“Doesn’t anyone ever get the urge to redecorate?” I grumble.
The mask-like face of T’Mev’s Rigelian exec doesn’t show much expression at the best of times, and this is clearly not the best of times. “Standard doctrine with captured temporal vessels,” Commander Teadoursi explains, “is to interfere as little as possible with the construction or the environmental details. Just in case some aspect of it is… important.”
I glance around at the interior of the Virgo. It’s like every other Na’kuhl ship, at least as far as I know; rounded organic shapes in blood-red colour, like being trapped inside the intestines of some vast creature. In places, rounded domes of control consoles protrude from the floor or the walls, usually glowing green. The diseased and ulcerated intestines of some vast creature. It’s no wonder the Na’kuhl are peculiar.
“So what’s this bit?” I ask. Teadoursi’s face remains studiously neutral. I’m over here, officially, in case I’m needed for information about some aspect of the Priyanapari situation. In practice, I’m pretty sure they want me because, if the temporal interference takes an unhealthy turn in that system, the discrepancies will show up immediately when my memories change. I have a strong suspicion that my previous accounts of what happened have been preserved in some temporally shielded archive, and any new versions I might suddenly remember will be carefully cross-checked and compared. Assuming I don't drop dead or vanish in the process, I suppose.
I don't like any part of this. My entire memory, maybe my personality, could be re-written at the drop of a hat. And I wouldn't know about it. Or the person I would be, who would no longer be me, wouldn't know about it.
So, to take my mind off the whole God-awful business, I asked for a tour of the ship. And since I'm a senior officer, Teadoursi got kind of stuck with showing me around. I don't think she appreciates it much, though, with the Virgo doing nothing but orbiting the blasted ruins of 25th-century Priyanapari, I reckon she should be glad of a distraction herself.
Now she peers at the giant glowing bubble I'm pointing at. "This is the anti-chroniton transmission module," she says. "If we need to send a message to the team in the past - and I do mean need - then this is what we'd use."
I frown. "You'd have to send any messages to the Leacock, then? I mean, they're the only ship that'd have the facilities to receive...." Which strikes me as a weak point, especially since we know someone in that system can knock seven bells out of the Leacock already.
"No," says Teadoursi, "we can modulate the anti-chroniton pulses to transduce them into any pattern of electromagnetic or subspace radiation at the destination point." I'm sure that would sound impressive, if I had any clue what it meant. "For example...." She taps at the glowing surface, and the data scrolling across it suddenly whirls and reorganizes itself. "That's set on Starfleet data-transfer protocols for the twenty-third century," she says. "A message we sent now would be picked up on any open tricorder's data subchannel and displayed as text. That -" she points to something "- indicates the destination time-track and space-time location."
I look where she's pointing, and my one good eye goes very wide. "That looks - very straightforward."
She looks closer. "The coordinates are intelligently resolved by the system - presented in as simple a format as we can manage it. I must admit, the coordinate strings aren't usually truncated that effectively - that's a very short one. And also palindromic, I notice."
"Memorable," I say. Highly memorable, in fact. If I can trust my memory.
"Yes, I suppose -" Something chimes, a loud, urgent, high-pitched sound. Teadoursi's eyes narrow. "Excuse me a moment, sir. There's a temporal flux warning - possibly nothing, but I'd better check -" She stalks off towards another console.
Oh, boy.
I look at the indicators on the glowing dome, and I swallow hard. Something tells me the next few seconds are going to be important.
I flex my fingers.
Technically, I haven't been warned not to fiddle with anything. The assumption, obviously enough, is that fiddling with poorly-understood temporal technology, in the middle of a time-travel crisis, is an idea so intrinsically bad that even I won't have it. Which makes sense. Except where nothing about this whole business makes sense.
I take a deep breath, and start tapping away at the console. I can't deny I'm nervous - so nervous, I'm having to ramp up the controls on my still-Borgified fingers to stop them trembling. But I can't figure out what else I'm meant to do -
On the screen, the simple, brief message takes shape. I take another deep breath. My fingertip comes down on the icon that means send.
---
Ronnie
"You will accomplish nothing here," Luga hisses at me. She looks like she enjoys a good hiss.
I walk around the artifact one more time, keeping a safe distance. Luga follows me, making swearing-under-her-breath noises. The metal - thing - stands out in the Priyanapari night, illuminated by all the floodlights we could beam down and pour on it. The various metal components are spinning and churning, and there is a continuous faint grinding noise. I still can't work out where some of those components are spinning to. This thing extends into multiple dimensions, and it's been hyper-active ever since that Suliban ran into it.
The Na'kuhl aren't answering questions about the Suliban. Or the artifact. Or, indeed, anything much.
I don't know about this situation. The Klingons won whatever fight they were having down here, but that's as far as things went; the Klingon ship and the massive Na'kuhl battlecruiser are still in orbit around the planet, and aren't shooting at each other. Maybe I can chalk it up to my calming influence? - Yeah, right.
"What's it for?" I ask Luga. She glares at me and doesn't answer. "Oh, come on," I continue. "If you don't know, surely you'd be better off pooling your resources with us, so we can both find out? And if you do know, you can tell me why I shouldn't mess with it."
"The technology is quite beyond your limited comprehension."
"Yeah, but you can still tell me what it does. Besides eat Suliban. Or break your guy's arms." One of the Na'kuhl got too close, earlier, and was clipped by a randomly spinning metal rod. Straightforward accident, as far as I can tell, but I've been keeping a respectful distance ever since.
"Under the terms of the Organian treaty, worlds and resources in the neutral buffer zone are up for grabs, to go to whichever side can best develop them. If you guys brought the Klingons in on this, then you've got to let us in, too. Never mind your subsequent disagreements with the Klingons. And just what was it that they grabbed, anyway?"
"That is no longer your concern, or ours."
Cutting their losses? The Na'kuhl clearly need the Klingons for some reason... enough to make them forgive the attack? Or maybe whatever the Klingons took was important enough that they had to forgive them.... In any case, it's quite definitely my concern, but short of knocking Luga over the head and dragging her back to the Harrier for interrogation, I don't see any way to get answers out of her. And Starfleet frowns on kidnapping and torture. Which is fair enough, really.
But all it leaves me to fall back on is... legalisms. And I'd rather fall back on a pile of broken glass. "You've got some agreement in place with the Klingons, yes? And they have to abide by the Organian treaty, so that means you are covered by it as well." I hold up my tricorder, which has the data libraries all cued up. "If you want to see the relevant clauses -"
I stop talking, because at that moment a message pops up on the tiny screen. It's come through on the standard data subchannel - except no one has any business sending me stuff on that channel - and it doesn't have an origin code - and the text simply reads:-
You're not doing any good there. Beam back to the ship, things are about to get busy. Remember this code: AA0702DC-CD2070AA. Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Yer pal, Cassandra.
I have no clue what the palindromic code means, but Cassandra gives me furiously to think. The Trojan prophetess Cassandra, you see, was cursed by Apollo so that she prophesied truly, but nobody believed a word she said... ignoring her always turned out badly. So if Cassandra is sneaking into my tricorder to send me warnings, I am taking them seriously, and the god Apollo can take his curses and get stuffed. Come to think of it, didn't Jim Kirk deal with Apollo, a couple of years back, anyway?
"OK, you know what?" I say to Luga. "Forget it. Forget all the relevant clauses. Me and my team are going to follow your no doubt sound and well-intentioned advice." I turn away while her jaw is still dropping. "Landing party!" I bellow. "Assemble for beam-out!"
I give them their due, they come running and don't ask questions. I pull out my communicator and snap it open. "Grau to Harrier. Landing party requires immediate transport. Confirm and beam us up when ready."
Kara Grant looks a bit mystified, but she keeps her mouth shut. T'Pren has a quirky eyebrow that looks like she'll want some explanations back on the ship, but never mind. "So," I say to Luga, "see you around and about, then. Bye now."
The expression on her leathery face has changed, from startled to suspicious. She can smell a rat when someone shoves it up her nose, she knows there's some reason for my abrupt change of heart. She will be speculating very hard about what's made me run back to the Harrier.
And, as the transporter sparkle gathers around me, that's pretty much what I'm doing myself.
---
Ronnie
OK, so now Teadoursi has an expression, all right. I make a mental note: this is how Rigelians do aghast.
"Trust me," I say cheerily, "I know what I'm doing." Just as I said in the message.
Teadoursi finds her voice. "Do you have any idea what you might have done -?"
I give her a knowing look. "Yeah. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think I do. That alarm of yours? The temporal flux warning?"
"It - cut out," she says.
"Yeah, it would have done. Because that was the sound of a predestination loop closing. Like the sound of one hand clapping, I guess. The alarm sounded, because the time line was about to destabilize, if I didn't do what I was supposed to do." I point at the screen. "Somebody sent me that message. And I'm damned if I can see who else might have done it. I recognized that damn code of yours -"
I spent ages, puzzling over that code. I never worked out what it might have meant, but it preyed on my mind until I finally gave up on it. To see it, now, after all these years -
Of course, that entire chain of memories might only now have popped into my head. Whatever. The point is, it worked. I think.
"The timelines did stabilize," Teadoursi says grudgingly.
"Of course they did," I say, as smugly as I can manage.
"Please don't do anything like that again, sir. Not without consultation and a cross-check from a temporal observatory." And the way she says that, it sounds heartfelt.
"Relax. I think I've done enough. Probably." I cast my mind back. "Though just after that message, stuff got worrying -"
---
Ronnie
"What's it all about, sir?" Kara asks as we jump into the turbolift.
"Hell if I know. Bridge." The lift capsule hums into life. "Someone sent me an anonymous warning message on my tricorder's data channel. I didn't get where I am today by ignoring anonymous warning messages." Let's not go into how I did get where I am today.
"The nature of this message?" asks T'Pren. I flip open the tricorder and show her the screen. Her eyebrow remains resolutely quirked. Can't say I blame her.
The turbolift doors hiss open. "OK," I say as we make our way onto the bridge, "we definitely need a more nuanced alarm system. This is well past yellow, shading to a pretty ruddy sort of orange, but still not actually red." I can see Win roll his eyes at me as I take the centre seat. "Get me a read on our presumed-hostiles," I say, "and someone get comms up to the Leacock in case we need to yell for help."
"What's it all about, sir?" Win asks.
"Oh, hell, is that question of the day? I don't know. I got a warning message that says there's gonna be trouble. My guess is, it'll come from one or both of those battlewagons - "
"Hov'etlh is moving off station," Stulk interrupts me.
"Possibly that one, then. Where's she headed?"
"Impulse drive is active - reaching hyperbolic speed." She's breaking orbit, away from the planet. Maybe taking her ill-gotten gains back to the Empire? I swallow, hard. "We might need to stop her. And I don't think we can do that all by ourselves. Where's that line to the Leacock?" Because Kirza's horrendously-overclocked D7 will pick its teeth with the Harrier if we get in a fight right now.
My gaze strays to the armrest of my chair, to the slot holding Caird's magic data cart.
"Incoming hail from the Klingons," Kara reports.
Oh, joy. "On screen."
Kirza's face, when it appears, is all one solid gloat. "Captain Grau," she purrs at me. "You are no doubt wondering what artifacts I have recovered from the planet's surface."
"Crossed my mind, yeah," I say. "All well with you and your Na'kuhl friends? Did you kiss and make up?"
She ignores that. "Under the terms of the Organian treaty," she says, "I should inform you of my discoveries. And I take great pleasure in telling you, we have found something that will render the Organian treaty irrelevant. My scientists, and my Na'kuhl friends, have already made headway in deciphering the control interface."
"Control interface of what?"
Kirza's smile is almost too big for her face. "Of a weapon. It was fatal for the culture which built it, but we have more advanced shielding, thanks to the Na'kuhl. By we, of course, I mean the Empire. You have no defences at all."
"Red alert," I snap at Win.
Kirza laughs. "Sound whatever alarms you wish. They will all be useless. Let me give you time to contemplate your situation, Captain Grau. I intend to destroy every threat to the Empire in this system, starting with the most important, and working down. Your pathetic vessel is, naturally, last on my list. I will attend to you after I have finished with the Leacock. But first - Well. The weapon has many interesting capabilities. It can be wielded with finesse. I am even able to identify unique individual targets - a capacity that I will now demonstrate." She gestures imperiously. "Organian! Show yourself!"
There is a hot wind and a glare of light, and Clefune is suddenly standing on my bridge. "Captain Kirza," he says, "I must warn you that you are in grave danger of committing a treaty violation, and that I personally do not appreciate -"
"Enough!" roars Kirza, and makes another commanding gesture.
Clefune stiffens. A strange glow gathers around him, a shimmering aura like cascading rainbows. Then he flares with intolerable light, and explodes.
A shower of sparks falls to the deck where the Organian was standing.
Oh, boy.
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