“And that’s why the Cabal’s Sponsor warned Archer about the Xindi,” Dulmur said.
“Exactly. He didn’t want to risk losing the Federation, not until after the Borg were gone.”
“Though now that they are, he didn’t mind sending his Romulan Augments to try to start a war with the Typhon Pact.”
“You’ve got it.”
“But his tactics in the past were just as reckless,” Lucsly said. “Besieging the Tandarans for a decade to prevent their temporal research? Starting a Klingon civil war just to prevent Korath’s birth in a later century?”
“The Sponsor can model alternative possibilities precisely in order to predict the effects of his actions,” Noi said. “Our own simulations suggest that the civil war would’ve had little long-term effect on Klingon history—they were killing each other off so constantly and having so many political upheavals at the time that its impact would’ve soon been lost in the noise—but it would’ve led to the extermination of the houses that led the rebellion, including Korath’s ancestral house.”
“And the destruction of Paraagan II?” Dulmur asked. “Naadri’s ancestors can’t have been from there, or they would’ve been killed.”
“They were from there,” Noi said. “But once my . . . fellow Temporal Agent whom you know as Daniels became aware of the alteration to history, he went back earlier and arranged for Naadri’s great-great-great-grandparents to win a contest whose prize was an offworld cruise. They weren’t there when the colony was destroyed.”
“Why didn’t he put the original history back the way it was? Save all the Paraagan colonists?”
Noi sighed. “We did what we could. You can’t win every battle, no matter how much the idiots in the TIC wanted to think you could. Trying to fix every hitch in reality is a losing proposition, especially when an enemy’s matching you move for move. It leads to messes like this one.”
Dulmur stepped closer, forcing Noi to look up at him. “And Agent Shelan? Was she just another ‘hitch in reality’ you’ve washed your hands of?”
Noi’s bright golden eyes met his squarely, and to his surprise, there were tears in them. “You don’t even remember her. I do. I knew her. I liked her. And I talked her into the mission that ended her life, and I have to live with that. So don’t you get self-righteous with me, Dulmur.”
“What happened?” Lucsly said. “And don’t say we don’t need to know.”
“There’s no reason to hide it anymore,” Noi said. “I knew Ronarek was an agent of the Sponsor. A shapeshifting impostor who’d killed the real Doctor Ronarek so he could infiltrate Vard’s conference and kill the physicists. But nobody but an Augment, one with the right genes, could get past the security on his ship. When I tried it, I was caught in a time dilation field, captured, almost killed before my people yanked me back.”
“But Shelan had a Cabal ancestor,” Dulmur said. “She had the right genes.”
Noi nodded. “In a dormant form. But with her permission, and a few days of thirty-first-century gene therapy, I was able to activate them. I gave Shelan her full Augment powers, including the ability to shapeshift and pass as a Romulan. Her genetic signature let her get past the security on Ronarek’s ship and penetrate to his temporal communications chamber.”
“Why? What did you send her to do?”
“The Sponsor is smart,” Noi said. “He doesn’t travel in time, doesn’t even show himself openly to his Augments. So his identity remains a mystery. We know he’s from roughly the middle of the twenty-eighth century, but we don’t know the year, his species, his location, even what his ultimate goal is. We have suspects, but he’s spread plenty of false clues through history, and nothing solid has panned out. We only know him by his Augments in various centuries and species. Giving anachronistic genetic enhancements to his proxies is a favorite tactic.”
“Including Khan’s Augments?” Lucsly asked. “Did he really give genetic technology to Project Chrysalis?”
“That’s what the Aegis suspects, but Gary Seven could never prove it. Even under servo hypnosis, the surviving scientists insisted they’d made the breakthroughs themselves. We think the Sponsor must have given them memory blocks as an extra security precaution, since he was treading so close to Aegis operations, but we can’t be certain.”
“Shelan,” Dulmur reminded her. “What was her mission? To backtrack the Sponsor’s temporal signal? Let you lock onto his origin point?”
“That’s right,” Noi said. “She was the only one who could’ve done it. The only Accord-certified temporal operative in history with enough undiluted Cabal genes to penetrate their security. Once she understood that . . .” She blinked away tears. “God, I wish I could integrate you with your earlier selves, let you remember that woman. She was so dedicated, so driven to bring down the being who’d brought such suffering to her people. The look in her eyes when I sent her in . . . it was like she was fulfilling her purpose, her whole reason for existing. She wanted nothing more than to expose the Sponsor and help us bring him to justice once and for all.”
When Noi fell silent for several moments, Lucsly spoke more gently than Dulmur had ever heard him. “What happened to her?”
“I was on comms with her the whole time—an ansible beacon, untraceable. We were monitoring her every move, ready to pull her out if things got hot. Ready to get the information the instant she sent it so our forces could move in on the Sponsor.” She closed her eyes. “She reached the chamber, she ran the tricorder protocols we gave her . . . she was just starting to send us the information we needed . . . and then it all went to quantum static.” She sniffled. “That must’ve been the exact moment when the Sponsor sent an agent back into Shelan’s past to do . . . whatever they did.”
“That was when the timelines merged?” Lucsly prompted.
“Yes. Shelan, her tricorder, every trace of her life, they just quantum-tunneled out of existence. Forgotten. Except by me, because I’m shielded.” She ran a hand over her jumpsuit—or was it her own body she was indicating? “Phase discriminators built right in.”
After a moment, Lucsly asked, “Can you bring her back?”
Noi shook her head slowly, solemnly. “If I knew who the Sponsor was, if I could get my hands on the bastard, maybe I could make him tell me what he’d done so I could fix it. But without the information Shelan was stopped from sending, it’s hopeless.” She took them both in with her soulful eyes. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything we put you through in our stupid, selfish battles.”
After a pause, Lucsly spoke. “I saw him. Ronarek had a holocommunicator projecting an image of the Sponsor. If we could get that device . . .”
Noi had perked up when he started to speak, but now showed disappointment. “What size communicator?”
“Handheld. A miniature image.”
She shook her head. “Just a relay. It wouldn’t have the temporal circuitry we’d need to trace his signal. All we could do is watch him taunt us and gloat,” she finished through clenched teeth.
Lucsly surprised Dulmur again. He stepped forward and placed a hand on Noi’s shoulder, actually initiating physical contact without seeming uncomfortable. “You’ll have other chances in your subjective future,” he said. “Provided we end this battle so we can all go home safely.”
“Right,” she said, smiling up at him and placing her delicate hand atop his. “Thanks, Gariff. Don’t ever change.”
“I don’t plan to.”
She chuckled, then straightened and gathered herself. “Now let’s go see how the others are doing.”
Noi moved off, and Dulmur peered at his partner. “Is there something you want to tell me about you and Jena?”
Lucsly was as stony as ever as he moved off. “You don’t need to know.”
Dulmur thought about it. “No,” he muttered to himself, “come to think of it, I probably don’t want to know.”
Vard tried to insist on being allowed to attend the talks, saying that as the parties being fou
ght over, the physicists had a right to representation. But Lucsly and Dulmur put their feet down, and Worf and Choudhury were more than willing to keep Vard contained. As for Elfiki, she was happy to stay out of the talks. “I’m curious, of course . . . but I’ve had my fill of having to keep quiet about the future. From now on, no more spoilers.” She was needed where she was anyway; even if all the respective leaders joined the talks, the factions were still fighting, some in alternate or anachronistic time frames which made coordination difficult. The scientists were still in danger from the combat as well as the threat to local spacetime. They would need all three Enterprise officers to protect them.
It took surprisingly little time to bring all of the anti-Accord factions to the table. The female Vorgon, who had been far enough away to avoid the time loop that had trapped her male partners, had consented willingly. Ojav, as she introduced herself, was distraught at the loss of the males, who apparently had been her mates. “All I want is to end this,” she said. “No more fighting.” As for the Shirna, most of their leaders had been caught in the time-looped explosion, effectively irretrievable, leaving command to a junior officer who said his highest priority was the safety of his troops.
Rodal had managed to bring the Na’kuhl leaders to the table, though he demurred and said that Meneth deserved the credit. The black-uniformed, bat-faced aliens were staring at the Simperian civet with a look that could be either respect or fear, but Meneth was content to curl up in the middle of the table and wash herself.
Finally, Ducane brought the Romulan Augments aboard, in the person of the impostor Ronarek himself, who was not as dead as Korath had claimed; apparently he too had been temporally duplicated. “I’m willing to listen,” the gray-haired Augment spy said, offering no name beyond his false one. “But I and my troops will do as my Sponsor commands.”
Dulmur leaned forward. “Then by all means, bring the Sponsor in on this. We’re all looking forward to meeting him face-to-face.”
Ronarek—for that name would have to do—sneered at him. “You are not worthy to look upon our benefactor’s visage. Nor to waste his time with diplomatic sophistry.”
“If he’s your benefactor, then he’ll want you to get out of this alive, right?” Dulmur asked. “And if that’s going to happen, then everyone at this table has to have the power to make decisions and make them stick. I think he’ll want to be in on this.”
The Augment sneered. “Very well.”
He placed his holocommunicator on the table and activated it. The vague humanoid figure appeared and looked around as Meneth roused herself and padded over to sniff at it. “Greetings,” he said in a reverberating baritone, needing no explanation from Ronarek; clearly he’d been anticipating this or monitoring it all along, and the impostor’s objections had been mere bluster. “What a rare opportunity to confer with so many of my rivals in one place.”
“Welcome to these negotiations,” Lucsly said in a carefully neutral voice. “How shall we address you?”
The featureless head turned to regard him. “‘Sir’ will do.”
Dulmur wanted to scream at him, to curse him for damning Shelan to nonexistence, stealing his memories so he couldn’t even mourn her. He felt violated just looking at the blurry figure. But he sensed Lucsly’s gaze upon him, glanced aside to see his partner sitting there as cool and businesslike as ever. It reminded Dulmur of what they were all about: getting the job done, regardless of personal drama or philosophical angst. He was a stiff in a suit, a nobody with an unglamorous role to play. That was why they were the only ones who could negotiate a settlement: because, when you stripped away the Accordists’ sweet talk, ultimately none of these time travelers took the DTI seriously enough to perceive them as a threat. Normally that rankled, but right now it was an advantage. So he schooled himself to calm, following Lucsly’s lead.
But he promised himself that, someday, there would be a reckoning with the Sponsor.
“I know you all have different reasons for fighting in this cold war,” Lucsly said once everyone was seated. “But that’s not what we’re here to deal with. We don’t have to solve any of the big issues. All we need to do is agree to walk away from this fight. Put an end to the battles, deactivate our various temporal technologies so the local spacetime can return to normal.” He looked around at the group. “If we don’t, then that spacetime collapses and we all cease to exist on a quantum level. So this should be an easy decision to make. All we should have to talk about is how to coordinate our cease-fire and withdrawal. Agreed?”
“I agree,” said Ojav. She turned to the Shirna leader, Drash. “There is no point in continuing this conflict.”
The goblin-featured Drash nodded gravely. “I agree. We have both lost too much.”
“If I may interpose,” said the miniature Sponsor. “The Vorgons are known for their deceitful tactics. How can you be certain they won’t snatch the physicists away the moment you turn your backs?”
Drash’s pointed ears twitched. “He has a point.”
“We won’t allow it,” Jena Noi said. “You have our word.”
“And why,” the Sponsor asked, “should the Shirna trust the word of the FTA?”
“He’s right,” Drash said. “You have persisted in denying us the means to defend ourselves against the Vorgons’ attacks on our past!”
“Our attacks on your past?” Ojav protested.
“Quite right,” put in the Na’kuhl leader, Ghretch, his pale batlike visage glaring at the Accordists. “The enforcement of the Temporal Accords is an exercise in oppression—the temporal defense grid a tool of tyranny. All races deserve the freedom to employ temporal technology as they see fit.”
“Indeed,” intoned the Sponsor. “Why should we settle for a resolution that preserves the status quo, defense grid and all? That only serves the Accordists.”
“Because we don’t know that’s what we’ll get,” Rodal pointed out. “At this point, it is impossible to tell whether your attempts to disrupt this conference have already undermined the development of the grid or perhaps even accelerated its development. None of us knows if the future will be better or worse if we step away. It’s an equal gamble for all of us.”
It went on like that for a while. As simple as it should have been just to pack up their toys and walk away, the various factions had too much history, too much baggage which the Sponsor seemed happy to stir up. Lucsly and Dulmur had to probe for common ground, bases for consensus. As the Sponsor systematically scuttled their efforts, they were forced to find ways to balance the factions against each other, to ensure that both sides would have mechanisms in place to enforce a cease-fire. If anything, the Sponsor’s disruptive efforts worked in the Accordists’ favor, since the expanded checks and balances the agents negotiated to ensure the various factions would agree to leave the events of this day alone in their respective futures would probably help deter other temporal attacks on the present-day Federation and its allies.
Still, as the Accordists, the Vorgons, the Shirna, and even the Na’kuhl came more and more into agreement on a protocol that would allow them to stand down their forces and walk away safely, the Romulan Augments remained the only holdout, due to the Sponsor’s relentless refusal to cooperate. Since none of the other parties knew who, where, or when he was, none of them could exert any leverage over him the way they could over one another.
“You must end this soon,” Worf insisted over the DTI agents’ communicators fifty-one minutes into the negotiations. “The Augment forces are continuing to advance! No one else is attacking the scientists anymore, but all are under attack from the Augments.”
“What is wrong with you?” Dulmur demanded, leaning over the blurry hologram on the table. “You know what’s at stake here. It’s not just our lives and your troops’ lives. If the spacetime in here collapses, the quantum lock could go with it, and then whatever version of the timeline is left will spread out into the universe. You don’t know what reality that’s gonna be. You could b
e dooming your own timeline to collapse.”
“I have the utmost confidence in Agent Noi’s quantum lock,” the Sponsor said mockingly. “I’m quite sure it will last longer than the integrity of the spacetime within.”
“That’s what you’re counting on, isn’t it?” Lucsly realized. “You want the local spacetime to collapse. That way, the physicists die. The future goes on without them, without their work. You get what you want.”
“You’re crazy!” Commander Ducane cried. “You don’t know if destroying this conference will prevent the defense grid from being built!”
“Maybe not. But I do know that in all our respective histories, Korath invents the chrono-deflector in the first decade of the twenty-four hundreds. The first practical, replicable time-travel mechanism invented among the Khitomer Allies.” Dulmur was surprised. That gun-happy blowhard was the one who’d make the breakthrough? You never could tell. “Without him, and without the theoretical advances made by Naadri, Nart, and several of Professor Vard’s protégés, the development of temporal technology among the future Accordist powers will be set back by decades, perhaps centuries.” Just as well Vard wasn’t here; he would be crushed to learn he wasn’t the target after all. “Enough time for other, less . . . inhibited civilizations to achieve their own temporal breakthroughs.”
Jena Noi’s eyes were wide. “So with or without the defense grid, your side gains the edge over the Accordists. Maybe the Temporal Accords never happen at all.”
“Now, you understand,” the Sponsor said. “Either way, I win.”
Dulmur turned to Ronarek. “Do you hear that? This just became a suicide mission for you guys. Your vaunted ‘benefactor’ is tossing you on the trash heap. Are you gonna stand for that?”
Ronarek met his gaze proudly. “We owe everything we are to the benefactor. Our lives are his to do with as he wishes.”
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