Captain Alexandra Lee
USS Pegasus

The Galaxy Class USS Brittain pounded the Pegasus with its full arsenal of weapons. The Pegasus shook hard from the onslaught as it returned fire as the last of the Pegasus' torpedoes slammed into the Brittain's shields. Around them, the space was afire with weapons fire and explosions--each shot stabbing into the already battered ships and crews. Aboard the Pegasus, this was no different, it was times like these that they trained constantly for--to ignore the pains in their bodies, their sore and tired muscles, to help the man or woman next to you to accomplish the task assigned to them--all knowing that their commanding officer would be there with them through it all--and for that, they would die for without hesitation.

"Shields down to ten percent!" T'ral called out as sparks rained over the bridge from overloaded consoles.

"All available power to shields!" Alex ordered. "Concentrate fire on the secondary hull!"

The Pegasus lashed out with all available phasers, striking the secondary hull of the Brittain several times and ripping into its hull. The Pegasus rocked hard again as more torpedoes and phasers slammed into it, punching through its shields and into its ablative armor.

"Shields are down!"T'ral managed to report before a low humm and swirls of blue lights were heard and seen on the bridge.

The bridge of the Pegasus was soon swarmed with a fireteam of Marines from the Brittain.

"Intruder alert!" Alex called as she immediately stood, drawing her phaser and firing in one swift motion, taking down a Marine. Behind her, T'ral did the same, firing two shots, taking out two more Marines in the process. Alex lunged to intercept a Marine moving after Ensign Cathers at the Helm. Her flying tackle knocked the Marine off balance as she delivered a hard right cross to the Marine's face. She suddenly felt a painful burning sensation to her side and immediately moved to her entire body as another phaser blast caught Alex in the back. She fell to the deck, rolling onto her uninjured side, biting her lip to keep from screaming out in pain from her wounds.

"Captain!" T'ral called, as he launched himself over the tactical console and firing in mid-air, catching two more Marines, dead in the chest. As he landed, his feet slammed into the chest of another Marine, knocking him to the deck as the XO finished the Marine off with a phaser shot and fire three more times, taking the rest of the intruders out.

T'ral rushed over to Alex and knelt down next to her. "Captain, are you alright?"

"Despite the immense pain she was in, she forced her body up from the deck. ""Evasive...maneuvers...Mister....Cathers. T'ral...get to tactical...keep...firing...everything...we...have," she managed to speak as she managed to stand to her feet on wobbly and weak legs.

T'ral simply nodded and rushed back to his post. The XO, Commander Moonblood slapped his commbadge. "Medical team to the bridge immediately!"

The Pegasus shook again as sparks rang out from another console overloading. As Moonblood helped Alex back to the command chair. Alex felt her body collapse into the chair. 'Come on, Alex...your crew...needs you,' she thought to herself as she cleared her throat and fought back the tears from the pain. Her hands grasped the armrests tightly as she gritted her teeth, forcing herself to sit up in the chair. She felt herself struggling more to breathe seemingly with every breath. "Close...distance...full weapons...." she managed to say.

The Pegasus instantly closed distance with the Galaxy Class vessel as multiple phasers struck the secondary hull, punching a hole through the hull and striking the warp core, causing the core to breach as a phaser tore through the casing and containment field of the warp core. Those in Engineering were instantly vaporized while others in nearby sections were engulfed in hot plasma, melting their sking from their very bones, if only for a fraction a second, before their bodies were literally ripped apart and the core exploded, engulfing the Brittain in a massive fireball.

"The remaining Hawk Forces are in retreat and the Shiva has been destroyed, captain!" T'ral announced victoriously. Alex managed to smile as the medical team rushed onto the bridge--the pain seemed to be fading. "Good...job...I'm proud...of you all," her voice was cracking before coughing and with each cough, her pain intensified as blood speckled her lips. "Set..standard...orbit...Mister...Cathers...."

"Aye, captain," the helmsman replied. Cathers was torn between his duty and his concern for his captain. She had trusted him right out of the Academy. He had always done his best to do a good job for her--to his best every day. He also felt the cloud of guilt come over him--she had saved his life. It should have been him who should have been injured or killed, not the captain. The crew needed their captain.

"Captain! Damn, we have to get her to sickbay now!" the CMO, Doctor Bernelli stated. We have to risk moving her by transport. Its too risky to do so by stretcher. Yet, Bernelli knew the odds of the captain surviving even the transport.

"No...she managed to raise a hand. "Its...too...late...." weakly, Alex turned her head to look at her XO as she accepted her fate--she had saved her crew and to her..that was all that mattered. "Commander....the ship...is...yours. Take...care....of...her. Stand by...the Federation's....principles...alwayssss....... her voice died off and as darkness encompassed her, she saw a light and in that light was a small boy with brown hair and green eyes, holding his arms out. "Jonathan......."

Alex's head went limp as her eyes closed. Dr. Bernelli looked at the readings...or lack of on his medical tricorder. He closed the tricorder and bowed his head.

Cathers had turned to see his mentor and first commanding officer...the person who had made him feel at home on the ship slip away from life's grasp. He blinked several times, fighting back tears.

Commander Moonblood placed his hand on top of Alex's, whose was resting on the armrest. "I will, captain. I promise you."

******
A few hours later, the torpedo room were lined with officers and NCOs over a black torpedo casing draped in an old Federation flag in the forward torpedo launch control room. The casing, containing Alex's body was laid on the ejection rails by the honor guard.

Commander Moonblood, T'ral, Doctor Bernelli, and Cathers stood at the head of the casing. Moonblood looked at the sad faces of each person present. Each person had cared deeply for their captain...their mentor, their guide. Someone who could always be reashed and talked to if they had a problem. Of them all, Captain Alex Lee was the best of them as she had touched each and every person that served aboad the Pegasus. Moonblood's solemn voice broke as he recited the speech, "oh God, we pray thee that the memory of our comrade, fallen in battle, be ever sacred in our hearts, ... and that the sacrifice which they have offered for our cause may be acceptable in thy sight...and may this sailor find repose with the stars in which she gave her life that we might live. Into thy hands, oh Lord, we commend the soul of thy servant departed, now called unto eternal rest, and we commit his body to the deep."

A boatswain mate called the deck to attention as he blew his whistel and Moonblood commanded. "Attention! Honor guard, post!" Acoss the
Pegasus, every officer and NOC stopped what they were doing and came to attention, even those unable to attend the ceremony, sttod at attention in front of the monitor showing the ceremony--they owed it to Captain Lee. Moonblood looked at the casing as the flag was removed and folded by the honorguard. The casing then began to traverse the magnetic rails slowly as the sound of Raps were played of the Pegasus' intercom. "May your journey be one of peace, captain," Moonblood said softly as the watched the casing enter the launcher and the pressure door sealed shut. The casing was soon launched, and sped away from the Pegasus.

"Dismissed," Moonblood said simply as those attending slowly began to disperse and those about the Pegasus continued with their duty.

OOC- All of my posts tonight occur before the “Prime Planning” series. Specifically, this occurs just after “BFFs”.

"In a Yellow Wood"

T'Pei
John Walker

"The pivotal moments in one's life depend solely on a decision made, or not made." -Bajoran Proverb

===
T'Pei felt her head tilt forward, too heavy for her neck. A long, smooth curtain of ebony hair fell in front of her face, blocking the blank screen.

'You wanna know what I want, T'Pei?' John Walker's voice taunted.

She didn't know, or didn't want to know. One of those.

'I want her back. I want 8-ball, my 8-ball, back. If you can figure out how to do that, then call me.'

She laughed harshly into her hand. If only he knew. 'I have 8-ball right here John. She is right here. Would you like to know how she felt about you, John? How she felt about her daughter? Because I know. I could have shown you, once.'

T'Pei had never told him--about taking 8-ball's katra, about salvaging its remains in the beads. He might have wanted to meld with her, to know everything. And she could never allow that to happen.

Now, even if she had wanted to show him, it was too late. Her abilities had degraded far enough that she could no longer meld with the beads, relying only on her memories. There was no way to get 8-ball back.

===

There was no way to get 8-ball back.

John massaged his temples, then moved his fingers down the side of his face. His headache radiated down to the jawbone. He turned off the lights in his quarters.

It wasn't a migraine, really. It was just . . . pressure, coming in from all sides.

8-ball had died 11 years ago, and he still hadn't made peace with the fact. He thought maybe he could have, if she had died from some disease, or if the universe hadn't gone to hell in a handbasket shortly afterwards . . . but that wasn't what happened. 8-ball had died, the universe had collapsed, and he had to deal with it.

There was no getting any of it back.

Even with time travel . . . John snorted to himself in the darkness. Time travel, Jesus. Now there was an idea. Go back into the past, make everything all hunky dory. Throw in a few extra rainbows and you'd have yourself a happily ever after.

He couldn't have been the first person who'd thought of it. Someone out there must have been trying to find a way to take it all back. But even if John knew how, would it be worth it? Could they really fix anything? Just like taking Kaylee off this ship and abandoning Mercedes, flying to some far part of the universe, where everything was peaches and gold and caviar dreams . . . would that make anything better? War had come, and no corner of the universe was safe. Was there anything any person could do?

Wasn't Armaggedon pretty much inevitable?

===
Sinking down on the meditation mat she had abandoned in favor of John Walker, T'Pei stared at the unlit candle in front of her. She wanted to be angry at him--somehow, anger was one of the easiest emotions for her to accept--but she couldn't. The other emotions, the ones she would never accept, were too strong. Because some part of her knew he was right. She was guilty, and no amount of time would ever change that fact. She was a coward who had let her friend down out of fear.

Fear, not logic. She had known the truth and ignored it; refused to see what was happening. T’Pei had never regretted making difficult decisions when the situation demanded it, but out of many logical possibilities, her own inaction had narrowed her choices to one, all because of her denial.

'And Chris?'' a small voice mocked her. 'Will you also let him down out of fear?'

"Stop it!" T'Pei yelled, pressing her hands over her ears as she hunched over. "Just stop! Stop blaming me, stop asking for so much..." She wasn't sure who she was speaking to--John Walker, Chris, 8-ball, maybe herself. “I cannot do this anymore--whatever this is, whatever I have become. I want to be Vulcan again,” she whispered.

'Then stop whining to yourself and use some of that fucking logic you love so much to change this,' the voice said again, and this time it was 8-ball.

===
His headache had progressed to the point that John had given up hiding under his covers and instead attempted to smother himself with his own pillow.

'Yeah, Johnny. THAT's gonna work. You swallow a stupid pill this morning or something?' That was 8-ball, through and through, not that he actually heard voices in his head. 'Anymore than you have flashbacks', 8-ball reminded him sweetly. 'Right', John thought. 'I don't have those, either'.

'I'm totally sane'.

Some guy he worked with once, some smartass on the Phantom, told him that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Mercedes was insane. She perpetuated a cycle of madness and revenge, believing that every atrocity she committed would somehow pave the way to a better future. She couldn't see that every death only led to a bloodier, more desperate death, but he could, he could see that. And he did the same things anyway.

'Don't you want to be Johnny Walker again? Don't you want to be that guy---you know that guy, the low-key, funny one, the guy who DOESN'T torture people for a living?' If he closed his eyes tightly enough, John could almost see 8-ball in front of him, raising her eyebrows, pouting her lips. 'Don't you miss being my guy?'

He did.

===

It wasn’t really 8-ball. T’Pei knew that. It was not even a memory of her, or a moment from one of the dead woman’s own memories. But she knew, with as much certainty as if 8-ball was here herself, that that’s what she would have said.

Still crumpled on the mat, T'Pei let the word 'change' float around in her mind. It would be easier to ignore the 8-ball voice her mind had conjured, do nothing. She could continue on the path she had chiseled out. She could stop pushing Chris away, and perhaps he could be happiness enough for her. Perhaps then she could move past everything else.

Or perhaps not. And if she couldn't, then she would have lost her chance to change this, all because she was terrified of losing one man and the way he made her feel. She had never admitted it to anyone but Chris, and even then only indirectly, but she enjoyed it sometimes, feeling. Sometimes she felt more alive after seven minutes of giddy excitement than she had after seventy years of emotionless...existence. The other feelings, though...sadness and fear and guilt...how did humans survive with the oppressive, crushing feeling of guilt?

Letting her forehead rest on the floor, T'Pei closed her eyes. Whatever happiness she would feel with Chris, it wouldn't be enough to balance out the guilt she would feel for ignoring this chance. And choosing that, knowing the misery it would be bring her...would simply be illogical.

"Logical or illogical behavior...that remains up to me..." she murmured, repeating the words of an old woman from a time very long ago.

Slowly pushing herself to her feet, the petite woman found herself facing her own reflection, looking out from the dark screen on her desk. For the first time in ten years, the lack of emotion she saw on her face felt natural, a return to the way things were supposed to be, with decisions dictated by logic, not feelings. No matter how pleasant they could be. 'I can get her back for us John. I can change everything," she vowed silently, and as she stared at the dark, distorted image, the pieces began to fall together in her mind.

‘I can change everything’, she thought again, and realized it was true. Blinking, the Vulcan bowed her head in thought, hair once again covering her face, and considered the most sensible course of action. Certain elements would, unfortunately, be out of her control, but there was nothing to be done about that. She knew what had to happen, and she would take the necessary steps to make sure it did.

In one fluid motion, T'Pei stepped outside into the corridor and turned right. If this was going to work, then she had to move fast. There wasn't much time.

===

"There's never enough time," John said to his reflection.

He didn't like looking at his reflection. The man he looked at was a gray, tired thing, and made him sad for who he'd been and all that he had lost. His headache still pounded away, so he kept the bathroom light off. In the shadows, he was featureless . . . and somehow, still looked old.

The truth was, he could lie around all day and drive himself crazy over what he could possibly change; maybe he could find some space anamoly that would transport him back in time, keep 8-ball from ever dying. Maybe he could have grander ambitions and keep the whole universe from this damn war; maybe he could forget time travel and just take his daughter off this ship. Maybe he should lock up Mercedes and become the new captain of the Perdon, fighting the way Doves ought to fight. Maybe he should just take his phaser to his damn head.

But none of that would help. There wasn't enough time in the verse to save humanity from being damned.

He didn't know if the Garden was real. He didn't know what was myth and what was truth, but John did know that God was real and that he was one sick sonofabitch. Humans, all humanoid life in the universe, had been made to suffer since that damn snake, and anything short of killing Adam or Eve would fail to change it. Nothing could save it.

The only thing he could do was stick by the people he loved and wait, just wait, for death to eventually claim him. He had free will; he could choose the path to take, but all paths led to same place, and that was Hell.

'Jesus, you're melodramatic', 8-ball whispered in his ear. 'You can change things. Just DO something, dammit'.

But John knew that nothing ever changed, and if it did, it was never for the good.

OOC-Immediately after "In a Yellow Wood"

Rest In Peace

Lt. Cmdr. T'Pei
Dr. Oliver Hume, CMO

======
USS Hercules, Sickbay

"Doctor Hume, do you have a moment?"

Oliver jumped, almost dropping the PADD he had been reading. Absorbed in his work, he hadn't noticed T'Pei until she was already speaking.

"Ah! Ah. Hello, Commander."

"I apologize for scaring you, Doctor."

"No problem. I was just startled, that's all. Sometimes you're just way too quiet--sneaky," he joked. "You could definitely creep up behind someone and get 'em and they'd never see it coming. Anyway..." he said, realizing that his attempt at humor had utterly failed when T'Pei's only response was to narrow her eyes, "What can I do for you?"

"I have an inquiry. Based on your understanding of my medical history, is it possible for me to participate in a katric transfer and function normally afterward?"

Oliver frowned. "T'Pei, I may not have been your primary physician for very long, and I am certainly not the expert in neuroscience that Doctor Lokeni was, but as I understand it, you cannot even initiate a mind meld without causing yourself grave injury." He looked at her apologetically. "I'm sorry to be blunt, but your bondmate's katra is what caused your initial problem in the first place, and carrying that other woman's--"

"Lieutenant Hunter."

"--katra is what finally strained your emotional control to the breaking point. So no, not only can you not survive a katric transfer, I do not believe you could even form the link necessary to do one, as either the recipient or the donor."

T'Pei didn't respond for a long time, focusing intently on the corner of his desk where a small potted Cardilia sat, its vines spilling over the edge and down towards the floor. Finally, just when Oliver was about to apologize again, she abruptly returned her attention to him.

"And these?" She gestured to the strings of beads in her hair. "Am I capable of making more of these?"

"Look," Oliver sighed. "You have reached a balance, T'Pei. You can live the way you are for 20, maybe 30 years. For those years, you'll be able to take care of yourself without assistance, possibly even able to stay in Starfleet. I know that's not a long time by Vulcan standards, but by Human standards you will have a long happy life before any significant deterioration occurs. But--" he gestured emphatically at her with both hands. "If you upset that balance, if you push your mental abilities farther than they can go, you risk drastically shortening the amount of time you have. Worst case, you could lose your mind."

"You did not answer my question, Doctor."

"Fine. On your own you could not, but with a Rigelian's help, yes, you probably could. It would be dangerous, and there would absolutely be repercussions, but most likely, you would at least survive it. That said, there is no Rigelian who would help you, knowing your condition."

"I see," T'Pei responded briskly. "That is unfortunate. Thank you for your assistance, Doctor."

"Commander, what's going on?" Oliver asked as she walked towards the doorway of his office.

T'Pei paused, a calculating look crossing her face. "Preserving one's katra after death is extremely important to my people. In light of...recent events, I thought it prudent to explore my options." She stared at him intently, again narrowing her eyes as if challenging him to find fault with her response.

"Doctor, I would appreciate it if this remained between us."

"Of course it will," he said reassuringly. "But, Commander, just to check, you aren't planning on dying any time soon, are you?"

This joke didn't go over any better than the first one had. T'Pei raised an eyebrow and looked at him gravely.

"I am planning for everything, Doctor."

"Mother M"
Katherine Maivia

“Mothers and Fathers”
===============================
(Immediately After Stowaway- ISV Faith- Crew Common Room

While she'd been able to manage so far when Mother M found out she would have someone to help out around the ship, she was quite pleased. That was
fortunate because she was equally annoyed that she had not noticed a stowaway. Not as much because of the security breach aspect of it but rather
she'd forgotten to clean such a large area that she didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. She must have been losing her touch in her old age.

As they made their way into the common room Mother noticed there a couple of the Hawks were still eating their breakfast. The imposing figure of the
Gorn, Grekka, was the first to be noticed. She was munching away on a haunch of some sort of meat. The other was Aerin, the diminutive Caitian who
appeared to be just finishing. Noticing newcomers he jumped up and rushed over displaying the sort of energy that had led to his callsign, 'Peppy.

"Hiya Mom! Great Breakfast! Who's the young lady? My name is Aerin but they call me Peppy!", he said offering his hand to Kate. '

Grinning Kate shook his hand. "Hi Peppy, nice to meet you, I am Kate. I am going to be helping mother out around here." She held out a hand. "Can I pet
you, or don't you like to be touched?" The youngster asked politely.

"Careful he'sss ssshedding. And he bitesss at timesss." Grekka looked up and gave a fangy grin.

"I do not bite! And she can stroke me all she wants." Peppy replied

"Might as well just go ahead and brush him young lady. And be nice Slippy she's here to help" Mother jumped in

"you don't scare me." Kate told the gorn. "I grew up around all sorts. My mum is a marine and my dad is really tough. We are capellan!" It was said with pride. "Would you like to be brushed?" She asked Peppy.

Grekka only responded with another fangy grin and went back to her meal apparently unimpressed. Peppy on the other hand started wagging his tail happily. "Oh would you! I havne't been brushed by anyone but mother and Falco for ages and, well, they're both a bit rough. I like this girl mother, can we keep her!"

Mother let out a slight chuckle, "That's up to the boss. Right now we need to get this place cleaned up. We have a new ship and I'm trying to keep her looking that way. Kate dear, would you mind clearing the table?" She gestured to the stack of dirty plates on the dining table that seemed to outnumber those that were likely removed.

"Yes mother." Kate said then turned to Peppy. "I hope you have some time to stick around. I am going to do my duties first and clean this place but after that I would be more then happy to groom and pet you." She teenager was happy that she had been accepted so well and that she was making new friends already.

"Oh, well, I don't have anything to do for awhile! That is unless Fox shows up and we have to go to mess with the fighters or something! I look forward to it!" Peppy was just about jumping up and down with excitement at this point

"Allright Peppy, I'm glad you're so excited but I think we have lots of work for the little lady to do. However if you were to help..." Mother had always been on Peppy's case about helping out around the ship. He almost never did without alot of prodding from either her or Fox

"Oh sure! Yeah! Of course." Peppy grabbed a stack of plates and rushed off towards the kitchen.

"he is adorable." Kate grinned as she began to clear dishes herself. With working parents she had been used to doing a lot around the house from an early age, and she really didn't mind it. It beat sitting around, having nothing to do and worrying. "Peppy seems pretty young as well?" She asked mother while she worked.

"Well, see, he's actually about forty. See, he has some sort of disease that prevented him from aging physically after a certain point. In essence, he can't go through full puberty. Hence the shortness and hyperactivity." Mother responded casually.

"Awww that must be tough on him. I know how annoying it is when people treat you like a kid when you feel way older inside then you are on the outside." The girl said while wiping tables. "I am glad that he has good friends here."

"Yeah, the Hawks are a pretty tight knit bunch. And Fox is very accepting since he's an outcast of sorts. Probably why he gets along so well with Vic." Mother put down the load of dishes into the cleaning unit and reached for a mop and handed it to Kate.

"I will fit in right well as well then." Kate said softly. "My mum is going to be so angry when she hears what I have done. I doubt she is ever going to want to talk to me again." It made her sad as she loved both of her parents very much and she wanted nothing more then to bring them back together and be a happy family again.

Mother M looked Kate straight in the eye and spoke in a soft tone as well. "Dearie, I don't care what species they are, no mother worth their salt stays mad at their children for long. A day or two maybe but they always come around. If she stays mad, then I'll talk to her."

Kate gigled. "My mum is like a tiger when it comes to her kids. She is a marine, you know, all tough on the outside. Our family is pretty complcated." This was said with sadness as she didn't slack from her work for a second.

Mother's tone remained even. She knew precisely what Kate was talking about. "Alot of families are dear. Don't you worry about it. They're adults. If they want to work things out, they will. If not, don't keep blaming yourself. I was married to a Marine once, a Tellarite to boot so I know what you're talking about.

"Tell me mother. How do I go about it. My dad sides with the Hawks in this war. And two years ago he killed my half-brother Dafydd. Mum can't forgive him for that. I… I find it really difficult as well. But he is my dad and I love him as well. And I want to see him again. How do I bring them back together?"

"There's no easy answer dear. I suggest you don't worry about it. They both love you and that's what really matters. Wars...wars tend to make things difficult. Always have, probably always will."

“I will find them, both of them, and bring them back together. That is my mission and that is why I came.” She said with conviction.

"A noble cause dear. A very noble cause. But I don't want you getting disappointed if you can't...wait a sec you're Branwen London's kid aren't you?"Mother had an inkling up until then but it finally occurred to her who this girl was.

“Yeeesss.” Kate said not sure were this was going. “That is my mum

"My late husband, Thral, served with your parents when you were just a little kid. Both of them were good people if his stories were accurate and he was usually not one to exaggerate. But... ," Mother had to think for a moment about whether or not to bring something up , "...no, its not important."

“No please tell me.” Kate said. “The name does ring a bel.” Kate said. “Do you know my mum or my dad?”

Mother was still reluctant but it was time to let this out "I met them once before this war started but...what I was getting at...your mother...killed my husband."

The teenager blinked. “My mum… killed? How… why… She is so softhearted most of the time. What happened?”

"War can turn even the most softhearted folks into killers, even if they don't want to be. I don't know the details but they ended up on the opposite side of a battlefield and, well...I'd rather not go into it. Point is I don't blame her and definately don't blame you for it. There's no point in it."

Kate’s eyes were moist. “and you? You are with Victor. Did you and your husband chose different sides as well? Like my parents did?”

"I don't want to talk about it dearie. But its not going to get in between us...I promise. As to why I'm here, well, I look after the Hawks. I don't choose sides." Mother's voice was stern and clear. What had happened to her husband wasn't a topic of conversation for a time like this. Actually, she didn't even talk about it to Victor.

Kate gave her a hug. “Thank you mother. I like you and I would not like to fight with you.” The teenager felt for the other woman but had no idea what she could do to help.

OOC-Immediately follows "Rest In Peace". Occurs before "Prime Planning".

“I'll Never Tell”

Lt. Cmdr. T'Pei, USS Hercules
Technician Tleilic Is-Iadrig Ir-Zhref, Xarantine Stellar Array

T'Pei entered her quarters with the same brisk efficiency as the automatic doors that hissed shut behind her.

"Computer, open a secure line to the Xarantine Stellar Array."

There was no certainty that Tleilic would respond. A year and a half ago, he had stopped accepting transmissions, disappearing into the ethos. After two months, T'Pei had finally attempted to contact Amreitem, recognizing that if anyone in the universe knew why Tleilic had metaphorically disappeared, it would be his bondmate.

She located him easily. It's harder to hide when you're dead.

That explained Tleilic's silence. She knew he was listening, though. He was living on a sensor array, so he was always listening. And with the destruction of Earth, she thought it likely that he would finally answer. He had to. If Doctor Hume was correct, then everything relied on it.

She stared patiently at the screen for several hours, re-sending the request every few minutes. She would wait until he either answered or she could wait no longer. He had to answer.

Finally, he did; the connection opened, audio only and filled with static, but it would serve the purpose. Tleilic betrayed no annoyance, no hint that he had shunned everyone he knew for years; he just gave a simple, traditional greeting, "Look."

The Rigelian salutation wasn't, of course, literally appropriate to the current situation, but T'Pei knew the appropriate response. "I see."

"I'm not sure how long I can keep this line secure." Again, his voice showed neither warmth nor irritation; he was simply stating a fact.

T'Pei found herself relieved to be able to jump to the crux of the matter. "Then I will be as brief as possible. Recent events have caused Daren M'Kantu, among others, to believe that our present situation is not what it should be. We are going back in time to correct the timeline, and he wishes you to come with us."

"Daren M'Kantu asked for me specifically?" Tleilic said incredulously.

"Yes," T'Pei replied immediately. "Your expertise in sensor technology and engineering could prove invaluable."

"I have monitored the progress of the conflict in the former Federation. The current situation is certainly deplorable, but I'm sure there are still others with whatever skills seem to be necessary who would have been more convenient to contact."

"Perhaps," T'Pei admitted, her mind searching for a convincing counter, one that would convince Tleilic, specifically. "We do not personally know those individuals. Thus, we have not have reason to trust them, as we do with you."

"Be that as it may, and recognizing that I am no more attached to our present universe than anyone else alive in it, all I have now--all that moves me forward--is conscience and sense of duty. Our collective past has had consequences, and that they are unfair, or unpleasant, or even unendurable doesn't make it right to try to erase those consequences. So, I'm afraid you've wasted your time contacting me, I will not be going with you."

T'Pei glanced down at her hands. She had known he would decline, initially. Tleilic had always let his view of what was 'right' cloud his perception of what was logical. She returned her eyes to the screen, as if she could see the Rigelian through the blank darkness. "Tleilic, it is crucial that we fix the timeline," she said, placing meaningful emphasis on the word fix. He immediately picked up on it, as she knew he would.

"'Fix,' you say. What evidence do you have that the timeline needs fixing, beyond your displeasure at the way it has unfolded thus far?"

"It would be unwise for me to speak of it freely."

"And it would be unwise for me to agree to your proposal without more information. We are short on time. Tell me, don't tell me. It's entirely up to you."

T'Pei closed her eyes tightly, mentally counting to five to allow enough hesitation before she spoke. "A Triad operative was recently captured. He admitted that the Triad tampered with past events in order to ensure that they won the war. We know when and where these agents were operating, and we plan to stop them before they are able to create this future."

Tleilic sighed. "A single operative admits something under interrogation, and you are willing to mess with the course of time. Don't forget, I know something about what interrogation means these days, even in the former Federation. I would imagine that a completely unfalsifiable claim would be an attractive way to get it to end."

Although she had anticipated that it would be difficult to get Tleilic on board, T'Pei had hoped to keep it as simple as possible. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, this was going to require additional effort, which would make it significantly more complicated to hide from M'Kantu and the others.

"As you say, we cannot continue this conversation indefinitely, so in the end you must decide whether you trust my word. The Triad temporal operatives were clones who took the place of several key Federation citizens." She knew Tleilic was aware of the existence of Hydran cloning. Hopefully, that kernel of truth would influence him to believe the remainder of her story. "One of them died before his guise was discovered and was interred on Earth. We were able to exhume the remains before Earth's destruction and verify both that they were not of our time and that they were Triad in origin."

In the moments of silence that followed, T'Pei wondered if the connection had been lost or if Tleilic had even terminated it. But eventually, his voice interrupted the static. "It would seem that the timeline does in fact need to be fixed. And if, as you say, my presence is needed to improve the chances of success, I guess there's not really anything keeping me here. I will join you, and we can discuss this further in person."

T'Pei arched an alarmed eyebrow. Discussions in person were dangerous, at least until they were already in the past, and it was too late for him to return. "Tleilic, this information is highly classified, need to know even among those of us who are part of the mission." She paused for effect before continuing pointedly, "You needed to know only because Captain M'Kantu feels your presence is vital to our success. Do not speak of this to anyone else, including the Captain."

"I suppose you caught me at a point where my resolve is weak. I will simply trust you and defer to your judgment."

"I am sending you a set of coordinates. Rendezvous with the Hercules at that location in six days. T'Pei out."

T'Pei relaxed, extremely satisfied with her performance and the end result. There was just one more variable to control for.

"Computer, record audio message." The Vulcan woman leaned forward, steepling her hands under her chin for support.

"Captain M'Kantu, despite my initial decision not to join you, recent events have caused me to change my mind." T'Pei took a deep breath, just loud enough that the audio recording would register it. "I regret that I must pass on some troubling information. I was just contacted by a prior colleague, Tleilic Is-Iadrig Ir-Zhref. You may recall his posting as an engineer on the Galaxy when you returned to duty. By some means, Tleilic has become aware of your plan. If he is not permitted to participate, he is willing to disseminate that information."

As she continued, T'Pei decreased the volume of her voice, simultaneously increasing its intensity, until she was speaking in an urgent murmur. "I advise caution, Captain. We must allow Tleilic to join us, but inform him of as few of the mission details as possible, until we may ascertain his true intentions. Given my prior association with him, I will endeavor to do so, and inform you of what I discover." She allowed her voice to return to its normal tempo and timbre. "I hesitate to speak more of this matter until we meet. I will rendezvous with you at the designated coordinates in six days. T'Pei out."

"Stop recording," T'Pei commanded with a frown. Deceiving Tleilic had been necessary to ensure his cooperation. The repercussions of lying to M'Kantu, however, were far greater if the deception were uncovered. She squinted in frustration. Everything hinged on how likely Tleilic was to speak to the Captain, despite her telling him not to do so. If he were to determine that there was no Triad conspiracy, he would leave, despite their friendship and her relationship to his people.

Computer and Vulcan sat in silence, the latter calculating the potential risks and rewards of sending the transmission.

After a minute, T'Pei nodded absently, her internal debate concluded. The consequences of Tleilic discovering the truth were too great; she would simply have to find a way to deal with M'Kantu.

"Transmit recording to LNWV Resolved with security clearance level 10, authorization code T'Pei-gamma-1-8-2-2."

Standing for the first time in hours, the Vulcan sighed. A flash of regret crossed her face, only to be banished as quickly as it had appeared. What was done was done. She would no longer tolerate regret over necessary actions, or let fear stop her from recognizing the truth.

"Computer, what is the current location of Captain Daniels?" she calmly requested.

“The way things might have been…”

The Messenger/Captain, Ret., Alexander Clayton

Chantelle Clayton, Civilian

**********

USS Relativity – In 2382…

The Messenger returned to his temporary quarters where Captain Braxton wanted him and Chantelle to stay at while the Relativity was finishing their cleanup of the USS Miranda Temporal Event of 2382. He was allowed to be present for the farewell of his younger self, who still had no clue that he had been looking at or talking to his own future. The Messenger gave Clayton an encouraging nod just moments before he was beamed back to his rightful place on the 2382 Miranda. The Messenger then sighed and trudged back to the quarters.

He was greeted by the sight of Chantelle crying, and that stopped him cold in the doorway. She turned to him with her big green eyes that were bloodshot and puffy. “Is it true?” she asked in a small voice. “Is what the black window there says is true?” she asked, pointing to the computer console. Chantelle had yet to call anything by its rightful name, but then again she was still new to the whole ‘time travel’ thing.

Not knowing what exactly she was talking about, The Messenger ventured further into the room and looked at what she had been looking at, setting down the bag of his past self’s effects in the process. He then let out a defeated sigh. It was the same information that Braxton had told him about when he was taken off of the Revenge. Only Chantelle managed to go a bit further and find out what became of the rest of her family and what was supposed to have happened to her had he not been thrown back in time to begin with. “Yes… It is all true…” he said. “Or at least it would have been had I not shown up and met you.”

Chantelle shuddered. She abhorred the memory of being held and abused for a week at the hands of Lafayette, let alone the thought that she would’ve spent months, upwards of a year, at his and his crew’s lecherous hands, then to return home broken and shamed only to be killed later with the rest of her family during an Indian raid. It was almost too much to bear. She openly sobbed, burying her head into her handkerchief. She dabbed her eyes and then looked back up at him. “And what of us, now?” she asked. “How much longer until you and I can be together?” she wanted to know. He had not so much as touched her in such a way more than a friendly hug or a reassuring hand on the back or shoulder. True, this was her Alex, but he was so far removed from her that it wasn’t the Alex she remembered.

The Messenger knew this and saw this in her eyes. “Only another couple of hours…” he said softly, moving away and sitting down across from her. “Then you will be with him.” he said, referring to his past self. This was all getting to be way too painful for him. He buried his own face into his hands. The weight of his own sins of the past were all starting to weigh down on him. He wasn’t sure how much more he could personally take.

Chantelle noticed his grief. “How were things to turn out for you?” she asked softly, wanting to know, and yet at the same time not wanting to know.

“A lot more peaceful than my life has been, that is for sure.” The Messenger admitted. “We were involved in a war that, by all rights, should have been over a long time ago. But something happened that caused the war to go on far longer than it was supposed to happen. And when the wrong side won, we turned on each other in a civil war; blaming each other for the loss and blaming each other for the collapse of society.” He said, grossly oversimplifying things. “People did what they could to hold power, to grab power, or in some cases; simply survive.”

“That’s horrible…”

“You don’t know the half of it. God willing, you’ll never have to know.” The Messenger said grimly.

TBC…

(takes place after Papa Don't Preach and What Is and What Should Never Be, Part I & II)

"Lets Do the Time Warp Again"

John Walker
Kaylee Hunter (npc)
Mercedes Delgado (npc)


John sat on the floor with his back to the wall. Kaylee rested her head against his shoulder. "I don't remember much," she told him quietly. "Snapshots, kinda. Sensations. Tastes."

John couldn't help but grimace at that. He didn't want Kaylee to remember tastes.

"I remember you finding me," she said, "but I didn't . . . I didn't recognize you. I didn't remember." She looked down, as if to say she was sorry. He kissed her on the cheek.

"Not your fault," he said.

Finding Kaylee had been . . . devastating, in its own right, although still a blessing too, because she'd been alive. Anything else and he could deal with. Dead, and there was just nothing left to work with. When he had told Mercedes that, he must have looked little bit crazy, eyes wide and desperate, pleading with her to believe in him. I can fix this, he had said. I'm going to fix this. And though Mercedes had been pale, watching Kaylee with all that blood on her teeth, she'd given John a nod and said, "Fuck, yeah, you will."

They'd left Earth in a hurry, and Kaylee had worn a mouth guard for eight months.

"She helped me, you know," John told his daughter now. "Mercedes got us out of that prison camp, helped me steal a shuttle to find you. I don't know how much you remember about that, about after we found you and your . . . rehabilitation . . . but Mercedes really helped through the worst of it. By the time she left, you were talking again." Not much, John admitted to himself, but definitely more than the animal grunts and vowel sounds she had made when they found her.

Kaylee pulled her head away and turned to look at him. "I'm not stupid, Dad," she said, as if he had ever thought she was. "I get that you feel . . . grateful . . . towards Mercedes. I get it, but Dad, she's not the same person she was before, and I know, cause I do remember, and she used to laugh, you know, not that creepy little thing she does now, like, ha-ha-ha, you're dead and I'll be, like, bathing in your guts, but really laugh, Dad, she's not---you can't---you can't pretend that she's---"

"There's more," John said, "that you don't know, that I didn't . . ." He trailed off. There was so much more, things you didn't tell your eleven year old daughter, unless she'd seen things, done things, that eleven year old girls shouldn't. Unless she was the only person in the whole universe keeping you sane.

Kaylee laid her head down on John's shoulder.

"So tell me," she said to him.

***

Mercedes made it clear that she wanted John and Kaylee to come with her, back into Starfleet. She'd been serving on a ship called the USS: Paloma. "Guess where we stand on the whole Hawk-Dove thing?" John didn't get it, partly because he didn't know a lot of Spanish, but mostly because he was exhausted and his brain felt like pancake batter. Mercedes sighed a very long, drawn-out sigh. "Paloma means dove in Spanish, John," she said. "I've probably only said the word about a hundred times before."

John sighed too. "Sorry," he said. "I'm just---"

"You're wrung out," Mercedes said. "You need a break."

"So . . . you want me to go back to the war?"

"Asshole. I want you to come back with me to the Paloma, where there will be other people to help you take care of Kaylee, to watch her, teach her. She's gotten to a point now where she can be around others without hurting them or herself." Mercedes smiled a little. "My mija's pretty smart, actually. I think starship life would do her some good."

John looked over at Kaylee, playing hesitantly with her blocks, as if they might suddenly come alive and try to eat her. He turned back to the screen. "Don't pretend this is about Kaylee," he said. "You don't want her on your ship. You want me on your ship."

"I want both of you," Mercedes said, "but you're right, John. I want you here. I'd like you at my back again. There's some scary shit coming our way."

"And you want me to bring my daughter into it?"

"I want you to help me make a better place for her to live. You don't know, John---it's not just the Triad anymore. These Hawks, you wouldn't believe what some of them are campable of. The things they've done, just to get what they want---it's fucking horrifying. It's worse than the camps."

The camps had been pretty bad. John had the scars to prove it, and so did Mercedes---this wasn't the kind of thing she would have said lightly. "So they're all bunch of bloodthirsty psychos, huh?" He found it hard to believe. He'd known some Hawks, back when he'd been on the Galaxy.

"Not all of them," Mercedes said, "but a lot, John. A lot. There's this one guy---this Captain D'Agosto? They think he's tortured kids, little ones, and not even for information. He's just trying to make an example of them, show the other side what he's willing to do. Jesus, the things they say about him---"

"Say? So, it's unsubstantiated?"

"Yeah," Mercedes said. "You think if they could prove any of it, that pendejo would still be serving? But they don't have the evidence. He's a big war hero, you know, won some huge fucking battles for us, but still, at that cost . . . nothing's worth that cost." She hesitated a moment, looked away at something John couldn't see. "I'm going undercover," she said to him. "I'm going to try to expose some of these guys, boot their asses out of Starfleet and get them tried for war crimes."

"Jesus," John said, shaking his head. "And we wonder why we're losing the war. If we're fighting our enemies and our allies at the same time---"

"We don't want these guys as our allies, John."

"We can't win the war without them," John said. "We need somebody on our sides, and there's not exactly a line of people signing up for the job." Mercedes gave him a pointed look and John flipped her off. "I'm just saying that maybe the Hawks need to be tomorrow's problem."

Mercedes smirked at that. "Why put off till tomorrow what we can do today?"

"Because we can't do it," John said, "and we'll die trying."

Mercedes was silent for a moment. "There's gotta be a line," she said finally. "There's gotta be a boundary between what's right and what's wrong. Otherwise, we aren't the good guys anymore. Otherwise, we give up the right to exist."

John's eyes found Kaylee again. She looked so small, so breakable, playing on the floor. "Maybe there aren't any good guys," he said. "Maybe there are just people doing what they have to do."

"You're a good guy," Mercedes said, and he looked at her.

"I'm a father," he said. "And I can't go with you."

"You want to protect your family."

"I have a responsibility."

Mercedes nodded. "You know, I feel that way too. I have a family too, John." John knew Mercedes had a family, even talked to a few of them. All of Mercedes's family lived back in Mexico, parents, grandparents, siblings, nephews, nieces, all within fifteen minutes of each other. It must have been a very comforting way to live. John liked the lot of them---the Delgados were a friendly, boisterous, devout group of people---and had even offered their home to him, to allow Kaylee a place to recuperate.

And if John hadn't been so desperate to get off that planet, he might even have agreed to it.

"You think I don't miss them?" Mercedes asked. "You think I wouldn't be happier back at home, eating my mother's huevos rancheros and showing my niece Carmela how to throw a good right hook? I want to be there with them, but I've got a responsibility too. This is the best way I can protect them."

"By making the world a better place?" John didn't try to hide his cynicism, though he was a little horrified by how deep it ran . . . when he did stop believing that was possible?

"Yeah, John," Mercedes said, obviously not just a little upset herself. "That's what I'm trying to do. Because my family, your family, everyone's family? They'll never be safe in a universe like this."

"The universe doesn't change, Mercedes. It just goes on, no matter what we do."

"You don't really believe that," she said.

"I don't know. Sometimes, I think I might."

This time, they were both silent, looking away from one another. Kaylee had stood up from her spot on the floor and was now walking over to him, tugging on his sleeve. "Juice?" she asked---most of Kaylee's conversations were limited to one-word questions and gestures.

"Sure," John said, smiling at her. "Just a minute, sweetheart."

Mercedes leaned forward towards the screen. "Is that my little girl I see?" Kaylee turned obediently towards the image and waved a little. Mercedes waved back. "How's my favorite girl doing?"

Kaylee shrugged her tiny shoulders. "Okay?" she asked, as if this might be the wrong answer to the question.

Evidently, it was. "Just okay, mija?" Mercedes said disapprovingly. "How about fucking awesome?"

Kaylee gave that some thought. "Fuck-ing aw'som. Aw'som." She seemed to like the sound of it. "Fuck-ing aw'som!"

John looked at Mercedes a little sourly. "Thanks," he said, "a bunch."

Mercedes shrugged. "You said you wanted to add to her vocabulary."

Kaylee seemed to understand that Mercedes was teasing her father and apparently wanted to help. She giggled. "Fuck-ing aw'som!" John wanted to be disapproving of this . . . not exactly what he meant by expanding her vocabulary, Mercedes . . . but honestly? As long as Kaylee was giggling, he really didn't care what obscenities she was saying.

John told her to go find her artwork so she could show Mercedes what she'd drawn. Once she was gone, John looked back to the screen. "I don't want to fight," he said. "I know you're doing what you think is best."

"But we aren't going to agree."

"No,' he said, "we aren't. She's doing better, Mercedes, much, much better, but she's still so . . . vulnerable. I have to protect her, and this is my way. It might be a little smaller scale than what you're doing, but . . . it's what I got." John laughed a little. "I can't stop you from doing crazy shit. If I could, I'd probably lock you up too."

"Yeah, you and what fucking army, old man?"

"I've still got it," he said.

Mercedes smiled. "I'll back off for now," she said, "but don't think this argument's over. I'll be back before you know it."

"My civic duty pain in the ass."

"Hells yes."

John laughed as Kaylee came back in the room. She held her pictures up to the screen, unrecognizable squiggles that were supposed to be the three of them, apparently. Anyway, she wasn't drawing bloody piles of flesh and teeth anymore, so John was pretty happy, all things considered.

"Don't lose your hope, John," Mercedes said, once Kaylee had wandered off to the kitchen. "There is a difference between good and evil men, and John? You're one of the good ones. Don't ruin that by being a gloomy motherfucker."

John shrugged. "I'll try," he said, somewhat unconvincingly, "but I gotta tell you, Mercedes. I look out the window sometimes and hope's just . . . pretty hard to come by."

"Then look at your daughter," Mercedes said, "you fucking moron." And she broke off the connection.

Bitch always had to have the last word.

TBC

“Finem Respice Part 1: The Fellowship at the Ring"

(Writers: Rob H, Chad, Dallas, Chris D, Mek, Robyn, Michael, Kate, Mieke, Aaron, Eric, Lori M, Betred, Cliff, with input by Dave)

****

They materialized among ruins that were more ancient than any they had ever seen. Stone columns, millennia old, looked like they would crumble into dust at the slightest touch. In fact, ground beneath their feet made it seem that, indeed, entire parthenons had done just that. Even the air smelt old - musty, like a paper library, stale and empty, like a desert. Dead, like a cemetery.

"I thought there was supposed to be some sort of research installation here" Artim asked as he whipped out a tricorder in one hand an unusual looking energy weapon in the other. "I mean, that's how we found this place, right?"

Eve spoke up, as the information scrolled across the bottom of her vision in response to her internal query, "There was, although, we haven't actually heard from them within the past couple years. Perhaps it was abandoned as the civil war progressed."

"Still, you would expect to see some sort of Starfleet installation or something," added McAllister.

"Really?" Thyago asked, "I can't imagine it, ta me entendendo? Nothing here looks like it was ever inhabited, ever."

"It doesn't matter," Cutter said, stepping forward in between the conversing parties. "We're not here about any Starfleet base. We're here for that," he said, pointing to a large stone ring that sat several meters away.

"So that thing is the Guardian. Wow." Artim's words may have indicated that he was underwhelmed but his face definitely did not. He knew the significance of what he was looking at. It just seemed so odd that the tool they would use change history had the appearance of a simple unassuming rock. Then again, many of the ancient sites he'd been to frequently had important artifacts and such that looked unassuming to the unknowing.

"Mirror, Mirror," Karyn murmured, suddenly reminded of the Snow White story her sister used to read to her.

"Impressive," Daneel whispered more to himself than anyone else. Here was the stuff of legends, of old stories, of tales told in bars after one had too much to drink. Yet here it was... the Guardian of Forever.

Cutter circled around it, studying it closely with his own eyes before pulling out a tricorder and scanning it technologically. He seemed supremely unrushed, considering the raging battle in the sky above them that they had to secretly escape in order to beam down. He moved as if they had all the time in the world. Which, in this place, they may well have had.

"How does it work?" Thyago asked, jamming his hands into his jacket pockets.

"A QUESTION!" the stone ring suddenly boomed. The voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Its baritone timbre seemed to resonate from within their very own chests. As it spoke, the stone ring lit up as if there were hot magma circulating inside, pulsing like a heart beat upon every syllable. "FOR EONS UPON EONS, SEEMINGLY RANDOM EVENTS HAVE STRUNG TOGETHER LIKE DELICATELY WOVEN FABRIC LEADING YOU, INEVITABLY, TO COME HERE AND ASK THAT QUESTION!"

"It won't answer you," Cutter replied distractedly, his focus never leaving his tricorder.

Thyago shrugged, having lost interest, and wondered over to sit on a nearby rock. McAllister maneuvered to be near him, still puzzling over the strong smell of sprouts emanating from someone other than Victor.

"Okay," Angelienia said looking up at the arch of the Guardian. "It won’t answer us, I get that. But how does the thing work? Or does it just sit there and make snarky comments about how we’re too stupid to understand what an ‘on switch’ is?"

"I CANNOT ANSWER IN A MANNER THAT YOUR LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING WOULD COMPREHEND!"

"Case in point," the Ktarian replied.

"Seems like it has something in common with you, Cutter. Might want to try talking UP to it instead of down, like you usually do with your elders." Artim half joked and half suggested. If there was one thing Artim learned it wasn't wise to talk down to a sentient artifact.

Cutter looked up at the Miran suddenly, not out of anger or indignation, but surprise, as if the comment had inspired an idea in his avian head. Daren M'Kantu stepped up to the massive stone ring, looking up at it with a notable degree of reverence. "Are you the Guardian?" he asked, "The Guardian of Forever?"

"I AM THE GUARDIAN!" the world around them thundered. "I AM NEITHER MACHINE NOR BEAST, BUT BOTH! I AM MY OWN BEGINNING! I AM MY OWN ENDING! I AM THE MASTER OF ALL THAT IS, WAS AND WILL BE AND I AM IT'S SLAVE! I AM THE POISON TO THE EVERLASTING! I AM THE GUARDIAN OF FOREVER!"

"We come seeking your help," Daren said, hearing his daughter, Shiarrael, step up protectively behind him. "We wish to travel to our past."

But the ring stood silent. There was no response.

"We need your help to travel to our past and fix a mistake we made that caused a great deal of strife. A mistake that has cost billions... trillons of lives. Please...we need your help". Artim made his own effort.

"It won't let you," Cutter said matter-of-factly.

"NO!" the Guardian quaked, immediately after.

"Well that was helpful," Angelienia said, wrinkling her nose. "What now? It doesn’t have a arm we can twist or anything – it’s just a big rock."

Karyn was getting more than a little annoyed at how Cutter seemed to know how this was going to go before they even tried. "What would you suggest, Cutter?"

"I don't know yet," the avian responded, all his attentions still locked on the Guardian.

Daren began to offer an answer, but broke off as the whine of a transporter emerged from the shrieking of the wind. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shiarrael take a defensive stance, unsure if the two materializing figures represented a threat.

"Stand down," Cutter ordered without turning. "These are friends."

Shiarrael glared at the Fruna'lin man, but followed his command, since he was always right about such things. She watched a Vulcan and a Rigelian shimmer into existence a few meters away. The Vulcan strode towards the group purposefully, stopping in front of her father with her hand raised in a Vulcan salute. "Peace and long life," she said, and then added solemnly "perhaps soon, both will once again become possible." The Rigelian, slightly hampered in his movement, had just reached them, and T'Pei gestured towards him in introduction. "You recall Tleilic Is-Iadrig Ir-Zhref, of course."

"Indeed," Daren responded, unable to stop the frown that spread across his face. "I was not aware that you were pregnant, Tleilic," he said disapprovingly.

T’Pei spoke before Tleilic could answer, arching one eyebrow at Daren. "Given the nature of this mission, the risks are far outweighed by the potential rewards." She tilted her head up towards the sky where the red lightning of phaser fire could still be seen. "Furthermore, the danger of leaving at this juncture is potentially greater than the danger of continuing.

Another transporter whine sounded and two more figures appeared, starting across the wind-blown sands to the rest of the group.

"Hello James," Victor greeted the taller of them. "T’lan doing all right?" He nodded to the smaller figure. "Allison – I’m sorry this isn’t the future that we thought you were coming back to."

The two returned the greetings, and then James explained that Allison needed to return with them, or at least use the Guardian to try and return to her own future.

"THIS TIME IS HER TIME!" the Guardian crashed, interrupting James’ explanation. A cold wind began to swirl up, as if nature herself was beginning to get annoyed. "I WILL NOT ALLOW PASSAGE!"

"This reality is wrong," Daren called out, "Things are not supposed to be like this. Starfleet is not meant to have poisoned itself. The Federation is not meant to fall. Earth is not meant to be destroyed. It should be a paradise. This quadrant is meant to be home to peace. Something has gone wrong, perhaps because this girl traveled where she was not supposed to. Perhaps because of something else. We just want to fix it."

"NOTHING IS AS IT IS MEANT TO BE! ALL IS AS IT SHOULD BE!"

"I don't understand," Daren pleaded.

"UNDERSTANDING IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR PRIMITIVES SUCH AS YOU!" the ground rumbled beneath them. Nearby, a column fell and shattered into pieces.

Daneel pushed Karyn to the ground as a large piece of stone slammed to the dirt where the doctor had previously been standing.

Karyn had very little time to absorb what was happening. One moment she was standing and the next moment her face was kissing ground. When she looked up, she realized Daneel had saved her life. As Daneel hauled her back to her feet, she exhaled a shaky "Thank you."

"You’re welcome of course," Daneel tried to sound as pleasant as possible considering the circumstances.

Ignoring the sudden chaos surrounding them, Cutter stepped around to the front of the stone ring, his wings flattening out behind him, as if he were subtly trying to intimidate the Guardian. Trying to intimidate a god. "I understand," he said, looking up to it.

"YOU DID. YOU WON'T. NOW..."

"Perhaps?" Cutter asked, predicting the Guardian's words.

"PERHAPS."

Cutter looked back at M'Kantu, his face a mask. Daren couldn't tell what his first officer was thinking - if he was thinking nothing, or everything. "Let us through," the avian demanded suddenly, looking back to the hoary relic.

"TO FIX WHAT IS NOT BROKEN!" their hearts beat out from within their chests, a question that rattled all of their stomachs.

"No, to change it," Cutter said, "To alter all that is. To rewrite forever."

"TO WRITE FOREVER!" the Guardian echoed, changing Cutter's words slightly. "WHY!"

"Because we want to. Because we can," Cutter responded, folding his arms across his chest and relaxing his wings, "And because there is nothing you can do to stop us."

Despite almost being crushed to death, Karyn had recovered enough to snort at Cutter's demands. If he had been human, Dallas was sure he'd have been convinced he had the biggest balls in the group.

"Cutter...what did I say earlier..." Artim thought his indignity may have just ruined everything

The massive stone ring did not respond, but it continued to flicker light, continued to pulse solar fire through its earthen veins. Eventually, the ground beneath them rumbled and the sky above them shook. A star exploded high above them, a starship. None of them weren't sure if it was the Guardian itself that had destroyed it. After a moment, everything once again grew calm, and through the slowing breeze, the Guardian sighed, "VERY WELL!"

****

As she sparkled into existence on the surface of the cold dead world, Rebecca von Ernst could almost swear she felt the final blast of heat from the Starship exploding around her. Almost magically her brown eyes were drawn upward into the night sky, where amidst the dancing lights and streaks of phaser fire, an new sun was being born. Its radioactive tendrils of light stretching forth across the eastern sky like a fiery spider hissing its final venomous breath.

"Shiva…." she whispered to herself almost in awe. Noodles it had been close….darn close in getting out of there.

Gathering her scarlet hair around her like a cloak, Rebecca lowered her eyes and took stock of her surroundings. The dead city into which she had materialized extended off beyond the horizon in all directions, alien columns and buttresses stabbing skywards like skeletal fingers clawing at a glowing sky.

Voices.

She crouched low behind a fallen archway, her compact five foot frame folding neatly into the shadows as the warm phaser hummed quietly at her side. There not 100 meters away a small party of Dove’s gathered around a glowing relic of stone. She could not make out the words, but the voice was deep and booming against the cold wind which cut deep into her tattered uniform.

~~Pull yourself together girl.~~ she berated herself with a shiver. ~~You used to go out in the Minnesota winters in shorts and T-shirt as a kid.~~

She allowed herself for the moment to not consider the fact that there was no such thing as Minnesota anymore.

Creeping forward to get a better vantage point, Rebecca fussed to herself the whole way at how her hair was dragging in the dirt. Amazingly enough, considering how the tiny redhead was not the most stealthy of cadets to graduate in the Class of ‘74, she was able to find a better vantage point overlooking the Guardian and its tiny guests. What she saw made her shiver with a chill that had naught to do with the wind.

JAMES…..and there with him, similarly shivering in a skirt that was much too short for Rebecca’s motherly tastes…..ALLISON.

Her daughter was standing with arms wrapped around Corgan’s strong arms, apparently drawing heat from him as they both listened to the negotiations between the Doves and the ancient relic. Part of Rebecca’s mind recognized old crewmates from long ago... Daren... Victor... Arel… that winged weirdo Cutter… and a few others she couldn't quite make out. ~~Noodles… it’s ten to one odds and all I got is a silly hand phaser.~~ She wondered idly if the others remembered what a horrible shot she was.

Fingering the device, she leaned forward a bit trying to get a better ear on the conversation. Just bits and pieces of it were audible really, the details carried away by the chill wind. Slowly however Rebecca was able to pick up something about the glowing relic being a time portal of sorts, and some kind of plot to change history in the past. A tempting idea really since the last twenty years had been something of a mess.

Glancing up at the glowing starships still burning in orbit Rebecca wondered what changes could be possible.

She did not notice the two figures that materialized nearby.

“Finem Respice Part 2: "The Black Gate Opens"

(Writers: Rob H, Chad, Dallas, Chris D, Mek, Robyn, Michael, Kate, Mieke, Aaron, Eric, Lori M, Betred, Cliff, with input by Dave)

****

"Nice work, Cutter," Daren said, stepping up to the side of his first officer. The space inside the Guardian began to glow, brighter and brighter until it hurt to stare directly at it. Through the corners of their eyes, they could see the shape of a Starfleet bridge slowly materialize. The bridge of the Starship Galaxy.

"OK, maybe I was a bit hasty..." Artim seemed a bit humbled.

"We're not there yet," Karyn remarked. The war had made her pessimistic streak more pronounced.

"Wow!" Thyago laughed behind them. "I can't believe you got it to work, sabe? Like, I mean, dude! You know?"

Cutter glanced back to the Brazilian with a snobbish sneer. "Of course I got it to work," he scoffed.

"So this is it?" Thyago continued, rising from his rocky seat. "We're about to go back in time? We're about to change history? We're about to change everything?"

"Yeah, Dude, we’re going back – what did you think we were here for?" asked McAllister.

"We’re going to save the Federation," Daren nodded, "And we do not take this task lightly."

"I don't know if we should, sacau?" Thyago asked. "Are things here really that bad?"

"There are no positive affirmations or creative reframing that can brighten the shithole reality we've been living in," Karyn returned matter-of-factly, with far more force, finality and resignation than any who'd known the old Karyn had ever heard before. "I can't go on," she said more softly, "not anymore. If I die trying to create something else, that's better than dying slowly on the inside."

"I don't know about you but I didn't come all the way here to turn back now. Come on, let’s get this over with," Artim seemed impatient.

McAllister looked at the younger man incredulously. "That was you at the briefing, right – not some evil twin or something?"

"Yeah," Thyago replied through a lopsided smile climbing up the left side of his face, "Funny, huh?" Suddenly, his hand erupted from his pockets, and a stream of emerald plasma laced with a threading of black lines suddenly blasted across the decaying landscape. It was aimed at M'Kantu, but it missed by feet. Instead, it struck his daughter, ever at his side, as she pushed her father away, piercing her directly through the center of her chest.

The party froze as the bolt ceased. There was no thunder. Shiarrael stood for a moment, just as still as everyone else, before she crumpled delicately to the ground.

Daneel cursed under his breath. If only he could drop his mental barriers he would have known what that weasel was planning. His proximity to Krieghoff and his aura prevented that rather effectively.

McAllister swung his walking stick, and the gold parrot’s head smashed into Thyago’s wrist, causing him to drop his weapon. Both men momentarily stared at it in surprise, then dived to retrieve the phaser. Thyago was quicker, rolling over the weapon as he scooped it up and fired. McAllister’s awkward dive for the weapon saved him, as the beam passed harmlessly over his head.

Daren looked down at his daughter uncomprehendingly for a second, as if he didn’t understand what had just happened, and then, without warning, abruptly sat down next to her, as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut. "Shi?" he whispered, one shaking hand reaching out to touch his child’s still form on the shoulder. "Shi?"

The shock wore off the moment Karyn saw the woman hit the ground. She rushed forward, her medical tricorder out in a flash, trying to figure out what just happened. Some part of her knew the young woman was gone, but she kept scanning, frantic to focus on anything but what was happening between Thyago and company.

Seeing McAllister fall, T'Pei dropped into a crouch behind a rock. The ground shook, knocking her to the side as she unholstered her phaser. "Brace me," she hissed to Daneel, and the man pushed her against the sandstone as the Vulcan tried to get a clear shot at Thyago. He was faster though, and with a bright blast, the stone in front of them shattered, forcing them into an undignified scramble that made the Brazilian laugh. "Nice try, Sheena," Thyago sneered.

Daneel felt like everything around him was happening in slow motion. Without the full use of his senses he was sluggish to react to anything and he mentally swore at himself for allowing the traitor to act. After aiding T'Pei he drew his own weapon for all the good it would do.

"Dammit" Artim whipped around leveling the small but powerful Erdan weapon he carried at Thyago. He took a shot but the focused purple beam flew wide.

"Porra! What the fuck is the matter with all of you!" Thyago screamed as he leveled the weapon towards Artim. It was an old gun, almost a hundred and fifty years old, from back when the focusing barrel sat horizontally atop a separate handgrip. Victor was intimately familiar with the design. In fact, he was intimately familiar with that specific phaser. It was his.

"Caralho, I have a gun, I shoot a bitch. Pum! And you all attack me?! Don't you know you should be puttin' your hands up? Poxa! I should shoot you in the head, Shortround! Puta que paril, mane!" Thyago continued his rant. "And you, uh-uh, no no," the Brazilian said, stomping his foot on McAllister's wrist. "I wouldn't if I were you," he said, and held up his other hand. In it was a small handheld computer, like a triggering mechanism.

"That's a Gorn design," McAllister said. Thyago kicked him in the face as he attempted to stand. Paul used the momentum of his fall back to the ground to roll away and reach for the weapon in his boot.

"I got it from Puff," Thyago said, "It's totally killer, although they butchered the aesthetic design, don't you think?"

Artim simply glared at him, his weapon still pointed squarely at Thyago.

"It is kinda ugly," remarked McAllister, humoring Thyago, hoping to buy a little time so someone could actually shoot the fucker. Damn, his nose hurt! "What does it do?"

"It's a remote. To his entire fleet," the Brazilian explained, insane laughter in his voice, "It's really amazing. His entire fleet is a single weapon. It can destroy an entire star system in a single shot. All I have to do is push this teeny little button. Puff, he might even be smarter than you, Hawkman. He truly is a magic dragon."

"You're working with K'aa?" Cutter asked, "Since when?"

"Since her place," Thyago said, nodding to Eve.

"Aina Mason died recruiting you for this mission!" Cutter growled.

Thyago began to laugh, "You totally didn't get it, mane. Sparky was electrocuted? That wasn't an accident, that was me. Dude, I totally had you fooled. You should see the look on your face!"

While Thyago’s attention was focused on Cutter, Paul quickly palmed the small phaser he kept in his boot. He had no illusions that he would be able actually kill Thyago before he could trigger the remote device, but hoped he could provide enough of a distraction for Eve – Valentina in cyborg mode could move fast enough to get the job done.

Eve readied herself, needing only the tiniest of openings to reach Thyago but requiring that opening before she would risk the life of another of her companions.

"Then all along, you have planned to kill us?" T'Pei asked, stepping away from Paul to draw Thyago's attention away from him. "Why? For your own amusement?"

"Oh, I don't want to kill you. What would be the fun in that?" Thyago said. "Look up mane! Nearly the all the remaining Hawk and Dove fleets are tearing each other apart. I want you all to beam back up to your ships and see everything fall apart. I want you to watch the greatest civilization ever known beat itself to death. You get it? Nothing could stop it, not the Klingons, not the Borg, not the Triad. The only thing that could kill it, was itself, ta me entendendo? And it's doing it with such glee!" he laughed.

"But, if you don't leave, I will kill all of us, and destroy this entire planet," Thyago continued, his voice losing all humor, dropping to a deadly serious tone. "All this death and destruction, all your planning, all your hard work. You're the Federation's only hope and you've come so far, you've gotten so close. You wanna die just before the end?" Thyago glanced upwards to sky, struck by a thought, "Actually, that ending would be pretty funny, to---"

Catching Eve’s eye, McAllister thought he saw her nod. He sprang to his feet to fire, but Thyago was impossibly faster. The Brazilian spun and aimed his phaser at Paul, but instead of firing, paused for a mere fraction of a second, and evil grin lit up his face.

That’s when Victor killed him.

There was a single, softly spoken word, one that seemed to come from everywhere in the clearing and no one place in particular. A word spoken in a tone of voice that some present had never heard, and others hadn’t heard for almost two decades. A word spoken in a voice that cut into a listener’s skin like a razor made from ice. "No."

Suddenly looming behind Thyago, Victor reached out and took the smaller man’s head in his hands almost gently, like he was a child… and snapped his neck with a single, quick movement. Thyago’s smile never faded as he simply… stopped… and slid limply to the ground.

"Never doubt the sprouts," said McAllister.

Victor stood there for a moment, looking down at the still figure. "I was a fool," he said to no one in particular. "I thought it was the only way… but… I was wrong. He’s done too much, killed too many… and I made it happen. I let it happen…."

Angelienia moved to stand next to him, a hand on his back, her expression worried. "Love, no, you didn’t make him do anything. You don’t have to…"

"Yes, I do," he replied, sadly. "It’s my fault. I can’t undo this… but I can make sure it doesn’t happen again." He bent down and picked up the archaic phaser Thyago had used, turned it over in his hand, and detached the smaller Type 1 phaser built into it, dropping the handgrip to the sand.

"Victor, no," Angelienia tried again. "You… you’re not… you… when that’s inside you."

Cradling Shiarrael's head in her lap, Karyn's eyes widened in horror, over what she had seen and over what her heart knew she was about to see. As much as she'd hated him, as much as she'd been scared of him, she never wanted this. "V-victor, don't. Don't do this. You don't have to do this!" She flashed back instantly to the moment he'd begged her to kill him. He'd pleaded with her to kill him, to stop him from raping her, only because he was physically incapable of doing what she'd only imagined him doing in her darkest dreams.

"Actually," Victor sighed, "I am me – and that’s the shame of it." He kissed Angelienia once, deeply, and then drew back and turned the Type 1 phaser over in his hands once, twice, looking at it, as if deciding something. Then, with a second sigh of regret, he looked up at Angelienia, quietly said, "I love you, chatriz," and then raised the phaser up to his chest, emitter towards his heart, and triggered it.

"Ah, shit, Vic -- you don't have to do this," whispered McAllister, unconsciously not wanting to speak the lie out loud.

Karyn screamed.

With a whine unlike that made by modern weapons - and oddly unlike that of weapons from the period the phaser apparently came from - a beam of that same green, black threaded energy poured out directly into his chest as it had Shiarrael’s a minute before…

…and soaked into him, as though he were a sponge, leaving no marks, no scars, no burns. He winced once, then his eyes opened wide, and he laughed as the energy continued to pour out of the device and into him, the sound almost one of ecstasy. The process went on for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds and then stopped as he took his finger off the trigger, took a single staggering step back, and into Angelienia’s arms.

"Victor?" she whispered, almost as if afraid of the answer.

Victor didn’t answer for a moment, then shook himself once, like a wolf shedding water from its coat, straightened up, and smiled. "Wooooh, what a rush!" he chuckled, then turned to look at his wife. "Hi honey," he said lightly, "I’m hooome." He blinked once, frowned, and then added in a more serious tone, "I’m still me, chatriz – at least for right now."

Angelienia threw herself into his arms and buried her face in his chest.

Karyn, by far the one most tortured at the prospect of Victor dying, especially by his own hand, felt a surge of rage start to boil within her. She felt betrayed, as if her senses had betrayed her. "What the fuck is going on?" Dallas demanded.

"I…" Victor started to explain, but Angelienia spoke up from the circle of his arms, cutting him off. "There’s a… thing… inside him. A thing from another universe. It’s been there for years, since he was on the Galaxy – it came from a ship that had gone to the place it was from and come back here. It tried to take him over back then and it couldn’t… so he locked it up inside himself to keep everyone safe from it, made it a prisoner inside him. It changes him, makes him… different. Lets him tell people they can’t die and do other things… but it likes to hurt people too. He only let it hurt bad people for a long time, people that were trying to kill his friends and the people on the Galaxy he was supposed to protect, until… until that man killed me. Then it… they… stopped being two things and became one thing so he could save me, and then he did those things to the man that killed me - they did them together - the things that got him thrown out of Starfleet. But he didn’t want to be that way, to be… like that… so he cut part of himself out, the part that was mad, and put it in there, in the phaser it had come from. And when Thyago stole it, he let it go, to keep everyone he cared about safe, since the farther away it was, the better he was. But now…" she was crying, the tears making it harder for her to speak, "now…"

"…now I’ve taken it back," Victor finished. "Like I should have done years ago when Thyago stole the damned phaser. Before he killed all those people, before he killed Daren’s daughter, before… before I became his accomplice by not stopping him," he finished quietly, lifting his head up to look at the stars and wincing as a familiar soul moved on while he stood there, helpless to prevent it lest he let the demon he’d taken back into the bottle within him loose again.

"Extreme anger management," said McAllister, thinking of his father. "I guess we all have a lot to atone for."

"Jesus Christ," Karyn shouted, surprised to find she was crying.

"Paul," Victor spoke up from his wife’s arms. "I…"

"If K'aa's ship is in orbit, he'll be watching," Artim observed, interrupting. "He'll notice his little henchman has failed. We won't have much time."

"Then let’s go," Eve said determinedly.

Paul felt dead inside; he didn’t need Victor to finish, somehow, he had known that his Alexandra, his wife, would die. Still, receiving confirmation of the fact from one of the gods of death was a never ending kick to the balls. Lexi was gone? He tried it as a question.

The answer made him sick, but all he could do was nod and walk away.

"Finem Respice Part 3: A Stab In The Dark"

(Writers: Rob H, Chad, Dallas, Chris D, Mek, Robyn, Michael, Kate,
Mieke, Aaron, Eric, Lori M, Betred, Cliff, with input by Dave)

****

Arel and Aria watched Rebecca who was watching the group in front of the
Guardian. It had been remarkably easy to track the woman; they probably
could have just stayed aboard the Miranda with the same result. They had
both nearly broken their position when M'Kantu's child had been murdered
but had held themselves back. Thankfully, Victor had taken care of it
and - just as thankfully - he didn't seem to be on the verge of killing
everyone in sight.

"It won't take two people to kill Rebecca," Arel told Aria. "I want you
to help them."

Her words may have been quiet but the younger woman could hear the
command in them.

Aria's jaw tightened -- she wanted to take down Rebecca von Ernst as
badly as Arel did. But she knew better than to argue. The other woman
was far more desperate.

"I'll watch from here," Aria said, "step in if things go south again."

Arel grabbed her by the forearm. "If you die, I will be very
disappointed."

"Yeah," the girl remarked. "Likewise. But," and she smiled wryly at
this, "it is a good day to die."

****

"So Allison are you ready to go through?"

A brief change in the wind brought those words drifting across the ruins
to Rebecca's position, startling her from her musings. Allison? They're
sending her back? My baby!?! Rebecca's phaser was drawn and she was
striding across the dust before she even realized it.

"HOLD IT JUST A MINUTE!" she choked, the weapon hot in her hand, and
leveled menacingly on the group. "Nobody is going anywhere!"

James' first reaction was to reach for his phaser. His fingers were
touching the handle as he realized Rebecca had him dead to rights. Years
earlier, this would have not happened. James was an expert with the
phaser, security training left him as wary as a fox. But in this moment
he was distracted by others bartering Allison's fate, and by the sudden
shock of seeing the woman he loved years ago appear before him. A few
more stress lines and fading red hair didn't tarnish his image of her as
the adorable, naive little tactical officer he fell in love with years
ago.

Not even a wrathful Ice Queen could drive that image away. James pushed
Allison behind him, imposing himself between Allison and that shaking
phaser pistol.

McAllister sat on a rock and shook his head. "Great," he muttered to no
one in particular. "Wonder-boy and the Red Witch, reunited at last. Are
we ever going to get off this frackin rock?"

"I don't know," Angelienia answered, "but aren't we running out of
people to have show up? I mean really, who's next? That Admiral that you
all make jokes about? James T. Kork?"

"Kirk," Victor and Paul corrected in unison, eyes still on Rebecca and
her shakily-held weapon.

"Well well, if it isn't Shiva incarnate herself. Forget a pair of arms?"
Artim really had to hold back the urge to put a lance of charged
particles through the heart of the killer of Earth.

"Mom?" Allison spun around in surprise with the rest of the group
finding herself looking into the eyes of the fifty year old mother she
had longed to return to. No wait... her hair was different... much
longer like grandma's used to be, and snapping in the wind like a
crimson banner. "Mom is it you?"

Rebecca held the phaser as steady as she could... there were so many
targets and she was such a bad shot that despite having the initiative
she was in a weak position. "Mommy's here baby." she said, "Step away
from your father and come here Allison... nobody is sending you anywhere
ever again."

"That's her call!" James barked, taking a step closer and daring the
startled wraith of a vengeful ex-wife, "You don't know enough of what's
going on 'Becca. This is Allison, but she's not OUR Allison. She has to
go back!"

"What are you mental or something?" Alli fussed pulling herself away
from James, "That's mom out there."

Heedless of the phaser the teenager ran forward, and inexplicably
latched onto James wrist and drug him along, "C'mon dad, She's waiting
for us." SO strong was her desire to be a part of a family... a real
family that she just HAD to get them together.

For herself, Rebecca was just as surprised as James. The overwhelming
urge to vaporize him was tempered both by her daughters presence as well
as the fact that she probably couldn't hit him anyways.

~~Oh Foozlesticks~~ she scrunched her freckled nose as Alli dragged him
forward, and before she knew it she was staring nose to nose with her
ex-husband. (Well nose to belt buckle mostly considering the height
differential)

Beaming, Alli gathered the pair of them up into an awkward group hug.
"Awwww....one big happy family." she gushed, not noticing how the warm
phaser was semi crushed between the three of them threatening to
vaporize said family... happy or not.

James broke the embrace. He stepped back, and holding Allison by her
shoulders, he said gently, "I know you want us to be together, but I'm
sorry... it's not here. You're here by mistake, and it's time I
corrected it." He glanced towards Rebecca and beamed, "But it's nice to
know that in some alternate reality that we made it work, isn't it
'Becca? No war, no bullshit. A decision or two and we'll have Pax
Aeterna. Allison is proof of that." He hugged his daughter one last
time, "Allison, it's time for you to go home. Find your father. Convince
him to never leave your side again. Tell him the people close to him are
enough responsibility. He can't save the universe, only do well by those
around him. Go, and god bless."

But, before Corgan could send his daughter away, the sparkle of an alien
transporter filled the air as a final figure appeared, weapons in hand
covering everyone present. "Haaaa!" K'aa thundered a challenge out, the
roar filling the still air of the clearing. "Ssssstand down," he hissed
in a more normal tone. "No one movesss! Thisss misssion isss over!"

"Of course," Victor announced into the silence that followed K'aa's
appearance and orders, stepping away from Angelienia and Kate with a
disconcertingly cheerful smile on his face. "It lacked only this to be
complete," he asked in the same voice he'd used in the first seconds
after reclaiming the part of himself that was in the phaser. He studied
K'aa for a moment, head tilted to one side, and then asked, "Didn't I
step on you once?"

Daren, who'd paid little attention to anything other than his daughter's
still form since dropping to the sands next to her, looked over his
shoulder from his position next to Shiarrael's body at the former
Security officer, the tone of voice and the inflection of Victor's voice
- and the words he uttered - tugging at his memory, reminding him of
something from a dream years before. "Allah," he whispered. "Was it
really him...?"

"Really who?" McAllister asked, trying to decide which direction he
needed to point his weapon and finally deciding on the Gorn as the
deadliest threat.

"Yes," Victor decided. "Yes I did. Funny, you seemed smaller then. Or
was it that I was larger? Those things are always so subjective, you
know. I had a lot more tongues then too - I could taste the floor."

"Him," Daren breathed, staring at Victor. "It was... really him. In my
dream, after my neck was... telling me I didn't have permission to die."

"Ssssilllencccee!" K'aa thundered. "Prepare to be beamed to my ssship."

"Not likely lizard." Artim looked the reptilian square in the eye.

Victor started to interrupt, paused, and looked skyward. "Oh, I see," he
announced again in that same cheerful tone. "You're going to use it
again. The weapon, the one that you fired at Primus." He looked over at
K'aa. "Do you really think it will work? Destroying the Guardian, I
mean?"

"It may not be desssstroyed," K'aa growled, "But no one will ever be
able to ussse it again."

McAllister had enough. His wife was dead, beyond any hope, Wonder-boy
had not solved their dilemma with a snap of his fingers, the Red Bitch
was turning into a love struck wimp, his old friend was now as sprouty
and slimy as ever, and now lizard-nuts just had to join the party.

"You! Yeah, you! You walking, hissing over-grown bad imitation of an
Armani suitcase! Is that your fucking head or did someone shit on your
shoulders?" McAllister stalked towards the Gorn. "You are one fracked up
bug eyed reptilian asshole! Don't you realize what is happening here?
Are you so cosmically stupid? Is there anything floating around in that
head of your other than swamp gas?"

K'aa snarled and raised his weapon, a Gorn-designed phaser pistol the
size of a Federation-issue phaser rifle, but with a wider bore, and
fired off a shot at Paul who fell out of the way, leaving the weapon to
cut a line into the crowd by the Guardian, missing everyone but glassing
a line in the sand that led up to Daren's feet.

McAllister snapped off a shot that clipped the stone wall next to K'aa
and vaporized it, knocking the Gorn to the side in the resultant
explosion, and everyone scattered. T'Pei dragged M'Kantu behind the arch
of the Guardian, feeling that it was the most indestructible object in
the area, Cutter exploded upwards and looped behind the Guardian as
well, while everyone else dove for whatever cover they could find.

Except Victor.

He stood there in the open.

Smiling.

Occurs directly after "I'll Never Tell", before "Prime planning". LAST backpost, I promise.

~Empty Places~

T'Pei
Chris Daniels

The cold woke her, rather than a dream, but the disorientation was the same. T'Pei stirred, feeling air on exposed skin. In her sleep, she must have shifted out from under the thin sheet. The covers were crumpled, restlessly pushed to one side. Something tickled the back of her mind--a flash of warmth, so different from the chill she felt now. For a moment, she could almost remember, and she idly wondered if it was a forgotten dream. But it was late, or early, or maybe that in between time when it didn't really matter, and so she reached for the covers, trying to recapture the dimly recalled feeling of safe, soothing warmth.

"Stop faking...I know you're awake." The voice was quiet, but unmistakably his, and it shocked her into alertness, transforming the half-remembered sensation into a clear memory. T'Pei sat up, clutching the covers to her chest. Scanning the room, she found him in the corner. Even in the dim starlight, she could make out his trademark smirk and, if only for a moment, even the wrinkles in his forehead seemed to disappear. Despite the glow, a melancholy tone was present in his voice.

He couldn't sleep. It was an affliction that over the years had come to irritate him more often. Tonight was different though. Usually, Chris couldn't pinpoint the stressor that kept his brain working overtime. Not tonight. Quietly he sat in the corner of his room in his favorite chair, trying to process the overload of emotions he was feeling. Joy, sadness, and the realization of what all of them meant. It used to be that a night like this would have meant nothing, now, it was the ONLY thing in his life that felt real.

He leaned forward and rubbed his hands on his bare legs, trying to find a good way to express what he was feeling.

"You're going with them, aren't you?" The voice was fairly stable, but there was an underlying tone to it. Please, say no. Stay here with me.

"Yes," T'Pei whispered. "I am."

"So this..." he paused, looking for the right words, "was just a way to manipulate me into letting you go?"

=====================
4 Hours ago

There was no answer, but T'Pei knew he was there. Crossing to the panel by the door, she entered the emergency override code he had long ago given her. Silently, the small woman slipped inside and let the doors close behind her. The room was dark, save for a dim, muted light on the desk, barely illuminating the tall form that stood behind it.

The pushups hadn't solved it. A drink hadn't, either. Doing work just made him more irritated. After all that had gone on that day, it seemed like the only thing that Chris could do to get his mind off of the earlier blunder with T'Pei was to stare out into darkness, from darkness. He had gone for the home run and sadly, fouled out to the catcher. Chris had, at one point in his life, been regarded as a great tactician, yet his most important stratagem had just gone down in flames.

He had heard the door open and quietly turned, not really needing to see who had just entered. Only two people had the code besides him; and Doctor Hume was not prone to unannounced visits. As she approached, he said nothing, not even knowing what he could have said. What did you say to the love of your life after she gave you the cold shoulder?

With measured steps, T'Pei drifted towards the window, giving him time to respond to her presence. She hovered just at the edge of the soft white light, the shadows making her skin appear even more pale.

In his younger days, Chris would have reacted almost thoughtlessly. Now, though, his youthful lust was much more reserved. He took a long look at T'Pei, standing there, an almost angelic glow to her from this angle. God, how long had it been since he had finally admitted to himself how he felt about her? Years of holding back, of keeping his hormones in check "for the good of the ship," were suddenly starting to overpower every rational thought he could have.

But, despite all this, all his tired mind could come up with was a silly little smile and a quietly murmured. "This isn't about the ship, is it?"

T'Pei's only response was to cross the remaining distance separating them and pull him in for a kiss.

More than a little shocked, Chris returned the kiss, turned off all his other cares and let his passions take over. In the back of his mind, a wretched thought was forming, but Chris didn't allow it to get to him. For far too long Chris had quietly hoped and anguished over this moment, and in spite of any ulterior motives involved, he was going to live however long this lasted to the fullest. That being said, he picked her tiny frame up from her hips and escorted her over to the couch where they had had their discussion earlier in the day.

=============================

T'Pei didn't have an answer he would want to hear, so she sat silently, staring at the crumpled sheets.

"Why? Why do you feel the need to do this?"

That question, she could answer, although she still did not want to. Standing, she wrapped the sheet around her body and walked towards him. “Chris.” She said it gently, openly, trying to answer him with the tone of her voice. She was close enough to feel the heat of his body when she tried again. “Chris...”

"Just answer the question T'Pei."

Perhaps there was no avoiding it. “You told me once that you are fighting so that when it is over you can return to the life you wanted to have.” She paused, knowing she owed him an explanation, but that there was no way to explain without hurting him deeply. "The life I wanted...I can never go back to it."

"So this...us? Has just been what, a consolation prize to you?" He stood to his full height, the proximity to the lithe Vulcan making it seem like he was towering over her. There was no hiding the hurt in his eyes, but as he spoke, there was no anger, there was no malice...only the tone of a man whose world, which had slowly been crumbling for years, was about to fall apart.

"No," she answered, looking up at him unintimidated. "But, I have a chance to bring back everything we lost, Chris. A chance to bring myself back. I have to take that chance. If I do not, then I stay as I am now, and what is that? Not quite Vulcan, but not anything else, either."

"You're you. You're somebody to me, to this ship, to everyone that we've helped over the last 10 years. Just because you lost one aspect of your life doesn't mean you've lost everything. We've all lost things we can't get back. Please...don't do this to me."

Her face remained as smooth as stone, but her eyes went dark and filled with tears. He moved in close and held her hands, looking past the beads and tears and straight into her eyes. "T'Pei, I know that what's in those rocks altered your life beyond your expectations. But beyond them, who you've become is become such a vital part of my life that I can't let you go on the off chance that this plan works."

"You cannot know how much they altered me, Chris. Have you ever considered the fact that you will outlive me? You cannot see it, not yet, but slowly, year by year, I can feel my mind weakening. I do not wish for you to see the day it actually breaks." She looked down at the strong hands holding hers. Here she stood, naked, with a man who thought she had betrayed him, and somehow, she still felt safe. Somehow, he still wanted her. Which only made it harder to do what she had to do.

Chris could see it in her eyes that he wasn't going to change her mind, and the pit in his stomach began to grow exponentially. T'Pei was one of the last things he could hold on to in the world, and having to start over without her wasn't something he was looking forward to. Still, ever the tactician, he knew which battles he could fight, and which ones he had to withdraw from. Quietly he stood there for a minute, wondering what to say.

"I'm not going to tell you yes..." he looked down at the ground and kicked at it with his toe. "But if this is what you want, I won't stop you either."

T'Pei nodded, not trusting herself to say anything more. He was letting her go; she had gotten what she wanted. She pushed down any feelings of guilt, the thought of what the success had cost them. Cost was immaterial, and guilt...she was doing this to get rid of the guilt permanently.

He took a deep breath and wiped a tear from her cheek. "So when are you leaving?"

"Six days, thr..." she trailed off. Chris didn't want to know the hours, minutes and seconds. Neither did she, particularly.

Chris nodded. His response indicated his resignation to the fact that they had passed the point of no return on this. He managed a weak smile. "Guess we'd better make the best of the time we have left."

Silently leaning into him, T'Pei loosened the sheet and wrapped it around both of their bodies.

"Maivia's Revenge"

Colonel Branwen London
Colonel Duke Biggs (Betred)
Commander Man'darr Maivia
Commander Xavier (Chris)
Captain Jill Maivia (NPC--Aaron)
Ensign Ro London (NPC--Betred)
Lieutenant Jennifer Adams (NPC--Aaron)

The battle was over as the Hawks had been forced to retreat. It had been a devastating battle. The space above the planet of the Guardian of Forever was littered with broken hulls and floating debris. The Capella had sustained major damage--but nothing that couldn't be repaired. Now, it was time to deal with the aftermath of the battle.

Jill and Man'darr entered the brig and immediately came to Branwen's Cell. the mere sight of Branwen angered Man'darr and Jill. "Open the gate," Jill ordered as the guard immediately did so. Jill walked in briskly and backhanded Branwen hard across the face.

Still groggy Branwen did not resist. She had been wounded in the destruction of the ship and of course had not seen a medic yet. Now she flew across the cell and landed against the wall.

"As the old proverb goes, colonel," Jill said, picking Branwen off the deck and pressing her against the wall with her forearm pressing into Branwen's throat. "All good things come to those who wait," Jill seethed. "I'm going to enjoy beating the life out of you right here in front of your crew!" Jill then snapped a kick against the side of Branwen's left knee.

Bran fell down again. Right now there seemed to be no fight in her.

Man'darr stepped forward and placed a hand on Jill's shoulder. "No, do not kill her. We need her for information about my daughter."

Jill took a deep breath. "Very well....you're right." She then stepped outside of the cell and toured the rest of the prisoners.

"Well, where is she?" Man'darr asked, staring down at Branwen with crossed arms.

“As if I am going to tell you.” The colonel said after spitting out blood. She had a very high pain threshold and if this information would help keep her other daughter and her crew safe she was going to use it. And there was the baby growing inside her.

"You took the life of my lover. I have no problem whatsoever taking the life of yours," Man'darr glared down at Branwen. "and I will make you watch me kill him as I beat the life out of him."

“She took her own life and that was partly due to a virus your people introduced into my crew.. But what happened was wrong and I regret it.” Bran said truthfully. “For what it is worth I had given myself up for court martial. You know as well as I do that if you kill Duke, me, or any of my crew in torture, Katherine is not going to forgive you.”

"My guess is that she doesn't approve of Duke...its a Capellan...thing. I wouldn't expect you to understand that, so I doubt killing Duke would matter much to her. As for you, the excuse is easy. You died in battle..she will never know...and at least my lover had the courage to take her life after she was violated by members of your crew," anger was now clearly present in Man'darr's voice.

"Leave her alone!" Adams called out from her cell.

"Silence!" Jill retorted as her fist connected with Adams through the bars, sending her reeling to the deck hard.

“Katherine is not as capellan as you think, Dar. Deep in your heart you know that. This is the way to lose her.”

Biggs Duke woke to find himself laying on a spot of deck surrounded by bars -- obviously a cell. His chest hurt as if on fire, his head felt as if stuffed with cotton, and if he tried to use both eyes, he saw double. Keeping one eye closed and fighting for balance, he struggled to his feet in time to see a Capellan woman knock Adams off her feet with one punch. Quickly surveying his surroundings, he tried to focus on where Branwen was laying on the deck of her cell, bleeding, with Man'darr standing over her.

"Man'darr," he shouted as loud as he could, "Branwen is not responsible for what happened to your people. I gave you a promise they would be treated as warriors, and I'm the one failed to keep that promise. Your anger should be directed at me, not her." Biggs coughed and spat phlegm on the deck. "Or, do you just like beating up women?"

Duke immediately found Jill staring at him only inches away. "I was the one who hit her, not my brother, now shut your mouth before I do it for you."

"She was the CO and ultimately, that makes her responsible," Man'darr said, not taking his eyes off of Branwen. "Lose her? She does not even know me because of you!" he bellowed as his voice rang off of the bulkheads. He bent down and lifted Branwen off the deck with one hand, grabbing her by her neck "But that will soon change." He wanted to crush Branwen's throat, yet a part of him fought against that urge. Instead, he dropped her to the deck.

Biggs forced himself to grin at the woman in front of him. "Okay, I get it now. You punch, he strangles -- good to know you specialize. Ya'll want to bring the guy who specializes in thinking in here for a conversation?"

"I am that...guy, you weak human. I am Captain Jill Maivia...the same captain that just handed your asses to you on a silver platter. Now, do you want to tell my brother where his daughter is?"

Biggs backed up a step and slowly appraised the from of Jill Maivia. He managed a whistle through parched lips. "For a guy, you've got nice tits, but you're a bit hippy -- too much pasta will do that to you. And no, I don't want to talk to your brother at all. If he's too stupid to figure out his daughter is in the cell next to this one, I can't help ya."

Rowena London was in fact in the cell between Duke and Adams. She had woken to the sounds of her mother's beating, but had caught Adam's signal to 'play dead,' and she was doing her best to follow her lover's order, despite being so close to the object of her hatred.

"That half-human, half Hydran science experiment?" Jill laughed. "She's nothing more than garbage to me or my brother. She does not carry the blood of my brother or of my species. She's nothing."

“She knows more then you think. I made sure that the kids know about capellan culture and customs. If you had not gone over to the enemy I would have let you see them as well. I am not that petty.”

"Yes, you are that petty. You are a selfish, lying bitch, Branwen. Now, are you going to tell me where my daughter is, or should I have your other child take a long walk out the nearest airlock? Your choice."

“And how do I know you won’t do so after I tell you? I know murdering children is not beyond you. If you murder Rowena you will never see either of your children again, you butcher.”

"I spared your child's life once. I will not do so again. Now, tell me!" Man'darr screamed at her. He felt nothing but hatred for the woman on the floor before him. "Or do you want the death of your other child on your consciousness because you refused to tell me the location of my rightful daughter!"

Jill nodded at a nearby guard who threw open Rowena's cell door and snatched her up from the deck and out of the cell.

“No!” Bran screamed. “Crawling as near to Ro as she could. ‘Take her… take her and my crew to a place of safety and I will tell you.”

Playing dead didn't include being snatched of the deck by thick muscled guards. Rowena screamed as she raked her nails across the guards eyes, while kicking him in the groin. The guard dropped her, but Ro managed to land on her feet as she desperately sought a means of escape. Seeing none, she launched herself at the next available target -- Jill Maivia.

Jill's hand found the girl's throat and slammed her to the deck, followed by a knee to the abdomen. "Feisty 'lil garbage, aren't you?" Jill sneered. "I can fix that!" She then drug the girl up and threw her as hard as she could into the titanium bars.

"Enough of this madness, please!" Xavier shouted from his cell, staring at the two Capellans as well as his former skipper. "For God's sakes, we're all Federation, everyone seems to forget that! Yes, what happened to your wife was wrong Captain Maivia, beyond wrong. Horrid in a way words can't describe." He cast an angry glare towards Branwen. "'This' is what happens when you torture. You claim to have wanted the best for the crew... do you think they're going to feel any compassion towards our crew 'now'?" His eyes shifted towards Maivia. "And you are so thirsty for revenge that you are about to do something which assures this same cycle is repeated to your crew. You have a chance now to prove you're better than she is... will you take it?"

Branwen held her breath hoping her ex-husband would listen. Anything to end this madness.

"The Federation is dead! Jill spat.

Man'darr glared at the man who had spoken. "Revenge? Make no mistake...its not revenge I'm after. Its a reckoning and I will bring its hell with me! I have lost my lover, been betrayed and lied to by my former wife, and denied to see my children...and I will make anyone remotely responsible pay!" He then turned back to Branwen. "One last time. Tell me where my daughter is and I will then let that thing you call a daughter live

Jill's tossing of Rowena against her cell bars had moved her closer to Bigg's cell. He paused to see if Xavier's plea for reason would have any effect. When it seemed to further enrage the pair of Maivia's, Bigg's opted for despiration. Quickly reaching through the bars of his cell, he grabbed Jill's hair and yanked her head back against his bars, then snaked his arm around her neck in a hold guaranteed to cut off her oxygen and allow a simple twist to break even her Amazonian neck.

"Man'darr -- let them go," said Biggs quietly. "I will kill her. If the guard shoots me, the weight of my fall will snap her neck. Put Branwen and Ro in a shuttle, and when I know they are safe, you can kill me and we'll be done with this foolishness."

"No," he said simply. I do not negotiate with cowards and liars such as you and Branwen. Kill her, and Branwen will die by my hand, causing you to also lose a child as well as a wife and you will have a ." At seeing the shocked look on Branwen, Man'darr added, "Its called transporter scanners...perhaps you have heard of them?" He turned back to Duke and crossed his arms. "So, what will it be? You letting my sister go, or I kill your wife and unborn child before your eyes and you unable to do anything about it?" Man'darr sneered. "And in case you believe I am bluffing," Man'darr drew a Kligat from under his tunic at the lower back, and tossed it expertly at Adam's cell with the blade spinning vertically instead of the standard horizontal spin. The blade sliced into Adams' upper left chest, causing her to fall to the deck.

Branwen gasped. “You murderous bastard. There was no need to do that. If you want to kill anyone kill me.’ She struggled furiously. “Kill me and let the others go.”

The guards opened the cell as Man'darr withdrew the bladed disc from the gravely wounded Adam's, who screamed as the blade was pulled out.

Biggs tightened his grip. "Last chance, Maivia."

Man'darr glanced at Branwen. "All you have to do is tell me where my daughter is, and this will stop. How many more must I be forced to hurt or kill to get what I want?" He then grabbed Ro by the throat with his hand. Let my sister go or I crush her neck.

“Let her go, Duke. There has been enough killing. Dar, Katherine is old enough to make her choice. I will not force her to stay with me, but you have to be able to offer her a safe place to grow up.” She tried to talk her ex-husband down.

Biggs considered not following Bran's order; he knew that giving up his hold on Jill Maivia would eliminate any advantage Bran and Rowena may have. Unfortunately, the only advantage with a hostage is the threat of killing it, and then it's not a hostage anymore. Seeing that in this situation, there were no good choices, Biggs let Jill go.

Man'darr tossed Ro back in her cell before the guard slammed the gate shut at seeing Jill being let go, whom kicked at Biggs as she got up. "Stupid human! Kill them!" she ordered.

"Wait!" Man'darr intervened with a raised hand. Anger still swirled within him as he turned back to Branwen. He could not let go of the pain and suffering that he had endure due to the woman before him. An idea soon began to form.

"Now, one last time, Branwen. Where is my daughter? With your sister, or with that freak of nature, Victor?"

“She is with Victor. And before you ask, I have no idea were he is.” She said truthfully.

"She is with that psychopath? I will deal with him soon enough."

"During the withdrawal, the sensors showed an incoming vessel...that matched the description of Victor's vessel," Jill spoke up enthusiastically. "However, we would never be able to take on the remaining Dove Vessels that are in orbit over the Guardian Planet."

"We don't need to, we just need to get to the Guardian. Drop out of warp over the northern magnetic pole and then transport me to the surface. With luck, we will be able to avoid the Dove Fleet's sensors if the ship is taken to a lowered power state immediately after dropping out of warp," Man'darr deduced.

Jill smiled. "Sounds like a plan. I'll be on the bridge. We will return immedaitely."

"Now, was that so hard?" Man'darr asked as he slammed the the cell door shut and then looked to the sobbing child of Branwen's named Ro and noticed why she was sobbing, it was due to the fatally injured Security Chief that he had struck with his Kligat.

"Now you will know what it is like to lose one that you love...the kind of pain your mother brought on me and one that I have experienced three times during my life," Man'darr's anger-filled voice spoke to the young girl, before stepping out of the modified cargo bay.

"Finem Respice Part Four: The Breaking Of The Fellowship"

(Writers: Rob H, Chad, Dallas, Chris D, Mek, Robyn, Michael, Kate,
Mieke, Aaron, Eric, Lori M, Betred, Cliff, with input by Dave)

****

Everyone was scrambling, trying to find cover from K'aa's weapon fire.
Everyone but Victor.

"Now really, K'aa, old buddy," he asked pleasantly, smiling. "Is this
necessary? The guns, the yelling, the posturing? Really? Why don't we
settle this the old-fashioned way, hmmm? Just you and me, eh Dr.
Lizardo?" He took a step forward. "Winner takes all? C'mon, whata'ya
say, Puffster? Puff-meister? Puff-Daddy?"

K'aa roared in defiance, raised his weapon to fire... and a thin beam of
energy lanced out from the shattered wall Angelienia had taken cover
behind with Kate, slicing through the weapon in an eyeblink, leaving
K'aa holding little more than a grip and trigger assembly.

"Thank you, dear," Victor nodded approvingly. "Now..." He crossed the
distance to K'aa in so little time that it seemed like he'd translocated
himself, both feet impacting the side of the larger Gorn's head,
knocking him off-balance and back over the wall McAllister had shot
earlier. "I've got this," Victor laughed, the sound like a delighted
child's upon receiving an ice cream cone, and followed K'aa over the
wall. "Stay clear, everyone."

****

"Rebecca," Arel said clearly, wanting the woman to see her. Von Ernst
was a monster and bat shit crazy to boot but she still deserved to see
the face of her killer.

Whirling at the voice that seemed to whisper from the shadows Rebecca
squeezed of another random blast from her phaser, the blue beam
screaming its way in an arc that easily passed a meter over everybody's
head.

"Smith!" she hissed, Brown eyes narrowing, "Get away from me Arel! I'm
not going to let you take her you skinny freak! " Rebecca attempted to
push Allison behind her protectively, ineffectually trying to shield her
taller daughter with her own frail body.

"I'm not here for her, Rebecca."

James gallantly dashed to the rescue. He'd remembered Arel as a comrade,
not a killer, but found no trouble considering her a threat when she
loomed towards his daughter and ex-wife. "Get away from them you
stupid..."

A reverse Mok'Bara spinning elbow to the temple cracked James with
astonishing speed. Before he knew it he was on the ground, ill and
holding a bleeding forehead.

****

"No, no, no," Victor repeated patiently, slapping away K'aa's clawed
hands repeatedly as the Gorn came at him again. Each strike carved
chunks of rock from the wall he had Victor backed up against. "You're
just not getting into the spirit of things here. Do I need to take
things up a notch? Add a little spice?"

"Die... mammal!" K'aa snapped as he lunged forward, his teeth just
missing tearing Victor's face off.

"Now that's more like it," his opponent nodded. "But not good enough."
Hands reached out again, capturing K'aa's in a grip that seemed too
powerful to be merely human, halting the Gorn in his tracks. One foot
spiked down onto K'aa's, with a crack of bone, and the other planted
itself in the Gorn's gut as Victor fell over backward, heaving the
massive Gorn up and over to slam shatteringly into the rubble behind
them.

"Now," Victor whispered, the sound cutting through the dusty air of the
planet, clearly audible to those watching the fight. "Let's see what all
the fuss is about, shall we?" Emerald green eyes bored down into K'aa's
inverted, expressionless ones as the Gorn struggled to recover from the
impact. "Tell me... what are you afraid of, hmmm?"

K'aa snapped at Victor again, but his jaws fell short once more.
"Nothing!" he hissed.

"Oh now that's silly," Victor reprimanded. "Everyone's afraid of
something, even me. And in your case.... Oh!" he smiled suddenly "There
it is! And it's so basic, so primal... How fitting!" Victor straightened
up. "It's the children. The little K'aa-K'aa's. How sad... you're
worried that they'll never be born if Daren does his thing in the past."

K'aa roared again, surging to his feet and slamming Victor back across
the sandy ground. "You will not take my life from me... take *them* from
me!" He snatched a blade from his weapon harness and stabbed with
lightning speed.

"Well now," Victor said in the sudden stillness as he looked down at the
blade buried to the hilt in his abdomen. "That was certainly emphatic,
wasn't it?"

From her sheltered position by the Guardian, Angelienia screamed.

Still being sheltered from most that was going on by Angie, Kate did
catch what was happening to Victor and only half a second later she
started to scream and sob as well and tried to get closer to her uncle.

****

"NO!" Allison, jerked herself into motion, "Leave my mother alone you
Klingon-wannabe skank!" She bounced a small rock off of Arel's shoulder
and ran forward to intervene.

"Alli stay back!" Her mother wailed, unable to fire for fear of hitting
her.

"Leave us alone!" Alli threw a girly punch that the tall Arel didn't
even bother deflecting, absorbing the light tap easily.

"No," Arel said.

The follow up swing was a bit more deadly. Transparent Aluminum
fingernails flashed in the starlight as they swung down and across
Arel's cheek in a bloody scythe.

Arel was annoyed but continued to push forward and was able to deflect
the next blow easily. And because she didn't want to drag this out any
longer than necessary, she retaliated with a quick stab to the girl's
shoulder. The knife came back bloody, the tip broken.

Allison shrank to the ground in a surprised gasp clutching at the red
fountain blossoming in her arm. She was silent, but the scream came
instead from her red-haired mother who rushed forward to cradle her
injured child.

The outraged cry of the mother was all the distraction Arel needed. She
spun and thrust the broken knife into Rebecca's heart.

"Alli..." Rebecca half choked the name around a mouthful of blood, the
agony in her heart burning with the failure to protect her only child.
"Al..al..." she couldn't even say it now, sinking to her knees,
somewhere the sound of someone screaming her name echoed in her ears.
Some shadow with blond hair struggling to crawl to her. Noodles this
hurt...If I could only catch my breath...I'll go and check if the baby
is okay...just need a minute.

****

K'aa grinned toothily down into Victor's face. "Now I'll kill the
othersss," he hissed in triumph, starting to jerk the blade deeper and
upwards to slice into Victor's chest - only to stop and look down as his
hand refused to move.

"No," Victor replied, still smiling. "No, I don't think so." He
increased the pressure on K'aa's hand that he was applying with his own,
pushing the larger being back, inch by inch, in a steady pace, the
weapon withdrawing from his body as he did so.

"What isss thisss?" K'aa hissed, staring down in disbelief.

"Oh, that's right," Victor offered, still smiling, as the battle-blade
cleared his body - and the wound closed up behind it, leaving no sign
that an injury had been received except for the tear in his clothing.
"You missed that part, didn't you?" He twisted once, the Gorn's wrist
shattering with a sharp 'crack.' "Let me explain... No, let me sum up."
He jammed a hand into K'aa's chin, snapping his head up, and then
whirled around, using the grip on the Gorn's broken wrist to power the
reptiloid face-first into - and through - a section of standing wall
which then collapsed on top of the limp figure with a rumble of falling
stone.

"For years now I've been a shadow of my former self," Victor explained
cheerily. "Great..." he drew out the word comically and held his hands
out slightly wider than shoulder width "...cosmic power..." he pushed
his hands together and held up two fingers a scant inch apart "...but an
itty bitty phaser." He shrugged.

"It was enough to drive a man crazy. But I'm all better now, back
together again, thanks to you and Thyago." He laughed once and spun
around, singing, "Back in the saddle again, back where a friend is a
friend...."

He stopped abruptly, and leaned over to peer down at K'aa. "Are you
listening, Puff? Even a tiny bit? There will be a test on this later,
you know." He poked the Gorn once, and then sighed. "Well drat, just
when I was starting to enjoy myself. You just lie there and rest for a
while and maybe we can play some more later, all right, old buddy?"

Turning, he started back towards the Guardian whistling to himself
happily and waving at the individuals there. "Nothing to see here,
folks. This isn't the Gorn you're looking for. Move along!"

"Uncle Victor, you are alive!" Kate rushed to him and felt his abdomen.
"You are not even hurt? How? I saw him stab you?"

Artim smiled as he looked over Victor's wounds. "He's Victor Krieghoff;
he's not going to die that easily."

"It's all right, Kate," Victor reassured her. "Artim's right. I won't be
dying until I give myself permission to, that's all."

The girl looked half in shock, certainly not understanding what he was
saying, but for now it seemed enough.

****

"Sorry, kid," Arel said to the girl and then left.

Arel heard the swish of duranium alloy exit a scabbard, then the
electric whiplash of an energy field enveloped officer's sword crackled,
burning the air.

Ex-Commodore James Lionel Corgan, his greatcoat flapping like a
discarded battle banner, held his sword in two hands, planting his feet
wide in a battle stance. "Hey bitch!" Corgan called out, sweeping the
blade low and preparing a charge, "Are you sorry enough to die for what
you did?!"

Arel thought about that. "No."

James took one step forward, his voice quavered as grief determined his
actions well in advance, "You didn't know her. You didn't love her. You
didn't stand back while others turned her into a monster. And you
weren't THERE!" His feet took on a life of their own, matching a
marching stride with an urgent run, his blade crackled like white light,
"She never had a chance! She deserved justice and you denied it to
her!!! What gives you the RIGHT!!???!!!!"

She drew her mek'leth, holding it in her left hand and the broken knife
in her right. "These do." Arel shook her head at his snarl. She could
try to explain that she'd given Rebecca Von Ernst more than she deserved
- to die facing her enemy - but Corgan would never listen. "Well?"

"Well, I hope there's room in Gre'Kor for you, bitch!"

His blade swept up, and meet a classical Mok'bara mek'leth block.
Physics did the rest, as energy fields and dense metals meet. The shock
nearly numbed Corgan's arm.

Arel's weapon didn't break.

~"Fuck! She's got a modified weapon too!"~ And if he'd thought through
his grief addled rage, James would have reasoned, before it was too
late, that he was outmatched.

Arel looked younger, and was more fit than he. James kept in good shape,
but years in a Captain's chair put less of a priority in his fighting
skills, kept up only as a lark. Arel, on the other hand, managed to
assassinate a starship captain before a dozen armed officers could
respond.

She was also trained by the fiercest hand to hand combatants in the
known Galaxy, the Klingons. Humans trained under Klingon methods didn't
have the warrior race's brawn, but they more than made up for it with
viciousness and cunning. No matter the background, the Klingon way was
to never take prisoners or allow themselves to surrender in combat.

James didn't have formal training. His style of fighting was Anbo-Jytsu,
standard Starfleet martial arts and wrestling. His sword style had
European Fencing and Kendo, but it was mostly holodeck practice and a
few real fights. He didn't have Arel's fighting cred.

What he did have was experience. He also was festooned with weaponry.
James was known for finding other ways to fight. He bluffed a Hydran
fleet into surrender, before that he kicked the Hydrans in the testicles
on multiple occasions. He'd even faced off against an Alpha Centaurian
olympic grade fencer and won with dirty tricks. Fighting fair was a
luxury of the skilled. James went through his entire career, from
tactical to the captain's chair, one step behind his betters, so he had
to find alternate ways to outmatch them. That made him the master of
dirty tricks.

One way or the other, there would be a fatality.

And James bet it would be his.

Motivations aside, and James believed his was stronger than Arel's,
there was no guarantee it would be enough.

~"Fuck it."~ James snagged one of the mek'leth jagged corners with his
blade twisting so it could spin out of Arel's hand, ~"I'm committed. And
I better win or T'lan will kill me!"~

The mek'leth didn't disarm as planned. Arel was way ahead of him... with
the knife and with James in her sight.

And then one of those twists of fate happened.

Arel took a step forward, her foot landing on uneven terrain, and she
slipped slightly, not enough to trip but enough to throw her balance.

The two second correction cost her.

The knife blade cut precariously close to James throat, but not close
enough to draw blood.

At the same time, James let go of his sword. He stumbled back, then
rolled on the ground with his shoulder, like a tumbling ball of
fluttering cloth. He managed to land on his knee, draw his arms out of
his greatcoat, and arm himself with a flick of his arm, from his waist
to shoulder height.

He had drawn a midnight black phaser pistol, held it in both hand to
stabilize his aim, increased the power settings with a thumb twitch, and
fired.

And fired.

And fired.

A quick draw and three shots in the span of a second.

She looked down in surprise at three smoking, burned holes in her
midsection, and then back up at Corgan before a flicker of a smile
crossed her lips. "Not exactly a song-inspiring end but it'll do."

And then she slumped to the earth.

James fell to his knees. His joints were sore, age was telling him
acting twenty years his junior wasn't a good idea. Exhaustedly, he
holstered his pistol, and looked down at Arel Smith's corpse with
regret.

James grumbled, "Not a song I want to hear."

And then he vanished in a sparkle of transporter energy.

****

ISS Stolen Heart, in Orbit

"REPORT!"

T'lan held onto her Captain's chair as the ship buckled and thrashed.
For the most part, the Stolen Heart made good on her attempts to stay
out of the thick of the fighting, but as another wave of Hawk gunships
closed in, she was wondering if staying out was really doing her any
good.

Her ops officer barked, "Shields down to twenty percent! Port nacelle is
down, starboard is at half power! Aft phasers are down! Rerouting power
from nonvital systems to the shields!"

"Dora! Talk to me! Have there been any temporal transits yet?"

=/\="Scanning."=/\= Dora's voice crackled on the comms, a pause while
she searched, twinges of panic as she tried to juggle the tasks of the
main computer with a temporal sidescan, =/\="Positive match! Linear
timeline transits detected! Multiple temporal pings! Timelines...
diverging further?"=/\=

The ship was wracked by another spasm, "Dora, what are you talking
about?"

=/\="WARNING!"=/\= Dora vocalized loudly, =/\="Massive energy buildup
detected from Hawk battlecruiser! Energy signatures concurrent with
Protocol 34 weapon system!"=/\=

"On screen!"

The Stolen Heart arched toward K'aa's ship. Energy gathered and crackled
in large energy pods. Sensor readings were off the scale in energy
readings.

"How much time?"

=/\="Energy building will finalize in thirty seconds!"=/\=

~"James!"~ T'lan fretted, trying to find a logical means to honour James
and Allison's wishes while at the same time, and while taking down a
massive starship with a beat up, battle damaged clunker. Logic dictated
that to take the ship, it would mean the Stolen Heart's destruction, a
kamikazi attack would be the only way to stop the ship. Since the crew
was in her care, those on the planet were replaceable and their temporal
transit could be attempted in other ways, that was an illogical course
of action. The planet was not needed. The ship's weapon system would be
useless without a planet to fire, so it was not a threat afterwards.

What was important were two people.

James Corgan and Allison Von Ernst.

"Did Allison transit yet?" She asked.

The ops officer replied, "No way to tell! There's too much interference.
All the life signs left are jumbled together!"

=/\="Twenty seconds!"=/\=

She made the logical choice quickly.

"Helm!" T'lan ordered, "Set course for the planet's surface, transporter
range. Tactical! Prepare to drop shields! Transporter room, beam
everyone you can off the planet! I don't care who! Security, standby at
transporter rooms with armed parties! DO IT!"

=/\="Fifteen seconds."=/\=

The Stolen Heart gracefully swooped, scraping the planet's atmosphere.
Transporter systems were humming, indiscriminately snatching at anyone
left on the surface, but finding only one - James Corgan.

"Too much interference, Ma'am," the Transporter Chief called out over
the comm.. "Someone else got grabbed by a Hawk ship at the same time,
though, I can tell you that."

=/\="Ten seconds."=/\=

"FULL IMPULSE! Get us out of there!"

With a kick of ionic thrusters, the Stolen Heart ran away from the
planet, her hull lit up as the backwash of an energy weapon started to
accumulate, waiting to give the planet a death blow.

"Finem Respice Part 5: Return Through the Ring"

(Writers: Rob H, Chad, Dallas, Chris D, Mek, Robyn, Michael, Kate,
Mieke, Aaron, Eric, Lori M, Betred, Cliff, with input by Dave)

****

"I AM WAITING!" the Guardian thundered, ignoring all that had happened -
Thyago, Von Ernst, K'aa - demanding impatiently for the mortals to
fulfill their goal like they had simply been standing around twiddling
their fingers.

"Daren, let's go," Cutter said, leading the shell-shocked man to the
portal. He paused, staring back at Shiarrael's body. "If we succeed,
she'll be alive again."

M'Kantu looked up at the Fruna'lin's eyes, a look of resolve hardening
his grieving face. He nodded, and grabbed Cutter's arm, offering it an
appreciative squeeze. T'Pei stepped up beside him and took his arm,
nodding to Cutter, "I will accompany him."

Together, they stepped through the portal.

Daneel took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing," he told himself as he
followed his comrades through the ring of stone. He cursed his Trill
friend for sending him on this journey of uncertainty. Of course, on the
other hand, if they plan worked, he'd sing Jaal's praises providing they
all lived through this.

Karyn followed Daneel with a last look over her shoulder at the battle
overhead, followed in succession by Artim, Eve, and the rest of those
present except for Paul McAllister, the Krieghoffs and their ward, and
Cutter.

Aria, who had stood from her hiding place shortly after Arel fell still,
moved forward toward the ever-depleting group. She'd noticed the look on
M'Kantu's face, the change in his posture, the shift in his... self.
Like his entire world had shattered in the half a second when his
daughter's heart completed its last beat. Something pulled at her,
something her mother had said before she'd left with Arel. *Let her do
what she needs. For you, this mission is bigger than it seems.*

She let herself be drawn to the portal, and glanced sideways at Victor,
meeting his eyes. She set her jaw and nodded her farewell. It may be for
years, it may be forever... But they'd be okay. They'd all be okay
without her. She stepped through, into the swirling light, and felt
herself pulled away.

"We'll fix this; we have to," McAllister told Victor. "You got anything
you want me to tell your past self?"

Victor considered that. "No," he answered after a moment. "No, I don't
think so. I think the less I know about the future, the better it is for
everyone. But... thank you... and I'm sorry."

Paul nodded. "Thanks for letting me know about Alex. I'll give you guys
a minute, then we gotta go before the lizard lays any more eggs. Thanks
for everything -- I know I'm not as good as you are, but I'll keep an
eye out." He nodded at Angelienia and Kate. McAllister bowed formally,
then turned and walked through the portal to his past.

Victor waved, smiling, "Y'all come back now, y'hear?" and then turned to
his wife. "You have to go, chatriz. You and Kate." Victor was Victor
again, the happy, cheerful face of death gone for the moment. "You can't
stay, and I can't... I can't go with you."

"What?" Angelienia's voice cracked slightly.. "You can't... But we're...
Why?"

"Because I'm... whole again," he told her softly, hand on the side of
her face. "There's too much of me now. Too much to take back and meet
myself. I can control this much - barely - but back there... back there
there's more of me. Too much more. I'll pull it all to me, take what I
had then and add it to what I am now... and I think I'll be like I was
before. In the Other Place... when I killed everyone there. I can't let
that happen."

"Then we'll stay here," she decided firmly, never letting go of him.

"You can't, chatriz," he repeated, touching her face, her hair, as if he
were a blind man trying to memorize her. "K'aa didn't fire the weapon,
but his men will when they don't hear from him. I can't keep the two of
you here if that happens, there won't be a body - or anything - to hold
you to like I have with you in the past. Elrin can't get in to pick us
up in all of that," he indicated the war overhead in the sky as he let
seventeen more of his souls move on. "I won't ask him to die trying -
because he'd do both if I asked. We can't go back to the ships up there
- the interference is too great now, they wouldn't hear the request.
Even if they did, too many people are dying - so many that I've had to
just let them all go rather than try to hold anyone here - and we'd
likely be blown up on any ship we'd let beam us up, making it the same
problem all over again."

"But," she whispered, "if you stay, then you'll be here when the lizards
fire their weapon, and you'll...."

"I won't give myself permission to die, chatriz," he lied, kissing her
on the forehead. "I don't think even what he's doing will kill me now,
not when I'm all together like this unless I do. You have to go." He was
crying now, along with her.

"I'll be too far away from you, won't I?" she whispered as she pulled
his head down and kissed him as if he were the last man in the universe,
and she the last woman.

"I don't know, chatriz, maybe," he admitted when they separated. "But
I'm there, then, too, so maybe not. You just have to hang on until you
find me there, I think you'll be okay then... and the me that's there
knows how to send you back here, because I did it for Allison, if the
Guardian isn't working to bring you back. It's... it's more of a chance
than we have now, here, if you stay." He paused, and then took something
from his jacket and slipped it into hers. "Elrin gave me that, told me
to show it to him in the past and he'd know that I was telling the truth
and needed his help - take it with you. He'll help you back there."

She clung to him for a long moment, and then pulled away and looked into
his eyes. "I love you... I will always love you, no matter what, no
matter when, Victor." She took a breath and let it out, adding, "I'll
make sure that everything turns out the way it's supposed to." She
kissed him again, held him for another moment, and then turned to Kate
and took her by the hand. "Come on, Kate. We have to go."

The teenager had not dared to interrupt before. She knew she was
witnessing something profound between two people who loved each other
very much. But now she could keep silent no longer. "We can't leave you
Uncle Victor. And what is this about Aunt Angie not being able to be too
far away from you?" she demanded.

"You have to go, Kate," he said sadly, hugging her . "I promised your
mother that I'd keep you safe - and the only way to do that now is to
send you back, back before all of this started and went wrong. He looked
up and met his wife's eyes. "Your Aunt..."

Angelienia slipped her arms around the two of them. "I died, Kate," she
whispered. "A man that hated Victor killed me to hurt him. But I loved
your Uncle too much to leave him and he loved me too much to lose me, so
he kept me here, with him. The doctors fixed what was done to me, but I
still died... and if I'm too far away from him now, my body starts to
forget that it's been told that it's alive and remembers that it's dead.
When we go back... when we go back, we think it'll be too far, that if I
stay there too long I'll die again, permanently, this time."

"Then you will have to come with us, Uncle Victor? You can't let Aunt
Angie die! Don't be a hero; let someone else stay, you have to come and
save both lives." Kate held on to him.

"I'm not a hero, Kate," Victor said softly - and sadly. "I have to stay,
or something bad will happen, something that will make everything that's
happened all have been for nothing. I can't let that happen, I can't let
all my people die, have died, for nothing. Everyone pays a price to make
the universe a better place; this is mine. You're mine, you and
Angelienia."

She was crying still while Angelienia took hold of her and made sure
Kate made it through the portal without Victor. Kate kept her eyes on
her uncle to the last, willing him to change his mind.

Victor stood and watched his wife and ward step into the portal
silently, waiting for a long moment after they'd gone before he looked
away and sat down heavily on a nearby rock and let his tears come as the
heavens warred with themselves over head. "So many gone," he whispered
as thirty-nine more of his souls were set free in the endless night
overhead. "So many gone...."

Cutter watched as Angelienia and Kate passed through the portal and
faded from sight. He was the last one. He looked up past the Guardian to
see the battle still raging in orbit overhead, then back at the ancient
landscape surrounding them, and all that had been lost getting to this
point. The Federation was dead. Earth was destroyed. Above them, all
that remained of Starfleet would soon wipe each other out. Here, M'Kantu
had lost the last of his family. Shiarrael's lay peacefully on sandy
remains of a long dead civilization. Allison had lost her mother, the
destroyer of millions. A deserved dispensation of justice, by all
accounts, but that girl wouldn't see it that way. Thyago's corpse was
sprawled out uncomfortably a few meters away. Once a good man, annoying
and idiotic, but good-hearted, before he had been corrupted by Victor.
K'aa, a monster who was fighting only for his family, defeated by
another monster more horrible. Victor just sat there, on the remains of
a column near the Guardian, weeping. Death incarnate, reduced to tears
at the enormity of what he'd done.

They were leaving it all behind. Gladly, Cutter thought. He looked back
at the Guardian, through the simmering portal to his past. And he
stepped through.

But, the other side did not look like the bridge of the Galaxy. It
looked like the world he had just left.

Cutter looked back to the Guardian, a small question falling from his
lips, "What?"

"A STREAM MAY WIND, BUT IT CANNOT CROSS ITSELF!" the Guardian replied.

Cutter stepped up to it, his face a mask of confusion. "YOU DON'T
UNDERSTAND!" the ring boomed at the same time as Cutter himself mumbled,
"I don't understand."

"AN ARROW CANNOT PROPEL ITSELF!" the ground beneath his feet rumbled. "I
CANNOT PASS!"

"I?" Cutter echoed, "You cannot pass?"

"I AM THE GUARDIAN OF FOREVER! I WAS FORGED IN THE FIRES FROM THE
DARKEST OF CAVES, AND I SHALL REMAIN UNTIL I AM ONCE AGAIN BURNING AT
THE CENTER OF A GREAT ABYSS! I AM MY OWN BEGINNING! I AM MY OWN ENDING!"
it began to chant, over and over. "I AM MY OWN BEGINNING! I AM MY OWN
ENDING!"

****

K'aa lay still and thought. How had Victor Krieghoff beaten him?

Krieghoff was an accomplished fighter, yes - but to have fought in the
manner he had earlier, without weapons, and to have won? To have won
after a wound like the one K'aa had given him to no visible effect? With
the unnatural strength he'd displayed several times? Krieghoff was in
his fifties, still the prime of a human life, but even as a younger man
he'd not displayed that kind of ability. Therefore... therefore this was
not Victor Krieghoff.

That made sense, it fit all the observable facts. So if it was not
Victor Krieghoff that had fought with him and now sat, weeping on a
stone, appearance notwithstanding, then who - or what - was it? K'aa
considered the options. There were many choices, but one in particular
seemed obvious given the way Krieghoff had ignored the fatal stab wound
and had sealed it back up as the battle-blade was withdrawn... a
Founder. Not-Krieghoff was a Founder... a Changeling. He turned the idea
over in his head approvingly.

It answered the questions about the combat nicely. It even explained why
Not-Krieghoff's wife had reportedly died a half-dozen times since he'd
last seen her: she hadn't died at all, since she was a Changeling as
well. Not-Angelienia had just gotten back up after receiving the damage
metered to kill a being with internal organs and a nervous system
susceptible to wound-shock. They must have both been replaced sometime
in the past, perhaps even engineered Krieghoff's expulsion from
Starfleet to facilitate the replacement. And since then, they'd been
trying to nudge things into whatever path the Founders wanted the
Federation to follow.

And now one of them had gone back in time, back to make whatever
alterations the Founders felt were necessary to history...

"No!" The Gorn threw off the rubble atop him in a single heave, his
injured foot ignored in his scramble to his feet and the start of his
run towards the Guardian. If they could go back... then he could, too.
He could go back to stop Daren from ending his children before their
eggs were ever laid... and, more importantly, he could go back to stop
the Changeling and it's plot to reshape history as well.

Cutter and Victor both looked up to see what was happening. Cutter
realized what K'aa was going to try to do. He looked up, and he saw
Thyago's body. Victor stood and moved into K'aa's path as Cutter
unfurled his wings and pushed himself over to the Brazilian's body. In
his hand was the remote, the remote to K'aa's weapon.

"Oh no, little gecko," Victor said in an exaggeratedly chastising tone
as he laid hands on the charging Gorn and stopped him dead in his
tracks. "Not today!"

"Hrrrraaaahhhhh!!!!!" K'aa bellowed, struggling to free himself, to move
just an inch further, to transition through the portal.

"Let them go," Victor said, holding the raging Gorn in place without
sign of strain. "They're already lost. The little K'aa K'aa's, the wife,
all of them. I've lost *my* wife because of you - seems only fair that
you lose *yours* because of me." He laughed once, more painfully than
with humor. "But I'm kinder than you are, little gecko. You're leaving
me with my pain - I'll take yours away."

Cutter looked up to see the two beasts collide once more. Behind them,
the image of the bridge of the Galaxy burned in the portal like a
blazing sun, the Guardian still chanting. The others were through.

K'aa cried out as Victor shattered his knee with a booted foot, dropping
him to the ground and halting his charge. He was so close, millimeters
from the portal. He could see the shimmer of time dance on the lenses of
his eyes.

"Sorry about the pain, big guy," Victor apologized, as he drew the
small, archaic phaser and set it against K'aa's head. "But it'll all be
over in a second." There was a flare of green from the contact point at
the back of K'aa's skull, a wash of light from the inside of his wide
eyes, and the beam emerged out of the Gorn's mouth like a steam of
emerald fire to scorch some rubble into slag. "But you were a real
dragon for a second there," Victor said, as the reptilian sagged to the
ground lifelessly, "you got to breath fire and everything, eh?" He
laughed and sang, "Puff the Magic Dragon, lived by the sea...."

Victor frowned and shook his head, cutting the sound off abruptly. "No,"
he announced to the universe in a voice like the crack of doom. "I'm not
going to be like that. I won't."

They couldn't risk anyone coming after them, trying to stop them, Cutter
realized. Not K'aa's men. Not the Hawks. No one. Cutter reached down and
took the remote from Thyago's hand.

"I AM MY OWN BEGINNING! WE ARE MY OWN ENDING!" the Guardian continued.

Cutter paused at the sudden change. "We?" he asked even as Victor turned
to look at him, saw the device in his hand and smiled in understanding.

"WE BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND!" the Guardian thundered. Its distant voice had
lost some of its dispassionate tone. It seemed slightly... relieved. "WE
ARE MY OWN BEGINNING! WE ARE OUR OWN ENDING! I AM OUR OWN BEGINNING! I
AM MY OWN ENDING!"

Cutter's jaw fell as realization began to dawn on him.

"Do it," Victor said softly, nodding to Cutter before turning to face
the sky, "it's the right thing for both of us". He threw wide his arms,
laughed once, and, unaccountably, began to dance, his arms moving in
ancient patterns that made it look sometimes as if he had two, sometimes
four, and occasionally six of them. As he danced, he chanted a phrase in
some language that Cutter didn't know, over and over again, the only
recognizable word to the Frun'alin being 'Shiva.'

As the former security officer madly danced and called out to the sky,
Cutter pressed the remote controls. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers
away, K'aa's ships fired automatically, a weapon he had spent a lifetime
developing, a weapon built upon Romulan starship drive technology. The
sky changed colors, the world trembled, Victor laughed once more and
then abruptly vanished in a wash of blue light... and the Guardian
boomed, "FINALLY!"

And then, the world was gone.

****

From orbit, Allison watched through the porthole in her new prison as
lightning arced down from the unseen heavens and struck the planet. In
moments, the giant world began to cave in on itself, crumbling like the
ruins she had just left. Dying fires erupted from its core, reaching up
towards the sky for a moment before being pulled back down into a deep,
deep darkness.

Then, everything was gone. Her mother, her Uncle Daren, all the others,
everything was gone.

Disappeared down into a black, black hole.

****

(17 years Earlier)

For a long time there was silence except for the slight scraping of the
Counselors stylus scraping against her PADD. Allison von Ernst (20 years
old) sat on the couch quietly staring down at her clean and scrubbed
hands.

The blood was gone.

The scars either healing or all but erased by the gentle ministrations
of Dr. Burton. The tip of Arel's knife that she carried for nearly four
years was gone. Yet still the echoes of those final moments rang
distantly in her ears.

"They never came back then?" the Counselor asked at length, her voice
breaking the stillness, "Nobody came back through the Time Portal?"

Allison breathed a moment, eyes still unfocussed in lost memories. "No.
Nobody came back. Nobody else went back. The planet was gone you
understand? Everything on it destroyed. They closed the door behind
them."

Hugging a pillow tightly, Alli crossed her long legs and stared around
the quiet comfort of the USS Galaxy's offices. So neat and clean.

Everything in perfect working order.

No replicator rationing.

Plenty of food and energy, and all the friendly faces she could ask for.
"I guess they failed though." she sighed. "The future never changed for
me. One of mother's ships beamed me off the planet thinking they were
getting her. Once they realized what had happened, they marooned me on
another dead planet in the system for nearly a month before a passing
salvage ship attracted by the dead starships in orbit picked me up."

She blinked back tears. "I tried to bury her in the sand... I didn't
have a shovel or anything, just the knife that bitch stuck in my
shoulder... but I couldn't do that, either, before they snatched me. The
war went on and on without end, so they must have failed."

Allison paused for long moments recalling growing up in the ruins. The
von Ernst name made her a target for every bounty hunter and two bit
thug in the galaxy. Starfleet Death Squads pursued her across the
quadrant, as she sold her services to pirates...smugglers, whoever could
use a hand. "I used to work in the armory here." she explained, "I knew
a bit about weapons stripping and maintenance. A handy tool it turns
out."

"Yet you got back here." the counselor prodded. "You said the Guardian
was destroyed, but here you are."

Alli nodded absently. "It took me four years. A life time really for a
naive teenager, but I tracked my father down again. He wasn't pleased to
see me, and I have to say the feeling was mutual. His computer core
however had special interest to me. The Mika machine I told you about?
She used to be a time machine, and I figured if those jerks couldn't fix
the Future...maybe I could..."

She fell quiet. The memory of experiences beyond her years falling on
her. "I was too late...I had already left. It's going to happen all over
again. Finem Respice."

"I'm sorry," The counselor leaned forward. "What was that last bit?"

Allison shrugged. "A bit of Latin mom picked up from somewhere. Her mind
was full of random nonsense half the time. It meant an end to peace, or
rest or something. It was her way of describing the end of the world.
But maybe it was more personal. Maybe it meant the end of her own
personal peace. Maybe it referred to us all. All of us in that damnable
time and place."

FINIS

"My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys"

John Walker
Mercedes Delgado (npc)


John didn't hear much from Mercedes over the next nine months.

Her long-term assignment was on the USS: Fenrir, serving under the infamous Captain Mark D'Agosto. D'Agosto, a half-human, half-Bajoran officer, was as sane as anyone else on his ship; he was also a cold-hearted, calculating monster who would sacrifice anything or anyone to win the war. John was fairly horrified by the little he did hear from Mercedes---to be the impetus of that much violence and still keep your sanity . . . . John didn't understand it and didn't much want to. All he knew was that if he ever became a monster like that, something so depraved of basic humanity, he hoped that that Mercedes would put a phaser to the back of his head and execute him, right then and there.

Mercedes had been right---there were good men and there were bad men. As long as he stayed here, taking care of his daughter, John would remain one of the good ones.

It was ten months to the day when John answered a knock on his door and found Mercedes outside, a bottle of tequila in her hand.

"Hey, old man," she said, grinning at him. "You got any cervezas to go with my hooch?"

***

John put Kaylee to bed early that night and proceeded to get drunk with Mercedes.

She sat on his couch, stretching her little legs across him, and chased her tequila with a swig of his beer. "It's over," she said, rolling her neck and shoulders. "D'Agosto's been relieved of duty. They're holding him in a penal colony back on Earth."

"That's great," John said, tipping his beer in salute. When Mercedes did not reply, he looked more closely at her. She looked damn tired. "That's not great, is it?"

"Sure it is."

John glanced at the booze. "Suddenly doesn't feel like we're celebrating."

Mercedes looked at him and then viciously dug her palms into her eyes. "I don't know, John," she said. "I don't know what to think." She laughed a little at that, took another swig of her beer. "That fucker deserves to burn in Hell. I know that. I know it. But, he---well, that's the job isn't it? The bad guy's supposed to take you into his confidence, he's supposed to treat you like a daughter, and when you betray him . . . . well, you knew that going in. If he wasn't a world-class asshole, you wouldn't be there in the first place. Doesn't make you less the hero."

"No," John said, "it doesn't." He poured himself and Mercedes another shot and then asked, "Daughter, huh? Really? Didn't think that guy got that close to anyone."

Mercedes shrugged. "If killing me meant ensuring the Federation's survival, then yeah, he'd kill me. No questions asked. But D'Agosto isn't stupid. He's surrounded himself with loyalists, people that would die for him, kill for him, do just about anything he asked. They're like his own little violent family." She paused. "I was a part of that family. I had to do some pretty bad stuff to get there."

John wasn't going to ask. If Mercedes drank enough, she might tell, but otherwise, he'd wait till she was ready. He wouldn't pressure her into a confession. "You're still a good guy," he said, because he knew she needed to hear it.

Mercedes didn't answer him. "How's Kaylee?" she asked instead.

"Good." John smiled. "Talking in full sentences and everything."

"Any friends yet?"

John's smile faltered just a touch. "No," he admitted. "It's . . . it's hard for her, you know? She's, she's talking to other people, sometimes, answers them, but she won't . . . she can't . . ."

He trailed off and Mercedes pulled her legs off of him so she could lean forward. She patted him on his hand. The pat was a little sloppy. "She's making great progress, John. Don't fucking doubt yourself, man."

"I'm starting to doubt how well you can hold your liquor, actually."

Mercedes laughed. "Fuck you, old man." She fumbled a little for the tequila bottle and shrugged. "I mighta got started before I came here."

"Drinking by yourself now? Not a good sign."

"Hard times," Mercedes said.

"Yeah," John said. "They are." Mercedes poured herself shot of tequila, and John watched her hands while she did it. He didn't think he'd ever seen her this shaken. "Whatever you did," he told her, "you only did it cause you had to."

Mercedes paused and then laughed humorlessly. "Didn't you say that once before? There are no heroes, no villains, just people doing what they had to do."

"I was wrong," John said.

"Were you?" she asked. "D'Agosto, he ain't crazy. Not, you know, raving, wearing-his-mother's-clothes crazy. He wanted the Triad to be defeated, so he just . . . he did what he had to do. And I, I wanted to bring him down, so I . . ."

"You aren't D'Agosto, Mercedes."

"Yeah? How do you know that?"

John touched her on the cheek. "Because I know you," he said.

And Mercedes started to cry.

John was so surprised by her tears that for a minute he did nothing, just sat on the couch and stared at her like the useless lump of flesh that he was. He'd seen Mercedes through Hell, seen what some of those Breen guards did to her back on Betazed, was with her through all the beatings and the torture . . . and the woman didn't cry. Not ever. John's mouth actually dropped open before his brain kickstarted back into functioning and he pulled Mercedes toward him, holding her close to his chest. "You aren't a monster," he told her. "You could never be. I know you, Mercedes. You aren't a good guy. You're the best guy."

Mercedes tried to respond to that, but she was still weeping too hard. He held for a long time until her tears seemed to subside. Finally, he asked, "Are you done getting boogers on my shirt?"

Mercedes laughed and drew back. "Asshole," she said.

"Yeah," John said. "I am." He touched her face again. "You okay?" he asked gently.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah."

She looked into his eyes. They stared at each other for a minute.

"If you think we're gonna fuck, you gotta another fuckin think coming."

John smiled. "I'll keep that in mind," he said.

"Good. And if you tell anyone I cried, I'll cut off your balls and feed em to your dog."

"I don't have a dog."

"I'll buy you a dog."

John nodded. "Yeah," he said. "You're feeling better." He stretched out on the couch, Mercedes lying next to him. She rested her head against him, and he wrapped his arm around her. "This D'Agosto," he said, after a minute, "you put his whole 'family' away?"

"Not all of em," Mercedes said.

"Then you need to watch your back. They're not going to be too happy that 'little sister' put daddy in the big house."

"I love it when you try to sound cool."

"Asshole," he said to her.

"I'll be careful," Mercedes said. "But if you came with me, I wouldn't have to look out so hard."

John sighed. "You never give up, do you?"

"Nah," Mercedes said. "Where's the fun in that?"

***

John woke up the next morning with a hangover and a girl asleep against his chest. He roused her and his daughter before making the both of them breakfast. John didn't eat; he wasn't a big fan of food after tequila. Mercedes mercilessly called him a pussy before giving him a hug and walking out the door.

"You remember what I said," he called after her. "You watch your ass up there."

She winked at him. "Always do," she said.

***

That was the last he heard from her before she disappeared.


TBC

“What kind of Cat would I be?”

Star Captain Le’on Khatowren, CO Task Fleet Harpoon.

**********

Battle over the Guardian Planet…

Sparks flew across the CIC on the Days of Thunder. The battle was beginning to get really desperate. Hawk and Dove forces threw ships and weapons at each other in reckless ambition. His own task fleet was now down to one last ship to carry out the mission of Cattus. The Claw and the Talon had been damaged to the point of being useless. Both ships have since withdrawn and oddly enough they’d been able to get clear of the battle without anyone harassing them further, which Le’on counted as a miracle.

Le’on gripped the tactical table with both paws as the ship shuddered under the impact of more weapons fire. His XO was starting to look panicked. “Sir. We must withdraw!” he argued.

“NYET!” Le’on said with grim determination. “We end this here and now! Continue putting pressure on the Shiva. Evasive Attack Pattern Foxtrot Seven!” he ordered. The Thunder sideslipped to one side to avoid a barrage but ran right into another one. He felt his ship complain under his paws.

“CIC, this is Engineering…” A voice called over the intercom. “We can’t hold containment if you continue to run us into ever single shot that is out there.”

“Thank you, Comrade Engineer.” Le’on replied dryly. “I shall take that under advisement…” he said, cutting the channel.

Salem looked at him, his look almost pleading. “Sir, there is nothing more to gain, she’s putting everything into our path so that we cannot bring our full weapons to bear.” More sparks flew, causing both of them to duck. “She is a math god. No matter what, she is going to outthink you with math.”

That’s when the idea hit him. “Then let’s do as my lizard friend told us not so long ago; throw in a factor that doesn’t involve math…” Le’on said with a grin.

Then, the whole ship seemed to flip once more, pinning the two to the floor briefly until the inertial dampers took over. Engineering called once again. “Comrade Captain, we have about two minutes to core breech… Nothing we can do.”

“Oh but there is…” Le’on muttered. “I only need two minutes.” He looked at Salem and nodded. “Abandon ship. All hands.” He ordered.

Thankful, Salem relayed the order. “All hands, abandon ship. I repeat, abandon ship.” He said, hitting the comm. button. “Comrade Captain, let’s get you to the escape pod.”

Le’on shook his head. “Nyet, you go and take command of the crew. There is something left for me to do.”

Salem stood there, shocked. “But Captain… you are national icon…” he said, remembering his own orders to keep Le’on safe and alive.

“And I still will be one. NOW GO!” Le’on shouted, pointing over Salem’s shoulder to the door. Le’on didn’t give him a second thought as he dashed into his ready room, grabbed two pictures, and then dashed through the forward door of the CIC that connected to the bridge. There, the bridge crew were desperately trying to get the ship clear of the battle for the launching of escape pods. Le’on’s arrival interrupted that. “Belay that. Clear the bridge and get to the escape pods Comrades.” Le’on said, heading straight for the CONN station. “Helmsman, you are relieved.” He said, nudging the young Cattusian out of the way.

The bridge crew were confused at first, but soon left when Le’on looked over his shoulder and hissed at them to leave. They then understood that their valiant leader was making it possible for them to leave. Le’on slapped the two pictures onto the console nearby and smiled at them. One was of his family. The other was none other than the famous Q. “This be the grand fate for me, da comrade?” he asked rhetorically as he pulled the ship back around and gunned the speed to full impulse.

The Shiva came back into view as he sped towards it. He tapped the command for the ship to continue firing all weapons at the center mass of the ship, almost as if he were trying to bore a hole through it. The Shiva, in the meantime, was returning fire while still trying to plod along on its own mission. “I think that it’s funny really… Will things turn out the same way?” Le’on wondered aloud as he continued hounding the massive ship. “If timeline is really restored, will I still meet my family? Or will life just pass them by and pass me by?” he then shrugged. “Well, what kind of cat would I be if I didn’t make sure that those trying to change past have that chance to do so?”

As the Shiva grew larger and larger in the viewscreen, Le’on thought that he caught a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye. It was almost as if the picture of Q winked at him. That was enough for Le’on as he grinned. “We win!” he shouted at the Shiva. “Put THIS into your calculations you human bitch!” he said, shaking a paw at the viewscreen before slapping a paw down onto the CONN panel.

The ICS Days of Thunder hit the Shiva amidships and tore through the hull right as her core breeched. Le’on laughed maniacally at Rebecca Von Ernst the whole time. She would join him in death and all the math in the world wouldn’t save her.

END of Le’on’s story…

"The Doctor is Out"

Ensign (Doctor) Christopher Yorke,
Medical Officer

===

Location: Ens. Yorke’s Quarters, Deck 7

The unpacking had not taken as long as Chris had anticipated. He had been aboard a matter of hours and managed to get his personal items placed strategically around the bland, military-issue room, and personal clothing into the closet. His uniforms, all three freshly replicated adorned the right-hand side of the closet already placed there awaiting his arrival. He was, of course, already wearing the fourth.

Bland was, undoubtedly, an understatement, but he hadn't chosen the assignment for the quarters. In fact ‘chosen’ was hardly the appropriate term to cover the limited selection of starbase, Nova-class survey vessel or the USS Galaxy - he wanted to develop his career, not treat boredom. Hence he had ended up here.

Chris' quarters consisted of a living space shared with another junior officer, Ensign Rowe, a counselor, apparently; and a private bedroom and ensuite shower room. It was more than adequate, and certainly better than he would have managed on the Nova-class.

He glanced around and noticed the photo of his parents he had reluctantly placed on the small desk beside the computer terminal. He would have to contact them soon and let them know exactly how he felt, but now was not the time, he had to focus on getting into his work, not creating stress.

He let out a small sigh before checking the chronometer and deciding it was better to report for duty early than sit around doing nothing. The worst that could happen was that the Doctor was out and he would have to come back later.

After a brief check of his appearance in the mirror, and a slight fumble with his partially unkempt hair, he left the bedroom, passed through the empty lounge and out into the corridor, headed for the nearest turbolift to sickbay.

===

Location: Sickbay, Deck 12

Chris strode through the doors to the primary sickbay, as they parted with a slight swish. There was a little activity in the room – a nurse running a dermal regenerator over a crewman’s hand, and another conducting what appeared to be a routine examination.

Chris didn’t expect it to be busy though, afterall Galaxy was docked at the moment, so the majority of risky areas on the ship were offline and having some routine maintenance, though, it had to be said, that often led to people shortcutting, and coming out worse-off

He approached the office just beside the sickbay, that of the Chief Medical Officer and glanced through the glass. The room was empty.

“Can I help you?” the nurse with the dermal regenerator asked, as she put down the implement, her patient leaving.

“I’m looking for Doctor Burton,” Chris replied. “I’m Doctor Chris Yorke, I’ve just come aboard.”

“Ah, she’s on the starbase I believe attending a meeting, she asked me to give you some instructions and your duty roster, and tell you that she will meet you as soon as possible.”

Chris felt himself frown slightly, he was looking forward to meeting his new boss, and, more importantly, had mentally prepared himself for the occasion. To be simply handed a PADD and told to get on with it didn’t really fulfill his expectations.

“Thanks,” he replied, forcing a smile and taking the PADD.

“I’m Dinara Safina, one of the senior nurses in emergency care,” the Deltan woman offered. “Although today I’m fixing scratches.”

Chris shook her hand after shuffling the PADD into the other.

“I gather you’ll be working emergency care and general duty to start with,” she continued. “That’s the usual case with new doc’s, but Doctor Burton might have something else in mind when she gets back and has had her introductory chat.”

Chris nodded and glanced down at the PADD.

“Have a read, if you have any questions I’ll be around until about 1400,” Dinara concluded. “I’ll go finish my notes.”

As Dinara went to write up her patient notes Chris looked through his ‘orders’. He was covering the morning shift until the Galaxy left the starbase and the CMO had more time to consider his duties – simply put he was assigned the primary sickbay emergency treatment and some observation duties on the ward, nothing too taxing, unless something major happened. He noted his shift started the following day, so he had time to take a brief look around the ship and get used to it, after all, house calls were never out of the question on a ship the size of Galaxy.

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