I have modified again the first and second chapter.
TO BOLDLY GO...
1. Blast from the past
Captain Antonia "Toni" Castro, seemingly a tall, young woman with black hair and brown eyes, sighed and deleted her last words from the memory of the computer. Then, she added a pretty dry entry, detailing the progresses in the study of the anomaly, and adding the data collected during the last few days.
“What’s wrong, captain?” asked the ship’s Counselor, Amia D'Arla, a bald half-Deltan woman whose pointed ears revealed her Vulcan ancestry, and who over the years had learned that with Captain Castro, it was always better a blunt approach.
“Jim’s death”
The Counselor didn’t need to ask who was ‘Jim’. Toni had been very affected the last few days, since the second death of Captain James T. Kirk.
“You know that he died as he wanted, making a difference.” The Counselor tried to reassure her.
“Yes, I know. But to discover that he had been spared all these years, only to die again. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if...”
“If...?”
“Nothing really, Amia. It’s no use to brood about the past. What’s done is done.” said Toni “You know, I met him briefly when I was rescued from that energy vortex, but I never saw him again until I enrolled in the Academy. We were somewhat friends, as friends as Starfleet brass and a cadet can be, you know.” said the Captain.
D'Arla nodded, remembering her own rough time in the Academy caused, ironically, by Captain Castro, then one of the Academy deputy headmasters.
“He hitched a ride on all the training cruises that he could. He never liked to fly a desk in Starfleet Headquarters, he wanted to be out there, between the stars.” She closed her eyes, remembering with nostalgia “He was always there to see the Enterprise sail away or come back home, like a man looking for the love of his life. I was aboard her also on a few training cruises, but we only coincided in her last training cruise, one that I’ll always remember.”
“The Genesis incident?” guessed the Counselor, remembering what she had read on the captain service record.
“Precisely. As I was saying, I served on her a few times, but I sensed the… How could I put it? The magic of the ship. The Enterprise-A was almost a carbon copy, but I never got the same feeling from her.” said Toni. “But every one of them was special. The best ship of the fleet. Archer, April, Pike, Jim, Decker, Spock, Harriman, Chekov, Demora, Garret and Picard. Without the Enterprises they would have been good captains, but with them, they became legends. One ship has fallen, but another will replace her. The Enterprises are Kirk’s legacy.” As she spoke, Amia could feel how the captain’s sadness lifting, to be replaced by her usual energetic mood. The Captain had her occasional dark moments, but they were always short-lived.
Commander Korg Ramirez, first officer of the USS Corsair, a middle-aged klingon-human hybrid who resembled the ridgeless klingons from a century ago, stepped into the bridge and looked around. He was still getting used to the modifications that had been implemented in the refit that accompanied the repairs after the Battle of Lykandia. Captain Castro had called in a few favors to get the bridge redesigned. Not that he complained about it, the new design allowed for a better communication between the bridge officers, being reminiscent of the one used in the Intrepid class, although retaining the three chairs arrangement in the center.
Captain Castro was in her chair, talking quietly with Counselor D'Arla. It was odd how they had become friends, considering that the last time that they had seen each other before the Corsair was when Captain Castro, as Deputy Headmaster of Starfleet Academy had thrown Cadet D'Arla into the brig. He had never learned the exact details of the case, but he knew that Captain Castro had asked for a transfer to the Utopia Planitia Shipyards just afterwards. Behind them Lieutenant Brigitte Ta-Bej, the Tactical and Security Officer was alert in her post, although only somebody who knew her would think that her posture was other that the one of an officer bored out of her mind. Her very idiosyncratic approach to her job had been the cause of frictions with the Operations officer, Lieutenant Karl Grünning, at first. But oddly the animosity between those two had given place to love. They had been the official couple of the ship until Karl had died in... what exactly?
'By Kahless' beard, it was in that damned week early in the year that nobody remembers' he thought. Wanting to think about any other thing, he looked at the science officer, Lieutenant Khalevathir th'Uvyyn, or as he liked to be called, Khalev. Quiet, reserved, even a bit shy when he had boarded the ship three years ago, replacing the obnoxious lieutenant S'Tes, or as some crewpeople had nicknamed him, S'Tress, as science officer, Khalev had become a very capable officer. It was a pity to have to lose him, but apparently they needed him at home and soon.
Thinking about the bridge crew brought his mind back to the time where he had been a captain on his own right, commanding the USS Corsair, NCC-1721-
B, this ship predecessor, and how his command had ended tragically in the Alkrian sector. One of the junior officers killed in the attack that had damaged the ship beyond repair, had been the son of an admiral, who had done all that was in her hand to see him demoted... As he resumed walking, his hands went to his neck where the three solid pips of a full commander now stood, instead of the lieutenant commander that ha had been for years, afterwards. He had been stuck in Records for years, and only an unlikely chain of events had managed to put him back into the bridge of an starship... although only as first officer. At first, he had resented that, and his relationship with Captain Castro had become very adversarial. But he had finally managed to put all of that back over the years passed on this ship.
“Hi, Korg.” said Captain Castro when she saw him
“Captain.” acknowledged the first officer.
“Always so formal, even after all these years.” said Toni smiling.
Korg let flash one of his rare smiles and said:
“Naturality is a trait that I don’t posses in a great quantity, cap… Toni.”
“Yeah. I still…”
“Captain.” Interrupted Khalev. “The verteron emissions of the anomaly have increased, as if something was coming through.”
And then, before Toni could say anything the anomaly flashed. Although the filters kicked in immediately, that flash had been so strong that the afterglow still momentarily blinded them.
“Khalev! What has happened?” asked Captain Castro, knowing that the eyes of the Andorian, used to the blinding snow plains of his native planet, would have not been so affected as theirs. And she wasn’t disappointed.
“A small craft has appeared through the anomaly. It seems like a Type 3 shuttlecraft.” answered matter-of-factly the quiet Andorian.
‘Type F.’ translated Toni, remembering the old designation, and ordered. “On screen.”
What she saw on the screen was a white smudge over the red and blue nebula that surrounded the Sagan Anomaly.
“Magnification.”
Soon the image changed to an old-style shuttlecraft, whose name and registry number could be easily read now: Galileo II, NCC-1701/7, USS Enterprise.
“Khalev, scan for life signs.” ordered Captain Castro.
“One human female…” started to say the Andorian when a new stream of data stopped him cold “Captain! The shuttlecraft life support is failing!”
“Brigitte, lock on her life signs and beam her directly to Sickbay!” ordered Captain Castro to the Tactical Officer.
"Done!" answered in a few seconds.
"Korg, you have the bridge. I'm going to see our guest." Said Captain Castro leaving the captain's chair
A few minutes later, Antonia Castro was besides the new Chief Medical Officer, Sandra Pertini, an attractive blond woman in her early 30s, looking at the woman that they had transported from the shuttlecraft. She was a sandy-haired woman who looked to be in her mid thirties, a bit in the stocky side. She was wearing a mini-skirted variant of the green wrap-around tunic that she had seen Kirk wearing in recordings of his first five-year mission aboard the Enterprise. Although… there seemed to be some slight differences, as the center line of her captain rank braids was silver instead of gold, and the tunic was wrapped to the other side. Her face was somewhat familiar, but she couldn't place her.
"Well, Doctor, how is she?” asked the Captain
“She is well, only unconscious from a momentary oxygen deprivation.” said the doctor and continued “I have sedated her, only in case.”
“Well done, Sandra, and what can you tell me about her?" said approvingly the captain. Alessandra Pertini had come a long way from the nervous wreck that boarded the ship three years ago
"Human, female, 36 years old, good health, although seems to have not been well fed of late, nothing serious. No sign of pregnancies.” said the doctor, reading from the screen. And turning from teh screen to face the captain she added. “And she comes from another reality. "
"How do you know?" asked the Captain, curious.
"After the Mirror Universe infiltrators of last year, I thought that it was a reasonable security measure to install a quantum frequency scanner in sickbay." explained the doctor.
"That's an excellent idea, Sandra. You are doing a very good job as CMO. "
"Not as good as Dr. Tsen, he was the best doctor that I have seen since I left the Academy.” Said Sandra speaking of her late predecessor. “If I had checked Komarov more deeply then, maybe he would be here instead of me.”
"It’s not your fault, Sandra. How could you have known that he wasn’t... him?”
“Still, I...”
“It’s no use to cry over spilt milk, Sandra. We can only do our best to avoid repeat the same errors.” Said the captain trying to comfort the doctor.
They stood in silence for a moment, before Sandra sighed and said:
"Yes, I know."
Seeing the look in the doctor face, she thought of scheduling a her a session with Counselor D'Arla, before trying to deflect her attention back to the matter at hand.
"Sandra, I have seen this face somewhere. Can you compare her DNA with the one of the Starfleet Officers of a century ago?"
"Yes, of course. But, why a Century ago?"
"Alternate universes time tracks sometimes don't run at the same speed. And judging from her uniform she hails from the 2260s."
Doctor Pertini nodded and said:
"How accurate do you want the match?"
"We don't know when the point of divergence of her universe took place…"
"Ok. Ninety percent will suffice, I guess."
She quickly keyed the appropriate commands, while Captain Castro studied the woman with more attention.
She had seen this face before, but where? Instead of focusing in the features that were there, she unfocused her eyes a moment to see the general frame. That jaw, that nose... “She can’t be...” she thought while the solution started to insinuate in her mind. She put the hand on the woman forehead, leaving out the elaborated hairstyle, so she could see the face better, and then, at the same time that the answer appeared on the screen, she knew the identity of the woman. Even if it was impossible.
"Incredible." Said Dr. Pertini looking at the result. Captain Castro glanced to the screen, and saw the confirmation of what she had guessed.
"Not at all, I think that has its twisted logic. The slight genetic difference must be the change of the Y chromosome by an X chromosome." said the captain, still looking to the screen, where the computer had identified the woman, with more than 90% accuracy, as James T. Kirk,
