The Play
Previously on 24
Jack Bauer, believed to be mortally wounded by a gunshot to the back of the head, was put inside of a stasis canister in the early twenty-first century. So was the body of a ruthless killer, Thomas Devron, who had brutally killed Jack’s daughter, and her child. Devron had been part of a cabal to replace all the world’s rulers with clones. Killing Bauer’s daughter was an act of attrition.
Awakened, three hundred years in the future, Thomas Devron would soon continue his murdering ways, and was working for a new suitor, for some, as of yet revealed reason.
Upon finding historic data about Jack Bauer, Admiral Picard ordered that Jack Bauer be brought back from the “dead” as well, so as to stop Devron. To that end, Admiral Picard assigned a Starfleet officer to act as Bauer’s guide in the twenty-fourth century. The officer is named Lieutenant Mnu Subrelqui, or as he demands to be called, Stan.
So, now teamed with “Stan”, and as they now both pursue Devron, Jack Bauer does not know that it was it was Stan, who had traveled back into Jack’s time, and had shot both Jack and Devron in the back of the head with special bullets that faked their deaths, and kept them alive, but hidden for over three-hundred years, for a much more sinister reason…
Meanwhile; Bevery Crusher, now married to Picard, has come to believe that her husband has been replaced by an imposter. An imposter who, working with others, wishes to bring down Starfleet..
We now continue
Jean-Luc Picard was woken with a cold spray of water thrown into his face. He opened his eyes, and felt as if his face had been pummeled by a wrecking-ball. The bruises on his face had hardened, from the beating he had received the day before.
He was forced to his feet, and then dragged out of the darkened room he had been kept in. He slowly regained his strength, barely walking, as he and his captors made their way down a hallway. It was clear to Picard that this place, where ever it was, was aboard a starship. Though the uniforms were not standard Starfleet, they did denote some kind of hierarchy of rank. He looked to one of the men who had been forcing him along.
“I am Admiral Jean-Luc Picard of Starfleet,” Picard said, “I order you to release me at once.”
There was no response from the young soldier.
They came to a door, which slid open, and Picard was taken inside. There was a large desk, with two chairs close to the door where Picard came in from. Picard was forced to sit in one of them, his hands still bounded by very secure bindings.
Moments later, Benjamin Maxwell entered the office and sat in the chair next to Picard.
“This is madness,” Picard told Maxwell with disgust. “Have you killed my wife?”
“She killed her self the moment she stuck her nose where it didn’t belong,” Maxwell told Picard. “You’ll be joining her soon enough, so don’t worry.”
Then the door opened again, and a man came around the desk and sat before the two of them. Picard recognized who the obvious commander was. He had met the man on a few occasions. A man named Captain Chakotay.
“I’m sorry for the treatment you have received Admiral, you ordinarily would deserve better” Chakotay said with a smile, “but right now I don’t have time for pleasantries.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Picard asked Chakotay.
“No,” Chakotay replied, “I haven’t lost my mind; however, Starfleet has lost its soul.”
“Yes-yes,” Picard said in reply, with a tone of total disrespect. “I’ve heard all this before. And now your solution is to ruin the name of Starfleet and hope it will cause a collapse of our entire system and after that fall we will shall face the judgment of other galactic powers.”
“It is quite interesting how you should put it that way. I wonder how we would be judged.” Chakotay said. “Look at the races we have manipulated, or allowed to be nearly destroyed because of our arrogant ideas. Look at what Section-31 did to The Founders? What about what happened to the Bajorans as well? We let the Cardassians rape their world for decades. Oh, and then, we compounded that by letting the Klingons butcher millions of Cardassians as well. And only three months ago, as the supernova bore down on Romulas, we let their entire world be destroyed.”
“We offered help to the Romulans,” Picard said. “I know, I was part of the negotiation team that…”
“Did nothing,” Chakotay said. “Ambassador Spock was forced to do what he did, failed doing it, but at least he tried.”
“And now we have a rouge black-hole to deal with,” Picard said. “So I’m not quite sure how he helped the situation at all.”
“I sat in one of those briefings,” Chakotay told Picard. “I heard some of our own people say it would be better, for all of us, if Romulas was destroyed. Sure, it was a very small vocal few, but the fact they were even in Starfleet, part of the so called elite, shook me to the core. Well,” Chakotay said, “time is up. The men, and women, who have silently joined our growing cause over the pass two years to change the direction of this myopic Federation, and its Starfleet enforcers, will not stop until the core of Starfleet is destroyed.”
“You’re plan, whatever it is, will never work.” Picard warned.
“Actually, it will,” Maxwell finally said. “In fact, thanks to you, Jack Bauer will be the instrument that will bring about the change we need.”
“How can a man from three-hundred years ago be this instrument of change?” Picard asked Maxwell.
“When you found Jack Bauer, and Thomas Devron, trust me; it was no accident.” Maxwell said to Picard. “And when you went to Admiral Dennison, who is covertly one of us, to get Lt. Mnu Subrelqui to accompany Bauer? Dennison’s assigning Subrelqui to you was no accident as well.”
“What do you mean by that?” Picard asked.
“It was Subrelqui who we sent back into the past to seemingly kill both Bauer and Devron,” Chakotay said to Picard. “They were killed, in twenty-first century terms by Subrelqui, but were kept alive all these centuries; waiting for this moment in time.”
“And what possible reason could that be?” Picard asked, with worry in his voice.
“Have ever heard of the world Trident Gamma Seven?” Maxwell asked.
“No,” Picard replied, “I can’t say that I have.”
Chakotay took over for Maxwell.
“When the Federation was first started, what do you think ever happened to all the Nuclear weapons that the old nation states had acquired? During the last world war, only a hundred or so of them were used, before peace came about. There were nearly fifty-thousand, and that’s just counting the ones that the old so called super-powers. So what happened to them?”
Picard shook his head.
“I’m not quite sure,” Picard said, which for him, was the truth.
“One might have thought they would have been destroyed,” Chakotay said, “but they weren’t, due to Federation guidelines against contaminating space. The Nuclear Weapons were all rounded up, and entombed on the ice world of Trident Gamma Seven. It is a small planet off the beaten path of normal space traffic. Its location has been kept very secret, for obvious reasons, through-out time.”
“What has this got to do with Jack Bauer?” Picard asked.
Maxwell produced a file and handed it to Bauer.
“One of Bauer’s last missions (shown in flashback as Maxwell continues),” Maxwell began to say, “before he was killed, was to covertly enter the old nation state of Pakistan with a small crack team, and to locate all Nuclear missiles in that country and tag them, for it was feared these weapons could have fallen in to the wrong hands. Only Bauer, due to security reasons, and the trust of the then President of the United States, was given the access code to a special device that would disarm the Nuclear Warheads inside each missile. But out of the blue, a cabal sprang up and tried to replace the rulers or the world, including the President of the United States, with clones, and Jack Bauer was diverted back to America to deal with that new threat, but before he could be debriefed. We came across this tid-bit of information just by accident. Bauer had disappeared, as well as the man he was chasing, Devron, and no record of either of them having ever been found existed. It gave us he loophole in time that we needed.”
“And so you sent Subrelqui back in time,” Picard said, “so as to kill Bauer, and Devron. Why not just Bauer? Why do this to Devron as well? That man is out there killing innocents!”
“We needed Bauer for two reasons. Not only to create anti-Earth sentiment, along with Devron, but we also needed to also bait Bauer into space, and eventually to Trident Omega Seven,” Maxwell replied. “The rest of the Nuclear Weapons there can not be accessed. However, we believe, if Bauer gives his code to the computer, it will grant us a level one entry into the security matrix, which will release, to us, eight high-powered Nuclear devices. Devices that today’s methods won’t detect entirely.”
“For what purpose would that be?” Picard asked.
“The upper echelon of Starfleet, as well as their counterparts in the Klingon and Romulan Empires, and others, is due to arrive at Starfleet Command in two weeks.” Chakotay said.
Picard knew exactly what Chakotay was talking about.
“I will not help you in any shape or form” Picard said in defiance.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Maxwell said to Picard. “You have already met our look alike for you,” Maxwell said to Picard. “He is actually one of our men surgically altered to appear as you, even with your finger prints and retina patterns as well.”
“Even still, you know he will never get past the security protocols that will be used at that conference,” Picard said with sneer on his face.
“He won’t have to,” Chakotay said. “He won’t be going to the conference, you will still be going, just as you had planned.”
“Never,” Picard said in soft anger.
Maxwell took over. “We also used the technology on another one of our men, and this time we made him look like your close friend Captain William T Riker.”
“How does that help your cause?” Picard asked coldly.
“Last night,” Maxwell went on, “your wife accidently stumbled upon part of our operation, and she came to realize that you had been replaced. The first person she turned to was…”
“Riker,” Picard finished the statement.
“Correct, and this morning,” Maxwell said, “she made covert contact with Riker, our Riker actually. We had planned to use her anyway, but all her snooping around did was speed up our timetable, and now she will die a little sooner than we had expected.”
“Wait a moment,” Chakotay cut-in, “he was to have captured Crusher, not kill her; she’s pregnant!”
It was clear that Picard did not know. Instantly he now knew why she had planned a special evening for the two of them that night.
“My wife is pregnant?” Picard asked.
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