by David Smith
O'Mara kept a couple of engineers poking around the new engine configuration and another couple poring over the computer records which, bizarrely, were largely un-encrypted. She winced at the breath-taking stupidity of taking such a risk and couldn't imagine a universe where such a precaution wasn’t necessary. She assigned a shift of twenty security personnel to watch the Transporter Room, Hangar Deck and main air-locks, and decided her time would be better spent assisting Doctor Mengele with her interrogations.
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Deep in the bowels of the Tiger, Lieutenant Jasmine Sato bided her time. ‘Status report please, Susan.’
‘Tiger is currently occupied by twenty-five Imperial personnel. Twenty are assigned to guarding access points, the other five are all on the Engineering Deck.’
‘Are all security systems still under our control?’
‘Yes Lieutenant, the Imperial engineering staff are fully occupied interrogating the fake computer interface and getting nowhere.’
Excellent thought Sato, the plan was actually working. When ASBeau had asked them to come up with a contingency plan to leave personnel hidden aboard Tiger, she'd winced when Park suggested re-instating the fake interface he and Chief Money had used to defraud the Starfleet logistics system.
But she had to admit, it was brilliant. The fake interface took the Star-base engineers around in ever-decreasing circles as it had done to themselves until Hollins and Deng had finally worked out what was happening.
With the fake interface re-programmed and reinstated by PO Park, they had control of the ships computer and all of its systems without the Empire’s staff having the slightest inkling anything was wrong.
They'd carefully altered the visible crew roster to remove herself, PO Park, Chief Belle and Security Crewmen Handley and Larkin, and changed the records of five Yeomen to make up the apparent shortfall of security and engineering personnel.
When it came to finding a place to hide themselves, Sato had reluctantly admitted that she had always kept a small private space of her own. A small section of Jefferies tube that served as an access way to equipment that had been removed from Tiger during a previous refit had been left redundant and abandoned. She’d come across it over a year previously and noted that the internal sensors in the area had been disconnected too.
When Commander Cassini had been too much to bear, she’d retreated to this little haven to get an hour’s worth of peace and quiet. Although she much preferred working for Commander Romanov, she still used it. Just occasionally, that is.
It made a perfect hidey-hole with room for the five of them and a few days worth of supplies. Being the Ship’s Officer in charge of Support Services Engineering, Sato had no problem in working out what to do about sanitary arrangements etc.
By the time ASBeau’s worst fears had come true, the little space was a proper home-from-home. As the Star-base staff had transported across, they’d retreated to the space and disguised the only access way into the area with a couple of fake bulkhead panels.
There they waited quietly, Susan acting as their eyes and ears, able to watch every move the Imperial crew made. Biding their time.
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The Magistrate had no qualms in handing over interrogation of the lesser members of Tiger’s crew to Doctor Katrin Mengele. The Doctor had been assigned to the Magistrate as part of a project to halt the progress of the Sha T’Al through the disputed zone and her expertise had proved decisive. She was still working on ways to slow down the Tana, now that they’d been gifted the territory by the Sha T’Al.
The Magistrate wasn’t interested in Mengele’s knowledge of medicine, exo-biology and genetics, but she was interested in the Doctor’s fearsome reputation as an interrogator. She was cool and patient and always got the information she was after, even without having to resort to the use of agonisers, or other standard bits of Imperial interrogation equipment. She always found a way to loosen lips, and often other orifices, too.
Mengele had been given a pair of basic instructions by the Magistrate. She was to find out if the ship was from another universe, and also find out if the crew knew anything that would be useful for the war effort.
Mengele was a physician, not a physicist, and all the talk of parallel universes and conflicting warp-fields was of little interest to her. She was however, fascinated to find that these people seemed to be exact copies of the crew of their ISS Tiger.
Some of the crew had made it clear that there was a version of her on board their ship. The thought intrigued her, and although the Magistrate had made it clear that she would personally interrogate the Tiger’s senior staff, Mengele was desperate to meet this other version of herself. Purely out of scientific curiosity, of course.
She was still ruminating on this in the interrogation suite of the bases’ medical facilities when Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara arrived unannounced. She casually strolled in just as Katrin was beginning her next interrogation.
O’Mara eyed the naked man dangling upside down from the deck-head with some distaste. Although Mengele got results with her techniques, O’Mara was convinced that Mengele just got off on that sort of thing.
She walked past the unfortunate crewman and casually cracked her riding crop across his buttocks bringing a howl of pain and raising obvious red welts instantly.
She deliberately sat in the Doctor’s chair and smiled to herself at the Doctor’s quite obvious displeasure. ‘You are over-stepping a mark Lieutenant-Commander’, said the Doctor pointedly.
‘Really? How so, Doctor?’ smiled the Science Officer, ‘I’m sure it can’t be because I’m a mere Lieutenant-Commander and you’re a Commander?’ She waited for a reply, grinning like a Cheshire cat. ‘After all, Admiral O’Connor has made it quite clear that your status as Commander is questionable, what with you being under investigation by the Bureau of Integrity.’
Mengele scowled but said nothing. She’d foolishly questioned the sense of the war with the Tana and Sha T’Al and had been reported as being potentially disloyal to the Emperor. Her input into Admiral O’Connor’s war strategy was the only thing that had kept her from disappearing like most other citizens that the Bureau of Integrity were asked to investigate.
Even so, O’Connor had made it clear that her card was marked and she’d been posted to Sector 212 where she could be kept under control beneath the Magistrate’s watchful gaze. Although she still carried the rank of Commander, she had no actual authority. O’Mara knew this and rubbed her nose in the fact at any given opportunity.
‘What do you want, O’Mara?’ asked the Doctor bluntly.
‘Katrin, why do you always assume that I want something?’ said the Science Officer mockingly.
Unwilling to give ground to the loathsome woman, Mengele made her feelings felt ‘Because you are an odious, obnoxious and desperate individual whose ambition vastly out-strips her actual intellect.’
She watched with some small satisfaction as O’Mara’s grip tightened visibly on her riding crop. Although she could treat the Doctor with disdain, any violence towards her would undoubtedly incur the Admiral’s wrath. Both Mengele and O’Mara had seen others make that mistake, which was invariably their last.
O’Mara took a deep breath and relented a little. ‘I apologise Doctor, I am indeed after something, but you don’t need to worry, it’s just to satisfy my own curiosity.’
‘Then please feel free to ask’ said Mengele, happy to have restored the status quo, if only for now.
O’Mara sat up right. ‘These people . . . this ship . . . are they really from another dimension?’
Mengele hadn’t expected anything so simple. ‘Having . . . spoken . . . to about forty of them, I can only conclude that their story is true. If it isn’t, it’s a masterpiece of induced group-memory unparalleled anywhere and at any time. There is no other way so many individuals could corroborate a story so accurately, completely and consistently.’
O’Mara mused upon this. ‘So how did t
hey happen to cross into our dimension? I’ve spoken to a few of the engineers in passing and it seems that they believe it was caused by an unexpected complication with some Tana drive coils they’d installed after their own had been damaged.’
‘Without checking my records, I couldn’t give you details, but in essence that is the story as described by all of the crew who were involved’ replied the Doctor.
‘Did they mention any other odd effects of this interaction between differing drive coils? I ask only because I’d like to test the ship, but don’t want to end up in their universe’ she laughed.
Mengele laughed with her and instantly realised there was more to O’Mara’s question than she made out. ‘Well, I’m no engineer and much of what they said was beyond my understanding. All I could gather was that they were reluctant to use the warp-drive as the field interaction appeared to drive them through time, as well as space.’ She watched the Science Officer carefully. Was that just a hint of excitement then? Had she just heard what she was hoping to hear?
‘Oh dear’ said O’Mara, ‘I was hoping we could add another heavy-cruiser to the defence of the Empire, but if that is the case, we’ll need to carry out extensive repairs before we can make use of her’ and she sighed dramatically. ‘Thank you for your time Doctor, it’s been most enlightening.’
Mengele watched as the Science Officer left the room considerably quicker than she had entered it. Yes, O’Mara had heard exactly what she wanted to hear.
Turning her attention back to the poor unfortunate crewman still dangling from the deck-head, she smiled. Pulling on very long latex gloves, she said, ‘They say that the way to a man’s heart is through is stomach. Let’s see if we can reach that far from further down the digestive tract, shall we?’
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Dave was still stuck in his cell. The Magistrate had visited him a couple of times, asking questions that seemed banal or pointless, but he quickly realized that they weren’t what they seemed. Her questioning was frightening in its subtlety, and Dave was terrified that some things he’d said might have given away vital information to a potentially deadly opponent.
He stopped eating the food that arrived three times a day, and felt much sharper and more alert, confirming that he was being given drugs to make him more compliant. He wanted to stop drinking too, but knew he’d only last a matter of days without liquids.
On the day they’d been captured he’d heard movement and realised that someone was being moved into the cell next to his. He’d called out, and found out that it was Commander Mengele, but the guard outside his cell had discouraged him from trying to talk to the new inmate with the liberal application of what Terran Empire personnel referred to as an agoniser. To Dave’s mind it was a bloody cattle-prod, but having tried to talk once too often, he would ruefully admit that ‘agoniser’ was a reasonable description of its function.
Before long Dave heard another unfortunate person being thrown into the third cell on the block that he couldn’t see, but which he knew to be there from his visit to the Brig at Arcturus Station.
He avoided a stab from his guard’s agoniser this time as he could hear Lieutenant Jonsen arguing with his captors right up to the point where he too was zapped with an agoniser.
It seemed the Brig was filling up and Dave could only assume that the rest of the crew of the ship had been captured. The fact that he was on his own, rather than sharing a cell, indicated that the Magistrate was taking no chances. On their own, his crew couldn’t even speculate about this universe, let alone plot escapes, so Dave had plenty of time to speculate to himself on how and why the two Universes had diverged so spectacularly. Sadly there was no way for him to verify his theories, or discuss it with the Doctor, or Jonsen, but he had literally nothing else to do with his time.
He knew things had been different in this universe as far back as the twenty-first century. The rise of an actor to become President of a United Earth seemed incredibly unlikely, but Earth’s history seemed to be full of incredibly unlikely events. Even so, Sylvester Stallone?!?
If the Earth had been united for that long, and the actor was still venerated, it seemed likely that the global wars that had devastated the whole planet during the latter part of the twenty-first century must have had a clear winner.
Bizarre. But then, Dave thought, here he was, in a parallel universe. How unlikely was that???? His head ached, and he was tired and hungry and irritable. He couldn’t get comfortable on the thinly padded bunk and there was an incessant soft tapping sound that was driving him absolutely nuts.
He lay there, trying to think of some way he could escape or communicate with his crew, but the tapping was still there, encroaching on his thought processes. It wasn’t even a regular tapping, like a clock. It was inconsistent, as if someone was trying to send a message in Morse code . . .
He very nearly physically slapped himself, but settled for calling himself a twat under his breath.
Having chastised himself he listened and concentrated.
. . . G - E – L – E - . C – A - N – U – H –E – A – R - ?
The tapping paused and he tapped the wall to get the Commanders attention:
Y – E – S - .
G – O – O – D - . - H – A – V – E – S – E – E – N – M – O – S – T – O – F – C – R – E – W - . - N – O – T – B – E – L – L – E - ?
Dave sat up. It was slow, and they’d need to be careful but at least they were communicating. He replied:
O – K - . – C – A – N - U – C – O – M - M – W – I – T - H – A – N – Y – O – N - E – E – L – S – E - ?
He waited and heard.
Y – E – S – 6 – I – N – C – E – L – L – B – E – H – I – N – D - .
Dave began to think how they could use this and was beginning to see a glimmer of hope when he heard the door at the entrance to the cell-block open and the click of high-heels entering the cell area.
They were slower than the Magistrate’s foot-steps. Someone taller maybe? He heard Katrin Mengele’s voice and winced, expecting the guard to step forward and punish her for speaking, but nothing happened.
Intrigued, he stepped as close as he could to the cell entrance, and could see just far enough down the block to see . . . Mengele was outside!!
Somehow she’d got out of her cell! Dave was just about to shout to her, when he realised something was wrong.
The Doctor was calmly talking to the guard.
‘The Magistrate has asked me to interrogate this prisoner specifically.’
‘That’s as maybe Commander, but until I get authorization from the Magistrate or Commander Jervis, I can’t release her’ countered the guard.
‘Very well Crewman . . . ‘
‘Crewman Stoltz, Commander’ answered the guard.
‘Thank you, Crewman Stoltz. I shall speak to the Magistrate and commend you to her for your diligence and fortitude. I am sure she will not mind that her orders have been contradicted and the information she has urgently requested is delayed somewhat’ said Mengele calmly.
Dave could see the colour drain from the man’s face, and nearly choking he replied ‘Thank you, Commander, but that won’t be necessary. I’m sure the authorization from Commander Jervis has been delayed temporarily. These things happen sometimes. Please take the prisoner. Now. With my sincerest apologies.’
He stepped forward and lowered the force-field to the cell, and Dave watched bemused as Katrin Mengele stepped out.
The two tall, elegant blondes stood calmly regarding each other, as if sizing up the competition. The Mengele he knew was a cool operator, and Dave trusted her to take advantage of any situation that arose. But there was something else in the way they looked at each other . . .
Chapter 6
Six hours later, Dave was woken with a start by the sound of a force-field dropping again. He was up and over to the cell entrance just in time to see a very dishevelled Katrin Me
ngele being pushed back into her cell.
He’d been worried about her all the time she’d been out. He knew how painful the agonisers could be and if the Magistrate wanted some specific information he dreaded to think how she might have suffered.
He hated to have to push her, but he needed to know what had gone on.
U – O – K - ?
Y – E – S – F – I – N – E - . – V – T – I – R – E – D - . – N – E – E – D – S – L – E – E – P - .
O – K - , - B – U – T – M – U – S – T – T – A – L – K – A – S – A – P - .
There was no reply, other than some quite distinct snoring.
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Dave struggled to rouse Mengele the next day, and had only just begun to communicate with her when her doppelganger turned up again, dragging her away for yet another lengthy period. The pattern of interrogations was repeated day after day, and Dave wondered how much more the Commander would be able to take. She was a strong and uncompromising character, but even she must have her limits? The other Mengele kept coming back for her time and time again. Had she already lost the battle to resist?
On the fourth day of her extended interrogation, the ‘other’ Mengele returned with her prisoner and after putting her in the cell, she called the guard outside the block so they could converse away from the prisoners.
Seizing his chance, Dave sprang to the entrance of his cell and hissed urgently ‘Katrin! Katrin! Are you ok? What’s going on?’
The Doctor’s voice came back sounding fatigued but curiously relaxed. ‘I’m fine Commander, I’ve rarely felt better. Listen carefully, we don’t have much time.’
'The Empire is indeed losing the war. About three years ago they invaded Sha T’Al space and overran nearly twenty systems quickly and easily as the Sha T’Al were not prepared for war. However, when the Sha T’Al eventually re-armed and fought back, they proved to be brilliant strategists and gradually pushed the Imperial forces out of their space.’