporal anomalies or unusual relics, except for a single crater on its surface - evidence of an explosion, in the twenty-third century."
"Which would hae wiped oot all traces o' th' Na'kuhl camp," I say. I turn back to T'Laihhae. "So how exactly did ye dae it?"
"The damage to the station was extensive," T'Laihhae says. "I could not afford, I believed, simply to set up a - a jamming signal - with the console. So, I used it in another manner. Since it was keyed to Thyvesh's doorway, I was able to relocate it, with only a modest outlay of energy, so that its coordinates coincided with the doorway's location." She gives another flash of smile. "In plain terms, I crashed the space station into the Suliban weapons cache."
"Oh," I say, because I can't immediately think of anything else.
"And that worked?" asks Ronnie.
"The weapons cache itself was not terribly extensive. The energy release, when the station started to occupy the same space-time point, was more than sufficient to vaporize both. Some of the energy, in fact, bled through the other side of the doorway, on Priyanapari. Enough to destroy the physical aspect of the door, there, in the explosion whose relic we see today."
"Which leaves us with only a couple of loose ends," says Ronnie, "but damn, they're nasty ones. Thyvesh. Clefune. Kirza."
"I am... almost certain," says T'Laihhae softly, "that Thyvesh was in the vicinity of the doorway when I destroyed it. It... it seems to be the solution he required." And she turns her face away from the rest of us.
"There was considerable concern over the apparent demise of an Organian," T'Mev says.
"Oh, yeah," says Ronnie, "I kind of noticed that, in the debriefing."
"In the current timeline," T'Mev continues, "this was allayed, some two months later, by a communication from the Organians themselves. A joint conference was arranged between Federation, Imperial and Organian dignitaries, to provide a list of - as the Organians put it - suggested projects for joint endeavours."
"I remember that," Ronnie says, and she pulls a face. "I remember it now.... The only time the Organians showed their faces, after the initial treaty signing. They brought us a whole long list of planets and asteroids, with details of the resources we could use... I don't think either side got through even a tenth of them before the Genesis crisis."
"And then, after the Praxis explosion, diplomatic relations between Federation and Empire were on an entirely different footing in any event," says T'Mev. "The Organians listed two hundred and seventy-seven possible projects in the sector, with another eight hundred and fourteen suggested secondary targets. They also provided, in an appendix, a list of the other habitable and marginal worlds in that region of space. Priyanapari appears on that last list."
"They buried it," says Ronnie. "They deliberately drew attention away from it. The clever little -"
"Both Federation and Empire were keen to show cooperation with the Organians," says T'Mev. "The joint conference was, in fact, regarded as a diplomatic success. I have a visual record of the final session -" She taps on her own PADD, and an image forms on the conference room's viewscreen.
"Haud on a wee minute," I say.
"Oh," says Ronnie.
"Is that who Ah think it is? Only Ah didnae get a verra guid look at him -"
"Oh, yeah," says Ronnie. "I never forget a face."
She stands up, goes to the screen, and taps on it. The Klingon ambassadors are on the left side of the picture, the Federation on the right, and in the middle are a group of undistinguished-looking humanoids in mediaeval clothes. Ronnie's finger is prodding at one of them.
"That's Clefune," she says. "Or maybe another Organian who's built the same body? - But it's got to be sending some kind of message, anyway. That Clefune... survived... somehow? Maybe?"
"Anybody want tae visit Organia an' jist ask? - Aye, Ah thought not."
"But if Clefune survived...." Ronnie shakes her head. "So what did happen to Kirza?"
"Imperial records show her lost on a mission on the Federation borders," says T'Mev. "A formal diplomatic inquiry was made - and a subspace message from the Organians, in response, informed them that no treaty violation had occurred. The Empire was not disposed to question the Organians more closely."
"So... what did happen?" Ronnie asks again.
"Ah checked the Leacock's sensor logs," I say. "The Hov'etlh wis closin' at max impulse when she jist... blinked oot. Nae trace. Ah'm guessin' Kirza hit th' wrong button on her temporal weapon, an' it backfired on her." I shrug. "But it's nae mair than a guess."
---
Afterwards, once we've all agreed what bits we're never allowed even to think about again, I make my way down the corridors and lift shafts of Earth Spacedock, down towards where the Leacock is docked. I feel tired. After-action reports will do that for me.
But my spirits lift as I see a tall blonde figure leaning against the bulkhead by the docking port. Even in twenty-fifth century coveralls, Zula's a welcome sight.
"Hi, hen," I say.
"Did it all go well?" she asks.
"Oh, aye. Paperwork, it's nae but a chore, after all.... Ah hear tell ye had some words wi' yon trigger-happy Romulan. Thanks fer that, ony road."
"If anyone gets to shoot you," says Zula, "it's going to be me. You are still trouble." She touches the key panel, and the door slides open. We stroll on together, into the docking tube.
"Ah'm th' fun sort of trouble, though. Admit it."
"Oh, sure." She snorts. "If you want your fun dangerous, unpredictable, and damn near incomprehensible."
"Aye, weel." I shoot her a quick glance as we carry on walking down the tube. "Ye ken aboot th' accent? Ah wis nae but a wee bairn when we moved tae England... an', weel, iverythin' wis strange and new, except th' way mah parents spoke... Ah had t' hae somethin' tae hang on tae, ye ken? An' Ah wis teased fer it at school - och, ye can guess that - an' that jist made me hang on all the harder." My voice grows a little soft. "When ye've had sae many things ta'en away... ye hang on tae what ye can. An', weel, Ah'm a lang way frae home, these days."
"Yes," says Zula. "Yes, I guess I understand." She lowers her voice, too. "And some things are worth hanging on to."
We've reached the end of the tube, where the docking collar fits snugly onto the yellowish ceramic coating of the Leacock's hull. Zula reaches for the airlock's control panel, but drums her fingers on the hull, instead.
"You're still trouble, though," she says. "And you're my commanding officer, now - I mean, OK, Starfleet guidelines are just that, they're guidelines, but it'd still be, well, improper...."
I don't say anything. Because, sometimes, I'm not stupid.
Zula sighs. "I get off duty at 2300, and I'm going straight to my quarters," she says. "I guess, if you leave your propriety outside my door, you can pick it up again in the morning."
Again, I don't say anything. I just smile.
"Trying to reacquire target," said Kuruth. "Checking circuitry -"
"Sir -" Kingrol began.
"We will be in range of the enemy in seconds!" roared Kirza. "I need sensors! Fix this!"
"Sir -" Kingrol said again.
"What?"
Kingrol swallowed. "There was a surge in the temporal circuitry -"
"A surge? What does that mean?"
"It is possible that -"
Kingrol got no further. A hot wind started to blow across the Hov'etlh's bridge, and the ruddy light was suddenly augmented by a blinding glare that hung in the air -
"You!" Kirza reached instinctively for her disruptor - then let it go with a yelp of pain, as it turned intolerably hot in her hand.
Clefune glared at her. "You caused me personal inconvenience," he said. "More than that, you occasioned me actual physical distress. Actual pain. I had quite forgotten how unpleasant that was."
"Give me a chance," snarled Kirza, "and I will remind you." She bared her teeth at the Organian.
"I have no desire to be reminded further," said Clefune. "And your behaviour has been - has been impermissible. So I have taken action. I have used your temporal device to remove you to a place where you can do no further damage. I will now use it myself, to return to my own time - and I will fuse the circuitry in the process. You will not be able to restore it, I assure you. You may consider this -" he drew himself up, haughtily "- a condign punishment for your disgraceful actions." And, with a final dismissive sniff, he vanished again in a glare of light.
There was a sudden explosion, and a console erupted in a torrent of sparks. Kingrol cursed.
"Status," snapped Kirza, as she stooped to retrieve her disruptor.
"He... did not lie," said Kingrol. "That was a secondary surge in the control circuits. The Nhandesson weapon... it has melted."
"What of our status? Get those sensors back!"
"Sensors are operative," said Kuruth. "The screen is blank only because... there is nothing to see."
"What do you mean?" Kirza demanded.
Kuruth swallowed. "I have background radiation on scan," he said slowly. "Consistent with one source. Proton decay."
"Explain yourself."
"For proton decay to be detectable... we must be in a place where there is nothing else left. A place so old that there is nothing else left. The Organian... he has transported us into the ultimately far future. To the end of the universe."
"Leave out the poetry! How far in the future?"
Kuruth shrugged. "It is meaningless. Quintillions, sextillions of years. So vast a span of time as to be... unimaginable." His voice suddenly broke. "Except that we do not need to imagine it, we can see it...."
"Sextillions of years." Kirza stared into the empty blackness on the viewscreen. The corner of her mouth twitched.
"Some time track where the universe underwent continual expansion," Kuruth continued in a broken monotone. "Vaster and vaster, emptier and emptier, for all eternity...."
"Do you know what this means?" Kirza asked. Her mouth was still twitching.
"No way back," said Kingrol in a dead voice.
"No," said Kirza. "Do you know what it means?" Her voice was high-pitched, on the verge of cracking. "It means we are alone. At the end of time. All there is, is us...." She threw back her head and laughed. "It means I am triumphant! I am the last, the only, the ultimate commander! All hail! All hail Kirza, daughter of K'Var, of the House of Karav! All hail Empress Kirza, ruler of the universe! All hail!"
Kuruth and Kingrol exchanged glances. Quietly, stealthily, they and the other officers left their posts, left the bridge, left their captain alone with the empty screen and her laughter.
After the debriefing, I make my way back to the Messalina and my quarters. I am tired, and deeply troubled over the unanswered questions we still have.
I am not so tired that I do not immediately spot the object lying on my bed.
I remain quite still for a second, then draw out my tricorder, slowly and carefully. The object does not respond as I activate the scanning function. It is what it appears to be... a small commercial holo-emitter, suitable for mementoes or messages. There is a trace of organic material, but nothing that registers as harmful.
But how did it get there? I take a nervous step towards the bed, then another. The emitter does not react. I reach out, holding my breath, and touch its playback control.
Thyvesh's image, transparent and faintly luminous, appears in the air over the emitter.
"By the time you see this," his voice says, "I will be dead. It is unfortunate, but it cannot, now, be avoided. I tried to avoid it, the first time."
His voice sounds stronger and more certain than I remember it. Perhaps it is the knowledge of his impending death that makes him concentrate.
"The first time someone found the weapons cache at Priyanapari, it was a Tal Shiar Commander working for a General Vorkov, who wanted a political advantage against a rival named Hakeev. This Commander found the doorway, attracted my attention, and compelled me, by - methods I will not describe - to comply with her wishes. She was ruthless. She was clever. Her name was T'Laihhae i-Kanai tr'Aellih."
I feel the blood drain out of my face.
"She drove me to acquire my current levels of awareness, to enhance my sensitivity to the chroniton streams. She thought it would make me a better tool. She was right, I suppose - but the enhanced sensitivity also gave me more control over the doorway. I used that. I went back to a decision point, took a step.... I planted suspicion in Vorkov's mind, made him take a step that turned T'Laihhae against him. Turned you against him. Together, we built the console, and used that to circumvent the original you. Then I went back, to teach the techniques that she had made me learn, to an earlier me, before I ever met her. With your time-track and mine subverted, the original events at Priyanapari - simply never happened."
I stare dumbly at the image. The voice continues.
"I wanted to go on, but... it is not possible. That is what I discovered. The increased sensitivity to the time streams... forced me to an awareness. To the awareness that there was no way the Suliban could win. For all our weapons, all our ingenuity. We could divert the time stream, we could blast whole civilizations into nonexistence... but we could only work with what we had, and what we had was not enough. For the Suliban to become the dominant galactic power, we would have to change things... too much. Either make the galaxy a wrecked thing, not worth the trouble of dominating... or make the Suliban into something that was no longer Suliban. That simple knowledge... that was enough to break my earlier self. To break me. To know that, whatever I did, however I tried, the cause to which I had given my life - was futile."
His voice drops. "I knew, even then, that something else would happen. That there would be more meddlers in time, that the archive would be uncovered again. And I knew... it would have to end, and I would have to end along with it. I knew your abilities. I knew you would find some way to destroy the archive. And I knew... I know, now... that my own timeline would have to turn to a closed circle, somewhere within it."
He takes a deep breath. "As I make this recording, I know my younger self is looking for me. He will demand that I teach him the awareness techniques which disillusioned me to the point of madness. I know that, when I do so, he will realize what I realized. He will lash out, will kill me, in response. I welcome it. I have lived a long life, and much of it several times over. It needs to end."
His voice is so low that it is barely audible. "Goodbye, T'Laihhae. I will not ask for your forgiveness."
The image winks out.
I stand there, staring at the emitter, for a long time. I do not know what I feel about this. I do not know how to feel about this. I have always thought of Thyvesh as a friend. Now I know... that he made me what I am. That he set up the situation in which I betrayed another friend to execution... that, without him, I would have been - what? Something which I now despise - but that I would not have despised, without him -
I do not know what to feel. I think, perhaps, I never will.
I pick the emitter up, and feel something rattle inside it. There is a compartment in it - often the case, with these commercial gadgets; a little space for a trinket, a physical memento. I find the compartment, open it.
The rank badge drops into my hand. It is a conventional enough raptor, but twisted, crushed and bent. There are old, dried bloodstains on it. I close my hand around it, and my fingers fit perfectly. My badge. My blood. From the time when I took it off, crushed it, dropped it into the dust.
From the day that Thyvesh made me.
He took two Romulan soldiers, made one a corpse, made another a hero of the Republic. Perhaps it is best that he is dead. Because nobody should have that much power.
I trusted him. And, in the end, I left him to his death, and destroyed his life's work forever. Justice, perhaps? Betrayal wrapped around betrayal, and the last treason is also the first.
I put the badge back in the compartment, and close it. I find an empty shelf and put the holo-emitter on it. Then I go to my bed, lie down, and stare at the ceiling. I am desperately tired, but sleep will be a long time coming.
Well, there's the truth of Priyanapar. I'm sure T'Laihhae rather wishes this story's time never came, to mangle her catchphrase back at her.
Really impressed how good a job on keeping this thing straight as maddening as the temporal mechanics and snarling paradoxes made it.
No well tell the Empire it really IS Klingons all the way at the end of existence, they're smug enough.
Excellent story!
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.