The Star Eagle Adventures: QD2 - State of Entanglement

I’m not sure Michael is making the right call in going after his counterpart but letting Star take point at least makes more sense. Still, the whole endeavor could prove a dangerous and unnecessary distraction.

That being said, I can’t wait for the final confrontation! I see events coming to a head very soon.

 

39


He couldn’t remember ever having felt less comfortable in his own skin as he walked down the corridors of this alien yet also familiar starship wearing clothes not his own. Perhaps it was because the heavy attire belonged to a dead man, or, more likely because everyone they encountered as they made their way through the ship greeted him as if he was that man. The very same one he had killed just minutes earlier.

“This is insane,” he said quietly to Garla walking by his side. “We’re never going to get away with this.”

His aunt jabbed her elbow sharply into his ribs to force him to be quiet just in time for two ship officers coming down the corridor, both of them making eye contact with the person they believed to be their commanding officer.

“Sentinel, you asked for an update on the secondary engine manifold,” the man on the left said as they stopped in front of him and offered a quick salute. Lif recognized his rank insignia, a moderatus, roughly equivalent to a lieutenant commander in Starfleet. “Primary intake valves are now operating at eighty-five percent.”

Lif found himself at a loss for words.

“I understand you requested that we improve performance to ninety percent or better,” the moderatus said when Lif didn’t respond, taking his silence as displeasure. “However, if we expand any more resources on the engine manifolds, I am not sure that we will be able to keep weapon systems unaffected.”

A gentler jab from Garla broke him out of his stupor. “Yes, of course. Engines are a priority,” he said quickly, trying to recall what he knew of Krellonian starship specifications. “But not higher than weapons, not in our current situation. Have you considered siphoning power from the secondary system core by routing plasma flow through sub-light converters?”

The two officers exchanged quick, confused looks before the second man, who held a slightly lower rank, spoke up. “That’s not an approved procedure as far as I’m aware, sir.”

“But perhaps it could work,” said the moderatus, immediately garnering him a curious glance from his colleague. “The subspace engines and the secondary core do use the same energy conversion frequency and are located in close physical proximity to each other. If we suspend the engines during the procedure—“

“We might be able to increase power flow to the manifolds,” the other man said, nodding along in agreement. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this procedure but theoretically it should work.”

“Well, gentlemen, it sounds to me you have a solution. Better get to it,” said Garla.

But the two men seemed uncomfortable taking instructions from a person they considered to be dead and instead made eye contact with Culsten again.

Lif nodded. “You heard her, let’s stop wasting time and get me ninety or better.”
They both saluted sharply and continued down the corridor.

Garla looked after them until they had disappeared around a nearby junction. “See, now that wasn’t so hard.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He felt as if he had held his breath throughout the entire conversation.

“You just managed to fool the chief engineer into believing that you are who you say you are. I think we’re off to a pretty good start here,” she said with a little gleam in her eyes. “And pray tell how did you just come up with a completely new and unorthodox procedure out of thin air?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t. It’s something my father once showed me when he taught me how to fly a shuttle.”

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. “A shuttle?”

Lif shrugged his shoulder. “I thought I’d give it a try. What’s the worse that could happen?”

Clearly, this didn’t impress her nearly as much and she grabbed him by the arm to encourage him to continue on their way to the command bridge. “This whole thing could blow up underneath our feet?”

“Even more reason to stop pretending I’m somebody I’m not and get out of here. I’m sure we could get access to an actual shuttle or an escape pod.”

“And go where? We’re surrounded by Krellonian ships.”

“We could try and make it back to in-betweens pace. They still don’t know it even exists.”

“We won’t get that far,” she said and shook her head again. “No, for now, this is our best option until a better opportunity presents itself.” She stepped into a turbolift and when Lif didn’t follow her inside, she just snatched him and pulled him inside.

“This is a terrible idea, Garla.”

“It will work if you just commit to the role. Trust me, I’ve done it before. Nobody has reason to suspect you and as long as you exude confidence, people will believe. The sentinel was practically the same person you are. Perhaps a bit more arrogant and deluded but otherwise the same man.”

As the lift set in motion, Lif shot her a dark glare.

“Fine. A great deal more arrogant and deluded. Just channel the worst parts of your personality and you should be fine.”

“Right,” he said with little confidence. He couldn’t quite get the last times he had tried his hands at pretending to be a spy out of his head and how badly each one of them had gone. They had made him swear off from any foolish notions he had once held of working on clandestine operations. He just didn’t have the nerve for it, he had decided. And yet, here he was, once more thrust into such a situation against his better judgment. The fact that Garla, at his side, was a master at such games gave him little comfort and he wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to switch places with her.

The turbolift doors opened and they stepped onto the command bridge which was abuzz with activity. Most of the combat damage the Yellow Rose had taken had been seen to, at least on the bridge, and crewmembers were busily moving from station to station with purpose, giving Lif the distinct impression that something serious was afoot.

Chief Justicar Tenn spotted the two new arrivals and waved them over. “Sentinel, we have a development you need to be aware of.”

The serious tone in his voice didn’t help to put Lif at ease in the slightest.

They joined him where he stood in one of the control aisles dissecting the bridge and when Lif didn’t speak straight away, Garla took the initiative. “What have you found?”

“Trouble”, Tenn said as he manipulated his controls until the large screen above the console showed several energy signatures that appeared to be heading their way. Judging by the relative distance, they were closing in quickly. “Sensors just detected this a few minutes ago.”

“What are they?” Lif said.

“Starfleet signatures,” said Garla when Tenn gave Lif an odd look, perhaps surprised a sentinel had to ask such a question.

Lif nodded quickly. “Yes, of course. But why are they heading our way? The Federation hasn’t threatened our borders directly in years.”

“It must be related to their recent fleet activity in the sector,” Tenn said once more and made eye contact with Lif. “It appears you were right to be suspicious of their presence here, Sentinel.”

He studied the energy signatures on the screen, trying to determine if Eagle was among the half a dozen contacts moving their way. “Yes, quite so.”

“We have to assume that this is a hostile move against the Star Alliance. I suggest we interrogate your counterpart immediately,” the justicar said. “He may have pertinent information relating to this situation.”

Lif gave him an odd look. “My counterpart?”

“He is a Starfleet officer, is he not? He should be able to provide us some insight into their motivations.”

“That’s not … possible,” Lif said, wishing he had come up with a better line but he was making things up as he went along. Never a great tactic when trying to cast off suspicions and, quite literally, get away with murder.

“Forgive me for questioning you, Sentinel, but I think it is worth the effort.”

Garla mercifully jumped in. “Lieutenant Lif Culsten isn’t from this universe. He doesn’t know this version of Starfleet. It is likely that you know more about how the Federation operates in this universe than he would.”

“Still, he is familiar with these types of vessels. He served on one himself. We have never engaged Starfleet in combat before. His help could be useful, even if we have to coerce his assistance.”

For a moment nobody spoke.

Lif could feel the tension among them rising to an awkward level and quietly cleared his throat. “My counterpart will not be able to assist anyone. Not anymore,” he said, trying to keep his facial features relaxed and free of any emotion as he stared right into the Kridrip’s eyes.

The justicar nodded slowly. “I understand.”

“You were implying they are hostile?” Garla said and Lif was thankful that she was refocusing the conversation.

“Yes. Our sensors confirm that all ships have shields and weapons active. They know we are here. I believe they mean to attack.”

“How much time do we have?” said Lif.

Tenn checked the console again. “Less than thirty standard minutes until weapons range.”
“An interesting challenge, don’t you think, Justicar?” he said with a cheerfulness he hoped didn’t feel too force since he was feeling none of it. “An opportunity to test ourselves against Starfleet. What would be your tactical analysis?”

Tenn once more looked over his board before he gave his response. “We are outnumbered but I don’t think we are outgunned. Starfleet is not the power it once was. If these ships were from their Preserver faction, which we know to be the tactically inferior of the two, I would say that our chances to prevail without further support from our fleet were high. But our data indicates these ships belong to the Guardians.”

Lif offered him a wide smile. “And what does that mean to you, good Justicar?”

He hesitated only a moment. “I believe it remains a battle we can win. But not unscathed. Our only two options are to withdraw or stand and fight. We cannot get reinforcements to our position in time.”

“Quite an astute analysis of our situation,” Lif said as he nodded with satisfied agreement. “Prepare the fleet for either option, Justicar.” He glanced towards Garla. “Come with me, I’d like to hear the thoughts of another sentinel on this, even if she doesn’t belong here.” He turned and headed to the most forward part of the bridge where the single command chair stood apart from the rest of the room and therefore would afford them some privacy.

“Take it easy with the attitude there, Lif,” Garla whispered to him as they approached the chair. “The man may have been an overbearing fool but he wasn’t a caricature.”

“I’m doing my best,” he hissed back through clenched teeth. “In case you forgot, I’m not the master spy here.”

Once they were clear of the rest of the bridge personnel and Lif was reasonably happy that the crew was too busy with preparing the ship to pay them close attention, he allowed himself to relax slightly. “What the hells do we do?”

Garla seemed to consider that for a moment. “The question is: Why are they headed this way? From everything I’ve heard about this Federation, they have far larger problems maintaining order within their borders to make moves against their more powerful neighbors.”

“It has to be related to the Ring. It’s the only thing that makes sense,” he said as he glanced at a nearby screen to confirm his suspicions. “Their heading is taking them directly towards it and we just happen to be in their way.

“I agree.”

“But from what I could see, Eagle was not among those ships,” said Lif.

“Which could mean that they were unsuccessful in rescuing their people and the Prism. Worse, Starfleet still has both and intends to use it.”

“That shuttle sounds pretty good right about now,” Lif said wistfully.

“I think that option just went out of the airlock.”

“You mean like we will once we are discovered.”
Garla turned to face him, positioning herself so that her back was to the rest of the bridge and nobody could overhear what she was telling him. “We have to stand and fight, Lif. It’s our only choice.”

He wanted to shake his head but a sudden and very noticeable alert klaxons caught his attention as the entire bridge was doused into dark blue light.

“What now?” he said.

Tenn quickly approached. “The Federation fleet has just increased their speed and changed to an attack formation. They’ll reach our position in five minutes, sir.”

“Looks like now you lead us into battle,” Garla said quietly before Tenn could reach them.

“Crud.”

 

I’m betting Lif is hoping to wake up from this bad dream already. So far he’s managed to bluff his way through this mess but now he’s snared in a dilemma with no good options,

Will he fire on those AU Starfleet ships for the sake of survival? Where’s the real Eagle when you need her?

Waiting for more.

 

40


She braced herself for yet another combat insertion onto a likely unfriendly vessel, but this time executed with far less planning or high-tech gadgetry that had benefited their previous boarding action.

Having taken a knee to present the smallest possible target, with her finger close to the trigger of her type-3 phaser rifle, heartbeat accelerated from adrenaline, she materialized next to the rest of her team on board the Erebus.

They didn’t receive the welcome she had expected. In fact, there wasn’t much of a welcome at all.

The ship appeared to have fared poorly from Eagle’s attack that must have caught the Erebus entirely unprepared. The darkened corridor the away team found itself in was lit primarily by the strobes of red alert lights running along the bulkheads. Several conduits had ruptured, exposing parts of the ship’s innards and venting thick smoke into the corridor.

“Clear,” Sensy said just moments after they had boarded the ship.

Owens’ voice was the next one Tazla heard, however, it was heavily distorted, close to unrecognizable. “Commander, what’s your status?”

“We’ve arrived without incident,” she said while touching her neck where the subdermal communicator had been inserted. “She’s in bad shape but so far we’ve seen no signs of the crew.”

“Commander, we have another problem. The ship appears to have suffered significant damage to its cloaking device. It has caused high levels of chronition radiations to leak throughout the vessel.”

That explained the poor connection, Tazla realized.

“We weren’t able to detect it before you beamed onboard but the telemetry we are getting from you is unmistakable,” the captain continued. “We won’t be able to get a reliable lock on the away team, meaning you’ll have to find another way off that ship.”

“Understood, sir.”

“You don’t have much time. The vessel is heading straight towards Telron XI and seems to be out of control. The chronition radiation is also preventing us from getting a hold of her with a tractor beam. You have perhaps twenty minutes, maybe less until the ship will be caught in Telron’s gravity well.”

“It’s all good news then,” she said with dark humor.

Owens hesitated for a moment and Tazla guessed that he was beginning to regret having sent her onto that ship. “Commander, get Captain Owens if you can. But your new priority is to get you and your team off that ship before it’s too late.”

She nodded. “We’ll be expedient.”

“Our previous scans showed that the ship is likely manned by a skeleton crew only, so you shouldn’t encounter a great amount of resistance.”

“Copy, sir. We’re on the move. Star out,” she said and closed the channel before glancing over at Sensy. “First week on the job, is it living up to all your expectations yet?”

“Oh, we’re having a blast, Commander,” he said with a smirk.

She offered him a grin in response.

“Sensors are useless,” said Violet as she referred to her integrated tricorder wrapped around her forearm. “The radiation is throwing off all my readings.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to make things too easy now, would we?” Tazla said, getting the distinct feeling that not much was going to work out in their favor on this away mission.

“We gonna gibble-gabble all day or we planning on getting things done anytime soon?” said Charm, the Tellarite operative, as he brought up his heavily-modified, black phaser carbine.

Star looked back towards the team leader. “Sensy, want to take point? Let’s head for the bridge.”

“Copy that.” He set out with his phaser rifle raised to eye-level, its bright white beacon lighting the way in the surrounding gloom.

Tazla followed close behind with the other two operatives taking up the rear.

Owens had been right, the Erebus didn’t appear to have much of a crew, or otherwise, they were in hiding, as the boarding team crossed two corridors without spotting another soul.

It wasn’t until they came to their third bend that Sensy slowed down suddenly and held up his fist before indicating a likely contact ahead.

He pressed his broad back against the bulkhead and the rest of the team stacked up next to him as they slowly approached the adjacent corridor.

Sensy was the first to spy around the corner and then gave the signal to move.

The Niner team leader whipped around the corner with his rifle held ready and Tazla and the others followed suit a beat after.

The beacons of their rifles revealed a corridor littered with bodies.

“Looks like we missed all the fun,” said Charm.

Tazla slowly approached the bodies, counting at least twenty, some lying on the deck, others sitting up against the bulkhead. It appeared these crewmembers were a mixture of the ship’s crew and a hostile boarding party, likely from the other Eagle.

She knelt next to a Benzite crewman, wearing the same style of body armor as the security troopers they had faced on Eagle and check his pulse. It was weak and thready.

A moaning sound from further down the corridor caused her to spin that way just in time to see an Erebuscrewmember vainly attempting to raise a hand phaser in her direction. He hadn’t even extended his arm halfway before he was struck by a perfectly aimed phaser blast coming courtesy of Violet.

Tazla gave the Niner a grateful nod before she stood again and scanned over the many of the other bodies. “A lot of these people are still alive.”

“Our man among them?” Sensy said.

It took her a moment to look over all of the wounded or dead crewmembers before she was certain that none of them was Captain Owens. She shook her head. “No. But we have to try and get these people off this ship.”

“Not our mission,” Charm grunted. “We’re here to extract one package and get the hells off this doomed tub.”

Tazla shot the operative a dark glare. She knew, of course, of the infamous Tellarite tetchiness but didn’t appreciate his callous manner on this occasion. “If they stay here, they’re all going to die and I’m not willing to let that happen,” she said without a hint of uncertainty in her tone. Perhaps once upon a time, back when her moral compass had been far cloudier, she may have thought twice about such a course of action. But that wasn’t who she was anymore, she had long since decided.

Before she could give any other orders, however, something else caught her attention. There was movement further down the darkened corridor where it intersected with another one. Something or somebody had across the junction, she was sure of it but by the time she had raised her phaser beacon in that direction, she found nothing but empty space.

She felt an inexplicably cold shudder run up her spine. “Anyone else catch that?”

Sensy stepped up to her, following her glance. “No. What was it?”

She shook her head. “Not sure. I think it may have been a person.”

“Our target, perhaps?” said Violet. “Sensors are still giving me nothing.”

“Perhaps,” Tazla said. She had to steady herself against the bulkhead suddenly when the entire ship shuddered hard.

“I think our time here is quickly coming to an end,” Charm said.

Tazla agreed. “We’re getting closer to the planet. We need to move now,” she said and turned to the Niners. “Sensy, I want you and your people to get these crewmembers into escape pods now. Then do the same and contact Eagle to bring you all back on board.”

But the SMT team leader shook his head. “You’re not going to go after him by yourself, Commander.”

Tazla was already on the move. “We’re out of time and you’ve got your orders. I expect you to follow them,” she said without gracing him with another look as she rushed towards the corridor into which she thought she had seen the mystery person disappear.

“Always figured she’s a hothead. Gotta be all that red hair,” she heard Charm grumble behind her but she was already too focus on going after her man to pay him any more attention.

 

I hope Tazla hasn’t bitten off more than she can chew. But I have to give her chops for going where angels fear to tread!

I see a big smack down coming and I’m putting my money on our red headed hero.

 

I agree with Galen4. My gold-pressed latinum is on Star. Our Star. Not some alternate reality Star.

 

41


Bensu watched on anxiously as Xylion and Hopkins set up a cylindrical device that the chief engineer had retrieved from the runabout, while the control room continued to rumble underneath his feet.

Xylion’s theory regarding the nature and location of this odd, bubble-shaped, control room, seemingly floating through a dark and unknowing void had been that it was located in yet another, deeper pocket of subspace, physically separate from the ring-shaped supercollider constructed by the subspace aliens. And yet it seemed difficult to argue that the control room itself was not somehow connected to the superstructure which, by all indications, had once more commenced firing immeasurably powerful molecules at each other in order to fulfill its apocalyptic purpose. How else could one explain how every single surface in the room seemed to vibrate with increasing intensity?

“What exactly is this device?” Bensu found himself asking, after having held out for as long as possible to avoid breaking Xylion or Hopkins’ concentration.

Nora joined him by his side. “It looks like a pattern enhancer to me.”

“It is,” said Hopkins as she looked up from the device that now stood vertically on the floor, perhaps a meter in height with a bright, cone-shaped light at its tip and on top of three slim metallic legs. “But with some significant modifications.”

The security chief appeared confused and Bensu didn’t entirely understand either. “How is a transporter enhancer going to help us stop this thing from wiping out another universe?”

To that Hopkins had no immediate answer, and instead, she shot the science officer a pained expression.

Xylion, apparently having finished his work on the device, stood up straight to face the others. “We have made some hastened adaptations to the enhancer, designed to support and enhance the stability of another mind-link.”

“How?” Bensu said.

“Yeah, Commander, how exactly is this going to work?” said Hopkins who apparently wasn’t quite so convinced of what he had proposed.

“The design of the circuitry is loosely based on an ancient Vulcan technology known as a psionic resonator that was primarily utilized by ancient Vulcans to weaponize psionic energy.”

The security chief, as well as the two Niners, perked up at hearing this, either out of concern or curiosity.

“Theoretically, the modifications we affected will allow the device to strengthen any psionic field we will create. This will be crucial since we only have three individuals with psionic abilities to attempt and stop the subspace creatures from fully deploying the particle collider,” Xylion continued.

“How theoretic are we talking here?” said Nora.

Xylion’s uncharacteristic hesitation probably told Bensu more than it did the others, after all, he had spent decades in that man’s mind and therefore understood his nuances better than those of any other person he could remember. “Psionic resonators were immensely powerful and complicated devices and I have to admit that my knowledge of how they functioned is limited. And with the limited amount of time available to us, this device is likely not a close approximation of the capabilities of the technology it is based on.”

“Just so I have this straight in my head,” said Nora Laas, taking a small step closer. “You’ve just jury-rigged a transporter enhancer to resemble an ancient and powerful Vulcan mind weapon in under thirty minutes?”

Xylion raised an eyebrow in a manner, Bensu was sure, was a response to what he considered to be a compliment of his technical ingenuity. “That is correct.”

“No offense, Commander, but that sounds like a very dangerous proposition to me. What are the chances this thing will blow up and incinerate us all as soon as we turn it on?”

If Xylion had been offended by Nora’s concern, he knew perfectly well how to hide this. “As I said, this device has very little in common with the resonator and I ensured to add a safety mechanism that will disable the enhancer should it malfunction. Additionally, Lieutenant Hopkins will be able to monitor it while it is in operation.”

Nora offered the chief engineer a sharp look but Hopkins merely shrugged in response. “It should be safe.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Diamond, the lead SMT operative said, doing little to mask the irony in her tone.

The force of the vibrations all around them markedly increased again.

“The fact remains that we have few alternatives and little time. It will be necessary to take some risks if we want any hope of success. I suggest we defer the conversation regarding the safety of the device for the time being and instead focus on attempting to interrupt the particle collider.”

Nora uttered a little sigh. “I guess we’re out of options.”

“Indeed,” Xylion said and then glanced first at Bensu and then at his fellow Vulcan. “Please take your position around the enhancer.”

Diamond spoke to Ivory before she could follow the instruction. “Are you sure you’re up for doing this again?”

The Vulcan woman considered her fellow operative. “I would be dishonest if I said that I was comfortable with joining another mind-link after our previous experience. But I understand it is necessary.”

Bensu thought that he had never heard the taciturn Vulcan say so many words at once.

Diamond nodded reluctantly. “Not sure if I could go through that again.”

Ivory knelt in front of the device and he and Xylion positioned themselves by her sides so that they formed a triangle around the enhancer before they each took hold of each other's hands. If the situation had been less dire, Bensu would have thought that this may have made for a good setup for group meditation or perhaps some sort of bonding exercise.

“We follow the same process as before. Close your eyes and focus your mind, your energy, your entire being onto the collider. Ivory and I will lend our thoughts and psionic energies to support your efforts. You will have to guide us again. The enhancer, in theory, will make it easier for us to lend you our strength and allow your mind to remain clear on the task before you,” Xylion said and making Bensu feel as if what he had asked him to do was the most ordinary and routine task rather than finding a way to prevent the annihilation of an entire universe by thinking very hard.

He closed his eyes anyway and began to follow his instructions, trying to once again find the psionic threads, swirling all around him, that would connect him to where they needed to go.

“Lieutenant, please activate the enhancer.”

Bensu had not enjoyed the sensation of opening up his mind to the psionic forces at play within this subspace pocket. On the contrary, it had been a greatly disturbing experience every time he had attempted to probe it.

Once again, he almost immediately felt a hundred thousand needles piercing his body. Or at least what he’d imagine something like that would feel like.

Intellectually he knew this was all just in his mind, but then, of course, it was in the mind that sentient people were truly able to experience anything at all.

And those needles weren’t just content to prick and stab him, no, they were pulling at the same time as if attempting to push him into a hundred thousand different directions at the same time and into the countless psionic paths that appeared to crisscross the unseen layers of the control room.

The disturbing sensation didn’t last long. Soon after he had heard Xylion give the order to activate his makeshift psionic amplifier, things changed quickly. He suddenly found himself awash in a warm and not at all unpleasant glow and could sense the presence of two others with him, giving him all their mental focus and energy.

It remained a challenging task, like trying to count every single blade of grass in a lush and expansive meadow, but it became easier with every minute, as he was able to feel his way through the psionic channels, first one-by-one, then eventually dozens and hundreds at a time, each of them leading to places unknown, other universes, or perhaps other moments in time, the past, the future, he couldn’t be sure and it wasn’t his task to find out.

Instead, he located the conduit that he believed would take him to where he could take control of the collider and its awesome power, where they had a chance to make the most difference.

Once he was reasonably sure he had found what he had been looking for, he allowed his mind to follow its twisted path.

He had never been exposed to the frightening experience of explosive decompression on a spacecraft but he figured that the sensation had to be similar to what he experienced at that moment as his mind raced through the channel, far worse certainly than what Gary Seven had put him through not too long ago.

He opened his eyes again when the sudden rush of traveling at speeds seemingly beyond what was deemed physically possible suddenly came to an end and he could feel and smell the air around him had changed.

He was outdoors, or at least his mind told him as much. He stood on a grassy hill next to a river that progressed down the hill at a steady current. It was nighttime but the two moons in the sky reflected enough sunlight onto the surface to keep the gloom of dusk at bay. The air was fresh but not cold and the slight breeze felt good on his face, even if he knew it wasn’t real. And yet it was more so than any holodeck fantasy he had ever visited.

“Where are we?”

He turned to see that Xylion and Ivory were with him, standing just a few meters away. The Vulcan SMT had asked the question.

Bensu looked back up towards the night sky. The two moons had already made him suspect their location but the visible constellations confirmed it. “We’re on Celerias. My homeworld.”

“A representation of your homeworld. Created from the memories in your subconscious mind,” Xylion said.

Bensu nodded slowly. “Yes. Peculiar how so much of it has been coming back to me lately.”

“None of your memories were ever truly gone. Merely buried.”

To his right, Bensu found a large wooden wheel, constructed horizontally on top of a short column. The wheel was at least two meters wide with thick spokes and handholds mounted on the outer ring at chest level, clearly designed for manual operation. He could see the entire contraption was connected via a mechanism to a massive wooden door in the river that functioned as a sort of dam. Presently, because of the current of the river, the wheel itself was spinning slowly.

He took a step closer to the contraption. “I think I recognize this. It’s a device from ancient Celerias, long before the industrial and electronic age. It was designed to attempt to divert rivers to allow settlements to be built alongside their fertile deltas and reroute the water towards agriculture. This looks like one of the earliest such machines. Not very sophisticated nor all that successful.”

“Fascinating,” said Xylion as he joined him by the wheel. “You appear to recall cultural and historical facts of your people that must have been ancient even when your world was destroyed.”

“Once we had developed synthetic bodies, thousands of years after this, we were an extraordinarily long-lived species. Perhaps I was a scholar of culture and history.”

“That is certainly possible.”

“Why have you brought us to this specific place?” Ivory said.

Bensu shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

Xylion studied the wheel in closer detail as it kept spinning around its axis and then towards the river where the wooden wall did little to impede or divert the flow of water. When Bensu followed his gaze further downriver he could see small settlements in the distance along the river banks that were beginning to be flooded due to the failure of this poorly designed dam.

“We have to assume that what we are seeing is in some form connected to the particle collider we are attempting to stop even as it is in the process of powering up,” said Xylion.

“It’s allegorical,” Bensu said with sudden clarity and then continued when Xylion and Ivory considered him with curious looks. “My mind created something from my subconscious memory that somehow fits our present circumstances. Don’t you see? The river is the collider and those settlements down the river, they represent the universe that is threatened by it.”

Ivory glanced towards the wheel. “You are implying this wheel may stop the collider.”

Bensu nodded. “That’s why the ancient Celerians built this. To protect their settlements from destruction,” he said and then grabbed hold of one of the large wooden grips, pulling against the spinning wheel to attempt to stop it. “I can feel it slowing down but this is not a one-man job,” he said, looking at the others.

Xylion hesitated only a second or so before joining him at the large wheel, grabbing another handhold and when Ivory took up position as well and added her strength to the others, Bensu could feel the wheel slowing significantly. Glancing over to the dam, the wooden wall was starting to show almost immediate effect, diverting the river into numerous small man-made channels that were branching off from it and thereby slowly lowering the water levels beyond the dam. “It’s working, we are making progress.”

No sooner had those words come over his lips, an ear-splitting thunder roared across the sky above them with such force, all three of them momentarily let go of the wheel before taking hold of it again.

Within moments heavy clouds moved in above as if somebody had drawn a curtain to the previously clear night sky and it opened up with a tremendous downpour, soaking all three of them in short order.

Bensu could already feel the ground under his feet beginning to turn into mud and his hands starting to slip from the wheel.

“This is a curious development,” said Ivory.

“Agreed,” said Xylion and looked towards Bensu, still working the wheel. “Was this part of Celerias prone to such rapidly changing weather patterns?”

“I don’t believe so,” he said, half-shouting now to make himself heard over the continuously roaring thunder that had come out of nowhere. “Certainly nothing on this scale. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky a minute ago.”

A bright lightning bolt struck a tree nearby, causing the ground to rumble and Bensu to flinch hard from the sudden brightness and energy that had been released. A new memory was quickly asserting itself in his mind. “The Worldtaker.”

Clearly, his two Vulcan companions didn’t understand.

“The Worldtaker was a powerful deity whom the ancient Celerians worshipped. Or rather feared. Among other things, he controlled the thunder he would unleash on the people that had angered him and on those who had failed to pay him proper tribute.”

Another lightning bolt struck, this one even closer to the wheel. Bensu slipped in the thickening mud and was nearly hit by the still moving wheel before he could recover. Lightning strikes were now erupting with increasing regularity as far as the eye could see, creating a steady earthquake that made it more and more challenging to stay upright. “My memories of Celerias are still muddled but I don’t think this storm is like anything I’ve ever experienced,” he shouted to the others.

“It is no coincidence,” Ivory responded.

“The most logical assumption is that the subspace aliens have learned of our intention and found a manner to counteract our efforts,” shouted Xylion.

“Which means we are on the right track. We are actually shutting down the collider. We need to redouble our efforts,” he called out and then focused all his strength against the wheel.

The others mirrored his move but it was quickly becoming obvious that it wasn’t going to be enough. Bensu’s feet were now in ankle-deep mud and he was slipping with every other step, the wheel itself was becoming as slippery as ice, and the constant lightning strikes, seemingly creeping nearer with each impact made it difficult to focus. To make matters worse, the wheel’s resistance was also growing, perhaps the torrential rain was increasing the river’s volume and current, but it almost felt as if something else was fighting against them, increasing the pressure they were up against by the second.

“We have to keep going,” Bensu shouted from the top of his lungs, his sweat now freely mixing with the heavy rain streaming down his face.

Lightning struck just a few meters away from the wheel, closest to Ivory who was pushed back from the force of the strike.

Not a moment later Xylion slipped in the mud and as he went down a thick spoke of the wheel struck his head.

“No,” Bensu screamed as he found himself all by himself at the wheel that had built up so much pressure, he was no match for it at all.

Even as his muscles bulged as he tried his absolute best to slow its spin, he could hear the loud creaking of the dam in the river. It broke just as the wheel slipped out of his hands and he too went down.

Although in tremendous pain, he managed to pull himself up slightly from the mud just to see the settlement in the distance, lit up brightly by the constant barrage of lightning strikes, steadily being consumed by the merciless watery force of the freed river, feeding on the river banks like an unleashed wild animal.

Whatever connection his mind had created to this place of the ancient past collapsed and Bensu felt himself once more sucked through the psionic channels until he was back where they had started, sitting in the control room around the psionic amplifier.

Although everything that had transpired had been a construct of his mind, he could still feel every last bit of physical pain he had experienced and he slumped in on himself the moment his mind and body reconnected once more.

Both Xylion and Ivory had already collapsed, Nora seeing to the science officer and Diamond to her fellow SMT operative.

“What happened?” Bensu asked.

Nora looked up at him. “We had to deactivate the amplifier when your vital signs became erratic.”

“How are they?”

“Alive,” she said as she tended to Xylion again. “But not in great shape.”

Bensu tried to stand but his strength left him almost instantly and he fell back to the floor which he realized was still trembling underneath him.

Nora left Xylion’s side and helped steady him. “I suggest you take it easy. You faired slightly better than the others but you’ve also suffered traumatic distress,” she said as she referred to her tricorder. “Or so this darned thing is telling me.”

He didn’t have the strength to argue, nor in fact, to try and attempt to stand again. So instead, he found Hopkins who was looking over the holographic displays at the center of the room. “What about the collider?”

She looked up from the alien displays. “Most of what I’m seeing here is still completely nonsensical to me. But I’d say that whatever you did bought us some time.”

“How much?”

The chief engineer’s dour expression pretty much said it all. “Not nearly enough, I’m afraid.”

 

This chapter set off so many red alerts in my head. Great work. I can never sleep again. Just kidding.

 

Yeah, so the collider has no intention of going quietly into the subspace night. I can only hope our heroes don’t end up lobotomizing themselves to stop this thing.

And Bensu...what up? The imagery from the mind meld was fascinating.

Keep the machine working!

 

42


She found the next corridor empty with few doors, none of which appeared operational and so she continued to the next junction where she carefully considered her two options.

A faint sound coming from her left decided for her. Keeping her rifle at the ready position, she slowly made her way down the curved corridor, staying close to the near bulkhead.

She stopped when she spotted the source of the sound.

A heavy set of doors were malfunctioning, continuously hissing open before attempting to unsuccessfully shut again.

She approached the doors cautiously and found that they led into a cargo bay. The damaged doors allowed for an intermittent, narrow gap, just wide enough for her to slip through.

She did one last quick survey of her surroundings and the little area she could see inside the cargo bay, unable to spot anything noteworthy or dangerous, and then, lowering her rifle, she jumped through the gap.

The doors practically slammed shut behind her so quickly, she came close to being trapped in-between them.

She quickly brought her weapon back up. The spacious cargo bay was even darker than the corridors outside, the red alert beacons barely illuminating half of the cavernous space, much of it filled with canisters and containers, and the light of her rifle felt but like a drop in the ocean.

She took a few slow steps deeper inside before she froze upon hearing a faintly metallic sound somewhere to her left.

Her instincts kicked in and she spun to her right and just in time to intercept a blow that had been meant for her head.

She had been quick enough to keep her attacker from landing a hit but had been caught unaware enough to lose her rifle as it went scattering across the deck.

She had little time to try and recognize who had set upon her, let alone think, as she was too preoccupied with fending off several rapid strikes, designed to take her down quickly.

But there was something very familiar to her attacker’s fighting style, and after a bit, she found herself almost anticipating the blows.

Tazla managed to use her attacker’s momentum to her advantage, landing a blow of her own and then using her elbow to get some separation.

That’s when she realized that she was facing herself.

A version of herself.

She felt an odd sensation overcome her once she saw her own, green eyes looking back at her. After the disturbing experiences of her fellow comrades encountering their alternate versions, she had held out hope to be able to be spared having to come face to face with her own doppelganger. It had not meant to be.

“I’ll give you that, you know how to fight,” the other Tazla said, between labored breaths as they began to circle each other in the cargo bay, allowing a momentary respite from their battle.

“As do you.”

“Tends to be useful in my line of work.”

“Which is what? Assassin?”

The other woman smiled. Tazla could see that she was wearing her red hair extremely short, not a style she had ever sported herself. More startling perhaps were the scars on her face. One, running almost horizontally along her chin, was most chilling since she recognized it well. She had been cut there herself many years prior when she had gotten into an ill-conceived fight with an angry Nausicaan who had very nearly cut off her head with his razor-sharp blade. However, Tazla hadn’t kept that disfigurement long, opting for it to be surgically repaired.

“I do a lot of things.”

Tazla nodded. “Such as working for your master Altee and kidnap people from starships on his orders.”

She shrugged. “You do what you have to in order to survive. Judging by the way you handle yourself in a fight, you must know a thing or two about that,” she said and then, before Tazla could respond, rushed her again.

She hardly had time to prepare a counter as her alter ego came straight at her with a ferocity and speed she had not anticipated.

She barely dodged the first blow but was not fast enough to evade the second that struck her across her face and painfully split her lip.

This Star was nothing if not a ferocious fighter. She quickly followed up with a kick aimed at her midsection that Tazla only managed to avoid by jumping backward and deflecting it at the last second with her hands.

It pushed her off-balance and she began to stumble. Other Star was more than happy to press the advantage, grabbing hold of her head and slamming it into a cargo container.

Her head spinning from the impact, Tazla nevertheless managed to block the follow-up attack with a raised forearm before blasting the other woman with a punch of her own that stung her fist as her knuckles made contact with hard skull bone.

Other Star fought dirty, grabbing hold of Tazla’s ponytail and yanking her head harshly backward before slamming it once more into the container. Between the aching pain, she darkly mused how this kind of fighting style, taking advantage of any weakness, wasn’t all so different from how she had once handled herself. It had been a tactic she had learned from a man who had bested her in a fight in just such a manner. ‘The only unfair fight is the one you lose’, had been his motto, and apparently her doppelganger prescribed to that same theory.

She had no time to ponder this further as her opponent was clearly looking to finish this fight and Tazla spotted the incoming fist aimed at her head from the corner of her eye.

She jerked back just in time to avoid the blow, the fist instead slamming into the container just centimeters from her face, and with such force, it went right through the plastisteel shell.

Tazla’s eyes opened wide as she briefly considered the other woman who had no intention of holding back from trying to smash her face.

She grinned. “Yes, I have a few upgrades. Jealous?”

Even while she retracted her left arm still buried inside the container up to her wrist, she brought up her right arm, this time aiming for Tazla’s exposed neck.

She spotted the metallic glint shooting out from below her opponent’s wrist and immediately knew what she was dealing with.

She brought up her right hand to intercept the spring blade, the razor-sharp knife slicing into her palm.

Tazla felt no pain. Instead, the blade broke after it had penetrated the outer layers of the artificial skin grafted over her cybernetic duranium appendage.

Her double looked down with surprise at seeing the blade harmlessly drop to the deck.

“Not really,” Tazla said. “I know some tricks, too.” With that she used her enhanced arm to strike the woman in her side, guessing correctly that she too carried a symbiont there, feeling momentarily sickened by the other Tazla’s explosion of pain by being struck in her weakest point.

Truth was, she had never enjoyed fighting dirty, and remembering how vulnerable a Trill was in that part of their body, she had done her best to lessen the impact of her fist. But it had been enough to cause her to double over as she winced in pain.

Tazla followed up the blow with a strike to her face, causing her double to stumble back and hit the deck.

By now the cargo bay was spinning so quickly, Tazla was unable to stay on her feet herself and she slid down along the container behind her until her backside hit the floor, fairly certain that she was suffering from a concussion from the repeated hits to her head.

At least her opponent didn’t appear to be in a state to carry on the fight either. She managed to slowly push herself back up onto her elbows and then dragged herself across the floor to sit up against a storage canister until the two women sat opposite from each other.

“Maybe we call it a draw,” Tazla said.

Her counterpart nodded slowly before spitting out a thick wad of blood onto the deck.

“Where is Captain Owens?”

Star laughed through blood-stained teeth.

“Did I make a joke?”

The other Trill shot her double across the deck a hard stare. “Now, why would you be worried about that sorry excuse of a man?”

“Last time I met him he had murderous rage in his eyes. Rage aimed squarely at you and he didn’t exactly make a distinction between the two of us. So, excuse me if I’m worried about him lingering in the shadows, painting a target on my back.”

Star spat more blood and shook her head. “Don’t worry about Owens.”

“You killed him?”

She considered her again. “I’m starting to think that perhaps there is more to your curiosity. Tell me, did your Captain Owens send you here to find him?”

Tazla didn’t reply.

“He did, didn’t he? Because that would be perfectly in line with the naïve manner you and the people in your universe think,” she said as she slowly attempted to get back onto her feet.

Tazla followed suit, not comfortable showing any weakness in front of the woman who had attempted to violently end her moments earlier, even if the cargo bay around her had still refused to settle down. “What do you know about my universe?”

“More than you think,” she said and then fell back to the deck when the ship trembled hard, worse than it had before, clearly a sign of her impending doom.

Tazla struggled to keep her balance as well but managed barely by holding on to the cargo container behind her. “Your ship is lost. We need to get out of here.”

“That’s one thing we can agree on.”

She slowly made her way over to her doppelganger and then extended her hand while indicating toward the cargo transporter at the other end of the bay. “I can beam us over to my ship.”

She glared at her and then finally managed to stand without taking the proffered hand. “I think I pass on that, thank you very much.”

“We don’t exactly have a lot of options here,” Tazla said.

“I have no interest in joining your merry band of do-gooders,” she said as she headed for the transporter console.

“You could do a lot worse. Working for Altee, doing his dirty work. I’ve been down that path and trust me, it can lead you nowhere but to doom and regret. “

Star laughed again, a throaty, nearly maniacal laugh that felt cold and unpleasant. “So what? You propose I go back to your universe where everybody gets along and wears flowers in their hair?”

She chose to ignore the sarcasm. “A person with your talents and experiences would be in high demand in my universe,” she said and took another step forward. “And no, I’m not talking about scheming, kidnapping, and assassinations. I know you are resourceful and smart. Cleary a gifted fighter and composed under pressure.”

“Are you describing me or yourself?”

Tazla had no idea why she was pushing this so hard. Perhaps since she had already lost Owens, the man she had been sent here to bring back, she considered the other Star as the next best thing, the consolation price as it were. Or maybe it went much deeper than that. Perhaps she saw in this Tazla Star a lot of herself that went beyond the superficial. She liked to think that she had successfully managed to change her life, even if it had been too late to prevent it from spinning out of control first. But if she had been able to redeem herself, perhaps there was a chance for this other Tazla Star as well. And perhaps before she made the same terrible choices she had once made. “If you are anything like me, then you have spent countless hours during sleepless nights thinking about your life choices and pondering if you truly are on the right path. You’ve asked yourself if there isn’t more to life you could be doing by making a positive difference for others rather than to further the agendas of a self-serving sociopath. Well, maybe this is your chance, right here. Maybe all it takes is for you to take the first step.”

The other Trill’s emerald eyes stared back into Tazla’s without uttering a word and she knew that she had been more right than wrong. They were not so dissimilar to each other at all and this thought gave her comfort. It gave her comfort and it scared her at the same time.

But the moment of reflection wasn’t meant to last. “It’s a nice thought. Real tempting actually. But it would never work.”

“How do you know if you don’t give it a chance?”

“Because even Tazla Star can’t change the laws of physics. Not in this universe or any other,” she said and turned back towards the transporter station and the ship around them was beginning to shudder and shake at much stronger and regular intervals. “I’m taking my chances on Telron XI. It’s class F but has a marginally breathable atmosphere.”

“What do you mean by changing the laws of physics?”

“Let’s just say my survival chances are better on that molten piece of rock.”

“How do you know?”

She shot her a grin over her shoulder. “Altee developed a transporter. Well, actually he had me steal it from Matthew Owens and Westren Frobisher. Not one of my proudest moments.”

“That’s when you killed his brother.”

She nodded as she continued to program the transporter. “As I said, things didn’t exactly go to plan. But that transporter turned out to be very useful.”

“Useful how?”

Star finished and headed for the transporter pad, but had paused as she was nearly swept off her feet by a mighty heave gripping the ship caught in its death throes. Tazla thought she could hear the hull buckle under the increasing gravitational pressure. A starship going down inside a planetary gravity well was a nasty business and one she was unfortunately not unfamiliar with. It was very much an experience she did not wish to relive. And yet, she couldn’t quite get herself to follow. Not yet. “How exactly did Altee use this transporter?”

Star was about to respond when she was blasted by a phaser beam which struck her hard in her left shoulder. The force of the impact slung her to the floor where she slid along the smooth deck.

Tazla whirled around to see a dark figure emerge from the shadows of the cargo bay.

“I would have thought that a seasoned killer like you would know the first rule about taking down your enemy. Don’t ever leave them for dead until you’ve made sure,” Michael Owens said. He was holding a large, compression-style phaser rifle but Tazla was instead drawn to the man’s face. Half of it seemed to have burned recently, leaving behind a terribly mangled mess of scorched and melted skin, so bad that bone was clearly visible underneath. Half his hair had burned away and his uniform was a smoldering ruin and hardly recognizable. In short, he looked as if he had been exposed to burning plasma and looked more like a zombie having come back from the dead than a living and breathing person. She had no earthly idea how he was still able to function at all in that condition.

“And look at this, I get two of you for the price of one,” he said when his one good eye—the other one appeared to be missing altogether—caught sight of Tazla as well. He whipped his rifle around to take aim and fired.

Tazla jumped at the last second, feeling the heat of the blast singe her side and tearing through layers of clothes but otherwise missing her by a hair length.

She executed a roll and came up running, desperately looking for her weapon she had lost earlier.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Owens fire at her again and she leaped forward and through the air.

The blast missed her once more and instead struck a canister containing a highly volatile mixture that exploded instantly. The resulting shockwave caught her even while she was still in midair and pushed her hard across the bay and into a row of barrels that mercifully softened her landing somewhat.

The ensuing fire from the explosion rapidly filled the cargo bay with thick dark smoke and with the ship already falling apart, fire suppression was out of the picture.

In fact, the explosion seemed to have sped up the vessel tearing itself apart, and not a moment after Tazla had met the deck, she had to roll away to avoid being struck by falling debris.

Her body groaned in pain all over but she understood that there was no time to lick her wounds. Not if she wanted to get out of this alive.

She could see a single shape moving through the smoke, heading right for the console. Owens wasn’t wasting any time and activated the transporter and not a moment later she could hear rather than see him dematerializing.

Tazla struggled to her feet, dodging more debris she found her way to the transporter console as well. It was already fluctuating as power was beginning to fail but she could see that it had beamed two people onto the surface of the planet. She knew the prudent thing to do was to reprogram the transporter and try to beam back onto Eagle.

When she spotted the ceiling literally coming down to crush her, she realized she had no time to do this, she simply reactivated the last cycle and then leaped for the transporter platform. The beam caught her in midair and before she had made contact with the pad.

 

It's not always easy meeting yourself.

 

What a fight! But what have we come to?

We’re down to a final triangle now...two Tazlas and a menacing, deformed Dark Michael. Wow. I wonder if the Darklings are going to kill each other on that planet and take our Tazla with them, or will there be survivors?

I think Dark Michael would have been evil in this universe even without the civil war. He’s definitely not the same person as Prime Michael.

Reserving my ringside seat for the final round!

 

43


By the time she painfully hit the ground, she was no longer on the Erebus.

The human saying speaking to frying pans came to her mind once she had recovered from dropping onto the rocky surface from a couple of meters in the air.

She found herself underneath a dark, night sky but could see well enough thanks to the half a dozen or so bright red and active volcanoes spilling hot lava into the sky. Massive burning rivers crisscrossed the craggy landscape as far as she could see. A steady rain of ash and dirt was drizzling down on her from the constant eruptions.

The heat was almost unbearable and the air so thin, she found it difficult to draw breaths. Those she did manage burned her lungs and forced tears into her eyes.

Matters could have been worse, of course, she could have materialized inside one of those rivers of lava or a volcano. As it were, she stood on a fairly steady rock outcropping, mostly surrounded by deep, pit-like valleys and sheer cliff walls.

She lasted less than a minute before the oppressive heat practically forced her to rip off her uniform jacket and crimson shirt, leaving her in a gray tank top already plastered to her skin by her sweat.

She grabbed her combadge from her discarded jacket and was about to try and reach Eagle when she heard the phaser blast.

Half ducking, she whipped around.

“Stop running. We both knew that this was going to be the way all of this would end.”

It was Owens, still wielding his phaser rifle. Star, although shot and injured, had clearly found her second wind as she was sprinting as fast as she could away from the man trying to blast her to smithereens, jumping across fissures and lava streams.

Fortunately for her, his aim was poor thanks to his compromised depth of field, leaving him with mostly blasting rock.

“No, this is your delusional fantasy,” she shouted back as she crossed a pit of lava by jumping between islands of semi-stable rock formations. “Hope it's everything you dreamed it would be.”

“Not yet. But the night is young,” he said and changed tactics, no longer trying to hit her directly but instead firing at the ground and trying to destroy the rocks she was using to avoid the lava.

One blast struck right in front of her, shooting up rocks and lava and sending her flying as she cried out when she was burned and pelted by the debris.

Tazla realized that Owens had not yet spotted her and quickly resolved to press her advantage. Keeping herself low, she snuck towards the elevated plateau Owens was using as his vantage point.

The terrain was tricky and she had to watch her every step to avoid plunging into one of the many deep crevices and fissures lining her path, while at the same time avoiding the streams and rivers of superheated rock.

“Are you still alive?” Owens shouted from the top of his lungs.

There was no response and Tazla wondered if he had finally managed to kill her. Glancing into the direction she had last seen the other Trill, she could not find any signs of her.

“Wouldn’t want to make it that easy on you,” she finally responded, sounding hurt but definitely not dead.

Owens laughed.

“Does it amuse you how much pleasure you take from this? You think that’s what your brother would have wanted.”
“You don’t get to talk about my brother,” he shouted, his rage reasserting itself and Tazla could hear him unleashing rapid-fire blasts for phaser fire into Star’s general direction from somewhere above her.

It was a good enough distraction for her to climb the few meters up to the plateau he stood on.

“Face it, this was never about your brother or with seeking justice,” Star shot back, clearly not impressed by the barrage. “This is all about you and your desperate need for revenge. To give your empty life meaning. At least admit that much.”

“I’m doing this galaxy a favor by wiping you out of existence.”

The climb was challenging and hazardous. She lost her footing at least twice, both times she had come close to tumbling down into a literal pit of fire. Her hands were slick with her sweat making it hard to get a good grip on the rugged rock wall and her lungs felt as if they were ready to burst any second. If the fall and the lava weren’t going to kill her, she was sure the thin air and the heat would be more than willing to finish her off soon.

Willing her way onward she finally did manage to reach the plateau, scrambling onto the rock ledge just a few meters behind where Owens stood, spying down at the rough-hewn landscape of fire and stone below him to attempt to locate his target.

Tazla tried to sneak up on him as best as she could but something—and she wasn’t sure what—gave her away. Or perhaps he had just sensed her presence, regardless he whipped around with a disturbing gleam in his remaining eye and a crooked half-smile on his deformed features.

“There you are.”

She jumped just as he fired.

The blast struck the ground and she was pelted by sharp rocks as she landed a few meters away.

“Nice of you to come to me,” he said as he took aim again and clearly too far gone to realize that she was not the Tazla Star he had chased for the better part of a year. Or perhaps simply no longer carrying which one he killed. “Admit it, you want this as much as I do. For somebody to finally put an end to that pointless and miserable existence of yours.”

“Behind you,” Tazla said.

Owens laughed, clearly amused that she would think he’d fall for such a basic ploy.

“You know what your problem is?” Star—standing right behind him now—said. “You just don’t know when to quit talking.”

His eyes opened wide when he realized his mistake. He whirled around with his rifle which Star easily slapped out of his hands, causing it to go flying over the edge of the cliff.

Tazla didn’t think she’d ever forget his soul-crushing scream as Star struck him hard and right into the already broken side of his face.

Instead of being undone by his pain, it seemingly re-energized him and he managed to block her next attack before striking out himself, hitting Star with enough force to push her backward and towards the edge.

That’s when Tazla realized that besides the thin air, the burning rivers, the cooking heat, and the bottomless pits, Telron XI had yet another way to kill any sentient life forms foolish enough to presume they could visit its surface.

Earthquakes.

As if having waited for the most optimal moment to unleash its latest deathtrap, the earth underneath her began to rumble uncontrollably and she could feel small fissure opening up where she was lying.

It was far worse where Owens and Star stood.

Both of them stopped their fight briefly, not because they wanted to, but because they had to in order to try and keep their balance.

The quake had been powerful but lasted only moments. But even before it had completely subsided, she could see the ground underneath the two fighters give way to gravity.

One moment they had both stood on solid ground just a few meters away, the next they were both gone.

Tazla jumped back onto her feet, leaping forward and toward the newly created fissures, and carefully approached the ledge. She glanced down to find a sheer drop of fifty or sixty meters, maybe more, having exposed the superheated magma in the planet’s crust.

Most amazingly of all, however, she could see both Owens and Star still clinging to life. Quite literally. Owens was hanging on near the ledge while her doppelganger was way out of reach further below but not all that far from a solid-looking ledge that potentially could get her to safety.

Tazla didn’t hesitate and laid out flat on the cliff edge and reached down towards Owens. “Take my hand.”

He hesitated only a moment before his survival instinct apparently overrode his disgust for her and he reached out to take hold of it.

It took all her strength in this ghastly hostile environment, but she could feel herself making progress as he very slowly inched up and towards her.

That was until she saw his one good eye focusing on her, seeing all his hate and fury, directed solely at her.

He reached out for her neck and she was beginning to go over the edge.

“You take us both down.”

He simply laughed. “As long as you burn it’ll be worth it.”

“Damnit, man, think straight,” she said already realizing it was far too late for reasoning with him. She tried to disentangle herself but he had gravity on his side, and she had nothing to slow her sliding to a fiery death.

“We’ll burn together, you and me,” he said, his voice now filled with undeniable madness. “It was always meant this way.”

“Just like your brother was meant to die.”

It was the other Tazla shouting up from down the pit.

“He died like a coward. Just like his brother.”

This caught Owens’ attention. He broke eye contact with the woman he was trying to drag down with him to find her double further down below.

“I did the galaxy a favor when I killed him. And it will be a far better place once you are gone as well,” she continued to shout. “A family of failures and cowards, getting what they—”

Owens drowned out her words with an ear-numbing, primal scream.

And they, just like that, he let go of the death grip he had on Tazla. Not only that, he pushed himself off the cliff to dive straight for the other woman.

“Burn,” he screamed.

For a second, Tazla thought that the other Star would be able to avoid Owens coming crashing down on her. There was a ledge, just large enough for her and quite possibly within reach.

She had no idea what she was thinking in the end, but for whatever reason, she never even tried to get to it or made any attempt to get out of the way.

Instead, the two bodies collided with a loud thump, and Owens ripped Star off the cliff wall as they both plunged down together, entwined in a final and ultimately doomed struggle.

Tazla forced herself to watch until the bitter end as they struck the surface of the molten magma and were quickly swept inside and away into the burning hot liquid, until, oddly silently, they both submerged and leaving no trace that they had ever existed at all.

She kept her eyes on the magma river for a short while longer, as if expecting any sign that it had just swallowed up two humanoid beings whole but when none was forthcoming, she pushed away from the edge and rolled onto her back. She closed her eyes.

She felt tired and utterly spent, desperate to sleep for days.

She wasn’t sure how long she had stayed like that until she felt her combadge buzzing on her chest.

When she opened her eyes again, she could see a spot of light in the dark sky above her. Too bright and moving too quickly to be a star.

It took only moments for it to grow large enough for her to recognize it.

It was a Starfleet shuttlecraft.

It came within a few hundred meters of her before she felt the familiar tingle of a transporter beam.

She closed her eyes once more, letting the light take her away.

 

That scene was thrilling.

 

It doesn’t get better than a battle to the death on a volcanic planet in the dead of night. A fitting end for Dark Michael and AU Star. Those two were so tortured I actually think they wanted there lives to end when all was said and done. Shows you what living on hatred does.

This story is nothing short of epic. I’m happy there’s more to go, ‘cause I don’t want it to end anytime soon!

 

44


“The lead vessel is confirmed as a super-heavy. The formation also includes one additional heavy and two battle escorts,” Tenn reported from his tactical position, his voice loud enough to carry across the entirety of the large, busy, and noisy command bridge.

Lif turned toward one of the dedicated screens that surrounded the command chair. He had not yet felt comfortable enough to take the seat itself, which he felt was oddly positioned all by itself at the very front of the bridge, noticeably apart from the rest of the command center behind it.

He quickly brought up the sensor information on the six starship signatures on approach and immediately recognized the energy configurations to be consistent with Starfleet ships albeit not quite identical to what he would have expected from those in his universe. His face turned into a frown. “You have to be kidding me.”

“What is it?” said Garla who had remained close at his side.

Lif double-checked that Tenn and the rest of the bridge crew were sufficiently out of earshot before he addressed her. “That super-heavy is a Galaxy-class starship and those two escorts are Defiants. That’s some serious firepower coming our way. I’m not sure I like our chances.”

“You don’t know what these Star Navy ships can do.”

“Exactly. So I don’t know the first thing about taking them into battle,” he said shaking his head. “I suggest we follow the better part of valor and withdraw. Even if just temporarily.”

The scowl on her face was clear evidence that retreat was not a strategy Garla had favored in her career. “Better part of valor? You’ve spent far too much time among humans, nephew.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t appreciate the value of a tactical retreat. Not so long ago, when we faced each other on opposite sides, you knew that backing down was the right decision,” he said, referring to the less than pleasant encounter they’d had when she had caught up with his Starfleet away team attempting to escape from Piqus following a rather heated skirmish with her and her Eye operatives. It was not a moment he enjoyed reliving, and in truth, it felt as if it had taken place a lifetime ago.

Garla grimaced before shaking her head, evidently not enjoying this trip back memory lane either. “That was different. I had a very specific plan at the time.”

“Sneaking onto Eagle undetected,” he said under his breath.

She ignored him. “I know you have battle experience.”

“Yes, with a ship I am familiar with, not on a vessel I haven’t set foot on since I’ve been a child,” he shot back and had to catch himself to blurt out his frustration too loudly.

Tenn briefly glanced in their direction but then was quickly distracted once more by his instruments to pay them any further attention.

In truth, his battle experience was yet another chapter in his life he’d rather forget. It had involved going up against multiple Jem’Hadar ships during the height of the Dominion War. People he had cared about had been killed or come very close to it. Eagle had very nearly been lost under his command, something he had most certainly not been ready for.

“Lif, listen to me, a retreat, tactical or otherwise, is not an option,” Garla said, suppressing the volume of her voice but leaving no doubt to her resolve. “Whoever is on those ships, they are making a move for the subspace particle collider and since we know what it is capable of doing, we cannot allow them to gain access to it. No matter the cost.”

Lif swallowed as he realized the truth of her words, perhaps even feeling a bit ashamed. As a Starfleet officer, putting the good of the galaxy—in this case, an entire universe, perhaps—before any other considerations was supposed to be his job. He nodded slowly. “I’ll need your help.”

She grabbed his lower arm tightly. “Naturally.”

Lif tried to focus on what needed to be done first to oppose this incoming threat of Starfleet ships but his concentration was abruptly broken by a round of loud, blaring alert sirens.

Tenn promptly provided an update. “The fleet has accelerated and will now enter weapons range in less than five standard minutes.”

“Of course, they have,” Lif mumbled mostly to himself.

The already busy command bridge became more hectic as the turbolift deposited another group of officers onto the deck who promptly went to work while those already manning the various, long banks of computer stations increased the urgency of their tasks.

To Lif it all looked like a hive of bees swarming around their nest with compelling purpose. It was a little too much activity for his liking and compared to the much calmer and seemingly more focused approach one could expect on Eagle and other Starfleet ships when going into battle. He found it difficult to concentrate with this much noise and movement around him. Perhaps this was why on Krellonian ships the captain was sequestered away from his officers.

“Battle stations,” Garla quietly said as she stood beside him.

He shot her a puzzled look, not immediately understanding what she meant.

“Call for battle stations, Lif.”

“Right, yes, of course,” he said as the proverbial light bulb finally came on. “All hands to battle stations. Full power to weapons and shields.”

The order was instantly repeated by Tenn and then by various other officers and likely throughout the ship.

“The Yellow Rose is a Penumbra-class heavy cruiser,” Garla said quietly. “If starship designs in this universe are in line with ours, its capabilities should be comparable to your Starfleet’s Galaxy-class. She should pack quite a punch with her main, forward-facing canons but she has some weakness. She turns very slowly and her ventral and aft weapons are not overly effective.”

Lif nodded as he made quick mental notes of her rapid-fire explanations delivered sotto voce and wondering if he shouldn’t try and think of an excuse to let her take command of the ship during the battle. He quickly discarded the idea; they didn’t have time to convince the crew to take orders from a woman who in this universe had died months ago.

“Try to keep the enemy in front of you. As for our escorts. They barely have half the firepower of this ship and they are poorly armored, particularly at their flanks. You may have to consider utilizing them to slow down the enemy fleet.”

Lif frowned at her as he understood the deeper meaning of her words. “I am not planning on sacrificing these people to ensure our survival.”

“You will need to think tactically, Lif. More is at stake here than our survival.”

But for now, he was undeterred as he headed for the large touch screens that surrounded the command seat and provided him real-time sensor data.

“Take the chair.”

But he shook his head. He was too anxious to try and sit. He brought up the sensor data from the incoming fleet again and then marked a few ships. “The Galaxy, the super heavy, is the biggest threat and therefore the priority target,” he said, finding that he really needed to project his voice to ensure it carried over the noise of the bridge. “These two smaller Defiant escorts could mean a lot of trouble as well. They are fast, highly maneuverable, and pack a heavy punch. They are secondary and tertiary targets.”

Tenn acknowledged the order.

“Use the cyclic converter,” Garla said quietly. “It’s the main gun and Starfleet may not be prepared for it.”

Lif nodded. “Target the lead ship with the cyclic converter and fire as soon as she is in range,” Lif shouted.

“Powering up cyclic converter,” Tenn acknowledged.

He could feel the deck plates under his boots vibrate slightly as main power was being siphoned towards the ship’s most powerful offensive weapon.

The next couple of minutes passed with increasing tension and Lif struggled to keep the butterflies in his stomach settled down. There was something inherently wrong and unreal about going into battle against Starfleet. He may have been around his own people, working alongside the Star Navy very much as his family had always intended for him, but it was impossible not to feel out of place in this universe.

“Incoming torpedoes.”

Lif spotted them on the screens a second after Tenn had shouted the warning, a dozen or so tiny dots rapidly crossing the distance between the Starfleet ships and their small fleet. He glanced up at the windows ahead, spotting the familiar sight of bright red missiles hurtling through space, just before heavy safety shutters moved into place to obscure his view.

“Keep her steady,” Garla said quietly. “The converter needs some time to spool up. We can take the damage.”

He nodded slowly, hoping that her knowledge of these types of ships in her navy translated to this universe.

“Brace for impact.”

Lif didn’t immediately find anything to hold on to and cursed himself that he had decided against taking the command chair when the ship shook hard from the torpedo impacts, threatening to throw him to the deck. Garla steadied him before he could fall and he thanked her with a brief nod.

“Forward shields are holding. Cyclic converter ready to fire.”

“Do it, fire,” he said without delay.

The ship shuddered again but this time not due to taking fire, but while unleashing it. On the screens, he could see a massive energy beam blasting towards the enemy ships.

The lead Starfleet ship—the computer had since identified it as the USS Heracles—dodged the incoming fire just in time but the Excelsior taking up the rear of the formation was not so lucky.

Lif watched on with a mixture of dread and excitement as the beam shredded the ship’s shields and then incinerated nearly half of her saucer section, throwing her into an uncontrolled spin.

The bridge erupted with euphoria at seeing their success at disabling an enemy ship but it didn’t last very long. Just moments later, the Heracles and the remaining ships strafed the Yellow Rose hard, unleashing barrages of phaser fire that struck her less well-protected sides and caused the ship to tremble as if it had been caught in an ion storm.

This time Lif managed to hold on in time. He thought he understood the tactic Starfleet was employing, in fact, it looked a lot like attack pattern omega-four. He knew how to counter omega-four. “Change heading two-three-one mark one,” he shouted. “I want both our escorts mirroring our course while staying at our starboard side. They are free to fire at all targets of opportunity.”

His orders were once again acknowledged quickly and he could feel the heavy Yellow Rose turning to meet the threat. As Garla had warned, she was doing so very slowly. Too slowly.

The two compact and overpowered Defiant escorts broke away from the rest of the task force and quickly managed to single out one of their own escorts.

The frigate didn’t stand a chance and Lif watched on helplessly as it was cut to shreds.

He felt as if somebody had suddenly turned the thermostat on the bridge to its highest setting and tried to ignore the sweat pearls forming on his brow. He could no longer bear wearing the heavy robes his counterpart seemed to favor. He shrugged them off and haphazardly threw them onto his chair. “How does anyone get anything done wearing all that?”

Garla glowered at him but he chose to ignore her displeasure at not playing the part, at the moment, he was sure everyone on the bridge was too busy trying to stay alive rather than to wonder about his behavior.

He could see the cyclic converter was ready to fire again and what was more, if they were quick enough, they just might manage to nab one of those devastating Defiants as it was coming dangerously close to their cone of fire within just a few seconds.

“Change course to thirty-five degrees on our x-axis. Thrusters full reverse.”

The order was acknowledged and followed and the large ship once more shuddered, this time as it attempted a turn far more sharply than what she had been designed for. The inertia dampeners worked overtime as the Yellow Rose shifted all her thrust backward at the same time, the superstructure groaning slightly in protest.

Garla seemed impressed. “That’s pretty clever,” she said, watching on the screen as one of the Starfleet ships was coming into their line of fire thanks to the radical course correction.

Lif couldn’t help himself but smirk. “Sometimes it helps to think like a pilot.”
He waited three more seconds until he was sure he would never get a better chance. “Fire.”

It wasn’t quite the direct hit Lif had hoped for but the cyclic converter’s super-powered beam still managed to clip the small and nimble ship and that was more than enough to destroy her starboard warp nacelle and expose much of her interior to the cold, dead vacuum of space. The ship was out for the count.

He felt Garla gently touch his shoulder and he turned her wat with a smile, thinking that she meant to congratulate him.

Her facial features were cold as stone. “You have to throw our second escort at the other Defiant to take her out. By any means.”

He shook his head. “We can still win.”

“Not like this.”

The next impact came so suddenly, Lif very nearly collided with the screens he had been monitoring so closely.

“We’re losing power to aft shields. Damage reported to main engines.”

Once Lif had found his balance again, he found the screen he had been using out of commission and had to move along to the next one. Heracles was back and along with one of the other cruisers was now pelting the Yellow Rose hard from behind, apparently having learned to stay away from the ship’s devastating forward weaponry.

“Hard to port, then immediately starboard,” he shouted. “Then new heading, three-three-one mark one-two. Thrusters full ahead.” But the ship was far too sluggish in following his course changes and for a brief moment, he was tempted to find whoever was in charge of piloting the ship and take the helm himself to make sure the course corrections were carried out faster.

The problem, he realized, of course, wasn’t implementing the orders, the problem was this ship was an unyielding monster about as maneuverable as a mile-long garbage hauler and most definitely not built for this type of dogfighting.

“New course, one-four mark three-one-eight, starboard thrusters full reverse,” he shouted but once again the ship was not moving as fast as he needed it to. “Turn, turn, turn, you goddamned overweight son of a bitch.”

She did just enough to shake loose the two heavies in her shadow.

“Fire all port ventral phasers.”

Although not nearly as powerful as the main gun, the close quarter phaser fire did disable the smaller of the two cruisers that just moments ago had made their life a living nightmare.

“Lif, check your starboard,” Garla said.

He noticed his mistake too late. Although the last maneuver had bought them some temporary breathing room, it had also allowed the remaining Defiant to take over the spot at their back vacated by the other, heavier enemy ships.

He didn’t want to consider a battle lost before it was concluded but knowing what he knew about those highly maneuverable ships, he had no idea how he’d be able to shake her loose, not with a ship that had a turning radius of a small moon.

“Who the hell designs a warship like this?” he fumed in desperation.

The Defiant made her presence known painfully and unleashed her rapid-firing pulse phasers at the massive ship in her crosshairs.

“Aft shields critical.”

“Maintain speed and course,” he said then left the forward command area of the bridge to join the Kridrip by the computer banks. “Tenn, I want all the power we can muster to the forward starboard and aft port thrusters only. I don’t care if they fuse shut after this and never work again. Just channel everything we’ve got until they are redlined.”

The justicar considered him for a moment and then his eyes flashed signs of recognition. “You mean to flip the ship on its own axis?”

“Will it work?”

“It might,” he said and went over to the helm controls to oversee the maneuver closely.

“I don’t think it’ll be enough, Lif,” said Garla who had followed him.

“It will have to be because I’ve got nothing else.”

Even as he spoke the Yellow Rose began to change her orientation while forward momentum kept her on her original course. Lif could see the problem immediately. It was the same old handicap. And it was going to get them all killed. “Too slow.”

The pursuing Starfleet escort had little trouble staying with their unusual maneuver and unimpressed by the sideways moving ship, continued to liberate her arsenal with extreme prejudice.

Several computer stations all around the bridge exploded, some in chain reactions of destruction and slinging the unfortunate crewmembers operating the workstations to the deck. Thick smoke and the smell of burned and melted plastics, blood, and flesh were beginning to fill the bridge.

Lif looked up at the many screens attached overhead and found most of them destroyed, inoperative, or otherwise indecipherable. One of the few that still offered usable sensor readings refused to give him any good news.

He sighed heavily as he considered his only remaining option. “Tenn, order our escort to take out the Defiant. Even if they have to ram her,” he said and avoided eye contact with Garla.

He could barely see the slender Kridrip through the increasing smoke on the bridge but he appeared to be shaking his head. “She’s unable to comply.”

Another glance at the screen revealed why. Heracles had now singled out the much smaller ship and Lif just caught the tail end of that encounter. The escort didn’t survive it.

Another hard strike rocked the ship, causing yet more explosive eruptions on the bridge.

“Aft shields are gone. I don’t think—“

Tenn didn’t get a chance to finish what he was trying to report.

Lif quickly found him lying flat on the floor and rushed over to his side. Garla got to him a split second quicker and together they turned him on his back only to discover that a large metallic shard had lodged itself deep within his sternum, the front of his tunic rapidly soaking with his yellowish blood. His eyes were barely open.

“Hang in there, I’ll get you a medic,” Lif said but before he could try to do so, the injured man grabbed his hand with a surprisingly tight grip, holding him in place.

“No need. Just tell me. The Star Alliance in your universe? Is it worth fighting for?”

Lif was so startled by the question, words escaped him. For a moment he wondered if he had meant to address Garla instead but there was no doubt that his wide-open and intense eyes were squarely focused on him. “Yes, I want to believe that it is,” he said, surprised by his own sentiment.

“I’ve observed you since you’ve come aboard. How you’ve handled yourself. In combat as well,” he said but had to stop himself as he coughed up blood. “I am convinced there is hope for any Star Alliance that has your resolve.”

“Tenn, stop trying to talk, we’ll get you some help,” said Garla who was kneeling by his other side.

The Outlander took her hand as well and smiled at her. “He’ll need your guidance. And I think you’ll succeed where your … other version failed.”

Those were the last words coming over his lips.

Garla closed his dead eyes.

Lif still felt disoriented by his words and didn’t immediately register that they were still very much at risk of following his example.

It was Garla who shook him out of it, grabbing him by his shoulder and pulling him back onto his feet. “We need to abandon ship.”

Lif looked up at the only workable screen he could find. Four enemy ships remained, all of which with a single focus now. Their shields, weapons, engines, and most of their armor were gone. He wasn’t quite sure if there was going to be enough time to abandon the ship.

“More Starfleet ships incoming,” Lif heard some distant voice say, with the bridge resembling a haze-covered battlefield, he couldn’t even tell where it had come from.

He shook his head. “Don’t think we’re going to make it.”

“Always the optimist,” she said and found a widening smile on her lips that confused him to no end.

Until he could see the world around him begin to dissolve in shimmering blue light.

 

My apologies for being so late with this comment. Dealing with some life stuff.

Wow, I was worried about Lif there for a while…I thought at the very least he might end up stranded in this universe. I’m glad he made it.

Now it’s just the little matter of the voyage home, So to speak.

I have the feeling it won’t be a picnic!

 

45


“Transporter room to bridge. We have eighty-four Krellonian survivors.”

Michael briefly glanced up at the dome-shaped ceiling of the bridge and at the stars visible beyond the reinforced transparent aluminum after hearing Chief Chow make his report. But before he could ask if there was an opportunity to attempt and retrieve more from the doomed vessel, the ship lurched hard as it took multiple hits from the not so friendly Starfleet ships that had surrounded them from the moment they had warped right into the middle of this chaotic battle.

“Multiple hits. Damage to deck six, eight, and twelve. Structural integrity is critical,” said Leva from his tactical post behind Michael’s chair, his voice calm and professional even in the face of taking heavy fire from four ships all the while their protective shield envelope remained deactivated to allow the transporter to work.

Tazla Star was standing behind the conn, holding on to the backrest of Srena’s chair as the deck underneath her boots trembled angrily. She glanced back at her captain. “We are too exposed. We can’t afford to take any more hits like that.”

He nodded, having reached that very same conclusion.

“The Krellonian vessel is breaking up,” said DeMara Deen who had promptly returned to her duties at ops after her abduction and much to Michael’s chagrin had treated a mandated sickbay visit as not much more than a pitstop.

On the screen, the large ship that until moments ago had been used as target practice by the Starfleet task force was coming apart at the seams. There was no dramatic fireball-like explosion, instead, large pieces of the vessel were simply falling away from its superstructure as it was unable to maintain hull integrity and, in the process, venting significant areas of its insides to open space. This also meant, of course, that there could be more survivors.

Michael chose to put the safety of his ship and crew, not to mention the mission, first. “Raise shields. Evasive maneuvers.”

The experienced and well-trained crew around him followed his orders without delay.

His next inclination was to check if Lif Culsten and Garla had been among the ones who had been rescued but the battle they now found themselves in the middle of simply had to take precedent. He knew that Altee was on one of those ships, more than likely along with his father and the Prism, in other words, the key pieces the scrupulous Deltan would require to take control of a device powerful enough to lay waste to entire universes. And although he tried his best to get his priorities into the right order, he also couldn't deny his desperate need to get his father out of that man’s clutches again. He had already lost him once, he wasn’t sure how well he would take losing him again, regardless of how contested their relationship had been lately, or really, for his entire life.

“The Agamemnon is getting pummeled,” said Star who had returned to her seat to his right and was now getting real-time sensor updates fed into her console. “Looks like a Defiant and one of the cruisers are focusing their fire on her.”

The view on the main screen shifted to show the scene the first officer had described and it immediately made him feel sick to his stomach to see multiple Starfleet vessels firing at each other, clearly not pulling any punches. What could have gone so terribly wrong in this universe, that people not so different from him and his crew had decided to turn against each other in such a vicious manner, he wondered. He couldn’t even begin to imagine a scenario back home in his reality where he would ever consider going to war against the one thing he believed in more than anything else in the universe.

Perhaps, he briefly thought, that was what had caused this split to begin with. Hundreds, likely thousands of people, determined to protect the Federation and what they thought it stood for so desperately, they were willing to fight each other to try and preserve the idea of it.

“Michael, the Heracles is heading for the subspace threshold,” said Deen from operations, shooting him a quick but clearly worried expression over her right shoulder.

The screen shifted again, this time to show the large Galaxy-class cruiser slipping into in-between space, much of her oval-shaped saucer section had already transitioned into the other realm

“No doubt Altee is on that ship,” said Star at his side.

He nodded. “Along with my father and the Prism.”

Star didn’t have to say what he was already thinking, her eyes were making her mind obvious. They had to stop him.

But Michael was not yet ready to give up entirely on Amaya Donners who, as it stood, was very much at the mercy of her attackers that had the Agamemnon significantly outgunned. “Attack pattern kappa-two. Phasers and quantum torpedoes. Target the escort first.”

His crew acknowledged promptly. Srena at the helm was channeling more power to the impulse engines to quickly cross the gap between them and the fighting ships while Leva at tactical was redirecting energy to the forward shield grid while getting a targeting solution on the fast-moving Defiant warship, buzzing around the Agamemnon like an angry bee with an extraordinarily punishing stinger.

Moments later the tactical officer opened fire. Michael could tell straight away that things weren’t going well for them. Many of the orange-hued phaser blasts Eagle unleashed found their target but Leva was having trouble getting a firm torpedo lock on the fast-mover and firing manually was out of the question since the chance of friendly fire was too high.

Star was already shaking her head, seeing the same thing.

“The Agamemnon is hailing us,” said Deen who tended to manage communications when the tactical officer was preoccupied with fighting a battle.

“Put her on.”

Amaya appeared on the main screen distorted by heavy static that was just clear enough to make out that her bridge had already suffered from the fight. Clearly, their communications had been affected as well.

“Go after him, I’ll take care of this,” she said without preamble.

“You’re not going to last,” Michael countered. “It’s three against one.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got reinforcements coming in.”

He briefly glimpsed at his first officer who decidedly shook her head, no. Amaya’s fellow Preserver ships would not get there in time.

“Not soon enough.”

Michael grabbed the armrests of his chair tightly as the ship shook hard suddenly.

“We’re being targeted by the cruiser,” said Leva, to explain the changed circumstances. That left the two other ships in Atlee’s task force focusing on the Agamemnon, having decided that destroying her was their primary objective.

“Return fire. Use quantum torpedoes if we cannot use them against the Defiant,” said Star and then apparently decided that Leva could use an extra hand and left her chair to join him.

“We can likely draw some of their fire away from you and give you a chance to get some distance,” Michael said, already considering the best strategy to overcome the three enemy vessels and inputting new commands into his armrest console. He was fairly confident that Eagle could hold her own against the Excelsior-class cruiserthat was currently targeting them as well as the smaller and less formidable Miranda-class frigate. He just wasn’t sure if they could put those two away before the Defiant would finish off Amaya’s ship.

“Michael.”

The tone of her voice had startled him so much, it forced him to look back up at the screen. She hadn’t raised her voice or even sounded distressed or upset. Instead, she had sounded a great deal like the Amaya Donners he knew and—he was fairly certain—still loved. She had sounded like the Amaya Donners he had briefly met in another universe just before she had been erased from existence.

“Listen to me. Go after Altee before it’s too late.”

He just stared at her.

She offered him a smile. “I can’t believe I’m even saying this. It’s been a long time since I entertained the notion of trying to protect more than just this sad little excuse one can barely still call a Federation. But I do remember a time—a lifetime ago it feels like—when saving the universe was not just a hokey idea but an actual calling.”

The connection winked out for a moment, as both ships were taking enemy fire, Agamemnon more brutally so as evidenced by a couple of explosions on her bridge.

“Be a Starfleet officer, Michael. Save this goddamned universe. Even if I’m not entirely sure it’s worth it.”

He absolutely hated the thought of losing her again. Of course, she was not the same woman who had perished in the other reality, the one they had failed to save, but that didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t stand her dying once more. He knew there was no good choice to be made here.

He also understood that his decisions as of late had not been governed by rational thought and it had cost him. He was still upset with himself for having sent Star after his double when every fiber of his being had told him that it had been a mistake. One that had very nearly killed his first officer.

The old Vulcan proverb about the good of the many came to his mind and he found that it gave him no comfort at all. But it was the right thing—the only thing to do. “Give’em hell.”

She smirked at that. “Oh, if I’m going down, they’re coming with me. You can bet on that,” she said with a mischievous look in her dark eyes. “Thank you, Michael.”

The words stung. After all his decision was going to doom her. “For what?”

“For showing me that not all hope is lost. That there is a Michael Owens out there I could have learned to tolerate,” she offered one last smile, and then she disappeared from the screen.

“Agamemnon has just opened fire on all three ships,” said Deen.

“She’s giving us a way out,” said Star who was still assisting Leva at tactical behind him.

“Then let’s not waste it. Helm, take us into the subspace rift. Full impulse until we reach the threshold. Slow to one thousand kph for the transition. Mister Leva, reinforce aft shields. Then redistribute and reconfigure as necessary before we make contact.”

Once again, the orders were quickly acknowledged and carried out.

Michael forced himself to keep his eyes on the screen for as long as possible, watching on helplessly as the remaining ships tore Agamemnon apart piece by piece. It was one of the most excruciating things he’d ever had to witness. But he knew that paying witness to it was the least he could do. That he owed her that much.

 

Poor Michael. Now he has to lose yet another version of Donners. But it was the right call since there are literally universes at stake.

But damn, will Eagle have a Galaxy class ship to deal with now?

Can’t wait to see how they work that out!

 

Dealing with a Galaxy-class starship will take some sneaky maneuvering. Is Schwartzkopf in command? Because Star could easily take him down. Anyways, keep up the great work.