Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History

by Christopher L. Bennett

  The science officer stared at her, blinking his hawklike eyes a few times. “No. I suppose not. It’s Starfleet. More egalitarian. I haven’t lost status, simply moved laterally.”

  Sulu smiled, recognizing now what Onami had done. Betelgeusians were a competitive people, so she’d chosen confrontation to deal with him, forcing him to take sides against himself and thereby make himself see reason, whereas he might’ve been more resistant hearing the same arguments from someone else. Psychological judo, he thought. Who knew?

  “You’re damn right, Mister Uuvu’it,” Sulu told him. “You’re still a valued member of this crew. But you always knew the post was temporary until Spock came back. Just like I did.”

  “That’s different,” Uuvu’it said. “You weren’t comfortable being first officer. You were good at it, very good, but it was always obvious you were holding Spock’s place for him. But me, I got comfortable in that chair. And I was good too. I should be moving upward, not sideways.”

  The science officer’s words struck a nerve. “Hrrii’ush, sometimes you have to accept that advancement takes time. You have to know what you’re ready for, and when. There’s nothing wrong with taking it slow. I mean . . . it’s Mister Spock. Why be in a hurry to stop learning from the master?”

  Uuvu’it studied him closely, and Sulu tried not to feel like a rabbit being sized up by an eagle. “Is that really how you feel?”

  Sulu pondered for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I do,” he said with growing realization and contentment. Being first officer had been exciting and enriching. But the Enterprise just hadn’t been the same without Spock around. Now that the Vulcan had returned from his year-long leave, it felt like home again. Someday Sulu would move on, move up the ladder, but there was still so much he could learn from Kirk and Spock in the meantime. Besides, he had more time now to spend with Marcella DiFalco.

  The Betelgeusian let out a chirping sigh. “Well, then I suppose I can feel the same. For now,” he added. “Until a better opportunity comes along.”

  “Um.” Onami threw Sulu a look. “Assuming Worene doesn’t want to press charges.”

  Sulu chuckled. “No. Lucky for you, Hrrii’ush, you chose an Aulacri to pick a fight with. She thinks you were flirting with her.”

  Uuvu’it looked up in alarm. “Don’t tell me she’s . . .”

  “Sorry, pal,” Sulu said, stepping to the door and holding it open. “You’re free to go. And you’re on your own.”

  Uuvu’it paused to check the corridor outside before bolting from Onami’s office. Sulu and Onami watched his departure from the doorway. “I’ll tell Worene to go easy on the kid,” Onami said. “Though not too easy. He could use something to burn off that nervous energy.”

  Sulu was still trying to figure out how to respond when he felt the engines ramping up to a higher warp factor. His eyes went to the annunciator display in the corridor ceiling. The changing pattern of colored, blinking lights in its black panel alerted him to the change in ship’s status just as communications officer Auberson’s voice came over the intercom. “Senior officers, report to the bridge, please.”

  Sulu made a quick farewell to Onami and headed for the nearest turbolift. He reached the bridge to find the rest of the senior staff either already there or arriving in the opposite lift. Uhura had relieved Auberson and was reporting to Kirk. “The distress signal is coming from a neutron star system three light-years away.”

  Chief DiFalco was checking the astrogator display as Sulu took the helm next to her, giving her a quick smile. “We can be there in six hours at warp nine, Captain,” she said before smiling back.

  “Set course and prepare to go to warp,” Kirk ordered. “Uhura, origin of the distress signal?”

  “I can’t identify it, sir. It’s in Federation Standard language and protocol, but there’s no ship identifier, and the message is automated.”

  “Course plotted and laid in, sir,” DiFalco said.

  Kirk nodded. “Ahead warp nine, Mister Sulu.”

  “Warp nine, aye.”

  “But Chekov, keep your eyes open as we approach. In case they have a reason for not identifying themselves.”

  “Aye, sir,” Chekov said from tactical, though of course he would have done so anyway.

  Sulu launched the Enterprise into high warp, pushing her easily to pseudovelocities that would’ve torn the old ship apart. After a few minutes, Spock turned from the science station that was now his again and reported, “Captain, I am picking up anomalous subspace readings from the vicinity of the neutron star.”

  “What kind of readings?”

  “Jim . . . they are consistent with a subspace confluence.”

  All eyes turned to the Vulcan. “A Vedala drive?” Kirk asked.

  “All known Vedala drives are on record as having been returned to the Vedala, sir. I can only say the readings are consistent. Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Spock’s eyebrow lifted. It was amazing, Sulu thought, how much you missed the little things. “Sir . . . there is also a temporal reading.”

  After the surprise subsided, Kirk’s features grew hard. “Spock . . . am I very much mistaken, or were our orders for this routine survey cut by Admiral Delgado’s office?”

  “Your memory is accurate, Captain.”

  Kirk turned his seat forward to face the view-screen . . . and whatever lay ahead. “What are you up to this time, Admiral?” he murmured.

  According to Spock, the neutron star was an unremarkable, quiescent one that they had charted during their initial survey of this sector over five years ago. There had been no surviving planets, no unusual activity, nothing to draw Federation interest to such a remote system. But that made it an ideal place for unauthorized time-travel experiments, especially if they involved a stolen Vedala drive.

  It wasn’t too surprising, therefore, that Uhura received no response to her hails until the Enterprise drew close enough to the system to allow real-time communication on a low-power, short-range subspace band, one unlikely to be intercepted by anyone else. The short-range signal emanated from a research station in a wide orbit of the neutron star—unlike the distress call, whose source was a vessel in a much tighter, more eccentric orbit. The confluence zone remained centered on the vessel as it orbited, but it was slowly growing.

  When Uhura put the signal from the research station on the viewer, it came as even less of a surprise to Kirk to see Admiral Delgado’s face. “Captain Kirk. We appreciate your punctuality.”

  “Credit where it’s due, Admiral. You assigned us to this sector. You wanted us on hand in case something went wrong with your latest time-travel experiment, because we’re already within the circle of secrecy.”

  The admiral made no effort to deny it. “And because your crew has the greatest experience and expertise with temporal and cross-dimensional phenomena, Captain. Including the particular technology being researched here.”

  “‘Researched’ is a euphemistic word, Admiral, considering that you’ve actually put lives at stake.” Kirk gestured toward Commanders Spock and Scott, who stood flanking his command chair. “And according to what my people tell me, that ship out there is built around the Enterprise’s old engines—the ones that were supposed to be dismantled over two years ago—and appears to contain an interphase-capable confluence drive stolen from the Vedala.”

  “Captain, there will be abundant time for recriminations later—and let me remind you that you’re no longer my equal in rank. That timeship is in danger. Perhaps even the timeline is in danger. And we need your crew’s expertise to resolve the crisis. Your people know these engines, and they’ve studied the confluence drive.”

  Spock stepped forward. “Granted, Admiral. However, in order to address the problem, we will need to understand just what it is you were attempting to do with these propulsion systems.”

  Delgado sighed. “After Timeship One, the Council refused to permit any more time-travel experiments. But the potential for knowl
edge was too great to abandon. Rather than dismantling the timeship engines, we cached them in the event of future need.”

  “But you lied about it to the Council,” Kirk said.

  “Sometimes what’s politically comfortable and what’s strategically necessary are at odds, Captain. And your discovery of the Vedala confluence drives created an unprecedented opportunity. It might be too risky to time-travel within our own timeline, but what if we could travel to the past or future of independent timelines?”

  Kirk blinked. “What would be the point?”

  “We could learn a great deal about historical processes through observation of alternative paths. We could observe possible futures and be alert to the threats that might arise, such as natural disasters or invasions from without—things that would occur regardless of the shape of local history. If nothing else, it would be a way to explore the potentials of time travel without risk to our own timeline.”

  “Good heavens!” Scott cried. “So it’s not enough to risk forcin’ more slingshot jumps on those poor engines, you thought you’d throw in a confluence effect and see what happened?”

  “Mind your tone, Commander. We spent months simulating and testing the combination.”

  “And you concluded,” Spock said, “that you could send your timeship simultaneously to another era and another timestream.”

  “Naturally we aimed for the future, just in case. But the confluence field interacted with the slingshot in a way we didn’t anticipate. Our calculations showed that the combined effect would transpose Timeship Two with a point in the future of a different timeline. Instead . . . something else happened.”

  Spock turned to Kirk. “Captain, our sensors detect stellar spectra through the confluence field that are consistent with the Lembatta Cluster, a small open star cluster several hundred light-years from our location. Extrapolating from its Doppler shifts and the luminosity curves of its variable components, we are detecting the Lembatta Cluster as it will be over one hundred years from now.”

  “Spock, what are you saying?”

  “That apparently the operation of a Vedala confluence drive during a slingshot maneuver did not merely transpose two regions of space and time, but connected them. Overlapped them, if you will. The timeship, and everything else within the confluence zone, exists in two places and times simultaneously. The zone thereby forms a crossing point between those places and times. Light and information can travel through it, and presumably so can material objects.”

  Kirk stared. “But are they in different timelines as well?”

  “Since the Vedala drive clearly did not operate as intended, it is unknown whether the interphasic effect engaged. The only signals we can as yet receive through the interference are astronomical readings which would presumably be identical in alternative histories. This could as easily be a conduit to our own future as to a separate one.”

  Kirk held his gaze grimly. “And that means anyone who stumbles onto it in the future could change what’s supposed to be.”

  But Spock was more contemplative. “Captain . . . we cannot say what is ‘supposed’ to occur in the future. There are many possible paths the future could take—and undoubtedly will take, given the established reality of spontaneously branching alternative histories. The potential for knowledge here cannot be overlooked.”

  Kirk gave it thought, but then shook his head. “No. We wouldn’t want people from the past putting our history in danger. Those people on the other side deserve the same consideration. So keep your scans of the confluence zone to short-range readings. Only what we need to know to rescue that ship’s crew and shut down the confluence.”

  Ever the professional, Spock acknowledged without protest. “Aye, sir.”

  “Well, now that you’ve got that settled, Captain,” Delgado said, “we need to determine how to make that happen. We haven’t been able to make contact with the crew, even after they triggered that distress call. They might be incapacitated by interphasic effects, or worse.”

  And even though they might’ve been dying, Kirk thought, you still refused to talk to us until you could do so without jeopardizing your precious secrets. Although, he had to admit, there was nothing the Enterprise could have done until they were closer. And they were still twenty minutes away, so Delgado’s late explanation hadn’t yet cost them anything . . . probably. So he simply said, “Agreed. Send us all your telemetry from the timeship prior to the . . . accident.”

  Spock and Scott began to coordinate with the research station’s staff—all of whom were civilians, though some of them had a disciplined bearing that marked them to Kirk as ex-Starfleet. But in the background, Kirk recognized Arthur Manners, the DTI policy director he’d met late in his previous tour aboard the Enterprise. That must be how Delgado arranged to spare the timeship engines, Kirk thought, aware that the DTI had been responsible for overseeing their dismantling. He had a man on the inside.

  Finally, Spock and Scott made their report. “Captain,” Scott said, “there’s only so much we can learn from out here, and nothing we can do remotely. Our only shot is to beam aboard that misbegotten Frankenstein ship and shut its drives down from there.”

  “And to beam aboard safely,” Spock added, “we must take the Enterprise into the confluence zone along with the timeship.”

  “Is that safe for the ship?” Kirk asked. “The crew?”

  “If we stay on the periphery of the zone, the interphasic effects should be minimized. I believe I can adjust the shield harmonics to ameliorate them further, thanks to my studies of the confluence event last year.”

  “All right,” Kirk said, standing. “Scotty, get your best people and join me in the transporter room in ten minutes.”

  “Captain,” Spock said, “as the one with the greatest grasp of the physics involved, I should be . . .”

  “No, Spock. Scotty’s fingerprints are on every piece of those engines. He knows their quirks better than anyone.”

  “I was not questioning Mister Scott’s presence.”

  Kirk held his gaze. “Whatever they’ve done to it, that’s a piece of my ship over there. So it’s my responsibility.” He softened his tone, giving Spock a gentle smile. “Besides, if we manage to get ourselves whisked away to some other reality again, I’d rather have you here to find a way to bring me back. You seem to have a knack for it.”

  Spock’s expression barely changed, but in his own way, he smiled back. “Acknowledged. Good luck, Jim.”

  Kirk headed for the lift. “Captain,” Chekov said, rising from his station. “If that ship is in interphase, the crew could be . . . unpredictable.” He spoke with discomfort, still embarrassed by how the interphase madness in Tholian space had affected him all those years ago.

  “Don’t worry, Mister Chekov, you’re invited too. But keep the security detail small; we’ve got enough people going over as it is. Uhura, have Doctor McCoy report to the transporter room as well, and have him bring his theragen derivative for interphase symptoms.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The captain paused at the doors. “And Mister Spock, while we’re over there, you get DTI Director Grey on subspace, secure channel. I think she needs to be brought into this discussion.”

  U.S.S. Capitoline NCC-82617

  Stardate 60145.9

  February 2383

  The Capitoline completed its approach at standard warp rather than slipstream, lest the still-experimental drive system have some unanticipated effect on the confluence field. The sleek Vesta-class starship dropped out of warp and moved into station-keeping fifty kilometers off the flank of the much smaller Everett. No sooner did Lucsly, Dulmur, and T’Viss arrive on the Capitoline’s bridge than their fellow agents aboard the timeship sent a transmission on an encrypted channel beyond the detection capability of 2275 Starfleet technology. “Ranjea here. We’ve intercepted signals from the downtime end of the confluence. Captain Kirk and his chief engineer are preparing to beam aboard Timeship Two. Repeat, Captain Kirk is comin
g aboard.”

  “Of course he is,” Lucsly grated. “He could never leave well enough alone.”

  “So what do we do about it?” Dulmur asked, trying to refocus his partner away from his animosity and toward constructive solutions.

  “Kirk needs to be watched closely,” Lucsly said. “But a matter this sensitive calls for the most senior agents on the scene.”

  Dulmur met his eyes, gauging him. “Which would be us.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Ranjea,” Dulmur called, “you and Garcia beam back to the Everett. We’ll be taking point.”

  “Acknowledged,” Ranjea replied. “To be honest, I’m happy to pass the buck on this one.”

  Lucsly asked the Capitoline’s captain to have two isolation suits ready for them in the transporter room, and then the two agents headed for the turbolift. “Doctor,” Lucsly said to T’Viss, “you beam over to the Everett and coordinate with Ranjea and Garcia.”

  “Very well,” she said as she joined them in the lift.

  Soon the two veteran agents were in the transporter room, donning the claustrophobic isolation suits over their plain gray business suits while T’Viss transported over to the Everett. Dulmur tried to control his breathing. In his seventeen years, five months, and twenty-four days as an active DTI agent, he’d hardly ever traveled any significant distance into his past or future; that was something DTI agents were supposed to prevent, not participate in. Technically, the ship he was about to beam to was still in his relative present; but it also existed, and originated, a hundred and seven years, eleven months, fourteen days, twelve hours, and thirty-three minutes in his relative past, according to the chronometer readings Ranjea and Garcia had taken. Stepping into history like this was a last resort for any DTI agent, and Dulmur was terrified that, even cloaked in the isolation suit, he might do something wrong. He glanced over at his partner, who looked as cool and businesslike as ever while he donned the suit. As he so often did, Dulmur drew strength from Lucsly’s example. The important thing was to follow the rules. The rules existed to maintain order amid the chaos of temporal disruption. Too much imagination just got in the way of doing the job calmly, efficiently, and safely.