“I didn’t let it go that far,” he reassured her. “I didn’t want her to believe she’d conquered me completely. Besides, the idea of using sex as a tool of deception . . .” He gave a small shudder and shook his head. “I feel soiled enough taking it as far as I did.”
Teresa seized on that. “Then maybe you didn’t do it of your own free will. Could she have influenced you subliminally?”
“Naturally,” he conceded, “I can’t rule out the possibility. If empathic openness leaves one vulnerable as Shiiem claims, then I would be susceptible.”
“Is that something you could resist?” Garcia asked, then tentatively added, “Will I have to take over the talks?”
Ranjea smiled. “There are elements of my celibacy training that I could adapt into a sort of mental shielding with a little effort. And to be honest, Teresa, without the disciplines of a telepath, you’d have no defense against her at all.”
“Oh.”
Melora Pazlar furrowed her angular brow. “So what does this mean for our mission? Is Lirahn’s agenda a threat to the timeline? And if so, how do we stop her?”
“There is still much to learn,” Ranjea said. “We must simply hope that the answers will reveal themselves.”
IX
29 Rabī al-Awwal 1814 Anno Hegirae, Islamic Calendar A Monday
Rellon Ta, Pyrellia
09:32 UTC
“Agent Shelan, Department of Temporal Investigations.” The young Suliban agent showed her ID to the duty officer at the reception desk of the local Starfleet base. The Tandaran petty officer stared at her for a moment before summoning a superior to meet with her. Shelan tried not to be self-conscious; the petty officer had probably seen few Suliban in his life and was simply curious. But it was difficult not to be a little paranoid in these surroundings. Pyrellia was a Tandaran colony, a tidally locked world orbiting a dim red star less than three parsecs from Tandar Prime. During the Troubles back in the twenty-second century, it had been one of the worlds where Suliban had been interned in concentration camps by the Tandaran government. The camps had been in the barren, cold wastes on the perpetually dark side of the planet, outside the habitable band around the terminator. Pyrellia’s atmosphere and hydrosphere circulated enough heat from the sunlit side to keep the camps from freezing over, but the perpetual darkness and chill had driven many of the internees to madness and suicide. Of course, that had been generations ago, and the modern Tandaran government had formally apologized to the Suliban as a precondition for joining the Federation. Still, just standing here made Shelan feel as if she were walking on the graves of her ancestors.
But she had happened to be at the Aldebaran branch office when the call had come in the day before, making her the nearest agent available. She had a job to do. Shelan reminded herself that her whole purpose in joining the DTI was to move beyond the sad history of her people—and to start making new history.
Soon, Shelan was greeted by a tall Kreetassan male in a lieutenant’s uniform. “Agent Shelan,” he said in a deep voice, a formal smile on his heavily ridged brown face. “Welcome to Rellon Station. I am Emro Ganazeel, deputy station chief.”
“Lieutenant,” Shelan replied. She knew Kreetassans had elaborate rituals for greetings along with everything else, but had no idea what they might be. Fortunately, the lieutenant was cosmopolitan enough to settle for a simple handshake, a habit Shelan had picked up on Earth. “Forgive me if I forgo any pleasantries, but I’m eager to meet this mysterious arrival of yours.”
“Of course. I’ll take you to her.” Shelan followed Ganazeel through the door and down a long corridor. “To be honest, I’ll be delighted to let you take her off our hands. If she is from . . . where I suspect, she’s not a problem I want to have to deal with.”
“I know the basics, but could you tell me the full story from your perspective?” she asked.
Ganazeel paused his forward progress, considering his words. “There’s not much more beyond what we reported. The lieutenant was found crawling out of the sunside wastes, dehydrated and barely conscious. It looked like she’d been there for days, all by herself. She had a communicator and a tricorder, she could’ve easily called for help, but she didn’t. The people who found her brought her here. They asked her name, but either she didn’t know or wouldn’t tell them. When she got here, we tried to scan her combadge for an ID check, but she’d encrypted it somehow. Her tricorder too. We tried to take an image of her for facial identification, but she refused to let us. When we pressed the issue, she invoked a Starfleet emergency code, essentially declaring radio silence. The only other thing she would say was, ‘Contact Temporal Investigations.’”
Shelan considered his words. “I see. Thank you.”
“Agent, I can only think of one reason why a Starfleet officer would behave in that way, given that she summoned you.”
“Lieutenant, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t speculate. Clearly the . . . other lieutenant feels it’s important to control information here. We can assume she has good reason.”
“Of course. My apologies if I breached protocol.”
Shelan smiled. “If you weren’t curious, you wouldn’t be in Starfleet.”
They resumed walking, and Shelan pondered his words. There were possibilities besides the one Ganazeel probably had in mind. Pyrellia was in the Tandar Sector, and the Tandarans had a long history of temporal research. It was possible the lieutenant had discovered some secret that required her to remain anonymous until she could deliver it to the proper authorities at the DTI. For that matter, they were only three parsecs and three weeks removed from the retroassassination attempt on Professor Vard. Was it possible that this lieutenant had some information relating to that incident?
I can only hope it will be something that simple, she thought.
Soon they arrived at a private room and Ganazeel signaled for entry. “Lieutenant,” he called. “Agent Shelan from the DTI is here to speak with you.”
After a moment, the door slid open, revealing only darkness inside. “Send her in,” a muffled female voice said. “Only her, please.”
Ganazeel looked unhappy at the request, but Shelan smiled. “Thank you for your assistance, Lieutenant. I should let you know that we’ll probably be beaming directly out from this room, if that’s all right.”
The Kreetassan shook off his frustrated curiosity. “Yes. Yes, of course. I suppose it’s your problem now. Good luck with . . . whatever it is.”
“Thank you.”
Shelan entered the room and let the door close behind her. “Is it all right to turn up the lights?” she asked.
“Of course,” the woman said in a diffident tone. “Lights.”
The room illumination rose to reveal a striking human woman with light brown skin, shoulder-length brown hair, and large dark eyes over high cheekbones. Her lean frame was still attired in what was left of her uniform; she’d refused even to change or replace it. Although Starfleet uniforms were designed to regulate body temperature, she’d apparently found it necessary to abandon her uniform jacket and turtleneck. Though from what Shelan could see, her uniform was identical to current Starfleet issue. Her combadge was pinned to a teal blue tank top, identifying her as a science or medical officer. Her black trousers were of a self-cleaning material, but they were tattered around the knees as if from crawling. She looked tired, nervous, on edge.
“Shall we sit down?” Shelan suggested.
“Oh, of course. Please.”
Once they were seated, Shelan asked, “So would you like to tell me your name?”
Those dark eyes sized her up. “With the understanding that anything I tell you is highly classified under the Temporal Prime Directive.”
Oh, hell, here we go. “Understood.”
The human took a deep breath. “My name is Lieutenant Dina Elfiki. I’m the chief science officer aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise.”
“The Enterprise?” She made a quick check of her padd. The Department always kept close watch on
ships named Enterprise. “Right now, the Enterprise is assisting in resettlement operations in the Sagittarius Reach.”
“I know,” Elfiki said. “And right now I’m aboard her. Let’s see, I should’ve just filed a geological assay report about seven hours ago.”
Shelan checked the Starfleet download logs, confirming that Elfiki had indeed filed that report from the Enterprise at the same moment that this Elfiki had been cooling her heels in this room. Shelan pulled out her temporal tricorder. “Do you mind if I scan you?”
“I guess you need to confirm I am who and what I say I am.”
“And to confirm that you’ve traveled through time.” Elfiki shrugged in acknowledgment, and Shelan activated her device. There was indeed a faint chroniton signature lingering on Elfiki, and her skin and clothing showed indications of exposure to exotic particles and Hawking radiation. It was consistent with temporal displacement, though Shelan couldn’t identify the specific mechanism from these readings. In fact, there seemed to be a little of everything in the signature she was getting.
The chroniton residue was too decayed to let her narrow down Elfiki’s point of origin, except that it had been in the future. She ran a quantum dating analysis on Elfiki’s clothing, the only known means of determining an object’s actual date of origin independent of its subjective age. Every object was imprinted at its creation with a faint echo of the wavefunction of its entire universe as it existed at the time, and while the technology to read that whole wavefunction did not exist, it was possible to read the interference patterns that arose between the individual and universal wavefunctions, an interference that grew stronger as the universe evolved over time. Moreover, the interference patterns were inverted when an object occupied a point before its creation, giving a negative reading to a quantum dating scan. But the technique had a margin of error of roughly one year, and the results of Shelan’s scan were inconclusive. “So you’re from less than a year in the future,” Shelan said. “Could you tell me when, exactly?”
“I will,” Elfiki said. “When the time is right.”
“I see. I guess it’d be a waste of time to ask how you got back here.”
Elfiki smiled. “It’s never a waste of time to ask a question. But it’s not a question I can answer.”
“Because you don’t want to reveal it, or because you don’t know it?”
The lieutenant chuckled. “I don’t know if it’s even safe to tell you that much.”
“Point taken.” Shelan took a breath, let it out. “Okay. The Department has a protocol in place for something like this, though I don’t know if it’s been invoked before.” Previous unplanned negative displacements had tended to cover a much greater span. In 2154, Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise had encountered a version of itself flung back 117 years by a destabilized subspace corridor in the Delphic Expanse, and in 2373 the Defiant had undergone a strikingly similar experience on the planet Gaia in the Gamma Quadrant. In both cases, the crews’ descendants had helped them avoid the original accidents, apparently terminating their own loop timelines. But neither event had occurred within the DTI’s bailiwick, and Department policy, particularly for a displacement as small as this, was rather different. “And you seem to have intuitively worked it out already.”
“Witness protection,” Elfiki said.
“That’s right. We keep you safely hidden until you catch up with your own worldline.”
Elfiki met her eyes and smirked. “And watch me every moment to make sure I don’t give in to the temptation to try to change something.”
Shelan reached across the table and put a hand on her arm. “Dina, you practically let yourself die of thirst rather than risk contaminating the timeline. I don’t think we have to worry about your sense of duty.”
Elfiki closed her eyes. “I was sorely tempted, though. Another hour . . .” She sighed. “And I’ve got a long wait ahead of me. There are going to be . . . moments of temptation. Believe me, I’m grateful you’ll be riding herd over me.” She held Shelan’s gaze again. “Just so long as you give me a chance to make a difference . . . after I catch up.”
Shelan spread her arms. “Once that point is reached, you’ll be free to do whatever you want. And until then . . . just consider yourself on a long vacation.”
The human gave a small scoff. “Some vacation. I can’t visit family, can’t go out in public . . . you guys play poker?”
“Have you ever seen a DTI agent without a poker face?”
The women shared a laugh, but Shelan could tell Elfiki was nervous. Temporal displacement was always a stressful experience, and Elfiki’s circumstances made it particularly difficult. Shelan clasped Elfiki’s hands. “Don’t worry. We have people in the Department who specialize in counseling displacees. We’ll make sure you don’t feel alone.”
DTI Branch Office, San Francisco
2 Rabī al-Thani 1814 AH (A Wednesday)
14:29 UTC
“My, you’re looking old, Lucsly,” Agent Revad of the Temporal Assessment Group said from the com screen in Lucsly’s office. “Time not agreeing with you?”
“I can’t complain,” Lucsly told his Romulan counterpart. “I haven’t heard from you since you switched sides. How does it feel working for the Typhon Pact?”
“Lucsly, don’t make the mistake of thinking the Romulan Star Empire was ever on the Federation’s side. We pooled our efforts against a few common enemies, but my priority has always been the best interests of the Romulan people. That’s what the Pact offers us.”
“Politics is fleeting, Revad,” Lucsly said. “You know that, so you didn’t call to make speeches. What do you want?”
“To offer you information. And see if you have any to offer in exchange.”
Lucsly observed Revad’s thin face and dirty-brown hair evenly. Whatever political rivalries they shared, the temporal agencies of the quadrant’s various governments tended to cooperate, more or less grudgingly, where threats to their mutual history were concerned. “Do we have another common enemy?” he asked.
“Quite possibly. We recently discovered and averted a plot to cause a disaster on a planet in Romulan territory. The conspirators intended to blame the disaster on Federation sabotage, no doubt to precipitate a war.”
“I take it the conspirators were anachronistic?”
“They’re locals by origin, but chroniton readings from their base suggest they’ve been in communication with the future. Moreover, although Romulan, they possessed genetic enhancements considerably beyond the state of the art. They refused to reveal the origin of these enhancements before . . . losing their lives in an escape attempt.”
Lucsly let the euphemism slide, for he was more concerned with the rest. Revad saw his reaction. “Ah, I thought you would find that familiar. Didn’t the Suliban Cabal have similar genetic enhancements from an unidentified future benefactor?”
“You think the same being or faction is behind this sabotage attempt?”
“It’s hard to be sure, but the evidence is suggestive. I was hoping your agency could provide more information.”
“We’ve shared all our information with the other Accord signatories,” Lucsly told him. “You have everything we do. Probably more, given the Tholians’ past involvement in the Temporal Cold War.” While the Tholian Chronological Defense Corps had not been in direct conflict with the Suliban Cabal in the twenty-second-century front of the cold war, the two powers had clashed over the possession of a thirty-first-century Federation temporal displacement pod discovered by Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise on November 16, 2152.
“Oh, come now, Lucsly. You think I’m not aware that the Department now has a Suliban member?”
“Agent Shelan has no association with the Cabal.”
“That’s not what our genealogists say.”
“Ancestry doesn’t prove association. Knowledge isn’t genetic.”
“Not in our species, but in the Cabal and its heirs, who knows? Come now, Lucsly. You wouldn’t have recruited a C
abal-descended Suliban if you weren’t getting something from her.”
“What we’re getting is her skilled and dedicated service. She volunteered.”
“Oh, Lucsly, I’m hurt by your lack of trust. If you’re concerned that my new allegiance makes me a potential threat to your precious timeline, don’t be. The Pact has no interest in attacking the Federation in the past.” Revad gave a smug smile. “Why, without your sterling example to inspire us, we wouldn’t exist. No, we’d rather compete with you for mastery of the future.”
“Then why hasn’t the Pact signed the Temporal Accord?”
“It’s a negotiation in progress,” Revad insisted. “These things take time. First we must unify the temporal policies of our own respective agencies. But you know that the TAG was and is still an Accord signatory—otherwise we would’ve wiped the Federation from history ages ago.”
“It’s not as if you never tried.”
“Mmm, perhaps in some . . . other reality, now rendered irrelevant,” Revad granted. “And Accords or no, the Tholians have long since outgrown any desire to tamper with history.”
“But now that the Breen and Tzenkethi have access to the knowledge and artifacts in TAG and CDC possession—”
“They don’t. Whatever the Pact’s claims of unity, you can rest assured that the TAG won’t let those creatures get anywhere near our proprietary . . . resources. And you know how territorial the Tholians are.”
Lucsly pondered his words. “All right. It’s not a matter of trust. If Agent Shelan had given us any new insights into the Cabal’s benefactor, I would share them. If they tried to start a Federation–Typhon Pact war once, they may do it again, and target us this time. If so, it’s in everyone’s best interest to share everything they know.”
Revad peered at him for a moment, then relented. “You have a point, Lucsly. I believe you would share any information you had. You have no allegiance beyond the timeline.”
“If we don’t keep the timeline safe, then—”
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