November 2024: Waiting for a sign

[marcicatverse]

Title: Waiting for a sign
Author: marcicat

Fandom: Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Characters: Beckett Mariner, Bradward Boimler, D’Vana Tendi, Samanthan Rutherford, T’Lyn, D’Erika Tendi, T’Pring, Spock, Christine Chapel, James Kirk, Christopher Pike

Tags: AU, Time Travel, Alternate Dimensions, Space Monsters, Team as Family, Found Family, Family

Summary: In an alternate universe where Orion was a core member of Starfleet from the beginning, the Lower Decks crew encounters space monsters, time travelers, and a weird rock. So, basically a normal Thursday.

Author’s note: Title is from the song ‘Sounds of Earth’ by Jim Moray. There’s also a quote about soulmates that was adapted ever-so-slightly from a poem by Victoria Erickson.

*******

*******

Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

Mariner propped her head on one hand, and used her other hand to push the food around on the tray. Rearranging it didn’t make it any more appealing.

Boimler dropped into the seat across from her, swapping their trays without having to be asked. “Late night?” he said. The ‘again’ was unspoken, but she could see it in his expression, and she rolled her eyes at him.

“I’m fine.”

Boimler looked pointedly at the tray he’d taken from her. “The replicator only overrides your requests if its records show you’ve dropped below a certain threshold of nutrient intake.”

Mariner pulled his tray closer, just in case he got any ideas about switching them back, and took a bite of whatever he’d ordered. It was some kind of bread, with bacon and a fruit jam. Way better than what she’d been stuck with.

She waved away his words. “Or if it’s run out of something, or someone’s been messing with the settings again, or if Starfleet released a programming update and wiped all our customizations. No one’s gotten scurvy in centuries.” She resisted the urge to say she was fine again. She was – pretty sure she was fine.

D’vana showed up next, with Rutherford right behind her. “Ooh, protein mash,” he said excitedly, eyes lighting up at the sight of Boimler’s tray.

“It’s good today,” Boimler told him. “Extra protein-y.”

D’Vana made a face. “I don’t know how you can eat that stuff. You know it’s basically recycled dust mites, right?”

Rutherford took a large bite and chewed it, apparently with unfeigned enthusiasm. “I know; isn’t it great?” The words were mumbled around the mouthful of protein mash.

Mariner exchanged a look with D’Vana. “If you say so.”

D’Vana laughed, but then her expression turned serious. “I heard you up again last night. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” She’d been trying to put the feeling into words for days, maybe weeks. “It feels like – like I’m missing something, but I don’t know what. I keep thinking something’s gone wrong, but nothing has.” Whatever it was, it was keeping her wide awake when she was supposed to be sleeping, and jumpy during her shifts. “It’s probably just stress.”

“Have you been to Sickbay?” D’Vana asked.

Mariner shook her head. If it was nothing serious, there was no need to go to Sickbay. And if it was something serious, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She pointed at Boimler. “Don’t say it.”

He held his hands up. “I’m not saying anything! I definitely wasn’t going to bring up the time Riker couldn’t sleep and it turned out he was being experimented on by aliens, or that time when practically an entire Starfleet crew murdered each other because they couldn’t reach REM sleep, or –”

“I get it,” she interrupted. “But ships have safeguards against all those sorts of things now. And I promise I’ve already done a medical scan of myself, and had the ship scan for any kind of weird energy readings.”

“What about chroniton particles?” Rutherford asked. “Ooh, or tachyons!”

“Chroniton particles didn’t have anything to do with any of those situations,” she told him.

“No, but they’re neat. And they do weird things when a bunch of them show up where they shouldn’t be.” She stared at him, and he looked sheepish. “And I just updated my implant so it could detect them.”

“Are you detecting any of them?” It didn’t hurt to ask, she supposed, but Rutherford shook his head.

“Maybe you’re just restless?” D’Vana offered. “I almost yelled at L’Kar when she cut in front of me at the gym, but after we sparred for a while I felt better. Exercise is good for stress, right?”

“Is she the new one?” Boimler asked. “I keep getting her confused with K’Lar, and I think one of them may be planning revenge.”

Mariner patted his hand. “K’Lar is the new one. Trust me when I say neither of them could pick you out of a lineup. And D’Vana, are you sure it was the exercise? Because it kind of sounds like you’re telling me I should kick my anxiety in the face. And I’m not saying that wouldn’t help, I’m just not sure how to make it happen.”

“It wasn’t in the face,” D’Vana muttered.

She couldn’t help smiling. “Of course not. We all love you, D’Vana, but I fully expect you to kick me in the face if I ever cut the line in front of you.”

“It was a friendly spar,” D’Vana insisted. “She’s fine.”

“Of course she is,” Rutherford said supportively, although she was almost positive he didn’t actually know. Then he added, “We have been between missions for longer than usual. We’re supposed to get the announcement of our next assignment soon; maybe that will help?”

They might be right. “Maybe.” Something D’Vana said earlier suddenly clicked, and Mariner turned to look at her. “But you never wake up when I move around at night. Did you stay up?”

D’Vana looked shifty. “No? I mean, no, of course not!” It only took an extra second for her to confess. “I have an alarm – not for you!” she hurried to explain. “It was a coincidence! The alarm goes off when an author I’m following puts out an update.”

“An update like… a scientific journal? Peer reviewed studies?”

“No… not exactly? It’s a – fictional story.”

Rutherford’s eyes went wide. “Wait, are you following ‘Trapped in the Temporal Mist’? I love that story!”

‘“Trapped in the Temporal Mist’ had an update?” She looked at Boimler. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t know!” Boimler threw his hands up. “I told you none of my message alerts were working; I’m still trying to get access back to all my personal accounts. I can’t believe I missed it!”

She pushed her tray to the side and leaned forward. “So, what happened? Did So’lar finally figure out the code?”

Rutherford made about halfway through a description of the latest update before all their padds chimed at once. D’Vana clapped her hands. “That’s the new mission alert! Oh, I hope it’s a spatial fissure. We haven’t gotten a fun spatial anomaly in months.”

“I hope it’s a quasar,” Boimler said. He shook his padd gently. “Please be a quasar, please be a quasar.”

“You always hope it’s a quasar,” Mariner reminded him. “And it never is. We’ve run into more Romulans than we have quasars.”

Boimler shrugged. “I like quasars.”

Rutherford tilted his head to the side. “I bet it’s an aid mission. We loaded extra supplies at the last starbase. Maybe we’ll get to do infrastructure repair this time!”

That was statistically the best bet. Starfleet loved sending the D’Var class ships on aid missions near the border. Something about the combination of speed and shielding – officially, it made them ideal for delivering relief supplies quickly and safely in potentially contested areas.

Unofficially, the D’Var class was still referred to as interceptors, and most had modded sensors that were far beyond anything a cargo ship should require. If they just happened to pick up anything on those sensors that might be a potential security threat, Starfleet wanted to know. And if they happened to pick up anything more interesting than that – well, salvage practically went hand in hand with search and rescue, which was basically the same thing as an aid mission. Close enough for the Orion High Council, at least.

“Well, at least we know it’s definitely not going to be a diplomatic mission,” Mariner said. They were terrible at diplomatic missions. Sometimes she suspected Captain Tendi was terrible at them on purpose.

“On three?” she asked, and everyone nodded. “One, two, –”

When she said, “Three,” they all flipped their padds to read the announcement.

“Oh, boo, not a quasar,” Boimler said.

Mariner scanned through the mission brief and frowned. The information looked familiar somehow, even though she was sure she’d never been in this area of space before. “Nebula scanning?”

D’Vana bumped their shoulders together. “Come on, you love nebula missions!”

She did. Mariner nodded slowly. “I do. I just – I’ve got a weird feeling about this one.”


T’Lyn, Vulcan Science Shuttle Keethera

It was illogical to be worried. Worry served no purpose. The situation would not be changed by her emotional state.

And yet.

The Keethera had been scheduled to rendezvous with the VCF Sh’Vhal three days ago. Captain Sokel would follow the required protocols to retrace the shuttle’s planned mission route and attempt to locate it. Her. The data her mission had collected.

And yet.

She had not realized her communications systems had failed until she had already input the course change. Long-range sensors and navigation had lasted less than half a day after that, which she had also failed to notice quickly enough. There was no way to communicate her location, even if she had been able to identify it.

Captain Sokel would have no reason to deviate from the planned route. No reason to dedicate the resources of the rest of the crew and the ship to a lengthy search. Three days was the recommended time frame, absent other factors. If the Sh’Vhal had not located her so far, it was unlikely to happen at all.

And so.

It would be up to her to rescue herself. There was something out there, something more than just the nebula. She had been attempting to compensate for the short-range sensor distortion when she’d first detected it. It was larger than the shuttle, but the distortion made it difficult to estimate an exact size.

Another ship, or possibly some sort of outpost or monitoring station. Vulcan was technically a member of the Federation, though in most cases their neutrality pre-empted having any close allies. It was a risk. Every option currently open to her was a risk. She did not have an accurate rendering of the nebula, nor could she calculate her position within it. The shuttle’s supplies were not unlimited.

T’Lyn considered recording some sort of message. A warning about the energy field fluctuations that had damaged the shuttle’s systems? A log of her actions to explain the choices she’d made? Instructions for taking care of her plants? The probability that anyone would find such a message in time to save them was statistically insignificant, and she felt a pang she refused to label as regret.

Instead, she took several minutes to focus her thoughts, bringing her mind back to the present circumstances. Warp engines were offline. Impulse engines were operating within acceptable tolerances, but escaping the nebula would do little good without communications or warp. And the short-range sensors were not reliable enough for a grid search.

“A spiral,” she murmured. Speaking aloud provided supplemental nutrients to the plants, as well as mental stimulation for herself. It was a logical course of action. She would need the majority of her attention to pilot the ship manually, so she took the time first to care for the plants and record the latest data.

It was perfectly logical for each of the plants to have a unique identifier. Less logical, she could admit, for those identifiers to be names instead of an alphanumeric sequence. That had not prevented her from assigning each of them a name. They were her only living companions on this mission.

“T’Pring, your growth rate continues to be 5.2% faster than average.”

It was definitely not logical to have favorites, but she had found that reminding herself of that fact did not stop the preferences from forming. If she ever found herself in the position of writing a report about this mission, she would most certainly be leaving that information out of it.

Once the plants had been tended to, she settled herself back into the pilot’s seat. Nervousness was as illogical as worry. This was the course of action she had decided upon. Her training was adequate to accomplish it. Outside factors were beyond her ability to control.

T’Lyn’s route was intended to follow a basic spiral pattern, starting from her current location and gradually circling outwards. In ideal circumstances, it would allow the shuttle’s computers to compile a map of this section of nebula.

In those same ideal circumstances, the computers would be able to use that information to determine the shuttle’s location in the sector. In turn, that information would indicate the most likely direction to travel to come across an allied ship or planet.

Another possibility was that her route would intersect with whatever outpost or object the sensors had been able to detect. The options associated with such a discovery ranged from ill-advised to completely against regulations.

There was also a possibility, much larger, that she would fly the shuttle in circles until the supplies ran out, and then she would have another set of ill-advised options to choose from.

T’Lyn took a breath, and let it out slowly. She rested her hands on the controls and nudged the ship into the first circle.


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

Mariner narrowed her eyes at Captain Tendi from across the briefing room table. “We’ve scanned dozens of nebulas without needing a personal mission update from the captain. What’s different about this one?”

Captain D’Erika Tendi narrowed her own eyes right back at her. “I thought you liked nebulas.”

“Mariner has a weird feeling,” Boimler offered. “Usually she loves nebulas.”

Captain Tendi studied her carefully. “A weird feeling,” she repeated. “Do you want to be taken off the mission?”

It was a genuine question, Mariner knew. If she wanted off the mission, the captain would make it happen, no further explanations required. She shook her head. “Will you tell us what’s going on with the nebula?

Captain Tendi gestured at the screen, displaying all the same data they’d received before. “These are the results of scans by three separate Starfleet ships on three different stardates. None of them actually entered the nebula.”

“Why not?” D’Vana wanted to know.

“According to the reports, it’s largely been an issue of time and budget constraints. None of them found anything worth moving exploration of this particular nebula up the priority list.” The captain highlighted a section of the data.

“Probes that go in don’t come back out. Sensors can’t get an accurate reading more than twenty percent past the edge. And the last ship to survey it recorded ‘mysterious’ energy readings.”

Rutherford perked up, but Mariner scoffed. "You know that’s just what those galaxy-class lackeys say any time they didn't bother to double check the instrument calibration. ‘Mysterious energy readings’ – ninety percent of the time that’s user error."

D’Vana leaned forward. “But ten percent of the time, it’s something cool! You should come with us!”

“Well, I’m definitely not letting you go without me,” Mariner said. “But that still doesn’t explain why we’re here now.”

Captain Tendi hesitated, then said, “It was on the way to our next mission, relatively speaking. But Starfleet has decided that the aid mission can wait an extra day or two, because of the Vulcans.”

Mariner blinked. “Vulcans?”

Captain Tendi nodded. "We received a message from the Vulcan Science Academy – directly, not through the usual Federation channels. The Academy wanted to remind us that if we find any Vulcan ships, we're required to notify them immediately and turn the ship over to them."

That was true. Not something she would have thought would be relevant, though. "And… is there a reason to think that’s a thing we're likely to find?"

The captain put up a new image on the screen. “We’ve also been contacted by a Vulcan science vessel, the VCF Sh’Vhal. Apparently they've misplaced one of their shuttles."

“What’s a Vulcan ship doing way out here?” Boimler asked. He was frowning.

“They declined to offer an explanation,” Captain Tendi said dryly. “But Starfleet survey reports are available to all member worlds. It’s possible they were looking into those unknown energy readings, same as us.”

D’Vana was frowning too. “So the Vulcan Science Academy contacted you. And the Sh’Vhal contacted you. Separately?”

Captain Tendi nodded. And yeah, that was suspicious. Why would the Vulcan Science Academy want a shuttle turned over directly to them, if a Vulcan ship was already in the area?

“Officially, Starfleet Command is interested in anything that could offer insight into Vulcan society. Unofficially, we’ve been instructed to cooperate with whatever the Vulcans want.”

In other words, Starfleet wanted the Vulcans on their side. Vulcan neutrality was famous, or infamous, depending on who you asked. They tended more towards insular than truly isolationist, but the effects were similar. Very little information came out of their sector, and despite being members of the Federation for centuries, only a few Vulcans had ever joined Starfleet.

“I don’t understand why they would send a shuttle into the nebula and then ask us to go look for it,” Rutherford said. “Why is the Sh’Vhal involving us at all?”

Captain Tendi shot an irritated look towards the image of the Sh’Vhal before turning back to them and shrugging. “So far, they haven’t confirmed whether their shuttle is in there or not. According to Captain Sokel, they attempted to enter the nebula, but immediately experienced navigational and sensor disruptions that they couldn’t compensate for, so they retreated.”

Mariner leaned back in her chair. “And then they asked for help? That doesn’t sound like Vulcans.”

“Not exactly.” Captain Tendi sighed. “First they said their own sensors required a level of complex calibration we were incapable of understanding. And that Starfleet’s less accurate, less advanced sensor technology likely wouldn’t be sensitive enough to experience the same disruptions. They went on to imply that as we were likely planning to recklessly enter the nebula regardless of our abilities, it would be no trouble for us to inform them if we happened to come across their wayward shuttle.”

“Why, those –” D’Vana cut herself off from finishing the sentence, but she looked furious.

“Okay, yeah, that sounds like Vulcans,” Mariner said. “So, just to recap: there’s definitely a nebula, which may or may not be giving off mysterious energy readings. And it may or may not also have recently disappeared some Vulcans.”

“One Vulcan,” Captain Tendi confirmed.

Rutherford was already typing something into his padd. “They’re not wrong about the sensors, but I think we can work with that.” He looked up. “How many shuttles are we allowed to use?”

Captain Tendi crossed her arms and gave him a nod. “For a chance to one-up the Vulcans? All of them.”

“Yes!” Rutherford cheered, and bent back over his padd, with D’Vana leaning over his shoulder.

“Mariner?” Captain Tendi asked quietly.

This was a terrible idea. But she’d known what her answer would be as soon as the captain said there might be someone trapped in there. “Sure, let’s go explore the dangerous nebula. We’ll show them what the Adashake can do.”

Boimler caught her eye from across the table. “And we’re not going to leave anyone behind.”

“Damn right we’re not,” she agreed. “When do we leave?”

Captain Tendi cleared the screen and stood up. “I’m calling in Commander Billups and putting delta shift on call for this. Figure out a way to get us into the nebula and back out again without needing the Vulcans to rescue us, and you’ll have a go.”


T’Lyn, unknown outpost

It should have been challenging to gain entrance to an unfamiliar, seemingly-unpowered station, even without the complicating factors of the nebula and its effects on the shuttle’s systems. Instead, it was simple. It made her uneasy.

But the outpost was likely to have scanning and communications abilities significantly more powerful than those of the shuttle. She would have preferred not needing to call for assistance. She would also prefer not to die on this mission.

T’Lyn gripped the flashlight more tightly as she made a circuit around what seemed to be a docking bay, empty except for her shuttle. She didn’t recognize the room’s design, but it was set up to accommodate humanoid physical forms, and the pictorial labels on the controls indicated visual and tactile interfaces similar to Federation standard.

“Not unpowered,” she muttered to herself. “Some type of standby mode?”

The station wasn’t derelict. There were signs of repairs, and her suit’s readouts indicated a stable atmosphere beyond the docking bay. Someone had built a station and left it here. Why?

A standby mode could mean the station was empty, but it was impossible to say how long it would stay that way if she found a way to turn the power back on. And there was no obvious way to set or end the standby mode from the docking bay, which meant whoever designed the station hadn’t intended the bay to be the initial point of access.

Maybe there was another docking bay, or the station might typically be accessed using transporters. She’d docked to avoid the power drain of using the transporter, but the shuttle’s scans hadn’t shown any shielding that would have blocked it. T’Lyn resisted the illogical urge to sigh. The situation had far too many unknowns.

“A map would be useful,” she said aloud, just in case any of the systems responded to verbal requests. Nothing happened. At least the airlock could be cycled manually, and on the other side was a long corridor. She turned left.

And then immediately swung back to the right as a flash of light seemed to come out of nowhere. Her suit’s environmental controls were adequate for the situation, but she had never been comfortable with the diminished peripheral vision of the helmet. If the station wasn’t empty –

But there was nothing there. Only the flashing signal of the heads-up display in the helmet, alerting her to the remaining time she could safely stay in the suit. T’Lyn focused on keeping her breathing even and slow. There was no evidence of other beings on the station.

Despite the lack of evidence, T’Lyn couldn’t deny that the station didn’t feel empty. Her mental senses weren’t detecting anything specific; nothing she could identify as a fact. She didn’t feel pursued, not even quite observed. But she didn’t feel entirely alone, either.

T’Lyn reminded herself again that Vulcan was not at war with anyone, and Vulcans were not considered high-value targets for hostage takers or any of the other less-than-legal occupations that existed in the shadows of the Federation. Vulcans were generally only well-known in the academic realm, where competition tended to be non-violent, and more theoretical than physical.

She would find a way to reach the control center, restore power to the communications systems, and send a message to the Sh’Vhal. She meant no harm and carried no weapons. If the station wasn’t empty, there was no reason to assume any occupants would be hostile.

Her flashlight continued to illuminate nothing except the same empty corridor, and she let her feet move faster. Her footsteps echoed strangely. The composition of the flooring material was unfamiliar. Her movements on the shuttle had been silent; it was expected that the sudden change would be notable.

The first door she came to that wasn’t an airlock didn’t have an obvious manual override. As she considered the options available, the door slid open. T’Lyn could feel her senses sharpen as her body tensed for a confrontation, but nothing happened. The door slid closed.

The glimpse she’d caught through the open door had been enough to see consoles and a dim glow of what looked like long-term emergency light strips. Enough to make it worth trying to get inside. She recalled the evidence of repairs she’d seen in the docking bay, and theorized that age or damage could mean the door was receiving intermittent power. A simple electrical malfunction could explain its movement.

T’Lyn used a multitool to pry off the panel next to the door, underneath the unresponsive touch pad. The door slid open again before she could do anything else, and she stepped through it quickly, gripping the multitool and flashlight. It sounded like there was a noise from somewhere behind her – a distant, muffled clang. It was gone as soon as the door closed.

Inside the room, several consoles lit up. It could, she reasoned, be an automated response to sensing something in their proximity. The closest console appeared to include communications, and she moved towards it with intent. The sooner she was able to send a message, the sooner she would be able to leave.


Beckett Mariner, unknown outpost

“Okay, that is not what I expected.” Mariner gestured at the screen. They’d been in the nebula for hours already. They’d found no signs of mysterious energy readings, missing probes, or wayward Vulcan shuttles. Instead, they’d found –

“What is that?” Rutherford asked. “And what is it doing here?”

Mariner squinted at the screen, comparing it to what the readouts were telling them. “According to this, that is a giant abandoned space station in the middle of the danger nebula. Boimler, is all of this getting relayed back through the beacon?”

“The relay is working perfectly,” Boimler said. “Just like the last five times you asked. Astrid says she has ten credits on a space monster eating us.”

Mariner whistled. “That’s cold. It should at least be ten credits each. What if only one of us gets eaten by a space monster?”

“How about none of us get eaten by a space monster?” D’Vana said. Her voice was tense. “Just – zero space monsters at all.”

She looked over to see D’Vana’s hands clenched tight around the controls. “Hey, are you okay? I was just spouting off; you know how I get when there’s adrenaline involved – it’s like my nerves create a direct line to my mouth, no checking in with the brain at all. ”

It wasn’t that she hadn’t meant to make light of the situation. That’s what she did; she made light of things. But it was only funny if everyone was having fun.

D’Vana gave her a quick smile. “I know. I just don’t like this. A secret station in the middle of a nebula? You know what that means.”

Rutherford, on the other hand, sounded cheerful. “It means it’s way more likely to be a dangerous crime-related mystery than a fun science-related mystery.”

“Okay, but consider this,” Mariner said. She waved towards the viewscreen. “That’s definitely not a Vulcan shuttle, right?”

Boimler made a sound like he was trying not to laugh. He definitely knew what she was leading up to. “Boimler, back me up,” she said.

“It is definitely not a Vulcan shuttle,” Boimer agreed.

“And it definitely looks abandoned, which means we get to keep it! Right of salvage!”

Boimler rolled his eyes. “I think you’re enjoying this way too much. You know that’s not how the right of salvage works. Besides, we’re supposed to be looking for the Vulcan shuttle, remember?”

“Do not crush my dreams,” she told him. “The captain will definitely back me up on this. There’s no reason we can’t go over there and check it out.” She pointed at him. “Besides, what if the Vulcan shuttle is over there?”

Boimler didn’t look entirely convinced, but he threw his hands up in the air, and she knew she’d won. “I guess it could be?”

D’Vana was studying the sensor display. “I’m not sure it’s abandoned,” she said slowly. “It’s hard to get any clear sensor readings from here. There doesn’t seem to be much power over there, but there’s not zero power. It’s not drifting.”

Mariner looked at her own screen. “Will scans work better if we’re inside? I’d hate to have to search the whole place on foot, on the off-chance there’s a missing Vulcan holed up in there.”

D’Vana nodded, then shrugged. “I think so, but it depends on what’s causing the problem. If it’s something about the station itself, maybe not.”

Rutherford said, “At least we can beam in. That place is huge.”

She didn’t love that plan, but it was Boimler who shook his head. “If we beam in, one of us will have to stay behind on the shuttle. And I don’t think any of us are going to volunteer for that.”

“It could be dangerous,” D’Vana said. “If there are people over there, they could hijack the shuttle.”

“Or a space monster could eat it,” Rutherford added, and D’Vana frowned at him. “What? I’m just saying, it’s not like it’s never happened before.”

Mariner put her hands on her hips. “Look, if it’s not dangerous, it doesn’t matter whether we beam in or land the shuttle inside. And if it is dangerous, then statistically it’s way more likely to be something that disrupts transporter beaming than something that prevents us from using the shuttle to blast our way out.”

She realized everyone was looking at her. “Not that we’d make that the first choice. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Boimler repeated, but he was already passing out environmental suits .

Docking was easier than she’d expected, which was suspicious. It was always easy to get into a trap. On the other hand, there were only so many ways you could set up a docking bay, and who would a trap even be for, way out here?

She watched their flashlights scan around the interior of the bay. “Creepy,” she said finally. “Can we get anything useful from the scanners, or are we doing this the hard way?”

Rutherford was adjusting the settings on all their tricorders. “They’re working, but the range is limited. So, a little bit of both?”

Mariner exchanged a look with D’Vana. “Teams of two, split up and stay in contact?”

D’Vana nodded. “Keep the channel open. Report anything out of place. If we lose contact, fall back immediately to the shuttle.” She looked at Mariner. “Absolutely no engaging with criminals, ghosts, or space monsters, or I’ll make you be the one to report it to my sister.”

That was definitely not happening. “Understood,” Mariner said.

Twenty minutes later, she was almost ready to start wishing for a space monster or two. Almost.

D’Vana’s voice came through their helmet comms. ”We just found some sort of observation deck. Some of the consoles are active; it looks like they’re scanning the nebula.”

“Aw, you two get all the good stuff,” Boimler said. “We’ve only found another foreboding corridor.”

“Yeah, this place is totally haunted,” Mariner agreed. “Absolutely no doubt about that.”

”Rutherford thinks so too. He says they’re not like normal ghosts, but he’s not sure how they’re different.”

“Hey, is he picking up any chroniton particles?” she asked.

At the same time, Boimler said, “Why would there be active scanning of the nebula when the station is deserted?”

”Why would there be chroniton particles?” D’Vana asked.

Mariner shrugged, even though only Boimler could see her. “I don’t know – weird ghosts, weird particles. Seemed worth asking.”

”No chroniton particles,” Rutherford said. ”But I’m not sure the station is deserted. I think I successfully recalibrated one of the sensors to scan the inside of the station, and there’s something that looks a lot like a life sign. You should be right near it.”


T’Lyn, unknown outpost

She was failing. The communications console seemed to be locked into a cycle of the same three readouts, and none of her attempts had allowed her access to the controls. The other active consoles were in a similar state. She had been unable to locate their power source, or determine why only some of the consoles were working. The door had opened and closed six additional times while she had been inside the room.

There was a possibility she would be able to interface the shuttle’s communications system to an active console, but she did not have the skill to do so without damaging the other shuttle systems. She could end up trapped, without an operational shuttle. Ill-advised options were rapidly becoming the only options available.

T’Lyn had been so focused on not letting her emotions generate sensory input that didn’t exist that it took her an extra second to realize she was hearing voices.

“Was that a ghost?”

“I’m pretty sure that was just you tripping over your boots. Did you get your suit mixed up with Rutherford’s?”

Two voices, from the direction of the same door she’d entered through.

“Our feet are the same size!”

“Rutherford, are we still getting closer? Yeah, there’s a door in front of us.”

T’Lyn felt frozen in place. Was this the rightful inhabitants of the station, coming to investigate her intrusion? Or perhaps others who had taken shelter within the station?

“The door just opened on its own; I do not like that.” There was a pause. “Well, you’re just going to have to take my word for it; it’s very different when you’re in a haunted station that’s not supposed to have any power.”

Two flashlight beams shone around the room. T’Lyn realized she was on the far side of a console from the door, and likely out of sight. Hiding had not been her intention. And yet.

The second voice said, “I don’t see anyone. Are you sure this is the place?”

T’Lyn stood up. Two people spun in her direction, weapons raised, and two flashlights hit her face at the same time. She squinted, and put her hands up in what was commonly accepted as a gesture of surrender. Both weapons immediately went down, along with one flashlight.

“Whoa, whoa!” one of the people said – the first voice. “Sorry about that. Everything’s fine; we’re all fine.” More quietly, but still easily audible, he hissed, “Mariner, your flashlight.”

“What? Right, sorry.” The light moved from her face to the console next to her.

The one who’d spoken first took a step forward. “Hi, yes, hello. Is this your station? I’m Lieutenant Boimler, this is Lieutenant Mariner. We’re with the USS Adashake, on a search and rescue mission. We’re looking for a Vulcan. And a shuttle. A Vulcan shuttle.”

T’Lyn blinked, feeling genuine surprise. “It is not my station,” she said. “I am T’Lyn.” Her eyes were drawn to Lieutenant Mariner, who appeared to be staring at her. Neither of the Starfleet officers reacted to her name, and she resisted the urge to sigh. “It is likely that I am the Vulcan you are looking for.”

“Oh. Oh! That’s great! What about the shuttle?” Lieutenant Boimler looked around the room, as if he expected it might hold a Vulcan shuttle that he had previously failed to notice. He waved one hand. “No, wait, sorry. Are you okay? Do you require immediate aid? We have supplies.”

“The shuttle is in one of the docking bays,” T’Lyn reported. “In the course of my mission, key systems were damaged, including the communications system. I located this station by chance, and was attempting to determine a method of sending a transmission outside the nebula when you encountered me.”

“How long have you been here?” Lieutenant Mariner asked. “Because it feels like we’ve been wandering around this place for hours, and we didn’t find anything as useful as this room. Just a bunch of ghosts and a badly designed set of corridors.”

The universal translator was frequently unable to capture the nuances of cultural beliefs and spiritual practices. It was possible that ‘ghosts,’ as T’Lyn understood them, were not what the lieutenant was referring to. “The docking bay is not a significant distance from here,” she said.

Lieutenant Boimler stepped away, talking quietly to whomever was on the other end of their comm channel. She could still hear his words clearly; she was uncertain if he meant her to be able to, or lacked an awareness of the limits of Vulcan hearing.

Lieutenant Mariner was still staring at her. T’Lyn stared back; silence was perfectly acceptable to her.

“Are you all right?” the lieutenant asked finally. “You didn’t answer Boimler, before. Captain Sokel said you missed your rendezvous days ago.

T’Lyn blinked again. “Captain Sokel is here?” Somehow, that seemed even more challenging to believe than the notion of ghosts residing in the station.

“Well, not exactly here,” Lieutenant Mariner hedged. “He’s still outside the nebula. Something about Vulcan sensor arrays being too delicate to handle whatever all this is.” She circled a hand around to indicate – the nebula, perhaps? The station? “I’m sure he wanted to be here.”

“My time on the VCF Sh’Vhal provided ample time for Captain Sokel to share his assessment of my contributions to the crew. There is no need to – spare my feelings,” T’Lyn said. She raised one eyebrow. “If that is what you are attempting to achieve.”

Lieutenant Mariner gave her an assessing look. “In that case, Captain Sokel seems like kind of an asshole, especially since he didn’t even tell us your name. But he did flag us down to help find you.”

“So did the Vulcan Science Academy,” Boimler added, moving back in their direction. “Is it as amazing as everyone says? I keep applying to visit, but I always get rejected.”

T’Lyn felt she must be reaching the limit of things that could surprise her. “The Vulcan Science Academy,” she repeated, as neutrally as possible. There was no reason the Academy would have been aware of her location. However, there also seemed to be no reason for Lieutenant Boimler to lie about such a thing.

“As I am unaware of what ‘everyone’ says, I am unable to offer an accurate comparison,” she said finally.

Lieutenant Boimler raised both hands as if he was about to say something, and then let them drop. “No, that’s fair.” He pointed at her. “We’re revisiting this later.”

T’Lyn raised her eyebrow again. She was uncertain how to categorize the two lieutenants, or their interactions with her. “That is acceptable.”


Beckett Mariner, unknown outpost

She wasn’t sure what to make of T’Lyn, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Her instinct was to keep pushing until T’Lyn pushed back, but it probably wasn’t a good idea to antagonize the person they were supposed to be rescuing.

Before she could convince herself that it definitely wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever had, and maybe it would turn out great, the console next to her lit up, and then two more across the room. She could feel a vibration in the deck plating under her boots.

She looked at Boimler, who shook his head. Not anything he’d done, then. She said, “Rutherford, D’Vana? We’re seeing a lot of lights turn on over here. It looks like the station might be powering up.”

Rutherford sounded distracted when he answered. ”It’s happening here too. What did you do?”

She threw her hands up – it was a gesture she’d picked up from Boimler, and never failed to make her feel better. “We didn’t do anything! We’ve been standing around talking, so unless this place is activated by the power of friendship, it wasn’t us.”

D’Vana’s voice came over the comm next. ”That would be incredible, but it wasn’t us either. Remember how Boimler asked why the station would be scanning the nebula? I think we just found out.”

”And the mysterious energy readings just showed up!” Rutherford called. ”Along with chroniton particles!” He sounded way too excited. ”Are you near a viewscreen?”

“No,” she said. The wall across from the door flickered, and an enormous image of the nebula took its place. “Apparently yes,” she corrected, and then sucked in a breath. There was something out there – it immediately drew her eyes, but looking directly at it made her feel dizzy. “What the hell is that?”

”It’s definitely some kind of spatial anomaly,” D’Vana said. ”But it doesn’t match anything in our records. Images are being sent back through the relay now.”

Rutherford added, ”It’s emitting a huge amount of energy, and it’s getting bigger!”

She could see that for herself. The dizzying area of space was rapidly expanding towards the station. “Are we in danger?” She wasn’t sure they could get back to the shuttle fast enough to outrun it, but she wasn’t going to just stand around and wait to get obliterated either.

”If the station is designed to monitor the anomaly, it’s probably shielded. That could be why our sensors have so much trouble with it. So we’re probably less danger staying here than we would be if we left.”

The room was suddenly awash in light, and she winced – whoever designed the station must have really loved the ‘extra bright’ setting on things. Boimler yelped, but didn’t stop tapping at the console in front of him. “Are you sure you should be messing around with that?” she asked.

“It unlocked when the station activated,” Boimler said. “I’m trying to get it to give us a status update, or at least identify the station and its purpose.”

She glanced at the viewscreen, which showed the anomaly – still expanding, it already took up most of the screen. ”One hundred percent chance it’s going to reach the station,” Rutherford said. ”Definitely a much smaller chance that we’ll all die horribly when it does.”

”D’Erika says they don’t recognize it either.” D’Vana’s voice was tense.

Mariner blinked away the dizzy feeling. “Tell the other shuttles to pull back and evacuate the nebula. They need to get out of range.”

”Done. Everyone is en route back to the Adashake. All of them are outpacing the anomaly at its current rate of expansion.”

The door slid open, and two unfamiliar figures stepped into the room, seeming not to notice that it was already occupied. It looked like they were talking animatedly to each other, but she couldn’t hear anything. They were also walking directly towards the console where Boimler was working.

“Boimler,” she said.

He didn’t look up. “I think I’ve almost got it.” The console gave a rude-sounding beep, and he sighed. “Okay, yeah, that’s not great. I really thought that was going to work.”

“Boimler,” she said again. “Are you seeing this?”

He looked up just as one of the newcomers reached him – and walked through him as if he wasn’t there. “Hey!”

Boimler quickly stepped away from the console and over to her side. “Are they ghosts?” he said in a loud whisper. “Mariner, why am I seeing ghosts; that’s not supposed to be my thing.”

“I — don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think they’re ghosts exactly? T’Lyn, you see them too, right?”

“I see two humanoid individuals who crossed the room from the door to the console where Lieutenant Boimler was standing,” T’Lyn confirmed. “I cannot hear their words, though they appear to be speaking.”

“D’Vana?” Mariner asked.

”We have them here too. We can see them but not hear them. They don’t seem to be able to see or hear us.”

”Which is good!” Rutherford’s voice was quieter than usual. ”Chroniton particles are off the scale. All the other energy readings too! We’re inside the outer edge of the anomaly now, and the expansion is slowing.”

”Rutherford thinks the anomaly is causing some kind of temporal convergence,” D’Vana explained.

Or at least, she said it in the tone of voice that meant she thought she was explaining something. Mariner had no idea what she was talking about. “I have no idea what that means,” she said. “What’s a temporal convergence?”

T’Lyn startled, and Mariner suddenly realized they’d never introduced the other two members of the group. “Rutherord and D’Vana came with us,” she said quickly. “We split up to be able to search the station more quickly.” She adjusted the comm settings so that the sound would project outside her suit.

Rutherford said, ”Hi T’Lyn! A temporal convergence is just what it sounds like – we think all the people we’ve seen actually were here at different times. But the anomaly is making all those time converge. Or overlap, maybe. Temporal physics always gives me a headache.”

She couldn’t see T’Lyn’s expression, but she nodded. Mariner said, “Okay, but what does that mean? For us.”

“Theoretically, as the temporal overlap increases, everyone will be able to see and interact with each other.”

Mariner frowned. “And that sounds very cool, but you said it’s good that we can’t interact with each other right now, so I’m guessing there’s some horrible science consequence that you’re about to tell me.”

“Yes?” D’Vana said. “Probably. Right now we’re anchored in our own time. If we get mixed up in the temporal convergence, it’s like lifting the anchor; everyone’s just unstuck in time and floating around together. You can put the anchor back down, but the ocean floor is never going to be exactly the same as it was before. It could be a problem.”

“I don’t want to be unstuck in time!” Boimler wailed.

“Yeah, that sounds bad, how do we not have that happen?” Mariner asked.

”We’re working on it,” D’Vana said. ”Give us five minutes.”

T’Lyn said, “In the meantime, we should avoid contact with the —“ Her hesitation was barely noticeable, and she said, “individuals” like that’s what she’d intended all along. “It would likely be best to remove ourselves from this location.”

“Five minutes,” Mariner confirmed. “We’re going to start heading back towards the shuttle. Let’s meet back there and regroup when you’re done. Be careful.”


T’Lyn, Infinity Station

The relief she had experienced when the lieutenants introduced themselves had given way to the suspicion that she might have simply exchanged being stranded alone for being stranded with others. She was unsure whether her situation had improved or worsened; the variables that had been introduced were all unknowns.

“Wait – that’s a Starfleet uniform,” Lieutenant Boimler said, pointing at one of the people closest to them. At first the details had been blurry and indistinct, even with the bright lights of the room, but they were gradually gaining clarity.

Lieutenant Mariner tipped her head to one side. “Are you sure? It looks like a pajama set I had when I was nine.”

“I’m sure!” Lieutenant Boimler insisted. “It’s one of the old-timey ones. Look, they’ve got an old tricorder too, with the shoulder strap.”

Rutherford’s voice came through the communications channel. ”There are at least two different styles of Starfleet uniforms in this area too. And one person with extra facial hair and a sash; is that the mirror universe?”

Lieutenant Boimler frowned. “Do they look angry? What are they doing?”

“The same as all the rest of them – scanning the anomaly.”

“But why?” Lieutenant Boimler said.

Lieutenant Mariner shrugged. “It makes sense. That’s what we were doing too, right? Mysterious station, mysterious energy readings — of course everyone wants to run scans. Besides, the station was probably put here to monitor the anomaly. These consoles may not even do anything except scans.”

T’Lyn didn’t think the lieutenant intended her comment to be reassuring, and yet she found it, inexplicably, to be so. The part of her that was still trying to determine how to use the consoles to communicate with the Sh’Vhal was able to set the question aside, at least for the present. There were other things to focus on.

Things such as the fact that the room was quickly becoming crowded with sets of people who couldn’t seem to perceive or interact with each other. She felt nothing when they passed through her physical form, and yet it remained – disconcerting. She and the lieutenants had already moved to the wall, where they could avoid contact and still maintain observation of the viewscreen.

If Lieutenant Rutherford’s hypothesis was correct, they would need to determine a way to either escape the temporal convergence, or to maintain an ‘anchor’ in the correct time until the anomaly subsided. They did not currently know how to do either.

Now they were attempting to exit the room, and the door once again failed to open. “There is no logical reason for the doors to react to others and not to us,” she said.

Lieutenant Mariner appeared surprised when she looked at her. “Sure there is; you just haven’t thought of it yet. You know, apply a little creative thinking.”

T’Lyn didn’t allow her expression to change. “Vulcans do not engage in ‘creative thinking’ as a standard course of action.”

Lieutenant Mariner waved a hand. “Okay, maybe not all of them. But I knew a Vulcan during the war that could explain anything using logic. Anything.” She drew out the word ‘anything’ as if it was several syllables longer than usual.

T’Lyn stared at her, and Lieutenant Mariner appeared to take it as an invitation to continue. “Maybe the door sensor is broken in our time, and it only opens when it reacts to someone in a different time when it was working. Maybe the door doesn’t even open from this side – we haven’t seen anyone else leave the room.”

T’Lyn frowned without meaning to. “That would be a serious breach of safety protocols.”

“Well, I didn’t see a lot of dedication to safety protocols anywhere else on this station, so maybe that makes perfect sense.” Lieutenant Mariner’s voice had gotten louder as she spoke, and one of the individuals closest to them turned sharply, squinting in their direction.

Even without sound, it was easy to see them turn to their companion and ask something that had a 99.5 percent probability of being some variation of, ‘did you hear that?’

T’Lyn and Lieutenant Mariner both froze, and the lieutenant’s voice was much quieter when she spoke again. “Look, if people are starting to notice us, the station should be starting to react to us. We just have to be ready.”

The next time the door opened, a single figure strode through. Instead of moving to one of the consoles, they quickly walked to stand in front of the viewscreen. Approximately 72 percent of the room’s occupants appeared to be aware of them.

The newcomer adjusted something on a wrist device, and the viewscreen flashed white. “Welcome to Infinity Station,” they said calmly. “All is proceeding as expected.”

Beside her, Lieutenant Mariner sucked in a breath. “Oh shit,” she said.

“What?” Lieutenant Boimler asked. “What is it?”

“The one at the front, messing with the viewscreen. That’s the uniform for the Department of Temporal Investigations.”

“I am not familiar with that department,” T’Lyn said. “They are – a division of Starfleet?”

Lieutenant Mariner hunched over as if trying to make herself appear smaller. “Of the Federation, technically. They’re in charge of monitoring the timeline. They’re supposed to be preventing interference, making sure everyone is following the temporal prime directive, all that stuff. Not a friendly bunch.”

T’Lyn frowned. “Vulcan is a member of the Federation, yet I was unaware of the existence of such an organization. That violates several principles of the Federation charter.”

“Yeah, well, the first rule of temporal investigations is that no one’s allowed to talk about temporal investigations. You only find out about them once you’re in trouble.”

Lieutenant Boimler was continuously waving his hand in front of the door to test the sensors. “No one else can see us. Maybe they can’t either.” The agent turned slowly, and looked directly at them, frowning. “Nope, never mind, they can definitely see us.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the agent said. “Who are you?”

The majority of the room’s other occupants turned as well – some appeared confused, while others were almost certainly either able to see them, or found the wall behind them worthy of scrutiny.

She looked at Lieutenant Mariner. “What is your recommendation?”

“Door’s open,” Lieutenant Boimler said, with relief clear in his tone.

“In that case? Run.” Lieutenant Mariner grabbed her sleeve. For some reason, T’Lyn didn’t feel the need to remove her hand.

They sprinted out the door and back towards the docking bays. The corridor held more scattered groups of people, and their passing was met with a combination of curiosity and alarm. Someone shouted, “Stop them!” from the direction of the room they’d just left.

“Keep going!” Lieutenant Mariner said. “Take a right ahead; there’s another corridor.”

Lights came on around them as they ran, and the corridor led deeper into the station, rather than around the edge. It was significantly less crowded, with many more doors and branching corridors.

T’Lyn wasn’t entirely sure why they were running. If the agent had access to internal scanners, which it seemed likely they did, it would be easy to find them wherever they went.

“This area of the station has additional shielding,” Lieutenant Boimler said, sounding out of breath. She looked at him. “So it would be harder to find us if anyone is looking.”

A pair of humanoid figures in Starfleet environmental suits appeared at the far end of the corridor. They were both armed with phaser rifles, which they raised in their direction in what was unmistakably an aggressive gesture. The three of them skidded to a halt, and Lieutenant Boimler made a disbelieving sound. “Phaser rifles? They never let us have phaser rifles.”

“Side corridor!” Lieutenant Mariner called, and they altered direction to a smaller corridor that angled to the left.

“Do you actually know where we’re going?” Lieutenant Boimler called back.

“Just start checking if any of the doors open; we should be near the labs D’Vana and Rutherford found earlier!” Lieutenant Mariner waved at each door they passed, and as soon as one opened, she said, “In here, quick!”

The room was small, and no lights came on when they entered. Their flashlights swung around, illuminating one blank wall and two with shelving, all empty. “A storage room?” Lieutenant Mariner said.

T’Lyn remained close to the door, listening for any signs of pursuit.

“Who has an empty storage room?” Lieutenant Boimler said. “That makes no sense.”

Lieutenant Mariner leaned against one set of shelves. “Really? This is the thing that bothers you?”

“Yes!” Lieutenant Boimler threw his hands in the air. “It’s a space station; any storage space would be highly valued. The entire Adashake crew would start a fight for a space half this size. And it’s just empty?”

T’Lyn said, “Perhaps the contents of the room are also impacted by the temporal overlap. They may not be present at the point of time we are currently perceiving, but appear as the convergence progresses.” She turned to face the two lieutenants. “Also, I believe we have successfully evaded our pursuers, and the corridor is now clear.”

Lieutenant Mariner sighed out a long breath. “Let’s go, then. Maybe we can find something useful in this area. Or at least somewhere better to hide. I don’t want to be in here if a ton of supplies suddenly appear.”

T’Lyn stepped closer to the door, but it remained closed. Lieutenant Mariner joined her, and then Lieutenant Boimler, both of them waving their hands at the door. The door failed to open. Lieutenant Boimler said, hesitantly, “Are we – stuck in here?”


Beckett Mariner, Infinity Station

She let her head fall back against the wall. The station might have power, but apparently storage closets weren’t considered a priority for lighting. Spaciousness also hadn’t been a priority. She and Boimler were at the back wall, while T’Lyn tried to get the door to open, and they were all basically within arm’s reach of each other.

So, to recap: possibly getting unstuck in time, possibly being pursued by one or more temporally-converging individuals, definitely not near their shuttle, definitely trapped in a small room with no lights.

The words were out of her mouth before she could think them through. “The only way this could get worse is if the Breen showed up.”

Boimler hissed. “Why would you say something like that?”

And of course, that was the moment when D’Vana said, “Mariner? I think you’re going to want to see this.”

Boimler turned an accusing expression on her. “If it’s the Breen I’m blaming you!” She was pretty sure his whisper was louder than his usual speaking voice.

Mariner groaned. “We’re hiding in a storage closet; you’re going to have to tell us. Is it the Breen? And where have you been? We’ve been trying to reach you on comms.”

D’Vana said, ”I think the temporal convergence is disrupting our channel. Why are you hiding in a storage closet? No, never mind; this is more important. The good news is that it’s not the Breen.”

She frowned, not entirely sure she was liking the direction things were headed. “Okay, you do not sound as happy about that as you should. No Breen is a good thing. I don’t want to fight the Breen today.”

”How do you feel about fighting something that’s not the Breen?”

She’d feel better about it if she wasn’t currently trapped in a storage closet. “Like, easier than the Breen, or harder than the Breen?”

”It’s a space monster!” Rutherford called. ”It just came through the anomaly, and it’s headed directly for the station!”

That sounded – not great. “I didn’t think it was that kind of anomaly. If something came through it, can you tell anything else about what’s on the other side?”

”Not really,” Rutherford said. ”The scanners aren’t making any sense of what they’re picking up. The readings keep changing.”

Maybe it was that kind of anomaly. “Okay. Not that we don’t appreciate the updates, but I thought you two were supposed to be heading back to the shuttle. How are you seeing all of this?”

D’Vana said, ”Well, we were trying to get back to the shuttle, but we wound up taking a small detour.“

”We ran into a group of six Tellarites who could definitely see us. And shoot at us!” Rutherford added. ”We’re hiding out in a lab in that shielded area you found. They didn’t follow us here, and we have access to the computers; it’s great!”

Mariner sat up straighter. “Wait, we’re in the shielded area too. Where are you?”

“Can we focus on the space monster?” Boimler said. “That seems a little more important right now.”

She waved her flashlight at him. “I mean, do we even know it’s a monster? Maybe we can communicate with it, find out what it wants.”

Rutherford said, ”All we know right now is that it’s very large and it’s moving very fast.”

Boimler knocked his shoulder against hers. “Maybe it’s trying to send a message to something that used to live in the nebula, and now we’ll have to travel back in time to find some of them and bring them back,” he offered

She rolled her eyes. “That only happened one time. It’s way more likely that it’s upset because something the station is doing is causing environmental damage to its home dimension. You know – warp trails, or energy emissions, or something like that.”

Boimler opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then he paused. He held up one hand and started counting on his fingers. Finally, he said, “No, you’re right. That is way more likely.”

T’Lyn had been quiet as she investigated the door. When she stood up, it was with a decisive confidence that was extremely impressive for someone stuck in a storage closet. “At this time, we lack the ability to either communicate with, or fight against, the ‘space monster.’ Therefore it would be more productive to determine if your companions are able to reach our location and open this door.”

She almost applauded, but managed to restrain herself at the last second. She could tell Boimler was staring at her. “Yes,” she said. “Good call. D’Vana, can you and Rutherford track our location?”

”Maybe? Hang on, Rutherford’s working on it.”

Rutherford’s voice came a moment later. ”I think I found a schematic for the station. It looks like –”

He stopped, and there was a long pause. “Rutherford?” she asked.

”This may sound silly, but can you bang on the wall a few times? The back wall.”

She looked at Boimler, who shrugged. “Ooookay,” she said, knocking her fist against the wall.

“We heard that! You’re right next to us!” D’Vana said excitedly. ”I think there may be a way to access it – Rutherford, what about the control over there?”

There was a series of clicks that seemed to come from inside the wall, and she quickly took a step back from it. And then the entire wall slid aside, revealing a brightly lit – and much more spacious – lab behind it.

“Found you!” Rutherford said, and D’Vana clapped her hands.

It almost seemed too easy, and she hurried Boimler and T’Lyn out of the storage area as quickly as possible, just in case something else happened. Boimler immediately zeroed in on one of the blinking consoles, but T’Lyn hung back.

Mariner studied her as unobtrusively as possible. She seemed – quiet. If she was Human, Mariner would have said she seemed stressed, but she had no idea if that translated. She hadn’t been lying about knowing a Vulcan during the war, but it hadn’t been for very long, and it definitely hadn’t been under ideal conditions.

They’d just have to figure out if T’Lyn’s style was more ‘meditate your problems away’ or ‘hit your problems with a lirpa’ before she reached a breaking point. She could attest from experience; you did not want to get those mixed up.


T’Lyn, Infinity Station

She had previously dedicated the minimum amount of attention possible to considering the remaining two members of the Starfleet team, but found herself questioning the wisdom of that strategy. If she’d spent more time mentally preparing herself, perhaps she would have known to expect the level of exuberance that they brought with them.

“I’m Rutherford!” one of them exclaimed. “And you’re T’Lyn, right? I’m so jealous you got to fly around the nebula for three days; we’ve never been stranded anywhere this cool. Did you find anything interesting? Can we see your data?”

Lieutenant Mariner stepped between them and held her hands up. “Whoa now, let’s respect the personal space bubble. No need to overwhelm the person we’re supposed to be rescuing.”

The fourth person leaned around Lieutenant Mariner and waved, but kept their distance. “And I’m D’Vana Tendi, but please just call me D’Vana, it’s less confusing that way – I can’t believe you were so close to us that whole time!”

Lieutenant Boimler put his head in his hands. “Can we not put that in the mission report that we got locked in a storage room? Please?”

Lieutenant Mariner leaned over and poked him in the shoulder. “Come on, Boims, where’s your sense of adventure? This was a classic example of quick thinking, staying calm under pressure, and succeeding through teamwork.”

Lieutenant Boimler regarded her with suspicion. “Why does everything sound so reasonable when you say it out loud, even though I know you’re the most chaotic of all of us?”

“D’vana’s the most chaotic; she just hides it better.” Lieutenant Mariner led the others towards the center of the room. “So, what’s the latest? What’s going on with the energy and chroniton particles and all the rest coming from the anomaly?”

T’Lyn took a breath. Purposeful or not, she had been provided a reprieve to re-center herself; it would be logical to take advantage of it. She was unaccustomed to working with non-Vulcans. Among the crew of the Sh’Vhal, she had no familial ties. None of her crewmates could be described as ‘chaotic.’ A learning curve was to be expected.

While T’Lyn was focusing on breathing, Lieutenant Rutherford gestured towards a screen that showed a map of the area. He said, “The energy wave stopped expanding before it reached the edge of the nebula, but levels are still dangerously high close to the station.”

“I’m not an astrophysicist, but that’s not how energy waves are supposed to work, is it?” Lieutenant Mariner said.

Lieutenant Rutherford shook his head enthusiastically. “I know, isn’t it great? We have no idea why it’s acting the way it is. The temporal convergence also doesn’t make any sense, so it could be they’re canceling each other out somehow.”

Lieutenant Mariner replied, “Two impossible things make one possible thing? Sounds fake; I like it. What does it mean for us?”

Lieutenant Tendi said, “Well, the temporal convergence is making it dangerous to stay here, but the energy readings in the surrounding area mean it’s also dangerous to leave.”

“You said this area has additional shielding. Is that why no one else has showed up here?” Lieutenant Mariner looked around the room, as if she might have missed an additional occupant somewhere. “No ghosts.”

Lieutenant Rutherford nodded, then shrugged. “It’s as good a guess as any. Even more shields activated as the station started to have more power. That’s probably what disrupted our comms earlier. We’ve also lost contact with the Adashake, but we expected that.”

“Can we please get back to the space monster?” Lieutenant Boimler sounded distressed. “Because it looks like it’s almost here.”

T’Lyn thought the phrase ‘space monster’ was overly imprecise, but possibly not inaccurate. The being on the viewscreen was indeed in space, and was almost definitely larger than the Sh’Vhal. “It appears to be slowing down,” she observed.

“Yes!” Lieutenant Boimler said, and then frowned. “Wait, is that good?”

“Maybe?” Lieutenant Tendi indicated a third screen. “I mean, it’s good if it means it’s not going to crash into the station, but not so good if it just wants time to nibble on the outer areas first.”

Lieutenant Boimler made a noise, and Lieutenant Mariner said, “Maybe it’s here for – peaceful exploration? That’s what the rest of us are here for, right?”

“Would the presence of the agent for the Department of Temporal Investigations not indicate that this was an expected occurrence?” T’Lyn asked.

Lieutenant Tendi’s face made an expression that T’Lyn couldn’t interpret. “There’s a temporal agent here? Ugh, they’re the worst,” she said.

Lieutenant Mariner added, “Probably, yes, you’re right. You too, D’Vana, obviously. But if they’ve decided that the outcome of this event in their favorite timeline is that we all get eaten by a space monster, they’ll do their best to make sure that happens.”

T’Lyn frowned. She seemed to be doing that more than usual. “I do not see the logic in that decision.”

Lieutenant Mariner made a noise that sounded intentionally rude. “Yeah, well, that’s Temporal Investigations for you. So classified that even they don’t know what they’re doing half the time.”

The lieutenant spoke as if it was from personal experience. “You have had interactions with these agents before?”

“Unfortunately. Me and –”

“So, question.” Lieutenant Boimler interrupted, pointing at the screen in front of him. “Is it possible that no one else is in this area because this is exactly where the space monster is coming?”

She looked at the screen. The being’s path did appear to coincide with their general location in the station. Or perhaps – slightly lower?

Another console started flashing, and Lieutenant Tendi said, “There’s some sort of airlock opening, and it’s not anything that shows up on Rutherford’s station schematic. All of this information is in pictograms – it’s a box? A room, maybe?”

“The space monster’s got its own airlock?” Lieutenant Boimler said.

Lieutenant Rutherford added, “And it’s smart enough to use it. Maybe it’s really not going to eat the station.”

“Do we have access to any kind of internal monitoring? Cameras?” Lieutenant Mariner was staring at the station schematic. “I want to know if it keeps moving once it’s inside.”

It was – impressive, she decided. The four Starfleet officers used conjecture and discussion to build upon each others’ ideas and explore options. Not a single presentation of facts had been absent of opinion or emotion, yet they consistently reached consensus and took action faster than she expected.

T’Lyn moved to a console as Lieutenant Tendi said, “I’m pretty sure this area just got locked down. We’re sealed off from the rest of the station. I’m seeing a whole set of backup systems come online – life support, sensors, shielding.”

“Communication?” Lieutenant Rutherford asked. “We could try contacting the Adashake again.”

Lieutenant Tendi shook her head. “No additional communications systems. And no access I can find between us and the room the creature is in. Not even an intercom!”

“So we’re not supposed to go in there, and it’s not supposed to come in here,” Lieutenant Mariner said slowly.

Lieutenant Tendi tapped her fingers on the side of the console. “We can’t leave, we can’t communicate, and we can’t fight, so that leaves us with – what?”

Lieutenant Rutherford said, “Wait here and see what happens? Record everything for science?”

He held up a hand, and D’Vana reached over and gave him a high five. “Science!”

T’Lyn resisted the urge to sigh.


Beckett Mariner, Infinity Station

Mariner had maybe gotten a little distracted trying to figure out if the newly operational life support system would mean they could finally take off their environmental suits. She jumped when T’Lyn cleared her throat.

“I have obtained access to a series of cameras and internal sensors,” T’Lyn said calmly. She selected one of the images on the console, and it displayed on the viewscreen in front of her.

The screen showed what looked like a cargo bay, sort of. What a cargo bay might look like if it had zero cargo, but also one giant creature that had just flown out of an anomaly and roosted in the station like some kind of bat. The area the creature was in was mostly dark, but there was a small amount of lighting from the airlock side of the room that cast a dim glow. She could mostly just see patches of fur and scales that moved rhythmically, like it was breathing.

They all watched intently for what felt like the longest five minutes of her life, eyes glued to the screen. But the space monster, whatever it was, just sat there. Or lay there. Or stood there, maybe – she couldn’t see any legs, but who knew. Who’s to say the space monster didn’t have invisible legs? Apparently it was breathing but also enjoyed jaunting through the vacuum of space; clearly it wasn’t following any of the usual rules.

Finally, she said, “Okay, bets on what’s happening? What do we think it’s doing here?”

“Hiding?” D’Vana said.

“Taking a nap?” Rutherford guessed. “Maybe traveling through spatial anomalies is tiring.”

Boimler squinted at the screen. And then he said, “Having babies, probably,” which was not anywhere in her top one hundred guesses of what he might say. “Lots of animals on Earth try to find somewhere to hide in order to give birth. Maybe that’s what that part of the station is for.”

Mariner wasn’t the only one who looked at him in surprise. “How do you know that, about Earth animals?” Rutherford asked.

Boimler shrugged, but he glanced at Mariner as he did it, and then quickly away. It only took her a second to figure out why. “Ha!” she said, pointing at him. “You owe me a favor of my choice.”

“What? No!” Boimler objected. “Anyone could have known that!”

She appreciated his optimism, but he was also completely wrong. “Literally no one else here knew that,” she said. Rutherford and D’Vana nodded.

“I was not aware of that fact,” T’Lyn agreed. “Though I do not understand the significance of the exchange.”

Mariner looked at Boimler and raised her eyebrows. He sighed, and waved his hand at her. “Why not?” he muttered. “You’ll have more fun explaining than I would.”

Yes, she absolutely would. She said, “Boimler grew up on a farm, back on Earth. They grew, I don’t know, grapes and stuff – food crops. Very Kirk and Picard. And he bet me that the stuff he learned doing that would never come in handy on a mission, but now it has, so I win.”

Boimler flopped back in his chair. “All right, fine.” She could tell he was playing it up, and it was working. The air felt a little lighter; the mood a little less grim.

“So?” she prompted. “Tell us your wisdom – why do you think the space monster is having a baby?”

Boimler gave her another look. “I mean, I don’t know for sure that’s what it’s doing. But on Earth, certain types of wild animals will look for a safe place that’s not their usual den or nest when they’re about to give birth. The farm was basically a big open space filled with rows of plants, and not a lot of predators. Grape vines can form a dense thicket, so animals could feel hidden and protected from predators. Every year we had a lot of rabbits nesting. Sometimes a bobcat.”

He waved towards the screen. “This just – has the same energy as that.”

“Baby space monsters,” Rutherford said uneasily. “I am not sure how I feel about that.”

Boimler hesitated, and then added, “Sometimes they also did it when they were dying.”

D’Vana looked devastated. “Oh no, I hope it’s not dying!”

“But do you want a bunch more of them?” Rutherford asked.

“It’s kind of cute?” D’Vana offered. “All those teeth! D’Erika would love it.”

Mariner looked at the screen showing the creature again and saw zero teeth. Then she looked at Boimler, who gave a tiny shrug. He didn’t see them either, then. Well, good company, at least.

T’Lyn, who had been silent since announcing the existence of the cameras, said, “It appears Lieutenant Boimler’s first hypothesis was correct.”

At first she wondered if the rumors were true, and Vulcan eyesight was really that much better than Human, but then she realized it didn’t need to be. She could see the babies just fine, because they were glowing. “I bet the baby rabbits don’t do that,” she murmured to Boimler, and he laughed quietly.

Rutherford tilted his head to one side and said, “Is everyone else seeing this too? Because I’m seeing tiny glowing space monsters, and I’m worried that maybe I’m hallucinating.”

She nodded without taking her eyes off the screen. She wasn’t entirely sure how the whole birthing process had happened – it seemed like one second the creature had been alone, and the next it was curled around seven little glowing bundles of joy. “Everyone who sees glowing babies, raise your hand,” she said.

Five hands went up. “Based on the size of the parent, I do not believe ‘tiny’ is the correct descriptor,” T’Lyn said. “I would estimate that each of the infants is approximately half the size of a Starfleet shuttle at this time.”

There was silence as they all contemplated that pronouncement.

“Relatively speaking, though,” she said, and Rutherford closed his eyes.

“Not helping,” he said.

She winced. “Sorry. You good?.”

“It’s okay.” Rutherford took a breath, and then gave a decisive nod. “Space monster. Space monster babies. On a space station, next to a spatial anomaly. All good.”

D’Vana was staring at the screen. “They’re adorable! Do you think seven babies is standard for their species?” She clasped her hands together. “I want to pet one.”

“Vetoed,” Mariner said immediately. “Boimler, farm wisdom time: assuming this area is locked down because of baby-proofing, how long do you think we’ll be stuck here? Are we going to have to wait until the kids grow up and go off to school?”

“Probably just until they’re mobile?” Boimler said, obviously guessing. “There’s not a lot of extra space in that room with all of them in there, and no food or water.” He frowned. “If they even need those?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They may not, but we do. We can’t survive in here indefinitely.” With their environmental suits, they had maybe a few days.

“What about the storage room?” D’Vana said.

“I’ll check it,” Boimler offered.

Rutherford was already tapping away at the console in front of him. “It came through the anomaly – maybe it will go back the way it came when it’s finished doing whatever it’s doing. We can monitor the anomaly for any changes.”

“The energy levels too,” D’Vana added. “They’ve mostly stopped increasing since the creature arrived, but we might be able to find a connection between what the creature does and how the energy changes. I think it might be eating it.” She shrugged, like that wasn’t the most potentially disturbing statement she could possibly have made.

“What?” Mariner asked. “What does that mean? We have energy, D’Vana. Is it going to eat us?”

“Oh!” D’Vana looked surprised. “I don’t think so.” Then she frowned, which didn’t exactly fill Mariner with confidence. “Actually, let me check on that.”

“Yes,” Mariner said, trying to sound more calm than she felt. She should have traded with Boimler to check the storage room, and let him ask the questions. “Let’s do that.”


T’Lyn, Infinity Station

T’Lyn watched the others settle into their tasks. None of them had asked for her assistance, or questioned what she was going to be doing.

She spent several moments attempting to determine the last time she had been without any assigned tasks needing to be accomplished. Perhaps at some point before she had joined the crew of the Sh’Vhal? It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation.

And then, as suddenly as they had all broken off to work in silence, they returned to conversation, with no discernible signal.

“Supplies look good,” Lieutenant Boimler said. He was typing something into a padd as he stepped back into the lab.

“Where did you get that padd?” Lieutenant Mariner asked, even as she leaned over to look at it. “You’re not working on your mission report already, are you? You know that’s bad luck; you’ll jinx the whole thing.”

“I’m not!” Lieutenant Boimler said, holding the padd closer to his chest. “And I always keep a spare padd in my environmental suits. You never know when it might come in handy. I was just doing some calculations.”

He gestured towards the storage room. “There’s enough food and water in there to keep us going for weeks, and the tricorder says it’s safe to consume.” Then he looked at T’Lyn. “It’s mostly Federation-standard ration packs; are those okay for you?”

Lieutenant Mariner made a gagging sound. “Ugh, those things wish they reached the level of okay for anyone. But I guess it’s good we won’t starve.”

Lieutenant Boimler was still looking at her. “They are adequate,” T’Lyn confirmed, and he typed something else into the padd.

“Great!” he said. “And are we going to be able to eat them?”

It took her longer than it should to realize he wasn’t speaking to her. Lieutenant Mariner said, “All the environmental readings look stable; everything is basically acceptable for the Human-Vulcan-Orion range. We’re fine to take our suits off in here as long as D’Vana and Rutherford didn’t find anything weird. Cold for Vulcans, though; sorry about that.”

She realized she they were including her in their plans, and was surprised that she didn’t feel more surprised by it. But of course they would include her – finding her was their mission. She considered the fact that she had been unable to achieve true rest since her shuttle had become stranded, and mentally moved it up her priority list. Her reasoning ability was becoming impaired.

“The anomaly is also stable,” Lieutenant Rutherford said. “No signs of anything else coming through it. It seems to be shrinking, but very slowly. I set up a program to monitor it; it will alert us if anything changes.”

Lieutenant Tendi frowned. “The readings don’t make any sense. T’Lyn, you still have access to the cameras, right?”

T’Lyn nodded. Apparently her role had been assigned without her knowledge. Since she had already been monitoring the station via the available sensors and cameras, she was at least able to provide a report. “Yes. There are still multiple individuals interacting outside of the area that is currently locked down. No one has attempted to enter this area, and they appear to be unaware of the creature’s presence. However, I have not been able to locate the temporal agent.”

Lieutenant Tendi asked, “But all the cameras are still active, as far as you can tell?”

She blinked. Was this a test? She must have hesitated too long, because Lieutenant Mariner looked at her with an expression she tentatively identified as concern. “Yes,” T’Lyn said finally. “All of the cameras that were initially available are still active.”

“Are you all right?” Lieutenant Mariner asked. “How long has it been since you slept? Or meditated, or whatever it is Vulcans do.”

T’Lyn’s control slipped enough that she almost smiled, and then wondered why she had found the question humorous, instead of insulting. “Both meditation and sleep would be helpful at this point. But I am unlikely to be able to do either until we have decided upon a course of action, and I am perfectly capable of assisting until that occurs.”

“Of course you are,” Lieutenant Mariner said. “No one is questioning that. But we all have the best chance of getting through whatever’s happening if we work together, so it’s logical to tell us what you need in order to do your best work, right?”

T’Lyn blinked again. “That is a reasonable conclusion, yes.”

“Exactly! That’s settled, then.” Lieutenant Mariner sounded quite confident, although T’Lyn wasn’t entirely sure what had been settled. She decided that the lieutenant would surely not hesitate to inform her, whenever the settlement became relevant.

For the moment, Lieutenant Mariner had turned her attention to Lieutenant Tendi. “D’Vana, what are we looking at for best and worst case scenarios?”

“Our current theory is that the creature and/or the babies are somehow consuming the radiation from the anomaly. Not sure how they’re doing it, but hopefully one of the sensors in here is recording something we can figure out later.”

Lieutenant Tendi flipped through several charts on the viewscreen next to the camera showing the creatures. “There’s also a lot of energy being created by the temporal overlap, and again, it seems to be decreasing.” She waved both hands in the air. “Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea.”

Several deep breaths later, she continued. “Anyway. Best case scenario is that the creature absorbs the excess radiation around the station, along with the temporal distortion energy from all of the overlapping times except ours, and then leaves. The lockdown ends automatically and we all make our way back to our shuttles and safely out of the nebula, with petabyes of scientific data to study.”

Lieutenant Boimler sighed. “That sounds nice. I assume the chances of that happening are basically zero?”

T’Lyn began attempting a calculation, and Lieutenant Rutherford said, “I mean, it’s never happened before, but we’ve also never encountered glowing space monster babies before, so…”

Lieutenant Mariner cleared her throat, and Lieutenant Tendi took another deep breath. “Worst case scenario is that the creature absorbs the temporal energy from all the sources available, including us. Then the station ceases to exist, along with everyone in it.”

There was silence in the room for exactly nine point two seven seconds.

And then Lieutenant Mariner said, “Oooookay, don’t love that option. How long until we can tell whether it’s looking more like door number one or door number two?”

T’Lyn found the question to be valid, despite its wording being overly dependent on cultural context.

Lieutenant Rutherford replied, “At the current rate of energy depletion, we should have at least a few days before it starts impacting this area; maybe as much as a week. But we don’t know how fast the creatures will grow, and they’ll probably eat more as they get bigger.”

“What about the Adashake?” Lieutenant Boimler asked. “They’re not going to wait a whole week to come back and try to find us.”

T’Lyn felt a sudden spike of alarm. “Shuttles do not have adequate shielding to enter this area of space at this time,” she said.

Lieutenant Mariner shook her head. “Trust me, that is not going to stop them. Boimler’s right; they’ll find a way.”

“Maybe we can find a way to warn them off?” Lieutenant Boimler said.

The two lieutenants stared at each other, as if engaged in some additional conversation that T’Lyn was unable to follow. And then Lieutenant Mariner said, “Okay, yeah. That might work. Add it to the list.”


Beckett Mariner, Infinity Station

She’d jinxed herself.

They’d made a list. They’d discussed everything on the list. They’d re-prioritized the list several times, despite agreeing that everything on it needed to be done, and therefore the priority ranking was completely unnecessary.

They’d even come up with a watch schedule, which really should have clued her in. But no, she’d had to have the thought ‘at least we won’t be bored.’ And now here she was. Bored.

At least T’Lyn looked better. D’Vana had convinced her to go sit quietly in the corner and close her eyes for a couple hours while they were still arguing about the list. Mariner couldn’t say whether she’d been meditating or dozing off, but she seemed steadier when she came back.

Despite the schedule, they were all still sitting around, so she kicked her feet up on Boimler’s chair and leaned back. She said, “Here’s what I’m thinking. We still have one other big problem.”

T’Lyn frowned at her. “We have adequate supplies for survival. The situation has a significant number of variables, but I am uncertain which of them you would choose to single out as a singular additional problem.”

“I’m glad you asked,” Mariner said, even though it hadn’t really been a question. “The problem is that I’m bored, and if I’m bored, that means everyone else will be bored soon, and then we’ll start making up problems to solve, and that definitely won’t end well.”

“Ill-advised options,” T’Lyn said without thinking, and Lieutenant Mariner snapped her fingers and pointed in her direction.

“Yes! Exactly; you get it.”

T’Lyn observed her. “What do you suggest?”

T’Lyn was officially her favorite. Mariner clapped her hands together. “Entertainment! We’re stuck in here for an unknown period of time. We need options, people. What have you got?”

“I’ve got a deck of cards,” Rutherford offered.

D’Vana looked around the room, judging the area with an experienced eye. “There’s enough space to do some physical practice, as long as we’re careful.”

She nudged Boimler with her foot, and he clutched the padd to his chest. “I – I downloaded all the chapters of ‘Trapped in the Temporal Mist’ before we left the Adashake. I figured I could catch up on the latest update if we had any downtime.”

She could practically feel T’Lyn turn her attention to them. “I am not familiar with ‘temporal mist.’ Is this an educational resource?”

“Um, not exactly?” Boimler said. “It’s a fictional story.”

“Do Vulcans read fiction?” Mariner asked, and only realized how rude the question was after it was already out of her mouth.

As usual when it came to rude questions, T’Lyn responded by answering a different question entirely. She said, “Many Vulcans read poetry, which often contains metaphorical elements. I am familiar with literature that ventures outside of the strictly factual.”

“‘Trapped in the Temporal Mist’ is so good,” D’Vana said enthusiastically. “I love the science parts, because there’s a lot of really obscure theories mixed in with things that are just made up, so it’s like a game to figure out which is which.”

“I’m reading it for the romance storylines,” Rutherford said. “They just introduced a new character, and I think it might be the reformed villain from the first chapter!”

“Hey, no spoilers!” D’Vana said.

Rutherford shrugged. “Sorry! Is it really a spoiler if we’ve all read it? That wasn’t even in the most recent update.”

“T’Lyn hasn’t read it.” D’Vana spun in her chair to look at T’Lyn. “Have you?”

“I have not,” T’Lyn said, after a short pause.

“You can borrow it, if you want,” Boimler said, which was huge. He hated letting other people borrow his stuff. “The plotline is fictional, but the character development is realistic to Human norms, which at the very least gives it value as a cultural artifact.”

Boimler looked away, and then back up at T’Lyn, full of determination. “Also, developing cross-cultural understanding and empathy is a founding principle of the Federation, and it should be encouraged.”

Mariner whistled. “Damn, Boims, tell us what you really think.”

Rutherford said, “That argument even worked on K’Lar when she caught us reading during sensor maintenance.”

Boimler’s face fell. “That was K’Lar? I thought it was L’Kar! I called them L’Kar the whole time!” Rutherford shrugged again.

“Hand me your padd,” Mariner said, and Boimler passed it over automatically. “I think I can upload the files to the station’s network. That way we can all read it.”

“Is that safe?” D’Vana asked.

She hesitated with her hands over the controls. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

D’Vana made a face. “I don’t know, uploading something to an unknown network seems sketchy. We don’t even know who built this place. And what if the time agent thinks we’re contaminating the timeline, or something? I know we haven’t traveled in time, but also we sort of have, because of the temporal convergence?”

Mariner sat back and frowned. “Yeah, what’s happening with that? We were seeing all those extra people before, and now there’s no one. Is it over? I don’t feel temporally converged.”

“It’s still happening,” D’Vana said. “I think some of the extra shielding in this area may be protecting it from the effects, so it’s only this time in here, not a bunch of different times overlapping.”

“Like a temporal bubble,” Rutherford said, as if that was a real thing. She was pretty sure it wasn’t a real thing.

“A what?” Boimler asked. Mariner breathed a small sigh of relief. Almost definitely not a real thing, then.

T’Lyn said, “Does this ‘bubble’ include the area where the creature is currently located?”

And that got D’Vana waving her hands around again. “If we knew that, we’d know a lot more than we know now! A temporal bubble isn’t even a real thing! We’re just calling it that because it’s the best description we could come up with for a bunch of effects we can’t explain at all!”

She knew that feeling. They all did – they’d all been there. “You’re right,” she said, because she was, and also because it was a good way to interrupt the spiral. “We don’t know enough to make the best decisions right now. We need fresh eyes on the problems, which means we need to take a break from staring at them.”

She nudged Boimler’s shoulder. “Boimler and I will take first watch. D’Vana and Rutherford, you’re up next. Go eat, take a nap, whatever.” D’Vana looked like she was going to object, and Mariner caught her eye. “I’m asking you, not telling you,” she said quietly. “Walk it off.”

There was a pause, and then D’Vana blew out a long breath. “Thanks.”

Mariner shrugged. “You’ve done the same for me, more times than I can count. ”


T’Lyn, Infinity Station

T’Lyn was curious about the Starfleet officers. At one point in her education, she had considered applying to Starfleet Academy, before it had been made clear to her that such a decision would not be permitted. Not without more of a fight than she’d been willing to engage in, at the time – but perhaps it was a decision that should be revisited.

She could also admit, at least to herself, that one of the Starfleet officers was drawing far more of her attention than the others. Lieutenant Mariner’s personality was abrasive, yet she did not hesitate to speak and act in defense of others.

The lieutenant in question leaned back in her chair. Their shared watch shift had been underway for only six minutes and fifty-three seconds. “Soooo, what are we going to talk about?”

T’Lyn glanced at her, and then back at the screen. “There is no need to converse. We are on duty.”

Lieutenant Mariner rolled her eyes. “We’re spending six hours watching the glow-babies. I’ve done a shift already; it’s not exactly riveting. The sensors are doing most of the work.”

T’Lyn kept her eyes on the console in front of her. “I do not require additional mental stimulation in order to complete my duties as assigned.”

Lieutenant Mariner persisted. “But I do! You would be assisting me in performing my assigned duties to the best of my abilities. And you have enough concentration for both of us, so it’s not like it would be a distraction for you, right?”

T’Lyn considered the question, and Lieutenant Mariner clasped her hands in front of her. “Come on, T’Lyn. We talked about boredom and ill-advised choices already.”

It was less that she preferred not to converse, and more that she was uncertain what would be considered an appropriate topic. Discussions with her crewmates typically focused on their work, but Lieutenant Mariner was not wrong in her assessment of watching the creature and its offspring. It was not riveting. “You may select the topic,” she said finally.

“Yes!” Lieutenant Mariner pumped her fist. “Okay, let’s start easy. What would you be doing right now if you were back on the Sh’Vhal?”

T’Lyn had very few options to choose from when she answered. “If I was not on duty, I would most likely be caring for my plants.”

“Oh? You like plants?”

She thought about stating the scientifically-validated benefits that plants provided to a living space, but somehow what she actually said was, “Yes. I like plants.” And then she added, “One of my mission objectives was to observe the impacts of the nebula on plant health.”

Lieutenant Mariner turned to look at her. “Wait, are you saying there are plants on your shuttle?”

T’Lyn was uncertain how to interpret the lieutenant’s expression. “There are plants on the shuttle, yes.”

Lieutenant Mariner’s voice was very serious when she said, “T’Lyn. Do we need to rescue your plants?”

She raised one eyebrow. “Not only do we not have a way to leave the shielded area of the station, we have no evidence that it would be safe to do so.”

Lieutenant Mariner waved a hand like those considerations were unimportant. “Not yet, but that’s why I’m asking. If we need to go get your plants, we could find a way. Extend the temporal bubble so it reaches the docking bay, hack into your shuttle’s systems and remote pilot it to us; convince the temporal agent we’re going to fuck up the timeline unless we have the plants –” Lieutenant Mariner ticked each option off on her fingers as she spoke. It was – quite distracting.

She frowned. “That last one could use some workshopping, I know. I’m just saying, we could figure something out.”

T’Lyn shook her head. “It is illogical to risk the safety of your crewmates in any of those ways.”

Lieutenant Mariner gave her a considering look. “Yeah, I don’t know how things work on the Sh’Vhal, but you’re with us now. We’re a team. No one gets left behind, and if you want that to include your plants, it does.”

T’Lyn wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so instead she offered, “The plants have a self-sustaining environment set up on the shuttle. As long as the shuttle remains intact, the plants will be maintained in their optimal conditions. No rescue will be necessary.”

Lieutenant Mariner nodded. “Okay, great. That’s great. We should put that remote piloting idea on the list, though. Could be useful, and Rutherford loves that stuff. Also, it’s your turn.”

T’Lyn blinked. “My turn – for what?”

“To ask a question. To participate in the exchange of knowledge between allies in order to promote understanding and all that stuff. I’m serious; ask me anything.”

T’Lyn attempted to generate an appropriate question to meet those requirements. Finally, she said, “Who is the Vulcan you met previously?” Very few Vulcans served in Starfleet, though of course Lieutenant Mariner could have encountered a Vulcan in some other way.

Lieutenant Mariner was suddenly very still. She said, “Oh. Well, I – Here’s the thing–”

“You cannot tell me.” T’Lyn told herself it was illogical to feel disappointed.

Lieutenant Mariner frowned. “It’s super classified. And I know I come across as all ‘rules are just suggestions until you find a better option,’ but I made a promise. And there are circumstances that would make me consider breaking that promise, but – unless you need to know, I don’t think this is one of them. I’m sorry.”

T’Lyn had clearly failed at selecting her question. “There is no need to apologize. I do not need to know. I asked the question out of curiosity. Your answer did not provide the information I requested, but I find the information offered to be of equal value.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Lieutenant Mariner said. “But I would never doubt the word of a Vulcan. For that, you get a second question.”

T’Lyn was not prepared to ask a second question. Even the first had seemed a significant challenge. She picked the first thing that came to mind and hoped it would be acceptable. “Why do you wear your uniform differently than the others?”

Lieutenant Mariner stared at her. “How are you doing that?” she asked. “Two for two on things I don’t usually talk about; that’s got to be a record.”

“If you would prefer not to answer—“ T’Lyn started to backtrack, but Lieutenant Mariner cut her off.

“No way, I pulled the whole ‘it’s classified’ shit with your first question; I’m not flaking out on this one. There’s not just one reason, though, so stop me when you get bored.”

T’Lyn kept her eyes on the viewscreen. The creature’s offspring were visibly larger than when they had first appeared. The sensors had already noted the change, and charted it on a separate screen. “I do not expect to become bored.”

She could feel Lieutenant Mariner looking at her. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said finally.

“I agree to your terms,” T’Lyn said, and Lieutenant Mariner laughed.

“All right, then. Reason number one: it looks cool. Reason number two: I like it. Reason number three: it’s not against the uniform code, and I enjoy reminding people of that whenever they decide they want to give me a hard time about it.”

She paused, and then added, “Corollary to reason number three: it’s an early warning system for assholes. Some people in the Fleet still care more about conformity than community, and it’s best to identify them as soon as possible.”

T’Lyn felt like she must be missing some integral part of the explanation – presumably, the part that made it make sense. “You – disagree with the Starfleet uniform code?”

“Oh, absolutely, but that’s not really the issue. If someone’s going to have a problem with my sleeves being rolled up, they’re going to have a problem with people I care about, and that means they’re going to have a problem with me.” Lieutenant Mariner held up both hands, possibly to demonstrate the sleeves, or her willingness to engage in fisticuffs, and then shrugged. “The sleeves thing just gets it all out in the open quickly. It’s efficient.”

“I see,” T’Lyn said, though she wasn’t entirely sure that she did.


Beckett Mariner, Infinity Station

More than twelve hours later, she could still feel the echo of the shiver that had gone down her spine when T’Lyn said, ‘I do not expect to become bored.’ What did that even mean? She must have only been referring to Mariner answering the question. But she hadn’t specified that, and Vulcans loved specifying things.

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. At least she had her shift with Boimler to distract her.

“What is going on with you and T’Lyn?” Boimler blurted out the question as soon as she sat down.

Or maybe not. “What makes you think anything is going on? Maybe we should talk about what’s going on with you and T’Lyn. You’re suddenly okay with letting a complete stranger borrow your padd?”

“Only because I could tell you like her! I was trying to make a good impression!” Boimler was obviously trying to keep his voice quiet. It was hard to say if anyone was actually sleeping, but after more than a day stuck together in the small lab, they were all at least pretending that privacy was still a thing.

“Huh,” she said. “Do you think it worked?”

Boimler threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know! You’re the one who spent a whole watch shift with her; what did she say?”

“She likes plants. She has some on her shuttle; we need to make sure we get them when we leave. She asked about my sleeves.”

Boimler sat back, surprised. “Really? That just came up, in normal conversation?”

Mariner nodded. “I know, right?”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her it looked cool, and I liked it, and that it was a good way to identify assholes who were going to give my people a hard time.”

“Level three friendship already, huh? Are you planning on telling her the rest of it?”

She made a face. “Level four friendship? I don’t know. With the way the little glow-bugs are growing, we won’t be here much longer, and who knows what will happen then. What if she just – shuttles back to the Sh’Vhal and we never see each other again?”

“D’Vana’s already started a list of reasons why she should come back to the Adashake with us instead,” Boimler said. “The captain’s going to agree, obviously, so it just depends on whether or not T’Lyn’s willing to be convinced.”

“And Captain Sokel,” Mariner said, unable to entirely keep the dislike out of her voice.

“We can handle him,” Boimler told her. His eyes flicked behind her for a second, and his voice was slightly louder when he spoke again. “Hey T’Lyn. Were you able to get any rest? Sorry about Rutherford’s snoring.”

T’Lyn handed Boimler his padd. “Thank you for the loan. I found ‘Trapped in the Temporal Mist’ to be a valuable perspective on Human culture.”

Boimler took the padd back carefully. “Oh. Well, good. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Did you enjoy it?”

T’Lyn clasped her hands behind her back. “I enjoyed the experience of reading it. However, you failed to mention that the story is not yet complete, and that the most recent chapter ended with a cliffhanger.”

Boimler’s eyes went wide. “Yeah, sorry about that,” he said. “Sometimes that happens. I haven’t actually read that chapter yet, or I definitely would have mentioned it.”

“I see.”

T’Lyn continued to stand next to them, which probably meant she had something else to say and was deciding how to word it. Either that, or she’d overheard them before, and figured that if they were going to talk about her, she might as well be present for the conversation.

Mariner didn’t get the chance to find out which it was. A light started flashing on the console, followed quickly by the wailing of an alarm, and she winced. “We’re right here; does it have to be that loud?”

D’Vana and Rutherford joined them in seconds – it wasn’t like it took a long time to run from one side of the room to the other.

“What’s happening?” Rutherford asked.

“Look at this growth chart!” D’Vana said excitedly. “This is incredible!”

Mariner was looking. It was incredible. Incredibly bad. The babies’ growth rate had spiked way past anything they’d seen so far. Something was going to have to change fast, or else they weren’t all going to fit in the room.

“The good news is – at least it’s not the worst case scenario?” Rutherford said.

D’Vana added, “The station outside of this area does seem to be ceasing to exist,” as if it wasn’t disturbing at all. And then, even worse: “Except for the docking bays, and the path between them and the lab.”

“Aw, it likes us,” Boimler said. “It’s giving us an escape route.” Then he frowned. “Wait, no, that doesn’t seem very likely. Why would it do that?”

Mariner shook her head. “That is an incredibly convenient coincidence. Does anyone else think that’s suspicious?”

“Maybe they’re just full after eating the rest of the station,” Rutherford said. “They’ve absorbed a lot of energy. Way more than they could get from the five of us.”

She pointed at the screen, where there was suddenly a lot more activity happening. The babies were – climbing the walls? “Yeah, or maybe they’re trying to lure us into a trap! Maybe they can’t get to us when we’re in here, so they’re trying to get us to leave so they can suck out all our energy for a snack!”

Another alarm started blaring. “I think they can get in here, actually!” D’Vana said. “That room is right under us; they’re going to come through the floor!”

“Why are they coming after us now?” Boimler said. “This makes no sense! They eat energy, not – whatever this is.” He tapped his boot on the floor. “Actually, what is this made of?”

Then he shook his head. “That’s not the point – the point is that they could have eaten us at any time! There’s absolutely no reason for them to physically come in here!”

D’Vana’s response was equally loud. “We must have missed something in the data! Maybe the exponential growth phase triggers a different set of behaviors!”

Boimler was starting to look panicked. “What, like the kids have grown up enough to hunt for food on their own, and we’re baby’s first prey? I don’t want to be prey!”

“Suits on!” Mariner snapped, and even T’Lyn – already most of the way into hers – sped up a little. Mariner had put hers on earlier, and she wasn’t sure if Boimler had ever taken his off – it was cold in the lab, and the thermoregulation was worth the awkwardness. All they needed were their helmets. “Boimler, how long do we have?”

She could practically feel him taking a deep breath as he studied the sensor readouts. “Three minutes, maybe, before they breach the floor. After that, it depends whether they stop and snack on the lab, or chase after us.” Boimler didn’t look optimistic that it would be the first option.

“What’s the plan?” Rutherford said, snapping his helmet into place.

Mariner looked at D’Vana as they both did the same. “Run like hell for the shuttles and hope they don’t follow us off the station?” she said.

D’Vana gave a single nod. “You’re with T’Lyn. Rutherford, Boimler, you’re with me. Our shuttle’s closer – once we get there, we’ll monitor the creatures and act as a distraction.”

Rutherford and Boimler confirmed, and Mariner looked at T’Lyn. “Good?” They didn’t have time for a lengthy debate.

T’Lyn nodded. “I will follow your lead.”


T’Lyn, Infinity Station

There had been no need for shouting; they had all been in close enough proximity to hear each other speaking at a standard volume. Perhaps it was a Starfleet custom of which she was unaware.

Regardless, she appreciated the relative quiet of running through the corridors; no alarms sounded outside the lab, and if Lieutenant Mariner was communicating with the others, she was keeping the external speakers muted. It gave her a chance to think, and to consider the most convincing arguments in favor of saving her plants.

There was no logical argument she could make, so what she finally said was, “I do not wish to leave my plants.”

Lieutenant Mariner looked startled, and T’Lyn was surprised she could recognize the expression through the helmet of the environmental suit. “Of course you’re not leaving your plants. Look, how functional is your shuttle?”

“Communications, navigation, and long-range sensors are non-operational. Warp engines are likewise offline.”

“Not a good idea to warp in here anyway, so that’s fine. Impulse engines? Life support?”

“Impulse engines and life support were both fully functional when I docked the shuttle, though I am not able to attest to their condition at this point.” The shuttle might not even be there when they arrived. She did not expect that to be the case, but events on the station had been – unpredictable.

Lieutenant Mariner waved off that concern. “What about short-range sensors? We had some issues with ours when we got close to the station.”

T’Lyn hesitated, but there was no reason not to admit it. “I made several attempts to adjust the short-range sensors in order to locate the station. They are – functional for that purpose. I am not certain how they will perform otherwise.”

She was not an expert in sensor modification. It was entirely possible that her modifications were not only irreversible, but also significantly less useful, now that their goal was to get further away from the station, rather than closer.

“Okay, we can work with that,” Lieutenant Mariner said.

T’Lyn offered, “I thought – the plants could be transferred to your shuttle, if that would be acceptable.”

Lieutenant Mariner shook her head. “Nah, we definitely don’t have time for that. I don’t want any of us having to backtrack through these corridors. We’re going to take your shuttle and hope for the best.”

T’Lyn would have stopped and stared at her, had she not needed to keep her attention on the corridor. “Hoping for the best is not a comprehensive strategy.”

“I know a few tricks,” Lieutenant Mariner said, as if that statement was any more logical. She seemed to be gaining confidence, even as the situation became more uncertain. “Just please tell me your shuttle has a language option for Federation Standard. Or Klingon. If it was an absolute emergency, I could handle Cardassian, but I would lose all respect for whoever designed it that way.”

“That will not be necessary.” T’Lyn found herself distracted by the idea that Lieutenant Mariner might not consider the current situation an ‘absolute emergency.’ “The shuttle’s default language is Federation Standard; it is advised for any ship operating outside of Vulcan space.”

“Oh yeah? Is that for safety, or because Vulcan likes its secrets to stay secret?”

“I expect both are factors,” T’Lyn said calmly. The Vulcan language was hardly a secret, but there were many who would prefer to keep as strict a separation as possible between Vulcan and the rest of the Federation.

Lieutenant Mariner kept pace with her until they reached the docking bay, but when T’Lyn moved to unlock the shuttle, the lieutenant bent over her knees, breathing heavily. “I’ve got a suggestion,” she said. “Next time maybe don’t park so far away.”

“I will take that under advisement,” T’Lyn told her, and Lieutenant Mariner laughed as she stood up.

The shuttle lit up around them as they stepped inside, and T’Lyn felt her breathing automatically deepen as she took in the scent of growing plants. She wished she had time to stop and check on them. Instead, she hurried to the cockpit to begin activating the ship’s systems.

Lieutenant Mariner dropped into the pilot’s seat and wiggled her fingers. “D’Vana, what’s the latest on the space monster and its mini-mes?”

T’Lyn could hear Lieutenant Tendi’s voice clearly through the helmet’s comm system. “They’re definitely still following you, but not as fast as we thought. The shuttle’s sensors show them about halfway between you and the lab.”

Lieutenant Mariner groaned. “Are you telling me we didn’t have to sprint the whole way here? We could have taken it at a light jog?”

”You should be happy to have the extra time. They fly through space, and there’s eight of them. We need to get out of here.”

“We fly through space, Boims. That’s why it’s called a spaceship.”

Lieutenant Boimler ignored the comment, and said, “What if they follow us back to the Adashake?”

”We’re not going to let them,” Lieutenant Tendi said.

“That’s the beauty of having two shuttles,” Lieutenant Mariner said. “They’re all still staying together, right? They haven’t split up?”

”They’re still together,” Lieutenant Rutherford confirmed.

“And they could easily have split up and gone after both groups. Which means there’s a good chance that space monster numero uno wants to keep all the kids with them.”

“You are extrapolating that this behavior will continue once we are all outside the station,” T’Lyn said.

“It’s an evidence-based extrapolation,” Lieutenant Mariner claimed, which T’Lyn decided was essentially true, though the evidence was minimal at best. “They can’t follow both of us, and Rutherford is pretty sure they won’t want to get too far from the anomaly. We confuse them, we outrun them, and then we regroup with the Adashake and we get to sleep in real beds again.”

“You seem very confident in this plan,” T’Lyn murmured, trying to avoid being heard by the others.

Lieutenant Mariner glanced at her. “Someone has to be,” she said, equally quietly. And then, louder: “Walk me through firing up the engines. D’vana, we’re heading out.”

”Launching now,” Lieutenant Tendi said. ”We’ll meet you on the far side from the anomaly.”


Beckett Mariner, Vulcan Science Shuttle Keethera

There was a tricky moment during launch when the shuttle engines briefly cut out, but they restarted easily enough. Other than that, piloting a Vulcan shuttle was as fun as she’d hoped. She made a few loops – definitely to get used to the feel of the controls, not for any other reason.

“Where did you learn how to fly a Vulcan shuttle?” T’Lyn asked.

“Hmm? Oh, I’ve never flown one before. Honestly, I would have expected more safety warnings from the Vulcans.”

T’Lyn said, “I disabled them. I was aware of the situation, and did not require the computer to remind me each time the shuttle was operated in a way that was outside standard parameters.”

T’Lyn’s voice was so matter-of-fact that it took her a few seconds to actually register the answer. When she did, she wanted to laugh. “T’Lyn, you rebel! And you said you weren’t inclined to creative thinking.” She tried to figure out what the short-range sensors were picking up, but it all looked like random data noise.

“I don’t know what you did to these sensors, but it definitely falls into the creatively fucked up category. Let’s get around to the other side of the station; it should provide us some cover, and we can meet up with the others.”

“This shuttle does not have communications or navigation,” T’Lyn said, as if Mariner wasn’t completely aware of that already.

“Rutherford’s boosting the suit comm channels. We’ll be able to stay in contact with them through those until we get close enough to the Adashake to route through their comms.”

As if to prove the point, Rutherford’s voice came through the suit’s comm. ”The creatures have reached the docking bay. They–”

There was a hiss of static, and then silence. Mariner felt her skin prickle. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“The station is gone,” T’Lyn said calmly.

“Definitely not going to provide us any cover, then,” Mariner muttered. They should have expected that, probably. Maybe. “Were we expecting that?”

“The physical and temporal disruptions that we observed in other areas of the station during the creatures’ growth indicated a wide range of possible outcomes,” T’Lyn said.

Mariner didn’t have time to sort through all of that. “Meaning we were expecting that?”

“We were not expecting that,” T’Lyn corrected. “But it was not outside the realm of possibility. Is there a plan B?”

“Plan B is the same as Plan A – run away and hope they don’t follow us. It’s just going to be a little harder if we don’t know where they are. Do you have any visuals on the creatures or the shuttle?” The sensors were basically useless, but maybe T’Lyn could pick something out. Mariner chose a direction away from the anomaly and increased their speed.

“No,” T’Lyn said. “But I can sense the creatures.”

Mariner frowned. “What, like the telepathy thing? I thought that was a myth.”

T’Lyn hesitated, and then said, “Many stories about it are untrue. I could not sense the creatures when they were inside the station, but in the vacuum of space, their telepathic presence is – unexpectedly loud.”

Telepathically loud space monsters. Sure. Why not? She shook her head. “I have so many questions that we do not have time for right now. Can you sense the creatures and fly the shuttle at the same time?”

The hesitation was longer that time, but finally T’Lyn said, “I believe so.”

“Great, you’re in charge of flying, then.” Mariner gave up the controls with one last pat. “Make sure we’re moving away from them. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“What are you going to be doing?” T’Lyn asked.

Mariner cracked her knuckles. “I’m going to make the engines go faster.”

Less than a minute later, she huffed out a breath. “Hey, did you know these systems are eerily similar to Romulan ones? Like, did you all work with the same spaceship design team on these, or what? Anyway, you should have at least ten percent more power now.”

The hum of the engines changed slightly, and T’Lyn said, “We are gaining distance between us and the creatures. It is possible they have ceased pursuit.”

Her helmet comm suddenly emitted another burst of static. ”Is it working? Mariner! Can you hear us now?”

She closed her eyes, and breathed out a long sigh of relief. Then she said, “Aw, were you worried about us?”

The lack of a snarky reply let her know that Boimler had been truly stressed. ”Yes!” D’Vana called out. ”We were!”

“Well – thanks, I guess.” She would have had an easier time with the snark. “We’re fine, though. So ready to get out of here. Where are you?”

”Right behind you! The creatures only show up on our sensors about half the time, but it seemed like you knew where you were going, and we figured even if you didn’t, it would be better if we got lost together than separately.”

“Good thinking,” she said. “How are your sensors looking for finding our way back to the Adashake?”

Boimler said, ”We have a route charted. Working on sending it to you now.”

“Thanks,” she said, and she knew they all understood it was for more than just the route. “We’ll see you soon.”

She settled back in her seat, and stared out at the nebula. It didn’t really feel over, but it was at least on pause. Time to focus on other things.

“Now that we’ve gotten that figured out–” Mariner turned to T’Lyn. Once she was sure she had her attention, she clasped her hands together and gave T’Lyn her most pleading look. “T’Lyn, will you please come back to the Adashake with us. Please-please-please.”

“For what purpose?”

That sounded a lot like ‘convince me’ to Mariner, and she was prepared to be extremely convincing.

“I have a list,” she said. “Starting with the reasons we definitely shouldn’t go to the Sh’Vhal.” She waited to see if T’Lyn would object, but when she didn’t, Mariner launched into her arguments. “One, I don’t like Captain Sokel. I’ve never met him, but that’s not going to stop me from disliking him. Two, I am absolutely willing to claim a kidnapping if we go anywhere except the Adashake.”

T’Lyn raised one eyebrow. “That would not be a logical claim, as you are the one who provided the coordinates of our destination.”

Mariner pointed at her. “Exactly! So illogical! And you don’t want an illogical Human cluttering up a Vulcan science vessel. What if I disrupted the experiments, or saw some secret Vulcan thing I’m not supposed to know about? That would be terrible.”

“Indeed,” T’Lyn said, and Mariner was almost positive there was a hint of amusement in the word. “I presume there are also reasons why the USS Adashake is your preferred choice?”

“You presume correctly,” Mariner said, holding up her other hand. “On the ‘let’s go to the Adashake’ side, reason number one is that we all really want you there.” Part of her wanted to be flippant, but a bigger part thought T’Lyn would have an easier time accepting sincerity.

“We’ve only known each other a few days, but you’re one of us now. Part of the team. The science mystery investigating, space monster evading, flying a shuttle mostly blind through a dangerous nebula team.” She met T’Lyn’s gaze and held it, until the control panel beeped a warning at her, and she had to pay attention to flying again.

She cleared her throat. “Anyway, reason number two: we have all the space monster data, and I know you’re gonna want to analyze the hell out of that. Reason number three: it won’t matter what you see on the Adashake, because Starfleet loves showing off their stuff, especially to Vulcans. You’d basically be doing Starfleet a huge favor by sticking around for a while.”

T’Lyn made a considering noise. Mariner glanced at her, but she was staring at the screen. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “But I’m not sure exactly what category it falls in.”

T’Lyn said nothing, which Mariner took as an invitation to keep talking. “Sooo, the Vulcan Science Academy told us to turn over any Vulcan ships we found directly to them, and I’m pretty sure they outrank Captain Sokel.”

That got a reaction – T’Lyn startled, and Mariner could feel T’Lyn staring at her. “That was the exact wording?”

She tried to think back to the mission briefing. “They contacted the Adashake before we went into the nebula. ‘If we find any Vulcan ships, we're required to notify them immediately and turn the ship over to them.’ That’s a direct quote from the captain.”

T’Lyn said, “That is not standard procedure within the Federation. Why would the Vulcan Science Academy advise your captain of such a thing?”

Mariner shrugged. “I do not know, but what I do know is that nobody wants to mess with the VSA. If they want the shuttle, we’re going to give them the shuttle. Not the plants, though. Obviously.”

“Obviously?” T’Lyn repeated.

“Loopholes are made to be used,” Mariner told her. “Plants aren’t a ship, therefore they’re not covered by the request.”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

After the usual docking procedures, they’d been summoned to see the captain – immediately, no detours. T’Lyn acknowledged that the work of transferring her plants from one shuttle to the other was perhaps not part of the usual docking procedures. But a gear check was part of the process, and the plants could, theoretically, be considered gear.

T’Lyn also acknowledged that the route they’d taken – which had somehow included both the mess hall and rec room – had caused significant additional delays. Whether those delays were meant to cover for the time spent moving plants, or were simply coincidental, she could not determine.

“We’ll wait right here for you,” Lieutenant Mariner said.

Captain Tendi rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to stand guard, Mariner. Seriously, aren’t you all due in Medical for your post-mission scans?”

“We don’t mind waiting,” Lieutenant Boimler said. “T’Lyn will need a post-mission scan too.”

Lieutenant Rutherford nodded. “We can show her how to get to Medical.”

Lieutenant Tendi looked at the captain. “Come on, D’Erika; we escaped a bunch of space monsters together! We’re basically besties now!”

Captain Tendi sighed. “Fine. You can wait. Outside.”

T’Lyn followed the captain into what was likely their office, and sat in the seat offered to her.

The captain sat as well, watching her across a large desk. “Lieutenant T’Lyn. Welcome to the USS Adashake.”

“Thank you,” T’Lyn said, when it seemed that the captain was waiting for a response.

The captain said, “In case those four forgot to mention it, I’m Captain D’Erika Tendi. D’vana is my sister. She says it’s thanks to you that everyone made it out of the nebula.”

T’Lyn felt obligated to point out the obvious. “It was ‘thanks to me’ that any of them were in the nebula to begin with.”

Captain Tendi waved a hand. “Eh, they would have found trouble somehow. The point is, you are welcome to stay here. In fact, I would love it if you stayed, because D’Vana sent me a list, and she seems very intent on it. Starfleet would also love it if you stayed, because they think it would make them look good. But you’re not required to stay.”

T’Lyn nodded, and Captain Tendi continued, pointing back towards the door. “I know them. They talk and cajole and overpower any objections and they make it all sound very reasonable. But this is not a Vulcan ship. It’s not quiet, or serene, or anything that you might be used to.”

She thought that Captain Tendi perhaps had a limited understanding of how Vulcan ships operated. It was the image Vulcan preferred to present to the Federation, but ‘quiet’ and ‘serene’ were not words she would have chosen to describe her experience on the Sh’Vhal. She refrained from offering any response, and the captain narrowed her eyes.

“Those four can be a lot, is what I’m saying. I don’t want you to feel pressured into making this choice. You can go back to the Sh’Vhal right now; I can authorize a beam out from here.”

T’Lyn blinked. “I do not require a beam out.”

“I know you may — what?”

“I do not require a beam out,” T’Lyn repeated. “I would prefer to stay on this ship.”

“You would.”

“Yes.”

She could make the logical arguments, but she was fairly certain Lieutenant Tendi had already presented them. Captain Sokel would not have been influenced by T’Lyn’s preferences, but she believed Captain Tendi would take them into consideration.

The captain looked at her. T’Lyn met her gaze easily, and waited. Finally, the captain said, “Sometimes my people bring me other people. D’Vana met Rutherford at the Academy and he followed her home. Rutherford lured Commander Billups here with the promise of access to D’Var class engines.”

T’Lyn folded her hands in front of her as the captain continued. “This is the first time Mariner’s done it. Not only that, she vouched for your character, and she does not trust easily. I don’t expect you’ll break that trust.”

“No,” T’Lyn said.

“That’s what I thought,” Captain Tendi said. “Glad we had this talk. Happy to have you here; stay as long as you like.”

T’Lyn said, “I do have one question. You are aware that Vulcans have some degree of telepathic abilities.”

Captain Tendi gave a small laugh. “Orions and Vulcans were both exploring the galaxy ages before Humans figured out their first warp drive. I expect the abilities of our peoples are well-known to both of us.”

T’Lyn wasn’t used to having to specify all of her questions out loud. “Is this something I should disclose to the crew?” she asked.

Captain Tendi shrugged, which was unhelpful. “If you want. I’d like to think my crew is smart enough not to make assumptions, but if they’re not, they should learn. If anyone gives you a hard time, let me know. That’s for my own knowledge, though – I’d consider it a personal favor if you educated them yourself.”

“Fascinating,” T’Lyn said, because ‘I see,’ seemed too close to a lie. She opted for a subject change instead. “Will my presence create a conflict between yourself and Captain Sokel?”

“I will happily tell Captain Sokel where he can shove his requests,” Captain Tendi said. “There’s a clear precedent for a directive from the Vulcan Science Academy to be prioritized over that of a starship captain, and the VSA says you can do what you want.”

T’Lyn was confident that any confrontation between Captain Tendi and Captain Sokel would be decidedly weighted in Captain Tendi’s favor.

“We’re going to quarantine your shuttle and lock it down,” Captain Tendi said. Before T’Lyn could decide if she should confess removing the plants, she added, “Is there anything you want to retrieve first?”

“Is that not counter to the goal of a quarantine?” T’Lyn asked.

Captain Tendi shrugged again. “The quarantine’s mostly for show, really. Besides, we were ordered to hand over the shuttle, not any personal belongings that might or might not be inside the shuttle.”

“That is very similar to the reasoning provided by Lieutenant Mariner,” T’Lyn said. “I do not require any items from the shuttle.” In the interests of honesty, she clarified, “Any additional items.”

Captain Tendi smiled. “Excellent. You should get back out there before they decide you need a rescue. I’m going to go and ruin Captain Sokel’s day.”


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

“Sleeeeeeep,” Mariner said, dropping her head on Boimler’s shoulder. “I need sleep.”

“You need food,” Boimler said. It had taken forever to get released from Medical, and Boimler had promised they’d all eat something.

“Ooh, I think it’s protein mash night!” Rutherford sounded way too excited.

Mariner groaned. “Really, again with the protein mash?” Boimler steered her to a table and left again, hopefully to get their food. She rested her head on her arms and closed her eyes.

“It’s so good! Especially if you mix it with hot sauce.”

“I am not familiar with ‘protein mash,’” T’Lyn said.

“Don’t trust them,” Mariner mumbled into her arms. “It’s terrible.”

“I can get your tray!” D’Vana offered. “I’ll just get a little bit of everything so you can try it, and then Rutherford will eat anything you don’t want!”

She felt T’Lyn sit down next to her. “Mistake,” she muttered. “The tray. You can have mine instead; I’m sleeping.”

“Food first,” Boimler said, sliding a cup of something hot towards her hand. “It’s soup; you don’t even have to chew.”

The soup helped, and her brain shuffled the sleepiness over to one side in favor of paying attention to the conversation around her. D’Vana was explaining everything on the tray she’d brought. Boimler and Rutherford were arguing about everything she was saying. It was going to take forever before they finished eating.

“Hey,” she said. “Hurry up so we can all go to sleep.”

And then suddenly she felt wide awake, and she spun to look at T’Lyn. “Wait, where are you sleeping?” How had they not managed to figure that out yet?

D’Vana looked surprised. “She’s with you, right? There are no extra bunks right now; D’Erika said you volunteered.”

Boimler looked way too smug, and Mariner was pretty sure she knew the source of her sudden volunteerism. “You’re welcome,” he said. “So, should I find somewhere else to sleep tonight?”

T’Lyn raised one eyebrow. “Do you and Lieutenant Boimler – share quarters?”

Mariner made a face. “Ugh, gross, no.”

Boimler made almost exactly the same face back at her. “I think I’m offended? But also I agree. Blech.”

“Sometimes we sleep in the same quarters, there’s just definitely not any ‘sharing’ going on.”

Boimler nodded. “Euphemistically or literally. Mariner’s a blanket hog.”

She thumped the soup mug down onto the table. “They’re my blankets!”

T’Lyn looked back and forth between them. “I do not understand.”

“It makes sense once you get to know them,” Rutherford said cheerily. “There’s backstory.”

“And lore,” D’Vana agreed, wiggling her fingers dramatically.

Mariner rolled her eyes. “There’s no lore,” she said, turning to look at T’Lyn. “It’s not that complicated. Boims and I are married on like, six planets.”

“And two moons!” Boimler added, and then sighed. “That one was a double ceremony. So beautiful. I think I still have the pictures.”

Mariner drank more of her soup and tried to figure out if she was awake enough to offer a better explanation than that. Only one way to find out. “Sometimes it’s helpful to have people get married during a mission. You know – trade deals, treaty signings, ceremonial gatherings, that sort of thing. And me and Boims are ride or die, so we’re the designated marriage duo of the team.”

“The food is usually really good,” Boimler said, and Rutherford nodded enthusiastically. “And then sometimes there’s a historic rock you’re supposed to babysit together to show your commitment, and they say things like, ‘the rock likes you so much’ and ‘you get to take the rock home with you.’”

“Rocky’s my favorite historic rock I’ve ever received as part of a wedding,” Mariner said. Which she would have said whether it was true or not, but in this case it actually was.

Boimler nodded again. “You might think that would be a small category, but it happens weirdly often. At least half the time they’re trying to sneak some kind of spy device onto the ship.”

T’Lyn sounded like she couldn’t decide whether the information was alarming or fascinating. “Is the captain not concerned that it could be dangerous?”

Rutherford tilted his head to one side and waved his hand. “Eh, we run a lot of scans on them. Most of them end up in the gardens. Rocky’s kind of a special case, because the scans were inconclusive.”

“Which is why Rocky lives in a shielded containment unit,” Mariner said. She wondered if there was some Starfleet study being done about actual historical rocks versus fake ones, and whether or not some intern was reading all of their reports to compile data.

“The point is, they told us we should spend a lot of time together around the rock, and the easiest way to do that is to sleep in the same room.”

It seemed simple enough to her. It wasn’t like they could bring Rocky’s containment unit on missions with them. It fit just fine in the double room assigned to her and D’Vana, and D’Vana spent half her time in her sister’s rooms anyway, so it worked out for everyone.

“The people who gave you the rock would not know if you followed their advice or not,” T’Lyn said.

Mariner pointed at her. “Okay, first, we don’t know that.” They’d definitely made that mistake before. “Second, we gave them our word.”

“Exactly.” Boimler agreed. “Besides, it’s only a few nights a week, and it’s only for like, what — six more months?”

“What happens after six months?” T’Lyn asked.

Mariner shrugged. “No idea. You can place your bet with D’Vana, if you have a guess. Personally, I’m hoping it hatches a dragon.”

“They want the rock back,” D’Vana told T’Lyn. “I’m gonna miss that little mystery rock.”

Boimler shook his head. “I still think Rocky’s just a rock, guys. Not everything has to be some crazy surprise. Rocks are cool all on their own.”

“Heck yeah, rocks!” Rutherford and Boimler high-fived across the table.

“I am interested in seeing this rock,” T’Lyn said, and Mariner realized that meant ‘yes I’m coming back to your room with you after this.’ Huh. Maybe Rocky was a lucky charm after all.


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

“I was not aware that there were any other Vulcans aboard,” T’Lyn said. She did not add that she should have been informed if that was the case, but it was possible her expression was sharing that thought without any words needed.

Lieutenant Mariner looked confused. “There – aren’t? You’re definitely the only Vulcan aboard, unless Captain Sokel sent someone over.”

“I saw another Vulcan in the garden.” Anticipating the next question, she added, “It was not a member of the Sh’Vhal’s crew.”

Lieutenant Mariner yawned, and stretched her arms over her head. “That’s weird — could the Vulcan Science Academy have sent someone here already? Why are you up so early? Did the Sh’Vhal not give you post-mission free day sleep-in time? Because I’m pretty sure that’s against some kind of Federation rule.”

T’Lyn didn’t bother trying to hide her amusement. “It is not, and the Sh’Vhal did not. I awoke at my standard time. As you were still sleeping, I asked the computer to identify locations where I would be able to meditate. The gardens were suggested.”

She considered Lieutenant Mariner’s first question. “It is possible they are a representative of the Vulcan Science Academy, though if that is the case, I am uncertain why they would be in the garden.”

“Maybe they were looking for you.”

That seemed unlikely, but Lieutenant Mariner was not aware of her history with the Vulcan Science Academy, and therefore had a different perspective. “Perhaps.” She hesitated, and then started, “Lieutenant Mariner –”

Lieutenant Mariner groaned. “Please just call me Mariner. I can practically feel my soul shriveling up every time you rank-name me. I know it’s all respectful and professional, but it is so not necessary. It makes me feel like I’m about to get reprimanded for misfiling a requisition report of something.”

T’Lyn paused. She had never particularly cared whether her form of address kept her crewmates at a distance, but for some reason it now seemed important. “That is not my intention,” she said. “I will – work on it. Mariner.”

“See? So much better.” Mariner finished rolling up her sleeves and waved towards the door. “Come on, let’s go see the mystery Vulcan.”

The gardens weren’t far from crew quarters, and T’Lyn let her thoughts drift as they walked. She nearly collided with Mariner when she stopped unexpectedly just inside the entrance.

“I thought you said it was just one Vulcan,” Mariner said.

T’Lyn looked past her. There were clearly two Vulcans in the garden. Two Vulcans other than her. “It was.”

“Huh.” Lieutenant – Mariner put her hands on her hips and squinted. Then she gestured at one of the crewmembers tending the garden to come closer to her.

“Nya’al, do you see those two Vulcans over there?”

The crewmember hesitated, but then said, “Yes? I mean, yes, I do. I see two Vulcans. Three Vulcans, counting the one next to you.”

Mariner nodded. “Okay. Do you know where they came from?”

“No?” Nya’al looked back and forth between her and Mariner. “But I’ve been doing my things over here, and when I looked over there – Vulcans. They just showed up.” His eyes widened. “And then you showed up.”

He tapped his fist against his chest and held it out to her. “Vulcans are so stealth. Respect.”

T’Lyn looked at it. “Thank you,” she said.

Mariner reached past her and tapped her own fist against Nya’al’s. “Thanks, Nya’al.”

T’Lyn looked back towards the Vulcans, and realized they were in motion, headed in their direction. Perhaps Nya’al’s observation about stealth had been more astute than she realized.

The Vulcans stopped in front of her, and one of them offered the ta’al. “Live long and prosper.”

T’Lyn mirrored the gesture. Both of them looked almost familiar – as if she might recognize them, given the correct context. “Peace and long life.”

The second Vulcan said, “Lieutenant Mariner. Congratulations on your promotion.”

She felt Mariner freeze beside her, before deliberately relaxing. “...Thank you? Have we met?” T’Lyn attempted to subtly maneuver herself between Mariner and the strangers, possibly not effectively. Subtlety was not one of her more practiced skills.

Both Vulcans raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”

“Nooo, I’m pretty sure we haven’t,” Mariner said. “You’re not from the Vulcan Science Academy, are you?”

The two Vulcans exchanged a look. “We are not.”

T’Lyn allowed herself to feel pleased at having been correct, even though the information almost certainly indicated the situation was more alarming than previously realized.

“You should tell them,” the first Vulcan said, clearly continuing a conversation that she and Mariner had not been part of.

The second Vulcan frowned slightly. “I do not understand why I must be the one to explain, when you arrived here first.”

“It is statistically more likely to be your fault.”

The two of them stared at each other, and then the second one nodded. “That is true.” They turned back to Mariner. “Neither my companion nor I are aware of how we came to be here. Evidence supports the theory that we may have traveled in time, and as you do not recognize me, possibly across dimensions as well.”

Mariner held up one hand. “I’m gonna stop you right there. Hang on, there’s questions we’re supposed to ask.”

T’Lyn’s brain felt slow, as she tried to process the repercussions of such an event. Interdimensional time travel – how? Could it be reversed? The odds of two people who knew each other traveling separately to the same endpoint had to be incalculably small. Also, what questions?

“Are you here to warn us of immediate danger?” Mariner asked. Then she frowned. “Probably not, if you didn’t do it on purpose, right? Are you in acute distress?”

“We did not travel here on purpose, nor with the intention of warning you,” the second Vulcan said, and their voice was very neutral. “We are likewise not currently experiencing acute distress.”

Mariner’s frown deepened, like that wasn’t the answer she expected to hear. “Are you a danger to this crew?”

“It is not our intention to be one, no.”

“T’Lyn?” Mariner said, and T’Lyn wondered how much she knew about the Vulcan ability to tell truths from lies. Or perhaps she was only asking for T’Lyn’s opinion.

“They are not lying,” T’Lyn said. “But I expect the answers were carefully chosen in order to make that so.”

Mariner nodded, and tapped her combadge. “Captain, this is Mariner. Time-sensitive question.”

T’Lyn felt her own eyebrow go up. There was a specific code phrase for temporal phenomena?

”Let me move somewhere I can talk.”

T’Lyn watched the two Vulcans carefully, aware they were studying her in return. They were standing very close together. She wondered why the second one was not isolated and receiving medical care for their obvious telepathic distress, which they apparently did not believe was acute, and which was very much none of her business. She took a deep breath and reinforced her mental shields, again.

After a short time, the Captain said, ”I’m alone. What’s going on?”

“There are two Vulcans here who think they’ve traveled in time and possibly switched dimensions. You want us to meet you in your office?”

”No, Captain Sokel is in there. Is T’Lyn with you?”

Mariner looked at her, and T’Lyn said, “I am here.”

”Captain Sokel.” Captain Tendi said the name with obvious irritation. ”Has demanded a tour of the ship, using some ancient Federation protocol about crewmember exchanges. I’ve already got two people filling out all the documentation he’s come up with, and we’re stuck here until we can get him to agree to sign off everything.”

T’Lyn pushed away every emotion she was feeling and focused on breathing. “Should I prepare to return to the Sh’Vhal?” she asked, as soon as she thought she could say the words calmly.

”What? No! Are you kidding? We’re definitely keeping you now. I’m going to win this either way; I just want some insider information to make sure the victory is as devastating as possible. What areas of the ship will he absolutely hate?”

The second Vulcan was pretending not to listen. The first one made a noise that might have been a laugh, but when T’Lyn looked, their expression was serene.

“Captain Sokel places a high value on following procedure and maintaining order,” T’Lyn said. “He would likely prefer to avoid areas of the ship with higher levels of unpredictability, such as the mess hall.”

”So we’ll definitely start there; it’ll still be busy, that’s good. Then maybe the gym and the rec rooms to watch some training,” Captain Tendi said. ”Thank you; that’s very helpful. Mariner, you and T’Lyn take our guests to Medical and stay there until you get the all-clear. I’m sending D’Vana, and I’ll meet you there when I can.”

“You got it, Captain.” Mariner tapped her combadge again to end the call.

“Who is Captain Sokel?” the first Vulcan asked. Disapproval was clear in her tone, but T’Lyn was uncertain to whom it was directed. Perhaps it was at the situation in general.

“Let’s talk about it in Medical,” Mariner said. “I am all about the Janeway approach to temporal protocol, but I feel like this is going to take a while.”


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

It wasn’t unusual to find Astrid visiting Medical. It was extremely unusual to find Astrid talking to a complete stranger in Medical, while they both bent over a handheld scanner and gestured excitedly.

The doors slid closed behind them as everyone stared at each other. And then one of the Vulcans said, “Christine?”

“Oh, hey T’Pring. Spock.” The newest stranger – Christine, she assumed – tucked the scanner behind her back. Wow, that was not subtle at all. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Then her brain caught up with the words – but she must have heard them wrong, because there was no way the Vulcans they’d gathered up from the garden were T’Pring and Spock. No. Way. She stared at them. Maybe one of them looked kinda like Spock? Like a young, sort of emo Spock.

The other one was definitely not T’Pring, though. She would have recognized her – everyone would have recognized T’Pring. Maybe they really were from a different dimension. She snuck a glance at T’Lyn, but she was staring at maybe-T’Pring.

Luckily, drawing attention during awkward situations was practically her specialty. Mariner clapped her hands together. “Okay,” she said loudly. “Astrid, I know there’s replicators in here for the Medical staff to use. We need breakfast. I need raktajino.”

She looked at T’Lyn again. “Do you drink raktajino? Anyone else?”

T’Lyn surprised her by saying, “Yes, please. That would be – most welcome.”

So Mariner made sure there was food, and she made sure they were all sitting down – the ridiculous ‘we need a conference room in Medical for some reason’ table was finally coming in handy. She sent Astrid to wait for D’Vana, and made sure she and T’Lyn were standing between their guests and the door.

And then she said, “All right, here’s the deal. I’m Beckett Mariner, this is the USS Adashake. It doesn’t matter what the stardate is, because this definitely isn’t your universe. Assuming you’re not all lying.” She wasn’t entirely convinced they weren’t, no matter what T’Lyn said.

She put her hands on her hips and looked around the room. “So? Who are you, and how did you get here? Who’s going first?”

“I am Spock,” said the one who sort of looked like Spock. “I have already stated that we are not certain of how we came to be in this time and place.”

“I am T’Pring,” said the one who definitely didn’t look anything like T’Pring.

The third person waved. “Hi, yeah, I’m Christine Chapel,” and Mariner nearly choked on her raktajino.

“For real?” she said. “Can I have your autograph?”

“Sure? I have no idea how I got here, so I’m definitely not going to be any help fixing it. Can I maybe just go sit quietly somewhere out of the way?”

Mariner narrowed her eyes. “You still have that scanner, don’t you?”

Spock looked disapprovingly at a point somewhere over Christine Chapel’s shoulder and said, “The Temporal Prime Directive states that we must attempt to avoid gaining any knowledge that could alter our own time.”

“This isn’t even our universe,” Christine Chapel said. “And Starfleet has never enforced temporal protocol with respect to the mirror universe.”

She gestured around her at the med bay. “Did you know that in this universe, Orion was a founding member of the Federation? The techniques they developed during the Great Plague basically revolutionized rapid response training. This is an incredible opportunity!”

Spock’s eyebrows seemed to respond in lieu of any words, and Christine glared back at him. “Spock, I swore an oath, and as far as I’m concerned, it supersedes my contract with Starfleet. It’s not every day you find yourself accidentally transported to the future. What was I supposed to do – not ask about major medical advancements? This could save lives.”

Mariner was starting to think there was some serious backstory she was missing. She also didn’t think Christine Chapel was exactly wrong, and it wasn’t like she was going to take the scanner away.

“Okay, clearly you all have –” She waved a hand at the three of them. “Whatever is going on here. But if you could stay focused on the questions of ‘how did this happen’ and ‘how can we make it stop happening?’ That would be following the temporal displacement guidelines of this universe.”

T’Pring sat forward in her chair, clasping her hands in front of her on the table. “You are the ones most familiar with this universe. What do you suggest as a logical course of action at this time?”

Mariner was pretty sure that question was meant for T’Lyn, but it didn’t look like she was planning on answering it, so Mariner offered, “First, we need to find out if there are any more of you wandering around the ship.”

Spock pulled a communicator out of – somewhere. Did those pants even have pockets? At least T’Pring’s outfit had a jacket-type thing involved. She shook her head, trying to focus. She wouldn’t have thought time-traveling, dimension-hopping historical figures would throw her off so much.

“There should be a way to modify the communicator to ping only devices operating on a matching frequency,” Spock said.

Mariner stared at him. “Right. Or we could just – ask the computer. Computer, could you please identify any humanoid lifesigns on board that aren’t assigned as a member of the Adashake or Sh’Vhal crews?”

”Four humanoid lifesigns meet those parameters,” the computer answered.

“What is the location of the lifesigns?”

”Three lifesigns are located within Medical. One lifesign is located within Engineering.”

“See?” Mariner said. “Thank you, Computer.” She tapped her combadge. “Boimler, where are you?”

”Where am I? Where are you? Are you and T’Lyn still in your quarters? Rutherford wouldn’t let me check, even though you never showed up for breakfast and you always show up for breakfast.”

She picked the most important question to answer. “We’re not; something time-sensitive came up. I need you to swing by Engineering and find someone, then bring them to Medical. I’ll explain more once you get here.”

”Time-sensi– Why are you in – never mind. Who am I looking for?”

“Not really sure, but it should be obvious when you find them.” She tried to think of a way to explain without explaining. “Uh, you’ll recognize them because you won’t recognize them? Look, just – ask the computer for help if you can’t figure it out when you get there.”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

She did not care for raktajino. But it was an efficient way to increase her ability to focus during – challenging moments. This was an extremely challenging moment. Spock and T’Pring were now both showing signs of telepathic distress. T’Lyn was no longer certain if they were aware of it or not, and she had no idea what to do about it.

Mariner’s combadge chimed, and she tapped it quickly. “Boimler?”

”Mariner!” Lieutenant Boimler hissed. ”What is going on? Why didn’t you tell me I was looking for James Kirk?”

“Is that who it is?” Mariner asked, although T’Lyn thought she seemed unsurprised. “Genuinely had no idea, pal. Good work finding him, though. Are you on your way?”

”We’re still in Engineering!” Lieutenant Boimler sounded more stressed than usual. ”Apparently he just wandered in, and Billups put him to work, and now he doesn’t want to leave until he finishes!”

T’Lyn didn’t have to look to know that Mariner was rolling her eyes. “Tell him he has to. Tell him it’s – I don’t know, temporal protocol or something.”

”I can’t tell him what to do! He’s James Kirk! He’s THAT James Kirk! Also Billups might yell at me. It turns out he’s really good at tuning warp core circuits? Weird.”

“He’s not even from our universe, Boimler, so he can’t be THAT James Kirk. Tell him his friends are all here waiting for him.”

T’Lyn winced at the noise that came from Mariner’s combadge. ”What?! There’s more of them? Which friends? Is it Christine Chapel? Ooh, Mariner, please tell me it’s Christine Chapel.”

Mariner rolled her eyes again. “I already asked for an autograph for you, don’t worry.”

Christine Chapel’s voice cut through the conversation. “Why is this scanner telling me you’re both experiencing a medical emergency?”

T’Lyn silently gave a tiny sigh of relief. But Spock said, “I am not,” and T’Lyn had the sudden urge to snap at him.

T’Pring looked at Spock, and then Christine Chapel. And then – alarmingly, at T’Lyn. “What is the accuracy of this scanner with regards to Vulcan physiology?”

T’Lyn considered asking for the scanner, but she was unsure if Christine Chapel would give it to her. Instead, she said, “Telepathic distress is considered a medical emergency in this time.”

“Oh, shit,” Mariner said.

T’Pring inclined her head slightly. “Vulcans benefit from cultivating telepathic rapport with those they trust, which can extend across vast distances. They do not extend into alternate dimensions, as it happens.”

The stress of bonds disappearing without warning would be significant. And they had not all arrived at the same time and location; perhaps some logic could be found in the initial choice to ignore the pain rather than attempt to resolve it. She did not see anything logical about continuing to ignore it when a solution was readily available.

“There are four of you here,” T’Lyn pointed out. Dimensional differences or not, it was clear that they were all familiar with each other.

“The situation is – complicated,” Spock said. He did not look at T’Pring, who likewise was not looking at him.

T’Lyn took a measured breath. “Consider the situation logically. You are currently broadcasting your pain to anyone with the ability to sense it. Even a single bond would have a stabilizing effect.”

Both Spock and T’Pring appeared willing to maintain the status quo rather than take action, which was the opposite of helpful. T’Lyn found herself foolishly missing plant T’Pring, who never caused this much difficulty.

She was considering the merits of recruiting Christine Chapel to assist in the discussion when Lieutenants Boimler and Rutherford entered the room, hurrying a third person along between them. James Kirk, she presumed, though he did not look anything like the version shown in the educational materials T’Lyn had received as a child.

He waved at everyone as he sat down. “Christine! Spock, T’Pring, you’re all here too? Isn’t it great?”

T’Lyn was aware that James Kirk was an important historical figure in the Federation, and for Starfleet in particular. She had not pictured him being so – enthusiastic.

“Lieutenant Kirk,” Spock acknowledged.

Christine Chapel waved back. “Hey Jim. Did you know that these two idiots got un-bonded, and since they don’t have any bonds in this dimension, they’re leaking psychic pain everywhere and the scanner thinks they’re having a medical emergency?”

James Kirk froze. “I knew – some of that? Not the medical emergency part.” He somehow made it look natural to draw the other time travelers further into the room, separating them from the group. “There’s got to be a way to fix it, though, right? Tell me everything.”

Lieutenant Boimler dropped into the chair in front of Mariner, and she patted his shoulder. “Tough to wrangle, huh?”

“You have no idea,” he said.

Lieutenant Rutherford nodded. “It was amazing! He stopped to help L’Kar and K’Lar move a bunch of storage containers and he got their names right every time!”

“He has so much energy,” Lieutenant Boimler said. “I feel old. Am I old now?”

Mariner frowned. “Ancient, yeah. Did you see Astrid out there when you came in?”

“No?” Lieutenant Boimler craned his neck back towards the door, as if he might see her now. “Should I have? Did she eat all the lollipops again?”

“Weird. Maybe she went to go look for D’Vana. Captain Tendi said she was sending her here. Ugh, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hope the captain gets here soon.”

“You are doing as the captain asked,” T’Lyn said.

“Yeah, but I feel like I’m losing my mind.” Mariner waved a hand towards the group at the far side of the room. “What are we supposed to do with them?”

“Send them back?” Lieutenant Boimler said, somewhat hesitantly.

“Sure, but how? We have four people who jumped dimensions and forward in time, and they say they have no idea how it happened. Honestly, I thought they might be lying about that, but this is way too convoluted to be a Dominion plot, and not convoluted enough to be a Cardassian one. And given what we experienced in the nebula –”

She had not realized that James Kirk was paying attention to their conversation, but he turned towards them at Mariner’s words. “Did you say a nebula? We were investigating a nebula too.”

Mariner said, “Did you find an empty space station full of ghosts? Because – well, it wouldn’t really explain any of this, but we could probably blame everything on the anomaly.”

James Kirk looked intrigued. “You can see ghosts? Is that a regular thing in this universe?”

Mariner shrugged. “It’s hit or miss. You die, you come back, sometimes you can see ghosts.”

“I’m still mad I missed out on ghost-seeing powers,” Lieutenant Boimler said. “I can never tell when you’re really seeing a ghost, and when you and Rutherford are just messing with me.”

“It’s about fifty-fifty,” Mariner told him, and Lieutenant Rutherford looked away, whistling.

“You’ve all died?” James Kirk asked, and he sounded surprised. “Sorry, it’s just – you look really young.”

Mariner crossed her arms. “Speak for yourself, baby-face. You all look like infants. T’Lyn’s probably the oldest person in this room.”

T’Lyn startled, but nodded. She had not been expecting to be included in the conversation. “That is possible,” she agreed. “I have also died once, medically speaking, and been resuscitated.”

Mariner gestured in her direction. “See? Not that weird. Mine was more like a bunch of times, but it was during the war, and it was a whole thing. And it turned out it was also super illegal anyway, but – you know, ghosts.”

There were several seconds of silence, and then Spock said, “I followed very little of that.” T’Lyn silently agreed.

“I got it,” Christine Chapel said grimly.

Mariner looked at her with a seriousness T’Lyn had only seen in her once before. “You had a war too, huh?”

Christine Chapel’s knuckles were white. “Yeah. Kinda hoped the future wasn’t going to be more of the same, honestly.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Mariner said. “War fucks you up. There aren’t any words to make it better.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of reasons to keep trying, though.”

Christine Chapel gave a short laugh. “Is this when you share some sentimental future wisdom?”

Mariner raised her eyebrows. “If you want me to, sure. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: ‘Where there’s life, there’s change. Where there’s change, there’s conflict. Where there’s conflict, there’s hope. And where there’s hope, there’s life.’”

Christine Chapel sat back in her chair and narrowed her eyes. “Cyclical, a little bleak; not bad. Did you make that up yourself?”

Mariner’s smile was small, but it looked real. “You did, actually. You’re kind of famous in this universe.”


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

D’Vana gave the impression of bursting through the doors, despite the fact that they were programmed to operate at a consistent speed. “You are not going to believe what just happened! I just met Captain Christopher Pike! Like, in the past! In a different dimension!”

Then she looked around. “Okay, maybe you will believe it.”

“You were in the past?” Rutherford said. “That is so cool!”

Mariner resisted the urge to groan. They were going to need to scrap their entire theory if people were traveling in both directions. Not that they’d gotten very far in theorizing anyway.

“Is Captain Pike here?” Spock suddenly looked about twice as emotive as he had before.

The man in question strode into Medical. Okay, him, she recognized. Damn, those recruitment posters weren’t lying about the hair.

“Spock?” Captain Pike looked around the room with obvious confusion. “What the hell is going on? Kirk, what did you do?”

“What are you looking at me for?” Kirk asked. “I didn’t do anything. Are you sure it’s not you? Nothing like this ever happens when I’m on the Farragut.”

Kirk pointed at Boimler, who immediately sat up straighter. “You can ask him – I was just minding my own business, helping out in Engineering.”

She kicked Boimler’s ankle under the table, and he managed to say, “That’s true, sir. Captain Pike. He – uh, that’s what he was doing.”

“See? I figured this was probably like the singing, and I should just roll with it.” Kirk leaned forward so he could look down the table at them. “Nice ship, by the way. Beautiful engines.”

“Thanks!” Rutherford answered. “We like them.”

Captain Pike pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to say this again, in the hope that you will actually believe me this time. We were not hazing you with the singing; there was a naturally occurring subspace fold that produced an improbability field whose effects included impromptu musical performances.”

“I absolutely believe you,” Kirk said with a wink. “Definitely an ‘improbability field,’ and not playing a joke on the guy in training.”

Mariner put her hand up. “Can we hear more about the singing?” she asked.

“It is not relevant to the current situation,” Spock said quickly.

“It could be,” she countered. “You said yourself that you don’t know how you got here. Maybe singing will somehow reverse it and everything will go back to normal.”

Chapel muttered, “To be fair, that is pretty much what happened.”

T’Lyn leaned closer to her. “You mentioned hoping the captain would arrive,” she said quietly. “While Captain Tendi is not present, a captain has indeed arrived.”

“T’Lyn, you’re a lifesaver,” she whispered. It was brilliant. “I nominate Captain Pike to lead a strategy session,” Mariner announced.

Everyone in the room looked pleased with the suggestion except for Captain Pike himself. “I just got here,” he said. “I don’t even know who you are.”

Mariner took the opportunity to sit down next to Boimler, and nudged T’Lyn into the seat on her other side. “Sooo, you’ll bring an objective problem-solving approach to the table. Sounds like a good thing to me, Captain.” She clasped her hands on the table in front of her and gave her best, most innocent, ‘I love respecting the chain of command’ smile.

D’Vana quickly took the seat on the far side of Boimler, and leaned over. “Where’s D’Erika?” she asked, while Captain Pike argued with the other time travelers. “She’s not here yet?”

“She said she was sending you,” Mariner answered. “Ages ago; I thought something must have happened with Sokel. Did Astrid find you?”

D’Vana shook her head. “Captain Sokel was called back to the Sh’Vhal; some sort of unexpected message he had to deal with right away. I haven’t seen Astrid, though. Was she looking for me?”

Captain Pike cleared his throat. “It seems I’ve been outvoted,” he said. “And that introductions are in order? For some of us, at least.”

“We know who you are,” Mariner confirmed. She looked at D’Vana. “Different universe, time travel, you covered all of that already?”

D’Vana bit her lip. “Not exactly?” Mariner looked at her. “I was distracted!” D’Vana said. “It was the Enterprise! You should have seen her nacelles – the design had obvious differences from ours; it was incredible!”

Rutherford was leaning back in his chair, looking towards the door like he was thinking about making a break for the corridor to look for a way to the alternate universe. Mariner hated having to be the responsible one. “Rutherford,” she said.

He managed to only look slightly guilty as he focused back on the conversation, and she nodded towards Captain Pike. “You want to explain?” she asked.

“You’re in the future!” Rutherford said, as enthusiastically as ever. “And a different universe, which is probably why the nacelle designs are different. Do you think we’ll have time for a quick tour of Engineering? I have so many questions.”

“I want to know where our universes diverged. Was it before the Great Plague? The Orion Alliance? Pre-first contact?” D’Vana was practically vibrating with excitement.

Captain Pike shook his head. “We should follow the temporal displacement protocol, and minimize information exchange between the timelines.”

Mariner almost rolled her eyes, and then remembered she was pretending to respect the chain of command. At least until D’Erika showed up.

So instead she said, “No interfering with past events, and no sharing knowledge of the future. Yeah, we have that too. But if you're right, and whatever we’re about to talk about is going to create some kind of irreparable damage to the timeline, wouldn't someone already have showed up to stop us?"

Spock looked thoughtful, but Kirk shook his head. “I’m not sure it works that way.”

Captain Pike sighed, loudly. “No, it can. It’s happened to me. I don’t recommend it.”

Kirk looked at Captain Pike consideringly, like he had just figured out the next step in a game of kal-toh. “Huh,” he said. “Good to know.”

Mariner added, “And we know there’s at least one temporal agent around, because we saw them on the station. So if they haven’t showed up here yet, we’re probably fine.”

“You saw a temporal agent?” Captain Pike asked. Which – rude; did he think she couldn’t recognize a temporal agent when she saw one? “What were they doing?”

“We didn’t stick around to do extensive observation. From what we saw, it seemed like they were giving some sort of presentation.”

She looked at Boimler for backup, and he nodded. “They said ‘welcome to Infinity Station,’ and then they saw us, and they said we weren’t supposed to be there, and then we ran away. That was right before the space monster showed up.”

There was a brief silence around the table, and then Christine Chapel said, “Sorry, the what?”

“The space monster,” Mariner said. “Did that not happen for you? There was a spatial anomaly, and a creature came through.”

“Tons of chroniton particles!” Rutherford added. “And then it had babies!”

Kirk nodded, like that made perfect sense to him. But apparently his reaction to suddenly finding himself on a different ship, in a different universe, several hundred years in the future, had been to volunteer for a duty shift. He was either fiendishly clever or an absolute idiot, and Mariner genuinely wasn’t sure which.

Captain Pike, on the other hand, looked like he might be getting a migraine. She couldn’t help noticing Spock and T’Pring sitting on either side of him, and she told herself to stop noticing immediately. “We had a spatial anomaly, yes,” he said slowly. “What – and I can’t actually believe I’m asking this – what happened to the space monster, after it had babies?”

Somehow, everyone was looking at her again. “It’s – still in the nebula?” she offered. It had definitely seemed like the right choice at the time, but in retrospect… “We think?”

“You think,” Captain Pike repeated. “Maybe we’d better start from the beginning.”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

She knew the discussion had been ongoing for exactly thirty-seven minutes. Despite that knowledge, the perceived duration was significantly longer, and she did not think she was alone in that perception.

“I need to take a walk.” Christine Chapel pushed her chair back as she spoke.

“May I accompany you?” T’Lyn asked, standing as well. She would do so regardless of the answer, but expected it would be considered polite to ask.

Christine Chapel nodded, and they walked out of Medical in silence. The quiet of the corridors was a refreshing change from the conference room. T’Lyn felt her shoulders relax, just slightly.

After several moments of what seemed to her to be random wandering, they reached an observation deck. Christine Chapel said, “So, are you here to keep me from getting lost, or to make sure I don’t stick my nose into anything I shouldn’t?”

T’Lyn clasped her hands behind her back. “I am not qualified to do either. I only recently came to know the crew of the USS Adashake, and I am relatively unfamiliar with the layout of the ship.”

“Really? How did that happen?”

“I was engaged in a research mission when my shuttle became damaged, and I took shelter on the station found within the nebula. Lieutenant Mariner and Lieutenant Tendi led the team that located me.”

Christine Chapel leaned on the railing of the observation deck. “Solo research mission in a shuttle? Sounds important.”

“It was not,” T’Lyn said. She was aware the mission had been intended as a punishment. The fact that she had preferred it over her usual duties was something Captain Sokel had likely not considered. “Among the crew of the Sh’Vhal, I am considered reckless, insubordinate, and overly emotional.”

Christine Chapel laughed, and then waved her hands in negation. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just – that sounds almost exactly like Spock.”

T’Lyn found that difficult to believe. Enough so that she said, “I find that difficult to believe.”

“Well, believe it or not. I’d be willing to guess this universe’s Spock isn’t all that different. Just older. Once you’re on the far side of your hundredth birthday, I’m guessing it gets easier to pass off a rebellious streak as another version of an elder’s wisdom and dedication.”

Christine Chapel frowned. “I shouldn’t assume, though. Was there a Spock in this universe?”

T’Lyn inclined her head. “This universe has a Spock and T’Pring. The Lady Amanda was a vocal proponent for stronger ties between Earth and Vulcan throughout her life. Despite those efforts, Vulcan retains a tendency toward isolationism – we are members of the Federation, but primarily remain neutral. The Vulcan Fleet is not part of Starfleet.”

“Has?” Christine Chapel repeated. “They’re still alive?”

T’Lyn hesitated, uncertain of how much to share. Finally, she said, “They have not been public figures for many years. It is widely believed that they are still alive, yes.” It was widely believed that T’Pring and Spock were connected to the bond network in so many places that everyone would know if they died.

“But no one knows where they are?”

T’Lyn looked away. “I do not know where they are. It would be illogical to presume that no one knows.”

“Okay, that’s fair.” Christine Chapel turned to face her more directly. “So what’s your story? You said this universe has less collaboration between Vulcans and Humans, but more with the Orions, I’m guessing. And yet here you are on a Starfleet ship.”

“Indeed,” T’Lyn said. “Do you have a specific question you are attempting to allude to, or is this your preferred method for initiating casual conversation?”

“Mostly I’m trying to avoid thinking about my alternate self in this universe,” Christine Chapel said. “It’s pretty weird to find out there’s a version of you that’s famous for stuff you haven’t done yet.”

She shrugged. “I guess I just didn’t realize how much pressure I would feel to live up to that, when everyone started asking questions. Walking away seemed like the best of a bad set of options.”

“Mm,” T’Lyn said. “And also it would offer an opportunity to study the medical scanner without being observed.” She had noted the device was still present.

“I’ve been caught out,” Christine Chapel said, and another laugh followed the words. “Yes, that too. A pleasant bonus for getting out of there.”

Despite the laugh, she seemed wary. T’Lyn said, “I have no objection to your plans. To pass up an opportunity to increase one’s knowledge would be – illogical.”

“Thanks. I’m definitely telling anyone who asks that I made the logical choice.” Christine Chapel patted the scanner with a proprietary air, and then said, “Hang on – if you don’t know anything about the ship, and you don’t care about me studying the scanner, why did you follow me?”

T’Lyn raised one eyebrow. “Your leaving provided me an opportunity to do the same. I made the logical choice to take advantage of it.”

“And now I’ve spent all this time talking, when you were looking for peace and quiet. Did you have a destination in mind?”

“There are gardens a short distance from here.” She hesitated, and then added, “They would offer an acceptable setting for – solitary pursuits. Should you be so inclined.” She looked at the scanner, and then away again.

Christine Chapel said, “Sounds like my kind of place. Lead the way.”

They stepped away from the railing – and into chaos. T’Lyn flinched at the blaring noise of a red alert klaxon. The contrast between the external noise and the sudden unsettling silence in her head made her stumble, and Christine Chapel reached out a hand to steady her.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” T’Lyn said automatically. “I believe I now have a better understanding of Spock and T’Pring’s experience when switching dimensions. Is this–”

“This is the Enterprise,” Christine Chapel confirmed

Two security officers ran into view, though they stopped a respectful distance away. Or perhaps a wary one, given that they both held unholstered phasers. One of them said, “Christine?”

“La’an? What’s going on?”

“It’s some kind of temporal incursion. People are going missing all over the ship. We’ve managed to capture a few intruders, but we haven’t been able to identify any kind of pattern. The captain’s been taken, along with Spock.”

“You’re the first one to come back.” The second security officer gestured with a phaser. “Who’s this?”

Christine Chapel stepped in front of her, which was unnecessary, but not unappreciated. “She’s with me. It’s not an attack. We need to speak with – whoever’s in charge right now.”

Both security officers appeared to remain skeptical of T’Lyn’s presence, but they holstered their phasers. “Right. Let’s go, then. Una’s on the bridge.”


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

Captain Pike lost the argument about comparing universes even faster than he’d lost the one about sharing information, probably because he hadn’t bothered to do more than lodge a token protest about temporal displacement protocols. Now she was watching him watch Boimler and Kirk compare every class they’d taken at Starfleet Academy. And occasionally refereeing, when things got heated – which happened way more often than it should for a discussion about classwork.

Mariner shook her head at both of them. “Yo, nerds, stop nerding out about book stuff. Boimler, you literally have a written plan for what to do if you meet various historical figures; ask him about the Kobyashi Maru.”

Boimler sputtered. “How do you know about that?”

She rolled her eyes. If he didn’t want people reading his notes, he shouldn’t work on them during boring meetings when they were sitting next to each other. “I know stuff,” she said.

“This universe has a Kobyashi Maru too?” Kirk asked. “Probably not one that simulates a confrontation with the Klingons, though, right?”

“Ours varies – the Borg, the Dominion, an evil Q; there’s a set of different scenarios.” Boimler leaned forward. “How did you beat it?”

Kirk looked surprised. “I didn’t. No one does; that’s the point.” He looked pointedly at Captain Pike. “I may have petitioned to retake it a few dozen times, but someone kept denying the requests.”

Captain Pike said, "Come on, Kirk, not this again. Everyone only gets one try. That's the rule."

Boimler made an indignant sound. "What?" Mariner tried too hard to turn her laugh into a cough, and wound up choking on air.

Kirk looked back and forth between them. "What?" he said. “What am I missing?”

She pulled herself together just enough to say, "It’s fine, it’s just – ah, it’s not quite the same here. You should ask Boimler how many times he took it."

“One try?!” Boimler repeated. He sounded genuinely outraged. “It’s a simulation! The entire point is to understand how small changes in the variables can have unforeseen impacts on the outcome! How can anyone learn that if they only take it once?”

Captain PIke said, “How many times did you take the test, Lieutenant Boimler?”

Boimler’s chin went up. “Seventeen times.”

Captain Pike’s eyebrows went up. “Why stop at seventeen?” he asked, and Mariner was impressed. Most people just assumed that’s how long it took him to finally give up.

“After that I had enough data that I could recreate the scenarios in holoprograms,” Boimler said.

Unfortunately, Captain Pike didn’t seem aware of just how impressive a feat of holoprogramming that was, because he frowned. “The purpose of the Kobyashi Maru in our universe is to teach cadets about themselves, and how they’ll react in high-pressure, high-stakes situations. Sometimes there isn’t a winning solution, no matter how many times you try.”

“Not with an attitude like that,” Boimler said, and then he quickly waved his hands like he could erase the words out of the air. “Sorry, sir. Captain Pike. I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Fascinating.” Spock didn’t actually move, but he managed to give the impression of suddenly paying much more attention. “I am curious to hear more of your perspective.”

Captain Pike shrugged. “I’m not a captain here anyway; don’t worry about it. Please, go on. Indulge Spock’s curiosity.”

“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Mariner muttered, but she turned towards Boimler anyway. She’d heard it before, but it was a good speech.

“Look, in real life, you’re right. Every situation exists in such a complex context of social and scientific variables that it’s impossible to classify any outcome as ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ unless you define those states with a strict set of limiting parameters.”

Boimler threw his hands up in the air. “But the Kobyashi Maru isn’t the same as real life! It’s a simulation – a game, that has those parameters built in. Chaos theory predicts that every game has a winning solution.”

“How many of the scenarios have you beaten?” Kirk said.

There was a commotion in the doorway before Boimler could answer, and Christine Chapel stumbled to a halt inches from the table. “You’re all still here?” she said.

Mariner leaned around her to look at T’Lyn, whose entrance had been significantly more graceful. “You okay?”

T’Lyn nodded. “We have been on the Enterprise. They are operating at red alert. They believe Captain Pike was abducted by an Orion.”

“Oh, come on!” D’Vana threw her hands up in the air. “That’s not fair! I was abducted first!”

“Red alert?” Mariner made a face. “For this?”

Captain Pike looked at her with a full-on ‘I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed’ dad expression. “You disagree?”

She thought that was pretty obvious, and it wasn’t even just her, since it was also obvious that the Adashake didn’t consider this a red alert kind of situation. “I just don’t see how flashing lights and blaring alarms make anybody more capable of dealing with tense situations. It’s literally been proven to have the opposite effect on almost every species in the Federation.”

Captain Pike looked like he was going to respond, then changed his mind. He looked at Christine Chapel instead. “How did you get back there? How did you get back here, for that matter?”

Christine Chapel shrugged, and shook her head. “No idea. It seems random. We turned a corner and we were on the Enterprise. We walked out of a turbolift and we were back here.”

Mariner repeated her question from earlier. “Computer, could you please identify any humanoid lifesigns on board that aren’t assigned as a member of the Adashake or Sh’Vhal crews?”

”Seventy-three humanoid lifesigns meet those parameters,” the computer answered.

Seventy-three? How was that possible? It wasn’t a big ship. “Computer, could you also please identify how many Adashake crewmembers are not currently on board the ship?”

”Thirty-one members of the crew assigned to the USS Adashake are not currently onboard. Thirty members of the crew. Thirty-five members of the crew.”

“Thank you,” Mariner said, cutting off the computer’s attempts to report an accurate count. “That’s sufficient.” She blew out a long breath.

D’Vana asked, “Computer, is Captain Tendi onboard?”

”Captain Tendi is not currently onboard.”

“She’s on the Enterprise,” Christine Chapel said. “I think we managed to convince them that it’s not some kind of invasion. Una was glad to hear we’d just seen all of you, and that you were fine.”

“How’s the rest of the crew holding up?”

“Tense, but determined.”

“Good. Does this tell us anything new?” Captain Pike looked around the room.”Theories? Suggestions?”

“It is similar to the temporal disruption we witnessed on the station.”

“But not exactly the same – that was lots of different times and dimensions all converging into one. This seems to be two dimensions overlapping, without a single point of convergence.”

Mariner looked at D’Vana. “It’s your turn to make the dramatic declaration.”

D’Vana nodded, and stood up. “I think we need to go back into that nebula!”

“What? No! I don’t want to go back to the nebula!” Boimler said. “Does anyone else remember the giant space monsters? You know, the reason we ran away from the nebula in the first place?”

Spock said, “That is where we first noticed a temporal overlap effect. If it is still happening, or happening again, the most logical place to find answers is likely to be at the origin.”

“See?” Mariner said. “Besides, it’ll be easier this time – all the buoys we dropped on the way in last time should still be there. We can just go straight to where the station was and look around.”

“Both ships will need to go,” Captain Pike said. “We need to find a way to communicate between the two dimensions.”

“Uhura was working on it,” Christine Chapel said.

D’Vana looked at T’Lyn. “You got to meet Uhura? What was she like? Was she awesome?”

T’Lyn hesitated, and then said, “Yes.”

“What about the space monsters?” Kirk asked suddenly. “Where did they go?”

D’Vana sat back down. “We don’t know, actually. Why, do you need them?”

Kirk shrugged. “The temporal convergence happened here; the space monsters happened here. We didn’t see either of those things. Maybe there’s a connection.”

“Could they have followed you out of the nebula?” Captain Pike asked.

Mariner shook her head. “Trust me; we would know if they had. They were hard to miss.”

Captain Pike said, “And I’m not saying you’re wrong,” in a way that indicated he definitely thought she was wrong. “I’m just saying the nebula disrupted a lot of our sensor capabilities, and if it had the same impact on yours, even space monsters might be hard to spot.”

She looked at T’Lyn. T’Lyn had been able to sense the creatures well enough to pilot them in the opposite direction, but that hadn’t been on a ship that was full of people and also temporally converging with a second ship full of people. And Vulcans could be weird about their telepathy stuff; she didn’t want to spill any secrets she wasn’t supposed to share.

To her surprise, it was T’Pring who spoke up. “Perhaps a short break. I expect we could all benefit from one.”

Captain Pike said, “T’Pring, is this–”

T’Pring stood up. “Chris.”

He sighed. “Yes, fine. A short break.”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

She found herself pulled along in the wake of Mariner and Lieutenant Tendi, as the group of – Friends? Crewmates? T’Lyn was uncertain how to categorize them, as they gathered in their quarters after another meal.

Mariner was already seated on the floor, and she leaned back on her hands to look at the computer screen. It remained clear of any incoming announcements, as it had every time someone had checked it since their arrival.

Lieutenant Tendi shook her head. “I can’t believe we have to wait for Starfleet to decide if they want to send a more important ship to handle this mission.”

“Ugh, I hope it’s not the San Andreas,” Lieutenant Boimler said. He was also on the floor, with his head in Mariner’s lap. “Or worse, what if they send the Titan? You don’t think they’d send the Titan, do you?”

T’Lyn regarded him carefully, trying to decide if it was a rhetorical question. And if not, if it was one she was expected to answer. “Why would the Titan be an especially unwelcome choice?” she said finally.

“That’s where the other me is stationed,” Lieutenant Boimler said. “I’m a transporter clone. Or I have a transporter clone; there’s not really a clear protocol about which one is which. You’d think it would be the one created by the transporter, but the Riker precedent suggests it may be more of a qualitative thing.”

His unwillingness to meet anyone’s eyes as he spoke indicated the topic might be more contentious than his casual tone implied. None of the others appeared surprised, so she assumed the information was being provided for her own benefit. And, therefore, that a clarifying question would be appropriate.

T’Lyn said, “You were involved in a transporter experience that created an inadvertent duplicate of yourself?”

“Yeah. And it was kind of cool, but transporter clones can’t serve on the same ship, so we both got to pick new assignments. Other me is on the Titan. I picked the Adashake specifically because it’s the ship that’s had the fewest interactions with the Titan over the past decade.”

This sort of thing never happened on Vulcan ships. After careful consideration, T’Lyn said, “If your concern was that this information might change my opinion of you; it does not.” The tension in the room noticeably diminished. “I was not aware that Starfleet officers were able to select the ship they serve on.”

Lieutenant Boimler shrugged, which looked especially awkward from his position on the floor. “Yeah, the transporter clone thing was kind of a special circumstance.”

Mariner said, “Usually it’s like everything else – you can put your request in, but where you end up is usually some combination of luck and networking.”

“It’s true,” Lieutenant Tendi agreed. “Orion places a high value on social networks, which is a cultural accommodation that D’Erika takes ruthless advantage of in fulfilling our crew requests.”

T’Lyn remembered Captain Tendi saying ‘they bring me people.’ This, perhaps, is what she had been referring to.

“I’m D’Vana’s social network buddy,” Lieutenant Rutherford said, and held his hand out for a high five, which Lieutenant Tendi returned with alacrity.

Mariner received a high-five as well, as she said, “I’m the nepo baby of the group – both parents in the ‘Fleet, all the personality issues that come along with that. I got sent here after getting demoted back to ensign a few too many times. Blah blah blah, last chance before they ship me off to Starbase 80. More like last chance to keep me from walking, but it worked out. Captain Tendi’s good people.”

Lieutenant Rutherford had been tapping at a padd, but he nodded at the words. “I don’t think they’ll send the Titan.”

Lieutenant Tendi said, “D’Erika thinks they’re going to try to make a big spectacle of it because it’s the Enterprise. She’s trying to get in touch with the VSA instead. They were interested in the shuttle; she thinks they know more about what’s going on than they told us.”

“T’Lyn?”

She looked up, and realized everyone was watching her. “What do you think?” Mariner prompted. “About the VSA getting involved.”

“The Academy follows no counsel but their own,” she said – a common-enough refrain on Vulcan that she said it without thinking. She had not previously given extensive consideration to how the VSA assigned resources, and even less to how Starfleet did so. “Do you have a preference?”

Mariner shrugged. “If the VSA wants that shuttle sooner rather than later, they’re gonna have to come pick it up themselves. As far as Starfleet goes – we’re going to be involved anyway; they should just let us handle it. We have no idea what we’re doing, but neither will anyone else, and I don’t think adding more people who don’t know what they’re doing will help anyone.”

“There isn’t enough time to send anyone really important, like an Admiral,” Lieutenant Boimler said. “So they’ll probably have to pick from whoever’s close by.”

Lieutenant Tendi threw her hands up in the air. “Which doesn’t even make sense! We’re the ones closest by! Besides, we’re the ones who worked with the Enterprise crew to figure out how to communicate between the two ships, and how to temporarily stabilize everything. And it was all just so we could wait around for Starfleet HQ to decide who’ll make the best photo op?”

“I am uncertain what will be gained by the delay.” T’Lyn was also uncertain why the stabilization required everyone to remain in groups and minimize movement through the ship. However, temporal phenomena were not her area of expertise.

“Do you believe it likely that Starfleet will attempt to garner publicity around the incident?” That seemed ill-advised, given the volatility of the situation.

Mariner’s face made an expression she couldn’t identify. “Likely? No. Possible, yeah. It depends how the request gets classified. If whoever gets it first classifies it as a standard temporal mishap cleanup mission, they'll probably be happy to let us handle it. If they classify it as visiting historical celebrities from a different dimension, that’s gonna get a little more attention.”

There was a short moment of silence, and then Lieutenant Rutherford dropped the padd. “Guys, did we mess up with the space monster?” he asked. “I know Captain Tendi said it was fine, but now I’m not sure. I can’t stop thinking about what Captain Pike said.”

“Clearing the nebula of space monsters was not our goal,” Mariner said firmly. “Our mission was to go in, find T’Lyn, and get everyone back out again safely, and that’s what we did. We didn’t create the spatial anomaly, and we didn’t initiate any aggressive actions with the creatures. That’s a win.”

Lieutenant Tendi bit her lip. “Should we have tried to initiate first contact, though? That’s what they did in the old days, right? Seek out new lifeforms, and all of that?”

“Maybe the space monster was trying to communicate with us,” Lieutenant Rutherford said. “What if chasing us was its way of saying hello?”

“What if chasing us was a warm up to eating us?” Mariner countered. “Look, don’t let Pike and Kirk get into your heads. There are a million different ways things could have gone. Starfleet isn’t about getting everything right the first time every time. It’s about always being open to learning more and doing better.”

Lieutenant Boimler nodded. “Mariner’s right. That’s why we took all the data with us, right? So we can learn what happened and know how to make better choices next time.”

“Ha! You said I’m right.”

Mariner grabbed the padd from next to Lieutenant Rutherford, and began silently swiping quickly through the screens. After several seconds, Lieutenant Boimler said, “Mariner? What are you doing?”

“I’m pulling the audio file of you saying it, and I’m setting it as the message-alert tone on your padd, so you’ll always have a memory of this moment.”

“What?” Lieutenant Boimler lunged for the padd, and they wrestled for it while Lieutenant Tendi called out tips. T’Lyn didn’t bother to move out of the way. This, too, would never happen on a Vulcan ship. She found she was glad to be on a ship where it did.



Beckett Mariner, USS Enterprise, Starfleet Constitution Class

“I knew that ‘temporary stabilization’ thing was a bunch of bullshit,” she muttered. She’d rolled out of bed and hit the floor hard in some kind of cargo bay she didn’t recognize, but was really hoping was on the Enterprise. If they’d somehow wound up with another ship caught up in all this – well, they’d deal with it, but it would be a lot easier if they didn’t have to.

She stubbed her toes on a cargo container, and wished she’d gone to bed wearing shoes. “No automatic lights in the cargo bay? What kind of safety protocols do they even have on this ship? Am I going to wander into the vacuum of space accidentally?”

With every step, she hoped she might end up back on the Adashake, but she reached the interior doors still stubbornly stuck in the wrong time. She flexed her fingers. “Time to see if the captain’s lock-picking lectures will pay off.”

The doors slid open. “Or not.”

The corridor was as empty as the cargo bay had been, and lit only with emergency lighting. At least someone had turned off the red alert. It was a little exciting to be creeping through the corridors of the Enterprise, she could admit. But also, shouldn’t she have run into someone by now?

She paused, and looked around. No one showed up to maximize the dramatic timing. It wasn’t until two corridors later that she nearly collided with someone coming around a corner. They both jumped back and stared at each other.

The Enterprise officer broke the stalemate first. “Who are you?”

“Beckett Mariner. Who are you?”

“Erica Ortegas.”

She felt her eyes widen. “You fly the ship,” she said.

“That’s right.”

They eyed each other warily. “But you’re not flying it right now,” Mariner said.

“Navigation’s offline. Una’s flying.”

It clicked — the minimal systems, the thrum of the impulse engines — “You went back into the nebula. I thought we were waiting to hear back from Starfleet HQ.”

Ortegas shrugged. “I guess our HQ works a little faster than yours. We were ordered back into the nebula hours ago. Communication has been sketchy since then.”

“That’s convenient.” And suspicious.

“Yep. I’m also supposed to report any temporal intruders,” Ortegas said.

Mariner didn’t particularly want to be reported, especially if they were back to being intruders instead of partners. “Or,” she started hopefully. “You could consider that I traded two weeks of desserts for your special edition collectible card when I was a kid, and not report me?”

Ortegas smiled. “Christine said she liked you, so – sure. Why not. One of us will probably disappear into the other universe before long anyway. I can’t just let you wander around unsupervised, though.”

Mariner looked at her. “Will you let me fly the ship?”

“No.”

“Will you let me see the warp core?”

“No.”

“The Bridge?”

“No.”

She considered her options. “You’ve got a gym, right? You want to fight?”

Ortegas grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Several rounds of sparring later, Mariner thought she was really starting to get the hang of this whole time travel, alternate dimension thing. Ortegas handed her a water bottle, and tapped it with her own. “Good match. So – what’s with the outfit? Does your Starfleet really lean into the whole comfort in the workplace thing?”

Mariner rolled her eyes. “I was sleeping; it’s my pajamas.”

Ortegas nodded slowly. “Okay, yeah, that makes more sense than what I was thinking. You want a jacket or something?”

A jacket from the original Enterprise? “You should know that this is basically ten-year-old me’s dream come true. Yes, absolutely I want a jacket. Jacket me up.”

She didn’t even mind that Ortegas laughed at her, because she also started rummaging through the lockers at the edge of the room. “Hey,” Ortegas said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You’re currently my favorite person in this entire universe,” Mariner told her. “Hell yeah. Ask me anything.”

Ortegas didn’t look at her. It was a serious question, then. “Where you’re from, in the future – why do people join Starfleet?”

Mariner considered the question, and bit back the first three flippant answers that came to mind. “I think probably for the same reasons people do here. To help people, sometimes themselves. And to do cool science shit.”

Ortegas breathed out, and it sounded like a sigh of relief. “I’m glad. Christine said there’s another war.”

“Yeah, not gonna lie, that sucked. But war is never the whole story, or the only story. I have a degree in xenohistory. A few days ago I saw a space monster have babies. We’re more than the wars we fight.”

Ortegas looked at her. “You really saw a space monster give birth?”

She nodded. “Really for real. Baby space monsters.”

Ortegas nodded too. “The science shit is very cool.” Then she held out a jacket. “Here, try this one on. It’s got pockets.”

She slipped the jacket on and took a step back – only to find herself suddenly back on the Adashake, in the briefing room. She stumbled, and Boimler caught her elbow to steady her.

“Are you all right?” he said quietly, and she nodded.

“Mariner, good timing,” Captain Tendi said. “You’ve been on the Enterprise?”

She supposed it was always good to double-check that a crewmember appearing from thin air was for the expected reason, and not the result of some new, unexpected shenanigans. “Yes, and they’ve already re-entered the nebula. They said Starfleet HQ gave the order.”

Captain Tendi frowned. “We heard the same, but we’ve been having trouble with our communications since then.”

“It could be interference from the nebula,” Rutherford said. “If we could mirror their position and heading, we might be able to compensate for it.”

“We’ve been asked to hold here for now. Starfleet is sending another ship to monitor things from outside the nebula – they were supposed to be here already, but we’ve been ‘assured’ that they’re on their way.” Captain Tendi had very little patience for the assurances of Starfleet HQ, which was one of Mariner’s favorite things about her.

Next to her, Boimler muttered, “Please not the Titan, please not the Titan.”

Captain Tendi said, “It’s not the Titan.”

“Yes!” Boimler high-fived Rutherford.

And then the captain looked at her, and she knew what was coming. “It’s the Cerritos,” Captain Tendi said.

“Noooooo,” she said, as dramatically as she thought she could get away with. “Captain, is it too late to request a leave of absence?”

Captain Tendi said, “Yes. Also they’ve specifically requested that you be part of the mission briefing. It will be over comms, to minimize the risk of them getting caught up in the temporal overlap. And you can bring Boimler for emotional support.”

T’Lyn was looking at each of them with what she was pretty sure was a baffled expression. “I presume there is some context of which I am unaware that explains your reaction.”

“The Cerritos’ captain is my mom,” Mariner explained. “I served there for a very short time before transferring to the Adashake, and it was still way too long for both of us. Any time we run into each other it tends to go badly – it’s just a whole big mess of family dynamics and Starfleet dynamics and ‘why haven’t you called your father recently’ and – well, you know how it is.”

Unsurprisingly, T’Lyn said, “I see.” Much more surprisingly, she then added, “I do, yes. Vulcan family dynamics can also be – complicated.”

“You can go too, then,” Captain Tendi said. “Get the full Adashake crew experience.”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

T’Pring caught up with her leaving the shuttle bay, where she had been checking on her plants. “I would speak with you,” T’Pring said.

T’Lyn nodded, because it really didn’t matter if this was T’Pring from a different universe; she was still T’Pring. According to the ship’s computer, she had been the first to arrive in their universe, and had stayed in it ever since. No one seemed quite sure how that could be happening; T’Lyn suspected sheer force of will.

There was a small office next to the docking bay. It felt smaller when the door closed behind them, but T’Lyn straightened her spine and met T’Pring’s gaze evenly.

“You are of my family,” T’Pring said. It wasn’t a question, but T’Lyn nodded again anyway.

“You also identified the difficulties with our bonds immediately. Is bond science so advanced in this time and universe?”

T’Lyn – prevaricated. “I am uncertain when our histories diverged.” T’Pring raised a single eyebrow, and she made a second attempt. “I should not have presumed to interfere in the situation without more information.”

The eyebrow stayed raised. T’Pring said, “Your willingness to ‘interfere’ may well have saved Spock’s life. I am not interested in censuring your actions. My intention is to offer my gratitude, and attempt to increase my own understanding.”

“Are you aware that the Federation has a Department of Temporal Investigations?” T’Lyn was unimpressed that such a department existed, particularly in secret, and skeptical that it was capable of upholding the mandate it apparently held. But she was unwilling to put T’Pring at risk from their interference without at least disclosing what she knew.

T’Pring’s demeanor shifted towards irritation. “I was not, but I am unsurprised. Captain Pike and Lieutenant Mariner alluded to the existence of such an agency earlier. Even in my time, when Vulcan and Earth are closely aligned, many secrets are kept. By both sides,” she acknowledged.

“The brief description I was given indicated that they would likely attempt to prevent any sharing of knowledge between timelines.”

T’Pring smiled, very slightly. “They are welcome to make the attempt.”

“As you say.” T’Lyn took a moment to gather her thoughts. “In this universe, Vulcan takes pride in its history of neutrality within the Federation, but our internal history is one of conflict. Marriage bonds between Houses were insufficient to maintain a lasting peace, and the practice shifted to building strength within Houses.”

She looked at T’Pring, who nodded. “This is similar to my universe.”

“In times when conflict escalated, in-House bonds were often found lacking. Having too few bonds led many Vulcans to suffer preventable illnesses linked to their mental abilities. With Betazed and Orion leading the way in forcing Federation acknowledgement and accommodation of non-Human traits, Vulcan researched many potential solutions.”

T’Pring nodded again. “Less similar, but a logical progression of events.”

T’Lyn said, “There was a time when speaking about bonds, even amongst other Vulcans, was considered –” she searched for the correct word.

“Impolite?” T’Pring offered.

“Perhaps.” That might be a word to describe the situation if you were T’Pring, at least. “I would suggest ‘unacceptable.’ That is no longer true today. Bonds are as essential to Vulcans as air to breathe and water to drink. If they go unremarked-upon, it is only because they are also now nearly as common as those things.”

T’Pring took a deliberately measured breath and let it out slowly. “I sense that you are attempting to speak around some topic in order to avoid addressing it directly. I would ask that you speak plainly.”

T’Lyn eyed her carefully. Christine Chapel had seemed uncomfortable hearing about her alternate self. But T’Pring had specifically requested clarity.

“It was you,” T’Lyn told her. “You revolutionized bond dynamics, and profoundly changed Vulcan society. Your name is taught to schoolchildren alongside Surak’s. Vulcans would rally to your banner today, as they have done for more than a century.”

T’Pring stared at her. She was, T’Lyn realized abruptly, very young, and uncertain, despite her calm demeanor.

“Would you show me?”

A mind meld with T’Pring, no matter how shallow, was always going to be an – intense experience. T’Lyn found herself with a significantly greater understanding of how the others had felt when interacting with the Enterprise crew. She tried to keep her mind focused on the pertinent information.

When they emerged, they breathed in sync, in and out. “‘Consider soulmates also,’” T’Pring said quietly, and T’Lyn nodded.

“‘The wind, the tide; the stars and moons,’” she continued the quote.

“Plants?” T’Pring asked.

“Among other things, yes.” She hesitated, and then added, “I have named them after admirable historical figures. Your namesake is particularly impressive.”

T’Pring smiled. “And this is – common, now?”

That was a far more vague scale of measurement than she had expected. “Few would be surprised to hear of it. Though there are some who argue against it as a valid interpretation of Surak’s teachings.”

T’Pring waved a hand. “There will always be some who would argue regardless. In this, we are more similar to Humans than some would prefer to acknowledge.”

“In other ways as well,” T’Lyn said. “Humans may generally lack the telepathic ability to create bonds in the way of Vulcans, but they bond in other ways, and they offer their regard and companionship freely.”

To other species, to each other, to inanimate objects – she had been introduced to Rocky with a great deal of ceremony the previous night. Rocky was, as far as she could tell, a perfectly ordinary rock.

“You have given me much to consider,” T’Pring said, and T’Lyn could feel it when T’Pring’s focus returned to her. “Is it your wish to remain here, with the crew of the Adashake? Or would you prefer a different vessel in the Vulcan fleet?”

“Captain Sokel –” T’Lyn began to speak, but T’Pring held up a hand.

“Captain Sokel will not be involved in this decision.”

Captain Tendi had offered her a similar choice, but T’Lyn had not truly expected her to have the power to back it up. T’Pring, she had not truly expected to take notice of her. Clearly, her time on the Adashake was already expanding both her knowledge and her understanding of probability.

She said, “There have been numerous occasions when I have found myself lacking in the traits that would make me a successful member of the Sh’Vhal’s crew. I wondered if the fault was in my actions, or simply part of my innate character.”

T’Pring didn’t interrupt, so T’Lyn kept speaking. “In the short time I have spent with the crew of the Adashake, I have found that they embody the concept of infinite diversity far more than any group I have previously encountered. I – would like to stay here.”

T’Pring nodded, decisively, as if that was all she needed to know. She said, “The T’Pring of this universe – she is alive? On Vulcan?”

“It is widely believed so, yes.” T’Lyn tried to hide her surprise that Christine Chapel had not already shared the information. Perhaps they had not had a chance to talk.

“If I wanted to send a message to her, how would you recommend I proceed? Without involving the High Council?”

T’Lyn considered the question. “Why do you wish to avoid involving the High Council?” If T’Pring’s goal was to avoid notice, several options could be eliminated.

“I find the High Council – challenging to deal with, in my time. I expect such a thing is likely a universal constant.”

It was T’Lyn’s turn to stare. “You are T’Pring. Of this universe or another, the High Council will heed your words.”

“Fascinating.” T’Pring’s focus shifted inwards, and then she looked intently back at T’Lyn. “I have not supported you as I should have. That will change.” With those somewhat ominous words, T’Pring strode out of the room.


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

She really had intended to change out of her pajamas. She was keeping the jacket, obviously, but any meeting with the Cerritos was bound to be less awkward in uniform than in sleepwear.

But Astrid had wanted her to look at some weird sensor blips in the shuttle bay, and then Samuel freaking Kirk had showed up in the lab, and like hell was she passing up the chance to talk to the person who literally wrote the book on xenoanthropological best practices. The jacket zipped up; maybe they wouldn’t even notice.

She slid into the chair between Boimler and T’Lyn only a few minutes late – Kirk had disappeared back to the other universe in the turbolift, and she’d run the rest of the way. “Did I miss anything?” she said quietly, and Boimler shook his head.

“Lieutenant Mariner. Thank you for deciding to join us.” Commander Ransom looked at her, and then did a double-take. “Are – are you in your pajamas?”

She was sitting behind a table, wearing a jacket – how could he even tell? She stared him down. “Are you really asking me what I’m wearing, at a time like this?”

“Yes? Wait, no! No, of course not. What was I saying?”

“The nebula,” Captain Tendí prompted.

“Exactly, yes, the nebula. The last report we received said that several of the Enterprise’s systems were malfunctioning, including navigation, communications, and long range sensors.”

“That is consistent with my experience within the nebula,” T’Lyn said.

Captain Tendi leaned forward. “We need to catch up to them. We have no idea if the temporal overlap will collapse, or what that would mean for anyone in the wrong universe when it does. Which currently includes my sister.”

”Starfleet’s analyzed the data collected so far. There’s no evidence that distance between the ships is a factor in the temporal overlap,” Ransom said.

Mariner saw Captain Tendi’s fist clench on the table. “There’s plenty of evidence that we can see with our own eyes that the overlap has become more unstable since the Enterprise entered the nebula.”

”Captain Freeman is on a call with Starfleet HQ right now to make a final decision.”

“Is there a reason the officers of this ship aren’t involved in that call?” Captain Tendi sounded very calm. If Ransom remembered the last time he’d tangled with the captain, he’d be getting extremely nervous right about now.

”Yes? I mean, probably, right? It’s a private meeting. I just figured – since the Admiral is Mariner’s dad, it was like a parental conference. Or something.”

“Really, Ransom?” She wished she could say this was the most embarrassed she’d ever felt in a mission briefing, but that would be a lie. “They do know I’m an adult, right?”

”Well, I know that, and you know that, but my understanding is that adulthood is a little more of a gray area for parents.”

She tried to save rebuttals like ‘where was all this care and concern the first time I broke out of a Cardassian prison’ for times when it would really matter, so she kept quiet. Ransom looked around, and then leaned closer to the screen, like there was any chance of being furtive in a briefing room.

”Is that really an actual original Enterprise away team jacket?” he asked.

She brightened, and sat up straighter. “Hell yeah it is.”

”Are you going to turn it over to the Starfleet museum?”

“Are you kidding? Erica Ortegas gave me this jacket. I may never take it off. Check out these pockets! I’ve got room for like, ten knives. Plus snacks.”

“I’m so jealous right now,” Boimler said, sighing.

Mariner patted his shoulder. “I also got you her autograph.”

“Yes!” He pumped his fist. “Thanks, Mariner – I almost have a full set now!”

“Glad I can help you reach your dreams, pal.” The regulations about what to do with items gifted in alternate dimensions were full of vague wording and loopholes, pretty much for this exact situation. Everyone could agree that dangerous weapons and stuff should probably be confiscated, but no one wanted to give up every souvenir they’d snagged.

”Do you think I could – oh, hang on, here comes Captain Freeman.” Ransom cleared his throat and folded his hands on the table. ”Captain Freeman,” he said, and she stepped into view of the camera.

”Thank you, Commander Ransom.”

She could be calm. She could be a professional about this.

“Mariner! Where have you been? And what are you wearing?”

“Hi Mom.” So much for being calm and professional. Did her mom even know she’d been late, or were those just the words that automatically came out of her mouth whenever she saw Mariner?

She stuck her hands in the jacket pockets. “Good to see you too. So do we have the go-ahead to follow them into the nebula now, or what?”

Captain Freeman sighed. “It’s been taken out of our hands. This entire mission is now officially under the auspices of the Vulcan Science Academy.”

“Oh really?” Captain Tendi smiled, and it wasn’t a friendly smile. “In that case, the private meeting that I had earlier with a VSA representative takes precedence.” She tapped her combadge. “Proceed into the nebula as planned.”

The captain stood up. “This meeting is adjourned. Captain Freeman, do feel free to continue monitoring from outside the nebula, as planned. Or don’t. Adashake out.”

She cut the transmission. “Let’s go. I want you to join the team reviewing the data you collected from the nebula. We need a way to get back in touch with the Enterprise once we’re in there, and we need to get all our people back in the right universe.”

The usual lack of orderly departure from the room led to the equally usual opportunity to stand around a chat for a few seconds. Mariner was ninety percent certain that Captain Tendi did it on purpose. It was an unsubtle way to eavesdrop on crew opinion, and to pass along any messages she didn’t want to have the weight of an official captain’s proclamation.

Sure enough, the captain ‘just happened’ to wind up next to her and T’Lyn. “T’Lyn, the Vulcan Science Academy would like to speak with you, if you are willing. They await a message at your convenience – their words, not mine.”

T’Lyn inclined her head. “Thank you.”

Captain Tendi said, “There’s a communications station in the labs; feel free to use it anytime. And Mariner, either put some shoes on or draft up an exemption report for why you don’t need them.”

T’Lyn stepped slightly closer as the captain moved away, and asked, “What is an ‘exemption report’? I am not familiar with that document.”

“Oh, trust me; you’re going to love it.”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake Shuttle Blazzard-3

“Just us, a shuttle, and open space! Well, actually a dangerous nebula that might have space monsters in it. I bet this feels familiar, huh?”

Mariner’s enthusiasm about their current situation, misplaced as it might seem to be, was nonetheless having significant success in ‘lightening the mood’ within the shuttle.

“Indeed,” T’Lyn said. “However, I am unclear how this course of action was decided upon. It does not seem terribly safe.”

“Yeah, that’s true, actually,” Lieutenant Rutherford said. “It was a little unclear. Why send just us back out in a shuttle? And why would we need to bring T’Lyn’s shuttle too?”

Mariner shrugged. “I don’t know – two ships, two shuttles? Something about how the VSA is totally obsessed with T’Lyn’s shuttle? Did you ever get any answers about that?”

Her conversation with the Academy representative had not included any discussion of the shuttle. “No,” she said. “However, I was informed that the Academy has been investigating the Department of Temporal Investigations, specifically in relation to this nebula.”

“Ooh, a VSA versus DTI smackdown!” Mariner tapped her fist against the console.

Lieutenant Tendi said, “Vulcan logic versus time travel logic is actually a fascinating example of how similar core philosophies can lead to contradictory outcomes.” She sighed. “I would love to watch that fight.”

Rutherford shook his head. “I want to say the Vulcan Science Academy would win, because I want to support T’Lyn. But wouldn’t the Department of Temporal Investigations be able to use time travel to see all the arguments they would make and figure out how to counter them? I don’t know if it’s a good idea to bet against them.”

“Speaking of betting, L’Kar told me there’s a betting pool going that the space monster is going to eat us.” Lieutenant Boimler waved his hands. “And then they wouldn’t tell me which side they placed their bet on!”

“Pretty sure that’s why they sent us, Boims – we managed not to get eaten by space monsters once; we must have done something right.”

The insistence upon locking down the Keethera meant that no repairs had been made. If anything, the systems were in poorer condition than they had been previously. Either her memory was faulty due to the situational stress, or the damage had been significant enough that the failures continued to compound even while the shuttle was inactive.

And yet, their orders were clear that both shuttles were required. In the absence of other reasonable options, the Blazzard-3 was towing the Keethera via tractor beam. It was an inefficient method that required near-constant supervision by both the shuttle’s pilot and the operator of the tractor beam.

T’Lyn found herself enjoying the challenge and cooperation required, though she would have preferred a clearer understanding of why it was needed.

“Okay, yeah, that makes sense, and absolutely nobody should panic right now,” Lieutenant Boimler said. “Especially not me. But the sensors just picked up the space monster family headed in our direction.”

The viewscreen showed a representation of the area of space they occupied. A large glowing blob was gradually gaining definition as one medium dot and seven smaller ones, all moving towards their shuttle.

“Are they moving more slowly than before?” Mariner asked. “And why are the sensors suddenly able to track them?”

“The station sensors could detect them before, and that system wasn’t significantly different than ours,” Lieutenant Rutherford said. “Maybe there’s a difference in the creatures themselves.”

“Ooh, like they’re harder to detect during an active feeding and growth phase!” Lieutenant Tendi nodded enthusiastically. “That could be an evolutionary defensive trait.”

T’Lyn’s focus remained on the tractor beam controls, but she felt confident in predicting Mariner’s skeptical expression. “Or… since they seem to eat temporal energy and we have no idea what they are, it could just be that our scanners suck at picking up something we can’t scientifically explain.”

Lieutenant Tendi’s enthusiasm seemed undiminished. “Yeah, okay. It could be that too.”

On the viewscreen, eight dots suddenly turned into nine. T’Lyn blinked, but the readings remained the same. “Please confirm if you are seeing a ninth energy reading.”

“What the fuck?”

“Not helpful!” Lieutenant Boimler said. “Yes, confirmed.”

“Confirmed,” Lieutenant Tendi agreed. “But also what the heck? Where did it come from?”

“Maybe they can teleport!” Lieutenant Rutherford said. “Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. Maybe only one of them can teleport!”

Mariner said, “Guys, I’m trying to keep the shuttle in one piece; someone tell me what’s going on!”

“An energy reading similar to those of the smaller creatures is now registering on the sensors,” T’Lyn said. “Its location seems to be inside the Keethera.”

“Are you saying a baby space monster just appeared on your shuttle?”

T’Lyn reviewed the timeline of events. “It is considerably more likely that the creature has been on the shuttle since before we left the nebula the first time.”

“No way,” Lieutenant Boimler said. “You saw the size of those creatures – even the newborns were too big to stow away inside a shuttle!”

“Maybe it was the runt of the litter?” Lieutenant Rutherford offered.

Lieutenant Tendi’s eyes were very wide. “So you’re saying we kidnapped a baby space monster? Is that why the creature was chasing you before? So it could get its baby back?”

“Okay, when you say it like that, it sounds really bad,” Mariner said. “But! We also brought the baby back! T’Lyn, can you disengage the tractor beam? Let’s see if we can move the shuttles apart.”

The largest energy signature continued moving towards the Keethera, while the others maintained their distance. “That’s good, right?” Lieutenant Boimler asked.

“Let’s hope so.”

Their shuttle began reversing course away from the Keethera – and the creatures. Mariner said, “D’Vana, see if you can get a message to the Adashake. Rutherford, can you divert any additional power to the engines? Just in case we need to make a run for it.”

T’Lyn didn’t think of the Keethera as ‘her’ shuttle, but she had spent a considerable amount of time on it. It was logical that she would feel some amount of regret when the creature reached it and the entire shuttle simply vanished. The regret was minor compared to the curiosity about how it had happened, though.

“The VSA’s definitely not going to be happy about that,” Lieutenant Boimler muttered.

Sensors indicated the smaller energy reading was still there, though it was obscured on the viewscreen by the much larger creature. “They are moving away from us,” T’Lyn said.

“It looks like they’re headed back towards the spatial anomaly.”

They all watched the viewscreen as the creatures traveled towards the anomaly, and then through it. As they did, the anomaly continued to shrink, and then it was gone as well.

“Does anyone else think that was weirdly anticlimactic?” Mariner asked. “Do we just go home now?”

There were exactly ten seconds of silence, and then Lieutenant Rutherford said, “Well… I have weird news and really weird news.”

“Ahh, I can’t believe you jinxed us!” Lieutenant Boimler exclaimed.

“Oh, come on,” Mariner said. “Is it really weirder than a space monster baby stowing away in T’Lyn’s shuttle, and then all of us coming out here and seeing it reunite with the rest of its family? And then seeing all the space monsters fly back through a spatial anomaly and disappear, along with the anomaly?”

“What’s the news?” Lieutenant Tendi asked.

“Well, the weird news is that the station is back.”

“What, really?” Mariner looked up at the viewscreen, which was indeed showing an image of the station. “That was not on my bingo card for today. It wasn’t there when we got here, right? And we definitely all saw it disappear via space monster when we were here before?”

“That’s what we thought was happening, but we’ve been looking at the data we recorded, and it’s super weird.”

Lieutenant Boimler groaned. “Is it the chroniton particles? Those things never make any sense.”

“It’s got to be some kind of temporal flux thing, right? Like, maybe the station is stuck in a continuous cycle of existing and being consumed due to cyclical temporal waves from the anomaly.”

“Ooh, or it could be an inversion field, like that time Voyager got turned into a maze and they thought the ship was going to implode!”

“I’ve always wanted to get stuck in an inversion field!”

Mariner interrupted the rapid back and forth. “Hey, not to distract from the brainstorming sesh, but if that’s the weird news, what’s the really weird news?”

“Oh – I think someone might be trying to hail us. It’s not one of our ships.”

Mariner and Lieutenant Tendi exchanged a glance, and Lieutenant Tendi said, “Put them on screen.”

The screen went blank, and then showed static. “What the –” Mariner tapped a few commands into the console. “Did we lose them?”

Rutherford frowned. “I think it’s – wait. It’s some kind of virus; they’re trying to get through our shields!”

“Cut all comms!”

“It’s too late! They–”


Beckett Mariner, Infinity Station

“Okay, this definitely wasn’t on my bingo card for today. Is everyone here? Everyone okay?”

“I’m here,” D’Vana called. “Rutherford’s implant is rebooting, but I think he’s fine.”

“I am present and unharmed,” T’Lyn said. She was already inspecting the room around them.

Boimler groaned. “Isn’t there some kind of rule about using transporters this close to a spatial anomaly? I refuse to be the first transporter clone who winds up getting transporter cloned again.”

“This is the wrong kind of particles for that,” Rutherford said, still sounding groggy. “It’s much more likely that we would have ended up split into good and evil doppelgangers, or body-swapped with each other, or shown up in the mirror universe, or–”

Mariner interrupted him. “Thank you, yes, all of those would have been very bad. Luckily, all that happened was we wound up trapped in this cell!” She tossed in a little finger wiggle. “Yay!”

They’d been beamed out of the shuttle directly into what looked like a holding cell. It was very white and extremely brightly lit. She squinted at the walls. “Computer, please dim brightness by twenty percent.”

The lights obligingly dimmed. She looked at D’Vana, who shrugged. Worth a shot. Mariner said, “Computer, please open the doors of the holding cell.”

The computer made a polite-sounding error noise. “Eh, you win some, you lose some. Anyone else have ideas?”

“I believe we are on the station,” T’Lyn said. “As it is unlikely that the creatures have returned and have access to beaming technology, and neither the Adashake nor the Enterprise would select this as a destination, a third party is most likely involved.”

D’Vana said, “Computer, can you confirm if anyone else is on the station?”

That got another error noise.

“Huh. Well, the good news is we didn’t get eaten by space monsters.” Mariner rubbed her hands together. “And also that we’re really good at breaking out of holding cells.”

“Cameras?” D’Vana said quietly, and Rutherford tilted his head towards the far wall. She and Boimler moved casually to block them both from view. T’Lyn caught on quickly, and started poking at the energy shield like she was trying to break through it – it wouldn’t work, but it was eye-catching, and would conveniently mask any changes in the energy readings from Rutherford and D’Vana’s efforts.

Mariner put her hands on her hips and stared unsubtly at the ceiling. “Everything’s run by computers now. Can you imagine doing this back in the old days? Totally different skill set.”

Boimler looked at the ceiling too. “Didn’t Kirk’s Enterprise keep ending up traveling backwards in time? And then he would wind up in, like, old-timey jails.”

“Oh man, when I was a kid I used to pretend that was me,” Rutherford said. “And I would practice getting out of handcuffs and climbing up on top of things to do that Kirk move, you know? When he jumped down on people to surprise them?”

“And hotwiring cars?” she asked.

“Nah, that wasn’t till later. I was a short kid; I had to wait until I was tall enough to reach all the controls.”

Boimler waved his hands and said, “There’s tons of ways around that,” which she was definitely asking him about later.

Behind them, Rutherford gave a little cheer, and the energy shield disappeared. “All set!” he said. “It may have sent an alert, though, sorry.”

The area outside the holding cell looked empty. The door to the corridor opened easily when they tried it, and the corridor was also empty. Rutherford immediately moved to the computer console, while D’Vana crossed her arms and glared at the door.

“There’s no one here? Not even anyone to gloat, or monologue at us, or anything?” She sounded genuinely irritated. “Rude.”

“Maybe they’re all on lunch break,” Mariner suggested.

“This console is locked out of the rest of the station systems,” Rutherford reported. “Do you want me to try to override it?”

D’Vana shook her head. “No, let’s get out of here. We might have better luck in the –”

The door slid open. A familiar figure stepped in – unassuming, blandly dressed, way too surprised that things might not be going according to plan. He stopped abruptly. “What are you – you’re not supposed to be out here.”

Boimler pointed at him. “Hey! You’re the one from before! The temporal agent!” The rest of them spread out. The agent might be blocking the door, but five against one gave them good odds.

The agent seemed startled at being recognized, and then made an obvious attempt to cover it up. “What? I mean, yes, that’s me. I’m a temporal agent. I work for the Department of Temporal Investigations. You should listen to what I say.”

She was beginning to think that they might not actually be a temporal agent. They had the feel of one, though.

D’Vana said, “You wouldn’t happen to be a temporal agent who’s doing a little off-the-books project of your own, would you?”

And yeah, that would make sense. Mariner said, “Personally, I’ve always thought that 'I'm a temporal agent' is one of the best cover stories of all time. No pun intended, of course.”

“Exactly!” D’Vana agreed. “And that thing temporal agents say – ‘Discuss your experiences with no one.’ That is such a good way to get away with Crimes And Hijinx. A little light looting, a very small amount of skimming off the top, trading information –”

Mariner nodded. “Nothing too big, obviously. One person probably couldn’t manage a big operation by themselves.” There was a part of her that couldn’t quite believe their charade seemed to be working. Why were so many villains so arrogant and convinced they were smarter than everyone else?

“You have no idea what one person is capable of, when they have access to all of time and space!”

“Aaaaaand why do I feel like you’re going to tell us?” Boimler said. He added a sigh at the end that Mariner thought might have been genuine.

‘You wouldn’t understand!” the agent said. “You don’t know what it’s like!”

“Uh-huh,” Boimler told him, in his ‘placate the captors’ voice. “I’m sure your plan is great.”

The agent didn’t seem to need much encouragement to start talking. They even shook their fist. “It’s the monotony of it all – fix this, fix that. You do something, then you undo it, then you do it again – it never ends! What’s the point? They could at least let us use the technology for something fun once in a while.”

Boimler nodded earnestly. Mariner was impressed – she could never quite manage ‘earnest sincerity’ the way Boimler could. “Sure,” he said. “But isn’t the Department of Temporal Investigations doing – important work? Keeping people from using temporal weapons to manipulate the timestream for personal gain? Saving the universe from temporal chaos? That sort of thing?”

The agent scoffed. “Oh please, you don’t really believe that, do you?”

“I mean, I did? But that was before all of–” Boimler waved his hands around. “You know.”

The agent said, “Consider this: with everything you know about humanity, which is more likely? A massive, extremely powerful, well-organized bureaucracy maintaining a single ‘correct’ timeline, or a bunch of overworked minions trying to cover their asses when things go wrong?”

“‘Well-organized bureaucracy’ does seem like kind of an oxymoron, now that you say it. So what’s your deal? What’s with the station? Money, power, the thrill of scientific discovery?”

The agent shook his head. “That’s for me to know, and for you to never find out.”

“Because you’re going to let us go?” Boimler suggested hopefully.

The agent looked confused. “Uh, no? Why would I do that? The nebula blocks sensors and communications. I was just going to kill you all and make it look like a shuttle accident. Not a big deal.”

“What? No, big deal! Very big deal.”

D’Vana said, “How are you planning to kill all of us? There’s five of us and only one of you.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” The agent pointed at himself. “This is a hologram; I’m not physically present in the room with you. All I have to do is lock the door and turn off the air filtration systems.”

Before he had finished speaking, Rutherford and T’Lyn had both moved to force the door open. The corridor was lit only by emergency lights. D’Vana took the agent out at the knees as they all slipped past him. “Solid light hologram. Nice tech. Too bad you’re trying to kill us.”

“Hey!” the agent called. “There’s nowhere to go! Stop making this harder!’

“Split up!” D’Vana said sharply. Their eyes met, and Mariner nodded.

“Let’s go,” she said to T’Lyn. “Run.”


T’Lyn, Infinity Station

They were running through the darkened corridors of the lower levels of the station. Only certain areas seemed to be fully powered, which ideally would make it more challenging for their pursuer to locate them.

T’Lyn glanced at Mariner. “This also seems familiar,” she said.

Mariner laughed, and then did a double-take. “Was that a joke?”

T’Lyn considered the question. It had not been a necessary statement, and she had made it primarily to determine if it would elicit a positive reaction. “Yes,” she said finally. “I believe it was.”

“Hell yeah!” Mariner held out a hand for a fist-bump, seemed to realize T’Lyn might prefer to avoid skin-to-skin contact, and transitioned it to a thumbs up.

“I’ve gotta say, I’m loving this joking, kicking ass, fleeing from the cops side of you,” she said. “Not that the quiet, reserved, logical side of you isn’t also awesome.”

“Sometimes ‘kicking ass’ is the logical thing to do.”

“That is the truest thing I’ve ever heard.”

T’Lyn was fairly confident in her memory of the layout of the station, and she understood that the plan was to rendezvous at the lab they’d taken shelter in before. It seemed to be able to operate with some independence from the rest of the station, and they were familiar with its systems. It was a logical choice.

It seemed less logical to take such a circuitous route to reach their destination, but perhaps that had been conveyed in the unspoken communication between Mariner and Lieutenant Tendi. Or not, she realized, when they arrived at the lab to find everyone else already there.

“What happened?” Lieutenant Boimler asked immediately. “Did you get lost?”

“No!” Mariner put her hand out for the water bottle he was offering, but he maintained his grip on it. “Okay, yes. Only a little! It could have happened to anyone.”

“Uh-huh, sure.” Lieutenant Boimler offered her a water bottle as well, but she shook her head. “Over here,” he said. “Rutherford’s started setting things up already.”

Lieutenant Tendi greeted them with a nod when they joined the group around the viewscreen. “All right; we’re all here. What do we know, and what do we need to prioritize?”

“We know he has access to a transporter that was able to beam us off the shuttle and into the holding cell,” Lieutenant Rutherford said. “We might be able to use that tech to get back to the shuttle.”

Mariner nodded. “We at least need to block him from doing it again – it won’t matter how far we get on the station if he can just beam us back anytime.”

“The shielding around the lab should protect us for now. We might be able to figure out some kind of signal blocking – maybe repurpose our combadges. Boimler?”

“On it. How worried should we be about a temporal agent knowing exactly what we’re planning, since they can just check in the future to see what we did?”

T’Lyn was still working through the tense changes of the question when Mariner said, “If he’s acting on his own and doesn’t want his bosses to find out what he’s doing, he’ll need to limit the amount that he jumps around in time.”

“Which should make it easier for us to act without him being able to know exactly what we’ll do,” Lieutenant Tendi said. “And even with a mobile emitter, there are limits on distance for a holographic projection like that. It’s likely that he’s somewhere on the station, or has a ship very close by.”

“Could we use that ship to escape?”

Lieutenant Rutherford shook his head. “DTI ships are bio-locked to their pilot. There was a big scandal about it during the Voyager years – something about a temporal paradox, and conspiracy theories about an alternate Earth, maybe?”

Mariner stared at him with an expression T’Lyn couldn’t identify. “How do you know that?”

“Oh, it was big news in all the ship modding groups – a lot of people wanted to figure out how they did it, but it’s super impractical. Either you have a bio-lock that can be turned on and off, which could be hacked, or you have a permanent bio-lock, and then bad guys try to hack your brain instead.”

Rutherford shrugged, and then added, “Plus none of your friends would be able to fly your ship!”

Mariner said, “Oookay, let’s come back to that later. What I’m hearing is that there’s probably no actionable way to get to the transporters on the agent’s ship. What about the station? Cargo transporters?”

Lieutenant Tendi turned to her. “T’Lyn, you said the VSA is investigating the Department of Temporal Investigations, right? Do you think he knows that?”

“The Academy keeps detailed records of all investigations. It would be possible for a temporal agent to gain access to that information.”

“Could that investigation include an in-person visit?”

T’Lyn inclined her head. “That is one option. However, we have no way of contacting the Academy to request they come to this location.”

“Right, but he doesn’t know that for sure. What if we make him think the VSA is coming for him? We want to distract him from tracking us down by giving him something else to worry about.”

She nodded again. “That could be effective, yes.”

Mariner said, ““What if we try to get the station computer on our side? Rutherford, you’ve had practice with that; what do you think?”

“I think my track record isn’t great? But I can try!”

“We can’t contact the VSA, but someone else could. What about getting in touch with the Adashake, or the Enterprise?”

“Do you have a way to counteract the effects of the nebula?” T’Lyn asked.

Lieutenant Tendi looked at her. “Do you? I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to mention the whole Vulcan telepathy thing.”

“I do not believe there is a benefit to withholding knowledge that could be of assistance. It is possible I could communicate something to T’Pring, though it is not guaranteed.”

Lieutenant Boimler frowned. “Do we even know if the Enterprise is still around? I thought that was happening because of the space monsters. Now that they’re gone, the temporal convergence should stop too, right?”

“I haven’t seen any signs of temporal overlap since we’ve been here,” Lieutenant Rutherford agreed.

Mariner leaned closer to her. “Did we know the space monsters were causing the temporal distortion issues?” she whispered.

“I did not,” T’Lyn answered, equally quietly.

Mariner nodded. “Well, whether the Enterprise is present or not, the Adashake is definitely still out there. And they’re going to start sending other shuttles, unless they decide to skip that step and come after us themselves. We need to warn them.”

“So that’s four things,” Lieutenant Tendi said decisively. “Find transporters, block transporters, fake communication, and real communication. Everyone clear on the plan? Good. Let’s go.”

T’Lyn did not feel sufficiently clear on the plan. Most of the discussion had seemed to be a series of unrelated questions and declarations, interrupted by barely-relevant tangents. Mariner tugged her sleeve. “Come on; we’re on transporter-finding.”


Beckett Mariner, Infinity Station

The plan wasn’t exactly going according to plan. Either Rutherford’s efforts to befriend the computer system had backfired, or the station’s drones operated on a different network. They’d gotten about a thirty-second warning to get out of the corridors, and that Boimler was about to turn their combadges into signal blockers.

The good news was that they were at least ninety percent sure the temporal agent couldn’t beam them anywhere. The bad news was that their combadges one hundred percent didn’t work to communicate anymore, so they were on their own. They were also hiding in a storage room with extremely minimal lighting, while they waited for the drones to sweep through their area.

“I have a query,” T’Lyn said.

“Yes, this is still better than literally any of the missions we’ve been on that involved slime.” T’Lyn didn’t say anything, so Mariner added, “Sorry, was that not your question?”

“It was not.”

“All right, hit me with it. You’re really building the anticipation here.”

“By my count, we have now shared two life-threatening encounters, three narrow escapes, and five instances of being required to remain in close proximity. Does this mean we are now considered ‘level four’ friends?”

Mariner crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “You heard that, huh?” And remembered it, clearly. That conversation had been days ago, and it wasn’t like there hadn’t been a lot going on since then.

She couldn’t see it, but she was sure T’Lyn was raising one eyebrow. “The lab was very small for five people. Also, most Vulcan senses tend to be sharper than Human senses. Including hearing.”

Which didn’t make it not eavesdropping, but it wasn’t like she could stop hearing things. And it wasn’t like Mariner and Boimler hadn’t also been rude, talking about her behind her back. Mostly Mariner just wished she could remember the rest of what they’d talked about, and if it had been anything embarrassing.

What she said was, “Yeah, well, now that you’ve gotten to know me better, you know that at least half of what I say is total bullshit.”

T’Lyn nodded like that statement actually made sense to her. “I understand,” she said. “I was mistaken. We have not yet reached level four in our friendship.”

She resisted the urge to laugh. “Look, why does it matter to you so much?” It couldn’t possibly be about the sleeves. Literally no one cared that much about whether her sleeves were rolled up or not and why that might be.

“As a Vulcan, I find the concept of progressing logically through numerical levels of friendship to be intriguing.”

T’Lyn’s expression was extremely neutral, and Mariner narrowed her eyes even further. “I can’t tell if you’re messing with me or not. I think I’m impressed either way?”

She sighed. “I guess there’s not much else to do while we wait. And sharing uncomfortable truths is kind of a team tradition.”

“It is not my intention to force you to share any information you would prefer to keep from me.”

“It’s fine,” Mariner said, and she was only a little surprised to realize it wasn’t a lie. “It’s kind of cool that you asked – most people don’t.”

She leaned back against the wall, and tried to put the explanation into some kind of coherent order. She’d only really talked about it with the team, and they’d all been extremely high on alien plant pollen during that away mission.

“During the Dominion war, I was officially assigned to Deep Space 9. But captains could come and request extra support for whatever mission they were on, so all of us ensigns were on the move a lot.”

“This was the time period in which you died multiple times,” T’Lyn said evenly.

“Different mission, but yeah.”

She kept her eyes focused on the ceiling, but she still caught a glimpse of a movement that was probably a nod. “Anyway, one particular mission didn’t go great. Got captured, got injured, got rescued. While I was unconscious in Sickbay, the docs decided to erase the scars I would have had, because they thought it might ‘impact my emotional state’ to look at them when I woke up.”

“You disagreed?” T’Lyn asked.

“I wanted them to impact my emotional state!” Mariner took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Afterwards, the whole mission was classified. Secret shit; never happened. There were no mission reports to review, no after-action reviews hashing out everything that went wrong and how to fix it.”

She held her hands out in front of her and ran her fingers over her forearms. “They would have been here. And here, on the other side. And maybe I would have wanted them gone as soon as I saw them.”

T’Lyn stayed very quiet, and she took another breath. “When I woke up, I questioned my own memories. Sometimes physical reminders are the only things we can keep from an experience. They would have been a reminder that it was real.”

“Does it make it better, if they were doing it because they wanted what was best for you?”

Something about T’Lyn’s voice made it sound like the question was about more than just Mariner’s story, and that made it easier to answer. “Sometimes. Sometimes it makes it worse, because it means people I trusted didn’t really know me at all. Sometimes I can’t help thinking how convenient it was, for Starfleet, for those scars to disappear – redacted, just like the reports.”

She flicked a finger at one of her sleeves. “They should have asked me. They didn’t. There’s no going back and changing it now. When I roll my sleeves up, it’s a reminder. To me, mostly — that sometimes people make choices they think are the right ones, and it turns out they were wrong.”

“And to others?” T’Lyn asked.

Mariner laughed. “Yeah, okay, you caught me. There’s a little bit of spite to it too. A little ‘you wanted this erased, now I’m going to make you remember it every time you see me.’ Not my most admirable impulse.”

She could practically hear T’Lyn working through options to respond, and she waited, curious to see what she would come up with.

“Thank you for telling me,” T’Lyn said finally. “I will now make an effort to ‘shift the tone.’”

Mariner breathed out a noisy sigh of relief. “Oh, hell yes. Please do.”

“How much longer do you expect we will need to wait?”

“I have no idea, but I’m sure it will be enough time for you to share your own story.” Mariner smiled. “Come on, you’re the one who wanted to be level four friends. Time to cough up an embarrassing childhood anecdote or two.”

She offered the suggestion knowing that T’Lyn would recognize it as a chance to back down. Her own story had been considerably more than a childhood anecdote, but she didn’t have any interest in pushing T’Lyn into a game of truth chicken.

Next to her, T’Lyn seemed to be considering her words carefully. “I am not skilled at storytelling, but I believe this would be considered a – personal truth.”

Mariner waited. After a short silence, T’Lyn said, “Vulcans require emotional connections in order to maintain optimal health. It is not always required for those connections to be reciprocal. I have named all of my plants, and – until recently, considered them my strongest connections.”

“Until recently?”

“Yes.” T’Lyn hesitated, and then said, “My interactions with the crew of the Adashake have been illuminating, in more ways than one.”

“Aw, T’Lyn!” The storage room was small enough that she barely had to shift to bump their shoulders together.

“Thanks,” she said, completely serious. And then, not seriously at all, “You should know I’m barely restraining a joke about you lighting up our lives.”

“Admirable,” T’Lyn said, and there was laughter in her tone. “I would expect nothing less.”


T’Lyn, Infinity Station

“The corridor is clear. No drones detected within range.”

“Finally,” Mariner said, with what sounded like relief. “Not that you aren’t a fantastic person to be stuck in a storage room with. I’d just really like to reach the cargo bay sometime before the drones catch up with all of us.”

“I concur,” T’Lyn said. “On both points.”

Mariner reached past her towards the door controls, and then froze when a voice suddenly came over the intercom system.

”Attention. This is the Vulcan Science Academy Vessel Cthia. All personnel hearing this message are to stand down immediately. Cease your activities and await further instructions.”

“That doesn’t sound like Boimler,” Mariner whispered loudly. “Was this part of the plan?”

“I do not believe so,” T’Lyn answered at a normal volume. There was no logical reason to speak quietly; whoever made the announcement was almost certainly not close enough to hear them. “The pronunciation of Cthia was – very Vulcan.”

“Boimler’s accent is terrible, I know. He’s actually a lot better now than when he started. It’s just – context clues, you know?”

T’Lyn did not know. She found she was beginning to get used to the feeling. “Mm,” she said.

“So, what are the odds an actual VSA ship arrived just now?”

T’Lyn attempted to make the calculation. “It is extremely unlikely,” she said finally. “And yet.”

“And yet,” Mariner echoed. “You know what would be really great? If we weren’t hiding in a storage room when the VSA shows up to rescue us.”

That was true. “Yes,” T’Lyn said. “However, I expect their intention is for people to remain stationary while awaiting further instructions.”

Mariner pointed at her, barely visible in the dark. “But! They didn’t technically say that.”

“That is true.” T’Lyn reached for the door control, and they stumbled into the corridor. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the light. When they did, she saw Mariner unwrapping some sort of food bar.

“Snack?” Mariner offered, holding out a second bar.

“Where did you get that?”

Mariner shrugged. “I told you the jacket has pockets. No one wants to get rescued with low blood sugar.”

T’Lyn took the offered snack. “Shall we continue to the cargo bay?” she asked, and Mariner nodded.

“Might as well.”

By her estimate, they made it approximately two-thirds of the way to their destination before the air in front of them shimmered with an incoming transporter beam. She quickly attempted to step in front of Mariner, who was doing the same to her – they compromised by staying shoulder to shoulder and simply taking a large step backwards.

The figure that appeared was not one she expected to see on the station. More accurately, it was not one she expected to see at all, in any location.

“T’Lyn. I offer greetings to you and your companion.”

“Is that T’Pring?” Mariner was whispering again, but it now seemed entirely appropriate. “Like, our universe’s actual T’Pring?”

T’Pring looked at Mariner as if she was noticing her for the first time. “Yes.” She turned back to T’Lyn. “Is there a place where we might speak alone?”

Mariner held out a hand. “Whoa, time out. Stranger danger. We’re still in an unfamiliar space station in the middle of a confrontation with a temporal agent.”

T’Pring blinked. “The confrontation is resolved. The temporal agent has been apprehended. You may consider yourself ‘rescued.’ In due course we will return you to your ship.”

Mariner shifted slightly, so that she was standing even closer to T’Lyn. “Yeah, thanks. And ‘in due course,’ you can wander off with one of our team members for a private conversation. For now, no one goes anywhere alone. No secondary locations.”

To T’Lyn, more quietly, she said, “Look, I’m sorry. I know she’s important, and I’m usually the one who’s all ‘fuck the rules,’ but this is just common sense. Vulcan elder of lore comes out of nowhere to solve all our problems, just after a weird spatial anomaly was in the area? Super suspicious. Besides, team buddies stick together.”

T’Lyn looked at her. “There is no need to apologize. I, too, would prefer it if we stayed together.”

“It is logical to stay close to those who are important to us,” T’Pring said, blatantly eavesdropping. “I myself am traveling with several who are dear to me.”

T’Pring’s sleeves fluttered in a non-existent breeze as she resettled her hands in front of her. “The rest of the family wanted to come as well, but there was limited space inside our vessel.”

T’Lyn felt like her brain was processing information far too slowly to keep up with the conversation. “I – do not understand.”

“Did you not claim the alternate universe’s T’Pring as family when asked?”

She had, but she was used to claiming connections that didn’t claim her back. “You are not that T’Pring,” she said finally.

“She is T’Pring. I am T’Pring. In this, we are one.” The elder T’Pring moved to clasp her hands behind her back, and projected a sense of perfect serenity.

When T’Lyn looked back at the memory of this moment, it would always seem slightly out of focus. The emotions she felt would blur it from clear images into a wash of remembered sensations. Acceptance, welcome – imperfect and illogical, and worthwhile because of those traits, not in spite of them.

“We will speak more later,” T’Pring said, still serene, but clearly aware of – whatever she had just done. “Once we are all located somewhere your companion deems safe enough to separate.”

Mariner held up one hand in the Vulcan ta’al and said nothing. T’Lyn was fairly certain T’Pring was smiling as she turned away.

She heard footsteps approaching from the opposite direction, and turned to see the remaining members of the team running towards them. “Did you hear? The VSA is here and they totally arrested the temporal agent right in front of us!”

“We heard,” Mariner said, crossing her arms. “What were you doing that close to the temporal agent? We were supposed to be avoiding them, remember?”

“We were!” Lieutenant Boimler said.

“We were looking for the backup security office,” Lieutenant Rutherford explained. “It should have had a separate comms system.”

Lieutenant Tendi nodded. “And it did! But it turned out the temporal agent knew that too, and they were using the office as their base of operations here on the station.”

“It really would have made more sense for them to use their ship,” Lieutenant Boimler said, as if he was disappointed by the agent’s poor choices.

“So we sort of surprised them by accident, and then there was a lot of shouting, and then all of a sudden the Vulcans showed up.”

“More shouting?” Mariner said.

“Mostly just the agent,” Lieutenant Tendi said. “Vulcans don’t shout much, I guess.”

“That is correct,” T’Lyn agreed.

Lieutenant Rutherford said, “Oh! And they said they could get us in touch with the Adashake, because I guess they have some kind of super secure, nebula-resistant comm channel. Do you think it would be rude to ask if I could see the schematics?”

“Probably, but you should definitely do it anyway. Did they happen to mention if they collected our shuttle?” Mariner asked.

“Yeah, it’s in the cargo bay.” Lieutenant Boimler pointed back the way they’d come. “We thought you’d be there, but you weren’t, and then we used the shuttle’s sensors to track you.”

He looked back and forth between Mariner and T’Lyn. “Is everything okay?”

Mariner looked at her, and whatever she saw made her nod. “Getting there,” she said. “Weird day. Let’s talk about it back at the shuttle.”


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

“Ugh, I can’t believe the captain’s making us submit our reports before the bowling tournament. Boims, what did you write about the station? The second time, I mean.”

Boimler rolled his eyes, a habit she was pretty sure he’d picked up from her. She was so proud. “We weren’t even together for most of the second time!”

She rolled her eyes right back at him. “Yeah, obviously. That’s why I want to know what you wrote.”

“I said we showed good teamwork,” D’Vana said. “D’Erika said I had to stop using the phrase ‘creative problem solving’ in official reports.”

“What? That’s practically the team motto!”

“I know, right? I asked if we could put it on t-shirts instead, and she said she’d think about it.”

Rutherford waved his padd. “I just switched to saying we ‘achieved mission objectives.’ Then I put in some extra stuff about any cool engineering things we got to do. I got the schematics for the Vulcan ship’s comm system, but they’re all in Vulcan, so now I’m learning a new language!”

Boimler threw his hands up in the air. “I can’t believe we had to write everything up like it was just one continuous mission. ‘We went into the nebula. We escaped the nebula. Then we went back into the nebula.’ There’s no way to make that sound reasonable!”

She leaned over his shoulder to look at his padd. “Do you think it would sound better if we just had two back to back missions to the same nebula?”

“Yes!”

“No,” T’Lyn said.

Boimler sighed. “No, you’re probably right.”

T’Lyn carefully set her padd down and tucked her hands in her lap. “Do you frequently work on mission reports in a – collaborative way?”

They were at their usual table in the mess hall. It wasn’t crowded, but the mess hall was almost never completely empty. Mariner nodded. “As often as possible, yeah. Plus, if we do it here there’s easy access to snacks.”

Boimler rolled his eyes. Despite his complaints, he was probably already done with his report. He liked to get them done as quickly as possible – unlike Mariner, who preferred to wait until the last possible second. “And distractions.”

“It’s not cheating; it’s building team cohesion!” Rutherford offered, and she pointed at him.

“Exactly. It’s also a way for everyone to talk about what happened.”

“It makes the events of the mission real,” T’Lyn said quietly, and Mariner nodded.

“That too.”

“When we were ensigns, sometimes we would get advice from higher-ranked officers who were around when we were working on them.”

“Is this a requirement?” T’Lyn asked. “A mentoring program?”

“No, but it’s a good way to be exposed to a lot of different ideas, especially if reading years of backlogs of reports isn’t your idea of a fun time.”

“Hey!” Boimler protested. “The information in those reports has come in handy plenty of times.”

“Yeah, they’re my number one cure for insomnia.”

“It’s a small ship,” D’Vana said, interrupting their bickering. “But nobody’s required to write their reports together; some people prefer to work on them alone.”

Mariner poked Boimler’s shoulder. “And some people are giant nerds who do all their homework early. What are you even doing on that padd?”

He dropped his head on the table. “I’m supposed to be writing an explanation of how I broke the commbadges,” he said.

“Not going so great?”

Boimler groaned. “I don’t even know what I did! I just mashed a bunch of buttons and hoped for the best, and it’s not like I can put that in a report.”

“Blame it on the anomaly,” she suggested. “Non-replicable conditions.”

“But the anomaly wasn’t even there at that point,” Boimler said.

“Are you sure? It’s not like we were monitoring it every second. It might have been there.”

He sat up and studied the padd. “Yeah, that could work.”

“I do not have experience with writing a report that must exclude a significant portion of the context.” T’Lyn frowned. “The time travel elements are intended to be classified, are they not?”

Lieutenant Tendi said, “Ooh, Mariner’s really good at classified stuff.”

She cracked her knuckles. “Okay, you’ve got three basic options when it comes to this stuff. One, you just write the report as if none of it was classified, and you let the captain or Starfleet HQ redact it later.”

Rutherford chimed in with, “That’s usually the easiest, but the redactions don’t always make much sense, and then the report isn’t useful to anyone reading it later.”

“Option two, you write the report as if none of it was classified, and then you redact it yourself. That’s the most boring option.”

“What is option number three?”

“You write the report around the classified stuff. You just use a lot of vague phrasing like ‘we collaborated with a known ally’ and ‘we received assistance from a nearby Federation starship.’”

Boimler said, “My favorite is ‘trusted source.’ As in, ‘mission parameters were determined in consultation with a trusted source, known to Starfleet HQ.’”

“Fascinating.”

Mariner turned to T’Lyn. “Wait, are you even required to write a report?”

T’Lyn looked ever-so-slightly shifty. “I volunteered to do so. I thought it would demonstrate solidarity.”

D’Vana clasped her hands together. “That’s so nice of you!”

Mariner said, “You know what else would really demonstrate team solidarity? A bowling tournament!”

“I do not believe I was invited to the bowling tournament,” T’Lyn said, in a tone of voice that indicated she thought she might actually get away with that excuse.

“Oh, everyone’s invited.” She frowned. “Wait, is everyone invited? Obviously you are, T’Lyn, but is the Cerritos crew invited to bowling? Is my mom going to show up for bowling?” She wouldn’t, right?

“Nobody’s bowling until we’re done,” D’Vana said. “D’Erika said we need to finish these reports as soon as possible.”


“Did she say we need to finish them and have them be good?”

“You could be attending the post-mission briefings instead,” Rutherford offered, and Mariner groaned.

She was pretty sure the captain was requiring these reports immediately specifically as an excuse to let her avoid those briefings. “You’re right; I take it back. Reports are great. Who doesn’t love writing reports?”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

Somehow, she found herself present at the bowling tournament. She felt confident that she could remember all aspects of the day’s events, and that none of them had included agreeing to participate in such a thing. And yet.

“What is the purpose of this activity?”

“What, bowling? It’s a game. The object is to propel a heavy ball towards a set of pins, and knock over as many pins as possible with each throw.” Lieutenant Boimler shrugged. “So I guess you could say it’s good for improving strength and coordination?”

Lieutenant Rutherford added, “There are a lot of rules, but this is Adashake-style bowling, so there are actually no rules.”

“Usually someone will suggest a set of guidelines for each round,” Lieutenant Tendi said. “But that’s optional. Mostly the point is just to have fun.”

Mariner handed her a padd. “Yeah, bowling nights are mostly about eating snacks and talking. It’s good for crew morale. Not always great for crew safety stats, but I heard the captain banned rocket-propelled bowling balls this time, so it should be fine.”

T’Lyn was unable to imagine such an activity being encouraged on the Sh’Vhal. She was somewhat uncertain why it was being encouraged at all. “And this is a – standard recreational practice for Starfleet ships?”

“Sure,” Mariner said.

At the same time, Lieutenant Boimler said, “No, absolutely not.”

Lieutenant Tendi said, “All Starfleet ships have some type of recreational facilities, but different crews have different styles. Some ships have competitive basketball leagues, or orchestras, or poker tournaments. D’Erika encourages everyone to put in their own suggestions for crew activities, so the Adashake has a lot of variety.”

Mariner nodded. “Yeah, we have a lot of events – not just bowling. There’s talent shows, pie eating contests, karaoke, fight night… maybe don’t tell anyone about that one.”

“Oh my gosh I loved competitive crafting,” Lieutenant Tendi said. “Did you know L’Kar and K’Lar can knit with each of them holding one of the needles?”

“And the robot cars!” Lieutenant Rutherford added. “D’Vana made a little sweater for the Chompinator.”

“It was adorable,” Mariner said. “And only one of the cars turned out to have a computer core that tried to take over the ship that time.”

“Really? What about the Ceti Peeler?”

“Nah, Ceti didn’t want to take over the ship or subjugate humanity; they just wanted to pursue their dreams of being an artist. Totally different.”

T’Lyn wondered yet again at the intricacies of Starfleet socialization standards. None of those sounded like productive or enjoyable uses of one’s time. With the possible exception of the fight night, which apparently was intended to remain secret. “And all of these activities have a benefit for training?”

“Eh,” Mariner waved her hand. “They all have an exemption report that explains while they have a value for crew cohesion and morale, at least.”

“It’s mostly a way to blow off steam,” Lieutenant Boimler said.

Mariner added, “And a way for Captain Tendi to flirt with her husband. Can’t forget that.”

T’Lyn frowned. “I did not know that Captain Tendi was married. Her husband enjoys these events?” While unprofessional, that rationale was at least logical. But Lieutenant Rutherford shook his head.

“Oh, no, he hates them. I’ve never seen him at a social event. He’s basically the ship cryptid – I was here for months before I even caught a glimpse of him.”

“He’s not a cryptid, he’s just very chill,” Lieutenant Tendi insisted. “I think it’s sweet!”

T’Lyn had been waiting for them to reach the portion of the explanation that made sense, and was beginning to think it was unlikely to arrive at all. “I do not understand,” she said.

“He likes the quiet, but it can be hard to find that on a spaceship that operates at all hours. When there’s an event like this, people who want to socialize can come here, and that leaves all the rest of the ship emptier for the people who prefer something calmer.”

She looked around the room. It was loud, and crowded with more people than she’d previously seen on the ship. She closed her eyes briefly and took a breath. The situation was no better when she opened them again.

“I believe I may be one of the latter,” she said.

Mariner nodded. “Yeah, we thought that might be the case.”

T’Lyn realized that she was standing in an area of calm, with the others forming a sort of wall between her and the rest of the room.

“Seriously, you don’t need to stay. Go hang out with your plants, or talk with T’Pring, or take a nap, or whatever.”

Perhaps her hesitation showed somehow, because Mariner added, “It’s not a test. It’s awesome that you came to check it out, but team buddies is just for missions. You’re stuck with us no matter what, bowling or no bowling.”

“The garden is the nicest public place that’s probably empty right now,” Lieutenant Tendi said. “Or help yourself to any of our quarters. We’re trying to figure out some kind of ‘do not disturb’ signal, but you can always just lock the door. We’ll split up and take the other rooms.”

“Just make sure you say goodnight to Rocky,” Lieutenant Boimler reminded her.

The quiet of the corridor was almost startling after the noise of the bowling event. It was only after she was several steps away that she realized she was still holding the padd Mariner had given her. It was unlocked.

She considered her options – going back into the crowd was not ideal. It would also not be ideal to leave with the padd if Mariner was going to need it.

After a brief consideration, she sent a message to Lieutenant Boimler. Please inform Mariner that I have her padd and request next steps.

She immediately got a message back. Hey this is Mariner, the padd is yours for the night! The next chapter of Trapped in the Temporal Mist just came out and I thought you’d want to find out how the cliffhanger got resolved.

Another message quickly followed it. How come Mariner gets to be Mariner and the rest of us are still getting rank-named? This is Boimler. Please don’t bring the padd back; Mariner wants an excuse to avoid any calls from her mom.

It is logical to use a professional form of address unless otherwise requested, she wrote back.

This is D’Vana! We all request it!!!

She carefully typed out, I will take that into consideration.


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

She snuck out of the bowling tournament when the first Cerritos crew members started arriving. Well, not the first ones; that was a bunch of ensigns who were clearly sneaking out, and she wasn’t going to be the one to draw attention to them. When Shaxs showed up, she knew the post-mission briefings must have finally finished. Which meant other bridge crew members wouldn’t be far behind.

“We’ll cover for you,” D’Vana told her. “Here, take Boimler’s padd.”

“What? Why mine?” Boimler didn’t quite reach out to take the padd back, but he did look longingly at it.

“Because yours is the one T’Lyn has been messaging, and you told us you wanted to relax and not do any work tonight.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s true.”

Mariner waved the padd at them. “Thanks – and don’t worry about it if she tracks me down; it’s bound to happen at some point. I just don’t want to make it too easy.”

She started with the simple stuff – moving through restricted areas of the ship and encouraging the ship’s computer to give vague answers about her location to anyone who asked. Then she spent a while using the Jeffries tubes to quickly switch decks, always as far from a turbolift as possible.

Finally, she headed for the observation deck – the most obvious possible destination, and one that her mom had almost certainly checked first, so it would take a while for her to circle back. Then she settled in to wait.

“Beckett Mariner!”

She checked the time. It had taken almost an hour for her luck to run out – longer than she expected, and it had given her plenty of time to do some extra proofreading on her report.

“Hey Mom.”

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you; didn’t you see my messages?”

“Messages?” She held up the padd. “This is Boimler’s, sorry. We’re stress-testing it for him.”

Her mother took a step closer, and turned to look out at the star field. The observation deck was a fairly popular spot, even during ship-wide events – it was open enough to feel like you were around other people, and large enough that it wasn’t awkward for those people to avoid talking with each other.

Conveniently, that also made it a great place to have a conversation you wanted witnesses for, but not additional participants. Her mother said, “You know, that Lieutenant Boimler has surprisingly good eye-hand coordination. I was impressed.”

Mariner stared. Of all the opening sentences she might have expected, that wasn’t any of them. “What? What are you talking about?”

Her mother waved a hand between them. “I’m showing interest in your friends; it’s a technique for building rapport. My therapist suggested it.”

Mariner narrowed her eyes. “Ooookay? That’s new.”

“Ransom swears by it, if you can believe it. Apparently he’s trying a new holistic fitness routine, and now he’s very intent on improving everyone’s mental and emotional health. We’ve been keeping Starfleet Support Services very busy.”

Not the weirdest thing Ransom had ever convinced the crew to go along with, but maybe top five, honestly. “I cannot imagine it, no.” She quickly tried to add something positive. “But I conceptually support the idea and I wish you all a very stellar journey to inner peace.”

Damn – that hadn’t come out quite as supportive as she’d intended. Her mother didn’t sigh, but it looked like she wanted to. “Do you take anything seriously?”

Mariner deliberately loosened her grip on the padd. “Sure. Lots of things. I just don’t like talking about them.”

“I’m sorry,” her mother said. “My question came out wrong. I read your reports, and can see how much you’re doing. I just worry about you.”

“Because I’ve caused so much trouble before?”

“Because I care about you. And I know you won’t talk to me if you ever have any problems.”

It was one of the things they’d argued about the most, during the war. Her parents didn’t understand why she hadn’t reached out to them when things had been bad, and Mariner didn’t understand why they thought that would have been better. If the system only worked when one of your parents was an admiral, it wasn’t working.

“I would talk to someone.” She would. She had.

Her mother looked at her, and then back out at the stars. “Did we pressure you to join Starfleet?”

“Yes,” she answered bluntly. “But I still made the choice on my own, and I don’t regret it.”

“I just don’t want you to be stuck following Starfleet rules and regulations if you don’t believe in the organization itself.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely not what’s happening,” Mariner said. Probably best not to focus too much on the ‘following rules and regulations’ part, though. They were only a few conversational turns away from the ‘but what about your potential’ tangent, and she’d prefer to avoid that one.

Instead, she said, “Look, I believe in people. Some people. Starfleet isn’t people; it’s an idea. And it’s a great idea. But ideas don’t sign orders or write treaties. Ideas have to be interpreted and enacted, and that’s all people.”

She didn’t want to get caught up in a philosophical argument, and she ran her fingers along the side of the padd to focus. “I’m doing what I choose to be doing. You don’t need to agree or understand, but I’d like it if you accept that it’s my choice to make.”

“I do!” Her mother hesitated, and then said, “I’m trying to. I want to.”

“Well – thanks. I appreciate it.” Mariner looked over and raised her eyebrows. “I also accept your choice, oh Starfleet Captain. Which is why I’m going to ask: don’t you have a lot of more important things you should be doing right now?”

Her mother gave her a look that was uncomfortably close to her own sarcastic eye roll. It was like they were related or something.

“I don’t have any other children to check up on, so, no. Personally, I think Starfleet is hoping the original Enterprise crew will show up again; the social scientists gave us a whole list of questions they wanted us to ask.”

Mariner shook her head. “Yeah, I think they’re out of luck unless they want to go camp out in the nebula and wait for the space monsters to show up again.”

“They may do just that. No one has been able to identify the creatures you encountered. It may be a brand new life form.”

She looked up. “Oh yeah? I guess that is pretty cool.”

Her mother smiled. “Yeah, it is.”

The moment was interrupted by someone calling their names. A familiar someone.

“Mariner! Carol!”

D’Vana’s parents arrived in a rush of fluttering robes. Shona and B’Rt placed themselves at the center of the balcony, like they were preparing to address a crowd.

“Warrior Queen Shona,” her mother said, blandly polite. “What a surprise.”

Queen Shona waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, hush, you know that’s purely a courtesy title these days. Just Shona is fine among friends.”

“Mm-hmm.” Her mother didn’t sound convinced, which was probably smart. “What brings you to the Adashake?”

“Just a little family visit to our daughters and son-in-law, of course. It’s so important to keep the lines of communication open, don’t you think?” Queen Shona took B’Rt’s hand, and he nodded encouragingly.

Her mother raised her eyebrows. “And it’s just a coincidence that Vulcan Elder T’Pring happens to be on board?”

Queen Shona widened her eyes dramatically. “Is she? If that’s the case, House Tendi would of course love an introduction to such a venerable representative of the Federation.” She waved her free hand again. “Since you’re already representing Starfleet, I’d be willing to take a smaller role, of course, focusing on my home system. I wouldn’t want to step on any toes.”

“Of course.” Mariner could tell her mother was trying to look serious and respectful, and not like they were all completely aware that Queen Shona had a passionate love of history and would never pass up a chance to meet someone who had lived through so much of it. “That’s very considerate of you.”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

When she joined the others for the pre-shift meal, Mariner was the center of attention, and she did not look pleased.

“Are you still having trouble sleeping?” D’vana Tendi asked.

Mariner shrugged. “I guess? I was hoping it was just a temporary thing – pre-mission stress, post-mission stress, I don’t know; they’re always warning about some kind of stress.”

“Are you sure it’s not intra-dimensional aliens experimenting on you?” Boimler asked. “Ooh, or extra-dimensional aliens?”

“I scanned all our quarters for chronitons and tachyons, but there was nothing unusual,” Rutherford said.

T’Lyn set her tray down. “I believe your rock is alive.”

“What?”

“Rocky?”

D’Vana Tendi turned to Boimler. “Ha!” She shook her finger at him. “I told you Rocky wasn’t just a rock.”

Rutherford frowned. “What does that have to do with Mariner slowly turning into a sleep-deprived zombie?”

“Hey!”

T’Lyn addressed the most pertinent question. “During my meditation, I noticed a low-level telepathic signal coming from inside the containment device. The most logical explanation is that a living being is emitting the signal.”

Mariner groaned, and pushed her tray to the side so she could drop her head onto the table. “Please do not say you attempted to communicate with the rock.”

“I did not.” She had considered it. However, given that the door was locked, and no one was expecting to encounter her before the start of the next shift, the risk of something going wrong had seemed unacceptably high.

Also, the Cthia was still nearby, and she would prefer not to have to explain such a decision to T’Pring.

Mariner sat up. “What, really?”


T’Lyn was uncertain why confirmation was required. “It was the logical choice to wait for an opportunity to do so in a supervised manner.”

Mariner nodded. “Yeah, I’m just not used to logic winning out in decision-making. Captain Tendi is going to love you.”

Boimler said, “What does that mean, though? Is the rock itself alive? Is there something alive inside the rock? Is the rock transmitting a signal that’s coming from somewhere else?”

“Any of those options are possible. There is a limit to what I could discern without a deeper connection.” T’Lyn looked at Rutherford. “To answer your question, disruptions to the sleep cycle are a common side effect of telepathic interference.”

“The rock is keeping me awake?” Mariner said. Then she shook her head. “It’s just me, though. If it was telepathically disrupting stuff, wouldn’t it be impacting all of us?”

T’Lyn had wondered the same thing, and spent several hours researching the situation. It was helpful that Vulcans required less sleep than either Humans or Orions. “The range is limited, possibly not extending beyond your quarters, and Orions have a natural resistance to telepathic projections.”

She added, “However, not all of the available data corroborates the theory. It is unusual that Boimler was not impacted, given that he spends a significant amount of time in close proximity.”

Everyone at the table shifted uncomfortably, and she reviewed her statements. She could not identify any aspect of her words that would cause discomfort. She had the calculations on Boimler’s padd, but had left it in the room. Perhaps she should have brought it with her.

Mariner said, “Ha, yes, that’s our Boimler, so unusual.”

T’Lyn looked between her and the others. “I do not understand.”

Boimler leaned forward and waved his hands. “It’s fine. It’s just not something we usually talk about. I’m sort of genetically modified. I mean, not on purpose, or anything, but basically, yeah.”

She tried and failed to make sense of the mix of contradictory words involved in that statement. Regardless of wording, genetic modification was strongly discouraged within the Federation. “Your genetic modifications are – accidental? That seems counter to the usual goal of such modifications.”

Boimler shrugged. “I wouldn’t exactly say ‘accidental.’ More like – oh, I don’t know. Sometimes your family tree has a few unexpected branches? Genetic traits can be unpredictable. Maybe a few generations go by and something pops up that no one expected.”

“Human genetics are super weird,” D’Vana Tendi confirmed. “I thought Orion inherited genetic traits were complicated, but they’re nothing compared to whatever Humans have going on. Wow.”

“You are being deliberately vague,” T’Lyn observed. “If there is something you would prefer not to share, you could simply say so.”

“It’s not that, exactly,” Boimler said.

Mariner nodded. “Yeah, in the same way that it’s not exactly a secret.”

“We don’t really know,” Rutherford offered. “Because it’s better not to look like we’re too interested in finding out what might be weird.”

T’Lyn was starting to understand the shape of what they were all talking around. “Without confirmation of any particular genetic change, there is no evidence that a characteristic or ability is not coincidental. Your strategy is – plausible deniability?”

“Isn’t it great?” D’Vana Tendi clasped her hands together. “We just make sure we don’t know anything, so that if anything happens, we can’t know anything, and anyone who might be paying attention to who’s trying to know things knows that we definitely aren’t!”

Mariner reached out and picked up D’Vana Tendi’s cup, sniffing it carefully. “How many of these have you had today?” she asked.

D’Vana Tendi took the cup back and stared at it intently. “What day is it?” she said finally.

“Probably too many, then,” Mariner said. “T’Lyn, are you sure the rock can’t affect Orions?”

T’Lyn considered the most accurate response. “Information regarding such impacts is not widely shared. I cannot be certain.”

“Our parents are here!” D’Vana Tendi exclaimed. “We’ve been –” She waved her hands in place of actual words. “And I haven’t been back to our room in –” She counted off on her fingers, then seemed to give up, and shrugged. “So long.”

“It’s not Rocky,” Rutherford translated. “Just Orion family stuff.”

D’Vana Tendi dropped her head onto Rutherford’s shoulder. “There’s going to be a baby!” she exclaimed. “I’m going to be an aunt!” She pointed around the table without looking. “It’s still a secret, so don’t tell anyone!”

“Aw, that’s great! Congratulations!” Rutherford said.

“You’re going to be the best, most kick-ass aunt ever,” Mariner agreed.

D’Vana Tendi’s eyes went wide. “Oooh, what if the baby’s genetically modified?”

Mariner nudged the cup towards Rutherford, who moved it out of D’Vana Tendi’s reach. “That doesn’t seem super likely, but if they were, we all have practice already, right? You’d be fine.”

“That’s right! Thanks Boimler,” D’Vana Tendi said.

In the noisy exchange of questions and congratulations that followed, T’Lyn caught Boimler’s eyes. “I will not share this information without your permission.” After a pause, she added, “I am surprised that you are all so willing to forgo knowledge in this situation.”

Boimler shrugged. “There are plenty of mysteries out there way more interesting than my genetics. I try not to spread it around anyway, since so many genetically augmented Humans try to start wars, or rule over humanity, or whatever.”

Mariner had been paying more attention to them than T’Lyn had realized. “Yeah, and who has the time for that?” she said. “Way too much work.”

“Especially when we’ve got a rock to communicate with!” D’Vana Tendi and Rutherford exchanged a high five.

Mariner said, “T’Lyn, you said you could learn more, if you were able to – what, make a deeper connection?”

“It is not a guarantee,” she cautioned. “But it is possible, yes.”

“Do you want to?” Boimler asked

T’Pring nodded. “I would like to learn more.”

“Do you think T’Pring would help? Or someone else from her ship?

She hoped the answer was yes – assisting others in increasing their knowledge was a logical use of resources. But if the answer was no, she had a few other ideas to try. “I will ask.”


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

“Captain, we’re being hailed. It’s Queen Paolana, on the Spirit of Hysperia.”

Captain Tendi groaned. “How does she keep finding us? Call Commander Billups; ask him to come to the Bridge as soon as possible. Tell him his mother has another new starship she’s showing off.”

She stood up and paced towards the viewscreen, gesturing for the hail to be answered. “Queen Paolana,” she said, and her smile looked more like a baring of teeth. “What a surprise.”

“Captain Tendi.”

They stared at each other in silence until Billups stepped out of the turbolift. He gave the viewscreen a small wave. “Hello, Mother.”

Queen Paolana clasped her hands to her chest. ”My son! You’re very hard to find these days, did you know that? What in the galaxy could you possibly be intercepting out here?”

Billups shook his head. “It’s an Interceptor-class ship, Mother; that doesn’t mean every mission is intercepting something. It’s one of the scout-type classes. We’re primarily a science vessel!”

Billups was an incredible engineer and a terrible liar; he looked guilty as soon as the words left his mouth. “Sometimes we do other things,” he added quickly.

“I’m shocked,” Queen Paolana answered dryly, momentarily dropping her dramatic persona.

“Nothing bad!” Billups insisted, while Captain Tendi waved at him to stop talking.

“Queen Paolana, what are you doing here?” she asked. Mariner was reminded of her mother questioning Queen Shona on the observation deck. Was it weird to have so much royalty visiting suddenly?

“I heard the future king of our people was in danger, so of course I came to make certain everything was all right! Really, I can’t believe the things they have you doing. This sort of thing never happens on Hysperia.”

Captain Tendi looked about two seconds from instigating a diplomatic incident. She said, “No, Hysperia has a very different set of dangers.”

”What is that supposed to mean? No, never mind that. The point is, the dangers of Hysperia and the dangers of Starfleet sometimes converge. In short, I heard a rumor that you have come into possession of a dragon.”

Billups looked confused. He glanced around the Bridge, like there might be a dragon somewhere and he just hadn’t noticed it. “Me? A dragon? No, I don’t think so.”

Queen Paolana shook her head. “No, not you, specifically. You, in general. The ship. Captain Tendi.” She said ‘Captain Tendi’ like Mariner might say ‘unspiced protein mash.’

Billups frowned. “Mother, please. I raised Fiddlesticks from the time he was a hatchling; I think I would recognize a dragon if there was one on the ship.”

”Not if it was still an egg. That’s what my sources tell me – there’s a dragon egg on the ship.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say that?” Billups frowned harder. “Wait, what sources?”

Queen Paolana ignored both questions. ”Captain Tendi, I know how much your crew enjoys collecting shiny rocks, but this is not a situation that can be managed with your usual cavalier attitude.”

Mariner froze. An egg. A dragon egg. Something that might look like a rock.

The queen put her hands on her hips and gave the impression of looking down her nose at them. “Dragons are a protected species. If there is an egg on board, I demand to see it, to ensure it has proper conditions to thrive.”

Captain Tendi said, “Queen Paolana, I can assure you —“

Mariner waved her hands frantically, trying to keep them out of sight of the screen, and the captain paused. Apparently, Mariner’s expression communicated plenty, because she turned back to Queen Paolana with a bland smile.

“--that I will look into these rumors and get back to you,” Captain Tendi finished gracefully.

As soon as the call ended, she said, “Mariner, what is going on? Everyone knows the ‘no dragon eggs on spaceships’ rule. There can’t be any on board.”

Mariner nodded. “Yes, that is totally true, and we are all very aware of that rule.” She held up her hands. “Here’s the thing, though. Remember Rocky? Remember how I – jokingly! – said I hoped it was going to hatch into a dragon?”

Captain Tendi looked skeptical. “That rock you and Boimler are babysitting? That’s not a dragon egg.”

“We scanned it for everything, I know. But what if it is, though? Because T’Lyn says she thinks it’s alive, and our scans definitely didn’t turn that up either.”

“Why does T’Lyn think the rock is alive?” Captain Tendi asked.

“Apparently the rock is emitting low-level telepathic signals?” Mariner offered. “Which could mean it’s alive. And also possibly have been keeping me from getting any decent sleep for – a while.”

“Did you get checked out by Sickbay to make sure you’re not being experimented on at night by extra-dimensional aliens?” Captain Tendi said.

Maybe Boimler’s paranoia was catching. “Yes,” Mariner said, rolling her eyes. “No aliens have been involved at all, except for Rocky.”

Captain Tendi put her hands on her hips. “Great. Next question: why am I only hearing about this now?”

“Rocky’s been here for months; I didn’t think it was an emergency! I didn’t put together the ‘possible dragon egg’ thing until just now. T’Lyn thinks she can learn more; she’s asking T’Pring if she can supervise since it’s some kind of Vulcan telepathy thing.”

She was aware that she was basically using the ‘we told a different responsible adult’ excuse. Which wasn’t great, but Captain Tendi nodded. “Okay. We can work with that. You’re dismissed.”

Mariner blinked. “Captain?”

“You need to go move Rocky to a bigger space. And ask T’Lyn if she’s willing to do her thing with an audience, because we’re about to have one. If this is going to be a spectacle, we’re going to make it a good one.”


T’Lyn, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

“I do not care for spectacles.” T’Lyn looked around the room with unease. She had planned to investigate the rock somewhere quiet and secluded, ideally with the assistance of another Vulcan. Not – this.

T’Pring had agreed to participate alongside T’Lyn, to ensure that the connection proceeded safely. Two people had been reasonable.

Two other members of the Cthia crew were in the process of being certified to work with le-matyas, and requested to join them. As le-matyas were mildly telepathic, their work would require a similar ability to interpret communication. Their inclusion was also reasonable.

Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford, and D’Vana Tendi did not request to participate, but all seemed to expect that they would be involved. Boimler claimed they were “Rocky’s temporary guardians,” while Mariner simply stated that they were T’Lyn’s teammates, and therefore her endeavors were also their endeavors. Their inclusion was – perhaps not entirely reasonable, but she found that she preferred it.

And then Queen Paolana of Hysperia had arrived with six attendants, which did not seem reasonable in any way. Captain Tendi had accompanied them, along with Queen Shona, both of their husbands, and an assortment of crewmembers T’Lyn had yet to be introduced to.

“I do not understand why all these people must be present.”

T’Pring’s expression seemed amused. “I also generally prefer to avoid spectacles. But the — ‘Rocky’ feels quite pleased with this arrangement. Can you sense it?”

It was easier to understand the telepathic noise now that they’d removed Rocky from the containment unit. It wasn’t exactly communication; it was more like a sensation of awareness, and an ever-shifting array of feelings – very much like one would expect from an infant, or a very young child.

“Yes,” T’Lyn admitted. “It may indeed be a dragon egg. Or at least an egg of some kind.”

“Not one that Queen Paolana or the other inhabitants of Hysperia recognize.” T’Pring folded her hands in front of her. “Has Captain Tendi made a decision regarding her offer to take custody of the egg?”

“The crew has attempted to contact the planet where they received the egg, as they were supposed to return it after a certain period of time. I do not believe they have received an answer at this point.”

She looked towards the corner of the room where Queen Paolana was arguing with Captain Tendi, both of them gesturing dramatically towards the egg. “I predict Captain Tendi will not agree to Queen Paolana’s request.”

“Or those of Queen Shona?” The captain’s parents requested that they be allowed to return the egg to the planet it came from immediately, or to stay on board to guard it until the Adashake returned it.

“Definitely not,” T’lyn answered. Captain Tendi had been quite clear. She hesitated, and then asked the question that had been on her mind ever since the room began filling up. “If it is an egg, there may be no benefit to attempting a deeper telepathic connection. The potential for harm is less than five percent, but still exists.”

T’Pring raised one eyebrow. “Asking questions is the root of learning.”

T’Lyn took a calming breath. “Would it not be better to avoid this attempt?”

“Yes,” T’Pring said simply. “I agree.”

“Then why are we allowing everyone to believe that we will make one?”

“Captain Tendi has requested that we provide information in a public setting. We have the ability to do so without interfering with the egg.” T’Pring’s voice was calm. “I do not see a conflict in these goals.”

The conflict was that the room was full of people who expected them to do something. Her thoughts must have shown in her expression, because T’Pring said, “Perhaps a short meditation would be useful.”

One of the other Vulcans pulled out a small gong and tapped it lightly. The room went silent, and a path cleared between them and the egg. The four of them knelt in meditation around the egg.

T’Lyn found herself drawn into T’Pring’s mental landscape.

Have you perceived the strategy?

No.

Consider: there is likely no one here who knows what a mental link with an egg would look like, from the outside. Who are they to say we are not doing so at this moment?

You plan to deceive them?

I plan to allow them to deceive themselves. No promises were made, and thus none are broken.

I will think on this.

It was nearly twenty minutes before they emerged from their meditation. Long enough to appear significant, but not so long as to invite boredom, T’Pring murmured.

Aloud, T’Pring said, “It is indeed an egg. It is as unaware of its species as any infant.”

There was a murmur of approval from the people surrounding them, as if T’Pring had said something insightful, and not a common sense observation that nearly anyone could have made. T’Lyn felt both indignant and relieved that the ploy had been so successful.

Captain Tendi pulled them aside as the audience broke into smaller groups and conversations started up around the room. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

T’Pring said, “The egg is – satisfied. It may hatch early.”

T’Lyn added, “I believe the direction to remain in close proximity to the egg is a method to encourage growth. The creature is – learning, in a very basic way.”

“Is it all right?” D’Vana Tendi joined the conversation. “It’s the only egg here; is it lonely?”

“Curious, perhaps,” T’Pring said. “Not lonely. How could it be?” She looked pointedly around the room.

Captain Tendi frowned. “Are you saying the egg is responsible for everyone showing up here all at once?”

D’Vana Tendi shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. I thought the range of the egg’s telepathic influence was small – how could it have called to anyone so far away?”

T’Pring said, “I am not certain that it did. There was another being on board at that point, was there not?”

You think the baby space monster did it? It just – figured out the egg wanted some more company, and decided to fix it?”

T’Pring inclined her head. “There are an infinite number of possible explanations. The number of likely explanations is considerably smaller.”

She gestured towards the egg. “An infant creature with unknown abilities was present on this ship at the same time an unidentified egg was sending a low-level telepathic request for companionship. An assortment of companions chose this moment to visit the area.” T’Pring paused, and then added, “Probability suggests that these things are not unrelated.”

“Probability suggests they most certainly could be,” Captain Tendi countered. Then she shrugged. “That’ll work for the reports, though. Thank you.”

It was much later when T’Lyn found herself in a quiet corner, and T’Pring approached her again. “The people drawn to see the egg – have you determined the connection between them?”

“They all have a family connection to the crew,” T’Lyn said. “Presuming a flexible interpretation of the concept of family.”

“Yes. I will be most interested to meet whatever – whoever – hatches from that egg.”

“Will you stay?”

T’Pring said, “I have other ties calling me back to Vulcan. I trust you will keep me informed. Unless you would prefer to accompany me.”

“I am uncertain whether my preference aligns with the decision dictated by logic,” T’Lyn told her.

T’Pring seemed unconcerned by her confession. “Humans have a saying: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have found that logic is much the same.”


Beckett Mariner, USS Adashake, Starfleet Interceptor Class

She found T’Lyn in the garden, surrounded by her plants. “I heard the Cthia is leaving today.”

“That is correct.”

“And you’re still here.” T’Lyn was smoothing her hand over the leaves of one of the plants. If she was still here, and the plants were still here, that was a good sign, right?

“That is correct,” T’Lyn said again.

“Soooo, that means you're not leaving, right? We’re family now; no take-backs. You'd miss me if you left."

T’Lyn finally looked at her. "I could name one of my plants after you."

Mariner narrowed her eyes. "All of your plants already have names, though."

T’Lyn nodded thoughtfully. "Yes. I would need to wait until one of them propagated. It would likely be easier to simply stay."

"Was that a joke? That was definitely a joke."

“It was,” T’Lyn agreed. “I am not leaving. Captain Tendi has agreed to allow me to join the crew on a temporary basis, while the Academy negotiates the terms of my time here with Starfleet HQ.”

It felt easy to say, “I’m glad.” It was harder to say, “I would have missed you, if you decided to leave,” but she got those words out too.

“I would have missed you as well,” T’Lyn said gracefully. “I am pleased to be staying.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” Mariner blew out a breath.

T’Lyn smiled at her – it was a very small smile, but it was definitely there, and Mariner forced herself to take another breath. This was fine. She would just keep talking. Surely she wouldn’t say anything too embarrassing.

“Wow, that conversation took a lot less time than I expected. I was so nervous about it, and I had all these arguments planned out to convince you, and you just – you’re already convinced. Why? I mean, that’s great, but also, why? It couldn’t have been the bowling.”

“It was not the bowling,” T’Lyn said.

“I hope it wasn’t the dragon egg either, because that was actually a first for us. Most of the rocks we get are just rocks. I honestly thought Boimler was probably right about Rocky.”

“It was not the dragon egg.” T’Lyn looked at her intently. “Is it so difficult to believe that I would want to spend time in your company?”

Mariner stuck her hands in her pockets. “What? No, of course not. I’m a delight.” She stared at the plants to avoid making eye contact. “There’s one less plant than before, right?”

“Yes. I gifted the plant T’Pring to their namesake.” With a final pat to one of the remaining plants, T’Lyn stood up. “Were you looking for me with a particular purpose in mind?”

“Well, honestly it was mostly to make sure you were still here.” Mariner shrugged. “Not that I thought you would leave without saying goodbye, but you could have been in a hurry. T’Pring kind of hightailed it out of here during all the Q&A yesterday.”

“I would not leave without saying goodbye,” T’Lyn said.

Mariner gave another sigh of relief, and said, “Which brings us to the second reason! Consider this your official invitation to go check out the lab. It’s where we all work on whatever projects we’re not supposed to keep in our quarters. Which is most of them.”

She pointed at T’Lyn. “You might be thinking ‘how could that be; this is the kind of ship where people accidentally keep a dragon egg in their quarters,’ but Captain Tendi is actually very safety conscious. When D’Vana created a flying dog that could shoot lasers from its eyes – that was a hundred percent done in the lab. When Rutherford coded an AI that turned out to sort of be evil – also in the lab!”

She paused. ‘You know, now that I’m saying it out loud, I’m not sure those examples really support my argument.”

T’Lyn’s eyebrow was up. “They are intriguing nonetheless. I accept your invitation.”

They fell into step next to each other as they left the garden. “You’re going to love it,” Mariner said. “Now that we think the dragon might hatch before the six months are up, Billups is helping Boimler design some dragon-proofing for the habitat they’re planning. Just in case.”

“A logical precaution,” T’Lyn agreed.

“Oh! And Rutherford and D’Vana are going to try to create the temporal mist – you know, from the novel.”

“Temporal mist is not a real phenomenon.” T’Lyn looked skeptical, and Mariner smiled.

“Well, you say that now. But you never know until you try, right?”