Salient Lyric's Particle Sythesis Training

by USS Acheron Crew

A training mission taken by Cadet Salient Lyric

There and Then and Back Again
- A Particle Synthesis Training Mission -

Creatively Composed by

The USS Acheron Crew:
- Salient Lyric

Salient's Notes: This was my first PS mission… heh… before I'd fully developed the character. Actually, it's funny. My first description for Salient was 'quiet, withdrawn, and serene. Always carries himself with dignity. Very little sense of humor. A sort of dark and musical energy to his actions.' Hah. So… that sure didn't happen.

Mission Intelligence:

Merchant ships in the Devorious system have reported using what appears to be, to their untrained eye, a newly discovered, stable wormhole. However, Starfleet intelligence reports include some strange occurances. For example:

A frieghter came in for repares which claimed to have come through the wormhole. After they were sent away on their journeys, the same frieghter returned in the exact same, unaltered condition three days later. They said and did the exact same thigs, as did their counterpart from before. This could be explained as random coincidence, but numerous events of this nature have occurred, and each ship involved came through this "wormhole," and their counterparts each arrived at approximately three day intervals afterwards. It appears that this "wormhole" may have temporal displacement properties. In other words, we believe it leads three days into the past, and ships from that past are coming three days into the future. We need further information on this phenominon and have chosen you to conduct the investigation. You will be given command of the Nautilus class vessel USS Boone NCC-664531. Report back when you have the information.

End of Briefing.

Mission Objectives: (Secondary objectives are not manditory)

1. Primary: Gather information on the temporal phenominon (where it came from, etc.)

2. Primary: Locate merchant frieghter and send it back through the wormhole.

3. Primary: Colapse the temporal wormhole.

'Captain' Salient Lyric reclined easily in the command chair of the USS Boone.

First he looked to the left.

Then he looked to the right.

No one was watching.

"Computer..." whispered Lyric. "One cheeseburger, well done, with bacon."

" UNAUTHORIZED EDIBLE SYNTHESIZATION ATTEMPTED. DIFFICULTY LEVEL OF PARTICLE SYNTHESIS CHAMBER INSTRUCTION PROGRAM # 002 INCREASED BY A FACTOR OF THREE. "

"Xax'tow," cursed Lyric in Entrolian. "Very well, lets get on with it."

As a person who had never before commanded a starship (albeit a synthesized one), Lyric hoped that the artificial officers who manned their stations understood commands like "Go forward!" and "Shoot the weapon things!" Otherwise, he was sunk. Deliberately, Captain Lyric rose from his command chair, and advanced to stand melodramatically in the center of the bridge. He raised one commanding fist.

"Set course for the Devorious system," he proclaimed. "Activate the warp drive."

With a charismatic gesture to the stars on the viewscreen, he said, "Make it engaged!"

The Academy professor watching from the outside of the particle synthesis chamber despairingly buried his face in his hands.

Since this synthesized training mission was designed to test for leadership potential, decisiveness under pressure, and ingenuity, there was no need for Lyric to sit through the five hour warp to the Devorious system. The computer sounded a cute little chime and indicated in bold font on the viewscreen that five hours had passed.

Salient shifted in his command chair. Surely there was a reclining button somewhere... ah - there. Much better.

"Captain," droned the helmsman. "We have arrived at the Devorious system." The synthesized crewmen, having been apparently programmed by a hurried Vulcan technician, seemed to have no personality whatsoever - thus, the droning. In fact, as Salient glanced around at his officers, he observed that each one had the exact same facial features, build and dull-eyed gaze. They could have been clones. He doubted they had much response capability beyond executing commands. Perhaps he would experiment later - but not now. He didn't want the computer to vindictively make the difficulty settings any higher than they were already.

Salient felt the synthesized vessel drop from coaxial warp. The viewscreen showed the stars re-orient, and the Devorious system shimmered into existence.

"Ops officer," Lyric commanded in his best captainy voice, "give me a layout of the system, and mark our position."

The viewscreen shifted to an overhead view, and displayed the Devorious star, orbited by its two planetary bodies. One, Devorious Prime, was rimmed by a halo of industrial satellites and trading platforms. The second was an ice world, large and imposing, but insignificant enough to escape use as a touchstone for rampant capitalism.

Toward the innermost orbit of the star hovered a spiral symbol - the wormhole. In most cases, wormholes never aligned anywhere close to a gravity well the size of a sun, for usually, the electromagnetic and gravitational forces would shred the fragile, space bending flower. The scientist within Lyric suspected that the wormhole's proximity to the sun was the cause of the temporal anomaly, as suns were known to have natural time-corrupting properties. Of course, since this was, again, a simulated mission, Lyric could only guess at the intentions of that hurried Vulcan programmer; still, the idea was interesting.

The U.S.S. Boone was nearing Devorious Prime. "Captain," the ops officer droned, "A message from the heads of the Devorious Multicultural Merchant Commission."

"Put it through." Salient ordered. Heads, as in, plural?

The screen blinked to display the merchant commanders. As Salient took in the image, he ground his teeth in irritation. Curse the wretched programmer of this synthesization! Did they do this to spite me?

The short, paired merchant command team were Bynar.

The more Lyric thought about it, the more he grudgingly admitted that Starfleet could not possibly be aware of the natural antipathy between Bynar and Entrolians. Lyric himself was the only Entrolian from the Negative Order in existence to have had a cordial conversation with a member of Starfleet without one trying to maim, kill, subvert, or humiliate the other. Starfleet could be excused.

As a species whose entire culture was dependent on their psyche, Entrolians were, as a rule, at odds with all other cultures who did the same. Most other telepathic, telekinetic, or otherwise mentally-oriented species viewed the Entrolian's generally malicious, conquest style use of their Psi as their primary offensive weapon as degrading, irresponsible and all-around bad. Force a Betazoid and an Entrolian into the same room together for an hour, and guaranteed, one or the other will emerge telepathically convinced that he is a llama.

With Bynar, it was worse. And it wasn't just because they were short, had misshapen heads, and had the annoying habit of finishing each other's sentences. No, the truth had to do with something far more fundamental. True, like Entrolians, the Bynar were a species who focused almost entirely upon the mental. Bynar even amplified their incredible mental abilities through implanted computers, resembling the Amps of Entrol, though the Bynar only used them to calculate, not to destroy.

The Entrolians of the Negative Order and Bynar loathed each other because they literally could not stand to be in the same room together. A truly unfortunate mishap of nature had made them implacable enemies. A pair of Bynar coupled together had a continuous stream of focused, binary communication connecting their computer implants. This highly controlled, utterly deliberate mental stream gives any Entrolian in range extreme headaches and really ticks them off. And the active Psi field surrounding any conscious Entrolian plays havoc with the communication of the Bynar. So profound were the species' hatred of each other that they had sworn eternal blood feud.

Thus, Lyric's greeting was tinged with a hint more than the slightest bit of rancor.

"Welcome, Starfleet Captain - " started one.

" - to the Devorious system," finished the other.

"We hope that you will enjoy - "

" - your stay here."

Biting off his initial sentence, ("Your names, Bynar scum, before I sully space with your vaporized blood!), he instead chose to introduce himself first. He was vaguely surprised by his own violent reaction - his enforced geas of compassion and forgiveness would normally have overridden his cultural reaction to a pair of Bynar. He guessed that the compassion/forgiveness curse didn't count with simulated Bynar.

In the Negative Order, from which Lyric had defected, the commander of a space vessel would generally introduce himself with such titles as 'His Tyrannical Greatness', the 'Master of Entropy', or 'His Cruel Heinousness' - but Lyric assumed Starfleet wouldn't appreciate it. "I am Captain Lyric - " (Ooh, but that sounded good!) - "Captain Lyric of the Starship Boone," he snapped. "And you are?"

The Bynar frowned in concert at his tone.

"No need to get - "

" - crabby, Captain Lyric."

"We just wanted to - "

" - wish you a - "

"That's quite enough, thank you," Lyric stopped them with ice cold resolve in mid-sentence. "Now, if you won't tell me your names, tell me about this wormhole. I hope you haven't been experimenting with it?" he asked with a shudder. He held up a hand as they both opened their mouthes. "No! You," he pointed to the one on the left. "Answer. And you only."

Indignantly, they both began to reply, simultaneously, with exactly the same irritated comments phrased in exactly the same annoying tone.

Then the image snapped to stars as Lyric violently jammed the button to cease transmission.

"Get me to that wormhole," Lyric demanded.

The Boone swept towards the wormhole, and immediately behind her swarmed an armada of curious passerby's, profit conscious merchants, and indignant Bynar. There were four or five Bynar ships - medium sized, lumpy vessels that looked most akin to a pair of warped eggs with a beam passed between them. Striking a perfect balance between defence and cargo hauling, these formidable vessels seemed to be the backbone of the merchant fleet.

Lyric had not moved even a facial muscle since his encounter with the Bynar. His lips were still twisted into the peculiar leer/grimace leftover from the conversation, quite the same look one would get if he drank a glass of milk and discovered it was chunky. Of course, no one cared. The crew droned about their pre-programmed tasks, such simple synthesizations that they had no reference for reaction to their captain's dark mood. The only one who took note was the Academy professor that still lurked outside of the Particle Synthesization Chamber's doors, sighing resignedly every few moments and sketching out notes on a PADD for future review.

Lyric stood, finally, like a gargoyle rising to life from its stone pinnacle. Violently calm, he gestured towards the screen. "Give us a view of the wormhole."

One of the synthesized crew turned and droned. "The wormhole is not visible to the naked eye, Captain. As a subspatial anoma-"

"I've been a scientist since before you were an algorithm, fool. I know you can't see a closed wormhole. We have low-frequency subspatial scanners for that. Give us. A view."

Reactionless, the crewman did exactly that.

On screen, a streamer of flaming light spun into frail existence, burning across space-time from half a galaxy away to culminate here, in a pulsing knotwork of energies that hid the anomaly from view.

"Activate it," whispered Salient Lyric.

In glorious display, the knot of subspatial forces exploded into a tornado of blue flame, and the screen flicked back to a view of the visible spectrum.

Salient sat and stared at it for a moment, wishing he could be witnessing the real thing. Such an amazing sight might, in real life, be a perfect subject for a kithara composition.

Salient commanded the crew to launch three probes - one to act as a warning bouy on this end of the wormhole, one to travel to the other side and act as a warning there, and one to travel to the other side and return, for experimentation.

He then commanded a hailing frequency to be opened to the entire curious fleet trailing the Boone. "Commanders. This is Salient Lyric of the Starfleet vessel Boone. This wormhole is a potentially dangerous temporal anomaly. I am restricting access until we can analyze it." He abruptly cut transmission to all vessels except the lead Bynar vessel. "Please forward me a list of all vessels that have used this wormhole, as well as a list of vessels that are currently on the other side." He cut that transmission fast, before they could respond and make his mood any worse.

But, of course, instead of backing away from the dangerous temporal anomaly, every ship inched closer.

Salient took a moment to review the Bynar's list of starships still on the other side of the wormhole. He read it twice. His jaw slacked.

He immediately called up a roster of all Bynar ships in the quadrant. Every one of the forty seven large Bynar cruisers, besides the five following the Boone, were on the other side of that wormhole.

"Why Captain Lyric, -"

"- How interesting to -"

"- hear from you again."

If Lyric was reading their alien features correctly, they were sneering at him.

"We were under the -"

"- distinct impression that -"

"- we were not on -"

"- speaking terms."

Lyric gave them his best evil eye. "Tell me... why is nearly every single Bynar cruiser in your fleet on the other side of a wormhole that you knew had duplication properties?"

The Bynar looked at each other, for a moment communicating beyond words. As one, they explained.

"Because of people like you."

Dramatic pause...

"You Federations, you are no better than any other government."

"You waste the resources of our galaxy with your wars."

"You self-righteously attribute all wrongs to others."

"Though you are no more willing to cease fighting than any other species."

"You disrupt innocent lives."

"Destroy the heartbeat of galactic commerce."

"Inveigle yourself into places you are not wanted."

"You rationalize that your battles are just, but they are not."

The matter-of-fact, accusatory litany halted. They had stater their problem with all races of the galaxy who allowed war, for whatever reason. Now they would define their calculated solution.

"We will bring -"

"- peace to the galaxy."

Using the wormhole.

The implications astounded. A race with control of a wormhole with duplication properties could easily create the most massive fleet in all the galaxy. Any species, even the Bynar, could conquer everything - the Borg, the Federation, the Negative Order.

This was, apparently, the plan of the Bynar. Their simple, straightforward problem-solution type thinking had concluded that the only way to bring peace to the galaxy was to forcibly subdue it. It was a pretty rationalization that Lyric could appreciate.

And one vessel against five was not good odds.

The wormhole had to be destroyed, lest those odds become severely worse.

Lyric spun to the science console, thrusting the officer out of the way. Realizing he had but seconds before the Bynar decided to pacify him, he ran a scan of the wormhole. As predicted, the wormhole had temporal properties. But only on the other side. Interestingly, the trip from this side to the other would be completely normal. However, as a ship attempted to return, a phased copy would be shunted along a longer, more arduous route, which would take approximately three days longer to transverse.

Just then, the wormhole disgorged forty more double egg-shaped Bynar cruisers. Lyric pounded the console with his fist - they would easily defend the wormhole from torpedo attack with point-defense weapons. And that meant there were forty more cruisers only three days away.

One vessel against forty-five...

Then Lyric had an idea.

An awful idea.

A tremendously risky, regulation disregarding, awful idea.

With a grin that curled nearly to his eyebrows, he ordered a destination. The other side of the wormhole.

The Boone exploded into motion, shields raising to task, ablative armor deploying, weapons charging - but not firing. Deftly, she slipped past the shocked Bynar fleet, and into the flaming maw of the wormhole, attracting only potshots and half-cocked blasts.

The disorienting transition into non-space lurched the Boone. But she held fast - even though she was about to be temporally duplicated on their return trip.

Once on the other side of the wormhole, Lyric intended to turn right around and head back, leaving a torpedo right in the middle of the tunnel. The wormhole would be destroyed, and the Boone would be back in known space, leaving no tactical advantage to any enemy, and no duplicate Boone.

The sturdy Boone exploded from the opposite side of the wormhole, and was immediately fired upon by two Bynar cruisers who were guarding the other exit. Surprised, Lyric hesitated. "Turn us around! Take us back through!"

Ponderously, the Boone spun about, faced the wormhole's portal, and was drawn in. The two enemy ships followed.

As the Boone met the wormhole's embrace, something went awry.

Lyric suddenly felt the tiny prickle of a thousand spiders dancing across his skin. He instinctively reached for an Entrolian Psi technique to block nerve information, before sadly remembering that his abilities had been cut off long ago. But that reaching, that grasping for something that was not there grasped him back, and held him there, immobile.

Lyric felt smothered in the membrane of the wormhole, frozen to the marrow, lost in a spiral of wandering thought that made him helpless to resist eternal apathy. Because he was thrust beyond purposeful thought, he couldn't comprehend that something was wrong with the simulation, that this should not be happening.

Cut off from his Entrolian mental skills as he was, he had been trained since birth to resist any harmful attack to his mind, even without the benefit of Psi. Because of that training, somewhere in Salient's subconscious, he realized that his mind was under seige by a reason destroying, apathetic bind - caused in the space of a second by a suddenly very real temporal anomaly - and that if he did not resist, he might be trapped in this moment for all time.

But there was nothing he could do, for his access to his Psi had been tied off by the Negative Order for his crimes of compassion. That shimmering veil that separated him from his talents was no less substantial than normal, and he raged against it in vain.

He could see it, that hateful boundary that kept him from himself. He gathered all his strength, strained every source, bent every thought towards what lay on the other side. Screaming a war-cry of frustrated desire, he struck the barrier over and over and over.

In this instant, the professor outside the Synthesization Chamber door had no knowledge of the danger his student was in, and had no idea that his Entrolian cadet toed the brink of eternal oblivion. What he saw were the eyes of Salient begin to shimmer with something strange and powerful. An indigo pulse of light reflected for the barest of instants off the tips of his student's fingers.

This pulse sparked in the eyes of the droning crew - and quick change was wrought. Understanding, of existence and purpose, reflected for a moment in their dull features. Then, cruelly, the fountain of their sentience was shut off, closing the door to true existence forever. They had been, for a sparse second of time, more than just man-made programs, but they were beings no longer. Now there was expressionlessness, but if you looked carefully, you could see the bitterness of a loss unexplained.

The apathy shattered, and Lyric drew in a ragged breath.

He remembered nothing of the experience. He felt only a great feeling of loss, that his talents might forever lay beyond his grasp.

He knew that the time was come to fell this anomaly. "Launch a spread of torpedoes!" The Boone released a barrage of projectiles, many of which were picked off by the two pursuing Bynar cruisers. But not all of them were stopped, and the destructive forces ripped a hole in the tunnel's fragile fabrics. The wormhole began to collapse.

The Boone blasted out of the wormhole, followed closely by two Bynar. The wormhole flickered, struggling for its own existence - a theme in this tale, it seems, but could not compete with the vicious destruction of a Federation torpedo. It collapsed on itself, sealing off the possibility of it ever again being misused.

Their purpose failed, Bynar were a logical race, and not given to revenge. They very bruskly sent the Boone on its way. Starfleet would deal with them later. The mission was over. Wearily, Lyric slowly commanded the exit to appear. He tramped out into the Galazura Academy hallway fairly pleased with himself.

"Overall," his instructor noted, "that was very well done. I'm impressed with your quick thought."

Lyric frowned and nodded his acknowledgement of his professor.

"We have some definite concerns, however. For instance..."

The two made their way down the hall, talking seriously.

Three days later, the very same Particle Synthesization Chamber doors slid open, revealing seven dour, expressionless, bland Starfleet crewmen, shadowed with the memory of purpose lost.

Behind them moved an exiled Entrolian, likewise purposeless.

- Fin

Post-Mission Analysis

Salient's Notes: So, as I've said, this was way before I really had any idea of what Salient was going to be. It was fun, however, even though the character development was a little sketchy, and yes (sheepish grin) I did create an evil twin of Salient to be used at some point in the future. I'm probably not going to though – very few people have read this mission, and the evil twin thing has been done. Over and over. The only reason I would ever resurrect it would be if there was some either really funny way to do it, or a way to bring it in that was a parody of all other good twin/evil twin relationships. That's an interesting idea. In a later mission, Salient did have to face his mirror-universe counterpart, and that's good enough to sate my twin-ness for a while. That was cool, and an interesting character thing for him too. Everything relates to character, nothing to coolness – that's the way writing works. What's the use of being able to shoot blades out of your butt if the reader gains nothing from it?

In this mission, I also introduced another Salient trait that I have since abandoned – the idea that compassion was geas-burned into him as punishment when Dar cast him out of the Order – that he couldn't help but be nice to people. That's why I wrote that 'apparently his geas of compassion didn't work on the fake Bynar', because with the whole enforced compassion, Salient would have been obliged to be polite and actually care. Since writing some of Salient's past, I have decided that it would be more realistic and more interesting if Salient had the choice to do so or not to do so.

Also, I introduced the idea (one of the few that I actually kept) that when put under unusual circumstances or powerful emotional pressure, Salient could unconsciously touch his Entrolian psi abilities – although he never found out about it afterwards. I think I've used that… twice maybe? I dunno. But in my opinion, Salient will never actually regain his powers, unless there's a solid character building reason (and if he did, he would very soon lose them again). Salient is partly, (although you should never take him seriously) an image of rebirth from the most terrible of pasts. And part of that is the loss of power that he once had while evil. Doing good doesn't always get you what you want –women, for that matter.

And Salient in command is always interesting. He has a habit, when he commands, of either ordering people to their doom or pessimistically assuming that he is.

The whole plot, I thought, was cool. The Bynar are not a race you would assume would be evil, although doing what they did fits in perfectly with their mindset. (I.E. – TNG, when they stole the Enterprise D)

Finally, I actually got to start of the mission with the classic Entrolian curse: "Xax'tow!"

Xax'tow is both a curse and a species of 'writhing maggot' found on Entrol, which Entrolians find a delicacy as well as a device of torture. There are several variants, including flaming and nostril devouring. Xax'tow are apparently deadly and tasty at once.