Alternative Universe: Well, folks, because I'm insane enough to combine seaQuest, Voyager, and DS9 all together into one plot, there are some obvious changes! You'll notice the "obvious changes" quickly, I think.
Rating: Consider this PG, simply for safety's sake. There is some violence involved and some rather difficult topics at the beginning of the story (much like the stories "Away from Monsters" and "Monsters Return" in my seaQuest universe), but things quickly change in tone from there. Mild language warning, too.
Archiving: Just ask first. I'll probably say yes. :)
Cautionary Advice: (Clearing throat) Be prepared for a hefty dose of "suspension of disbelief." There is a degree of the intentionally ludicrous here. :) But remember . . . I warned you!
Length Advisory: Be prepared for a long haul! Currently, I haven't even set a cap on the number of parts involved . . .
Summary: seaQuest, plus Deep Space Nine, plus Voyager equals . . . lots of fun! Here's the short synopsis: Captain Bridger commands a starship, the Voyager both reaches earth and doesn't, and the Defiant gets sucked into yet another wormhole! Hmmm . . . crazy, isn't it? Well, of course it is . . . this is Sheri writing! :)
In a galaxy far, far away (err . . . sorry, wrong story) . . .
AND NOW, in enters NATHAN BRIDGER . . .
(BRIEF SILENCE as BRIDGER refuses to appear in this insane, crazy work)
ME: (Clearing throat) Hey, BRIDGER, you're on next!
BRIDGER: (Grumbling softly) Yeah, yeah, I'm coming. (Mumbles to himself) At least we're not landing in a field of corn . . . (Stares at me in horror as a sudden thought strikes) We're not, are we?!
ME: (Rolling eyes, laughing) No, even I'm not that bad! (Almost as an afterthought) Besides, I have other plans for you . . .
BRIDGER: (Shudders at the very thought) No Neptune, right?!
ME: (Evil chuckle) No Neptune: you've only got wormhole aliens, quantum singularities, and NELIX to deal with!
BRIDGER: (Running in terror) That's it! I quit! I'm hiding! Help! Let me out of here! (A much-protesting BRIDGER gets booted onto stage)
ME: Methinks the Captain doth protest too much . . . (If you've ever wondered if I was crazy, this little scene has probably convinced you of the likelihood . . .)
Lights, cameras, action . . .
Infinity: A Crossover
Part Three
Yet Another Day in the Life of Lucas
Wolenczak Goes Completely Haywire
"What?"
For a moment, there was only silence as the explosive question hung in the air. Then the voice's owner resumed his pacing: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He frowned angrily at the screen, brushing a distracted hand through his hair. At one time, the hair had been dark brown and full. Now, though the head of hair was still full—vibrant even—streaks of gray zigzagged through its waves. With a growl, he looked back at the screen, dark eyes glowering at the face across from him.
Admiral Noyce met the gaze with no hesitation. He waited as his friend slowly calmed enough to ask, "Did I hear this correctly, Bill? Please tell me I didn't. I'm going to be seriously ticked at you if I heard what I thought I heard."
Noyce snorted at this, shaking his head. The day his friend wasn't seriously ticked at him would be the day Bill could expect the Second Coming. And, since he didn't expect the Second Coming any time soon, Noyce was could easily conclude that his friend was angry with him. Calmly, he shrugged, watching as his friend scowled back at him. He lifted his hands in a pacifying gesture, all too aware that the gesture was pointless when Nathan was this upset. "Oh, please, Nathan. You know what you heard the first time around. You're not deaf."
Nathan again stomped back and forth, then finally slammed his fist into the neatly polished table in front of him. He winced. "Just great, Bill. Just freaking bloody great. How could you even think . . ."
Before Nathan could get his steam fully tilting, Bill interrupted. "Nathan, come on. Knock it off. You're behaving like a first year ensign, not the Captain of one of our Fleet's greatest ships! The truth is simple, my friend: you don't have much say in this. He is being assigned to your vessel, like it or not . . ."
Bill heard a mumble that sounded suspiciously like, "Truth? In the UFP? That would be an event . . ."
He stared at Nathan. Nathan simply stared right back, his face suddenly becoming quite blank of emotion. He looked suspiciously innocent of having uttered a word against the United Federation of Planets and its leaders.
Bill was tempted to snort. Nathan knew better than to try that stunt on him; he knew him too well. Deliberately ignoring Bridger's comments, Noyce continued with his campaign: "But, believe me, Nathan, he'll be an asset to your crew. In fact, I'd be surprised if you didn't think this particular young man was indispensable by the end of the first hour . . ."
"Isn't he just a bit young for this, though? Just a tad bit below the age requirement?" Nathan finally snapped, shaking his head. He didn't care what Bill said on the matter—the man was a statesman in disguise, after all. He could easily look quite comfortable in any situation. And it was Nathan's crew that would be affected by this little act of Bill's; he had a right—no, an obligation—to fight this absurdity!
A pause, then Bill sighed. He looked sad; though many people might have mistaken Bill's expression as indifference, perhaps even callousness, Nathan knew better. He knew when something was seriously bothering his best friend. Tiredly, he sighed, shaking his head. He had a bad feeling this whole situation was going to get worse the more he heard of it. "All right, Bill. Out with it. What the hell is going on?"
Bill shrugged, then finally said after a long silence, "We didn't have much of a choice in the matter, Nathan. His father—his father beat the crap out of him. For no good reason. He just—slammed into the kid the other evening. We had only two choices: we sent him back to his father, or we took responsibility for his welfare. I decided on the second option . . ."
"I don't get this, Bill. That's nonsense, and you know it." Nathan paced in front of the table, then leaned in towards the vid screen that stretched across half the room's wall. He scowled. "You can have the bastard put behind bars. You can have emergency beacons placed in the house. You can do all sorts of things that don't require your placing a child on my ship!"
Bill groaned at this. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Nathan: wake up!" At Nathan's confused look, Bill shook his head. "I know what options are ordinarily available in this type of situation. I'm not an idiot. And I don't just go around taking custody of children when their parents . . . abdicate their responsibilities. I don't have the time for such things."
A pause passed between the two men; then, Bridger finally sighed, giving in to the inevitable. "So . . . why are you doing it in this case?"
"For two reasons: because of who the kid is and because of who his father is."
Nathan heard this last part and felt his temperature was about to shoot right through the galaxy. Who his father was! Of course . . . he should have known. He should have guessed he was some prima dona's child. That at least made some sort of demented sense. And, as all such children were, he probably also thought he was God's gift to mankind.
Noyce continued: "Nathan, this kid . . . he isn't like any other young man you'll ever get the chance to work with. He's more than just a genius. He's more than just talented. He's brilliant: really, truly, absolutely, blindingly brilliant. Einstein would have difficulty keeping up with this kid's mind."
As Nathan continued to stare at him, unconvinced, Noyce glanced around himself, as if looking for eavesdroppers. He then continued: "Ever heard of induced and controlled wormholes, Nathan?" Amazed, Nathan nodded, quickly blinking his eyes. Everyone had heard of them—and everyone had heard that such things were no more than pleasant dreams. "Well, this kid is about a hair's width away from doing it. He has the 'induced' part down, but he still has to work on the 'controlled' bit."
Holy shit, Nathan thought with a start. Feeling much like a fish being reeled in for cooking, Nathan sighed. He knew he'd been caught by Noyce's bait: science. He'd always had a weakness for knowing the latest scientific information; he also knew that Noyce knew this. Noyce knew exactly how to lure him in against his best intentions.
But the information was definitely . . . tempting. Bridger ran a hand across his chin, lips pursed as he thought of what Bill had just said. It was amazing; actually, it was more than amazing. It was frightening. Wormholes were thin tubes of space-time connecting regions of space together across vast distances; unfortunately, they also tended to open and close at will.** A spaceship could travel within the wormhole and reach points of space light-years away from home, yet there was no guarantee that the wormhole would remain open minutes after travel was complete. Wormholes collapsed when they collapsed, despite all attempts to manipulate them. Scientists were even now frantically, almost obsessively, trying to artificially create wormholes.
As far as Bridger knew, though, the closest anyone had come to this was all theory: nothing practical whatsoever. No application. But this sounded like an entirely different story. He had to admit he was intrigued. In fact, nothing this intriguing had passed his way in years. Finally, he managed, "By himself . . . he's doing this by himself?"
"Yeah. The Academy is letting him use their physics lab for the experiment, but no one seems to be in on the details. He's got everyone going crazy over the thing."
Nathan's curiosity was flaming almost painfully, but he decided to try hiding it—at least for the time being. He knew Bill knew him too well for him to hide it for long, though. He launched into the next question: "And his father?"
This brought a dark expression on Bill's face. Nathan could see his friend was still furious over what had happened. "Nathan, his father is Admiral Wolenczak."
Oh, hell. Abruptly, Nathan understood why Bill had been forced to act as he had. Admiral Wolenczak was one of the most powerful men in the UFP—the whole damned UFP, all its one hundred and fifty planets and species combined. He made Admiral Noyce, a man with quite a few buttons at his disposal, look like an inconsequential fly. A scowl from Wolenczak could lead to a career being ruthlessly axed.
Wolenczak's power didn't end at his Admiral's chair by any means. He was also married to one of the wealthiest moguls in the Federation, Cynthia Manis-Wolenczak. Cynthia Manis-Wolenczak's family was currently one of the more powerful armament manufacturers. They supplied at least a third of the Fleet with its weapons. Several members of the Manis family were also (somewhat ironically) key ambassadors within the Federation. Without a doubt, any scandal involving Admiral Wolenczak—this poor child's father—could easily lead to political problems that sent chills of fear up Nathan's spine: war, broken treaties, more war. The family was, quite simply, more powerful than Bridger even wished to consider; they were the powers behind the headlines, behind the promotions, behind several of the more lucrative budgets authorized within the Fleet itself.
There wasn't a damned thing Bill could do to bring this father to justice, for trillions of lives depended upon that bastard for their survival.
Slowly, Bridger sat down, shooting a bitter look at his friend. He sighed. "So . . . Admiral Wolenczak gets off free while his son, the victim, is carted off to the furthest reaches of the galaxy and stuck on a ship that is almost guaranteed to see combat. This hardly seems fair, Bill."
Guiltily, Bill nodded, leaving Nathan to wonder what thoughts were spinning behind his friend's eyes. From what he'd heard, Bill had no reason to feel guilty; hell, if anyone had reason to be guilty, it was the kid's father. "I know," Bill began softly, looking down for a moment. "I'm afraid, though, that 'fair' has little to do with this. I just . . . couldn't see any other way around this one."
Silently, he nodded, thinking.
At last, after a long silence, Bill cleared his throat. He looked at Nathan. "Look, I have to get going, Nathan. Lucas will be waking pretty soon, and I wanted to talk to him again . . . make sure he's all right with this . . ."
"How did he take this, by the way?" Nathan abruptly asked, frowning slightly. He tried imagining himself in Lucas's place; try as he might, the only thing he could clearly imagine feeling was fury.
"Well . . . better than I thought he might, to tell you the truth. He seems to know the ropes about his father's position more than I would have expected." At Nathan's puzzled expression, Bill sighed. "He's furious over this—believe me when I say it—but he knew why his father's position was so important. I think he wanted to break something, but he also understood why this is being done. It seemed he had more of a problem with the fact that his parents . . . wanted . . . to give us custody of him than anything else. That hurt pretty badly, I think."
Nathan winced at this, then shook his head. Whatever the case, it stank. It stank from here to Cardassia. But political power had its rewards, and one of them seemed you could get away with just about anything when you were essential to your people's survival. It was sickening, but it was also true.
"When will you be here?" Nathan finally asked, interrupting his thoughts with a sigh.
"About a day from now. You'll be just getting ready to leave for the border, right?" Nathan nodded. "Okay, well, I guess I'll see you then, Nathan. Keep in touch."
With that, the vid link went dead, and Nathan sighed. Annoyed, he tapped his fingers against the desk, shaking his head. Damn. His ship, the Infinity, would soon be patrolling the Demilitarized Zone along the Cardassian border, looking for a ship stolen from Fleet headquarters back on earth. Rumor had it that the top command chain of the Maquis, a highly militant band of renegade anti-Cardassians, had stolen that ship. Rumor also had it that the Maquis were planning to bombard Cardassia with the ship's extremely effective plasma inverters . . . which, essentially, meant that they'd be turning Cardassia into a new definition for "scorched earth." The Infinity was the fastest, most heavily armed galaxy-class starship built to date, but still . . . this was going to be one dangerous mission. And a kid was about to become a member of his crew. A kid sure as hell didn't belong on a mission like this. Nathan didn't like placing any of his crew in danger, but this—this was different. This was a child, a child who had already faced the terrible spectacle of having his father beating the crap out of him. Damn, damn, damn!
What had Bill been thinking? Sure, place the poor kid on a ship—but not one about to engage the Maquis in Cardassian airspace!
He sighed. Well, he didn't suppose there was much to do for it now. Bill was on his way with the child in tow. He'd just have to find a way to keep the child relatively safe.
He snorted at this idea. Relatively. Yeah, right.
*****
Nervous, his hands fidgeting uselessly at his sides, his mouth dry, almost parched, Lucas Wolenczak stared at the view port. He swallowed hard. Though the view port was small—in fact, it was little larger than the size of his own head—it showed him more than enough details to frighten the soul right out of his body. As they moved closer, Lucas could see the sleek white body magnifying in size with each passing second. Again, he swallowed hard. It was huge: monstrous, even. Lights glimmered across its surface, windows blinked, adding a touch of familiar warmth to the vast cold of space. He'd never imagined anything like this. Though he'd trained to fly just about any flying contraption made to date, he'd never actually seen a galaxy class starship up close. All his work had simply been on simulations: never the real, amazing, frightening thing. But this . . . this was real. This was fascinating. And it was blood chilling.
He continued to fidget uncomfortably as the ship obliterated his view of space: Lord, the thing was huge! And he'd be on that for how long?
The thought unexpectedly sent a chill through him. How long would he be on that beast? He almost wondered if it would be years—decades. Forever. He wondered if he would be trapped there, never to escape . . . forgotten by his parents, forgotten by anyone and everyone, left to rot . . .
Abruptly, he stopped that train of thought. Almost forcefully, he shoved his fears to the back of his mind. He didn't have time for nonsense.
Noyce had already left for the ship. He was talking to the captain even as Lucas impatiently waited, wondering what he should do in the meantime. He could just imagine the kind of reception he was going to receive from the crew of the Infinity; these were career Fleet officers and crewmen. They were military. They were obsessed with protocol and functionality. Almost without doubt, they wouldn't want him around. They wouldn't want some kid genius poking his nose into their problems.
He sighed, then forced himself to unclench his fingers. They were white, nail imprints stamped into his flesh, almost drawing blood. Just what he wanted the captain of this ship to see: him with clenched fists and bleeding palms. Just flaming great.
With annoyance, Lucas glanced at his reflection in the mirror.
He was dressed as a Fleet crewman was supposed to dress: perfectly crisp lines, no wrinkles, spotless attire. It made him want to run and hide. He didn't want this. He didn't want to traipse around looking like some moron in a uniform. He was a kid—not a damned officer!
But an officer's title he now carried. Just this morning, Admiral Noyce had given him a field commission as an acting ensign—one of only two teenagers ever appointed in the Fleet's history. Acting ensign status was supposed to be a privilege; however, Lucas couldn't even begin to see it as a privilege. At least the other receptor of the status, Wesley Crusher of the starship Enterprise, had still been older than him. He'd at least wanted the rank. Lucas sure as hell didn't.***
As he considered the image reflecting back at him, Lucas snorted. In his own eyes, he looked absurd. The black jumpsuit made him look smaller than his already slim size, and the red slash of color at the uniform's collar did nothing for him. To make things worse, he had a grape turtleneck under the jumpsuit, making him feel more than just simply ridiculous. Who had had the bad sense to come up with two of the most clashing colors he'd ever seen placed side-by-side?
To top it all off, the whole bloody outfit was itchy and uncomfortable. Lucas was missing his jeans and t-shirts already.
A sharp chirp startled his thoughts; ruefully shaking his head as he calmed his jumping nerves, Lucas finally determined the source of the annoying sound. He cautiously touched the gold pin on his uniform—a pin shaped like a fat inverted "V"—then asked, hesitation obvious in his voice, "Yes . . . hello? Um . . . Lucas Wolenczak here."
He could have sworn he heard a chuckle on the other side.
"Hello, Lucas. I'm Captain Nathan Bridger. We'll be transporting you over in a second. Stand by."
"Okay. I mean . . . yes, sir."
Again, he heard a soft, somewhat stifled chuckle. "See you in a few. Bridger out."
Great, Lucas thought unhappily, groaning inwardly. Now he thinks I'm a complete idiot.
As he was mentally castigating himself for sheer stupidity, Lucas almost screamed bloody murder as a shimmer surrounded him and he abruptly felt the world shifting around him.
God.
He'd heard about transporters, of course. But he sure as hell hadn't ever used one. Even his father, the Admiral, didn't use them. They were rather exclusive because of the expense involved; only galaxy-class starships seemed to have them. It would seem that the Infinity had them. If he'd stopped to consider the matter at all, Lucas realized that this wouldn't have been surprising: he was, after all, on a galaxy-class starship.
His thoughts were abruptly interrupted, though, when he looked around himself to find . . . no one. The room (or whatever it was) seemed completely empty. Heavy darkness surrounded him on all sides, impenetrable; there wasn't a light in sight. And it was cold: furiously cold. He heard sounds, whistles, murmurs, but none of it sounded like it came from a human being.
Then he heard a yowling, crying, yipping screech . . .
This couldn't be the ship, could it?
God, he hoped not. So . . . if he wasn't on the ship . . .
Where the hell was he?
*****
** The excerpt on wormhole theory is actually not a figment of my deranged mind. It's from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (1988), Updated and Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition.
*** All right, folks, before you mistakingly conclude that I'm a secret Wesley Crusher fan, don't: I happen to think Lucas Wolenczak could outsmart good old Crusher any day of the week. However, that's just my humble opinion. Grin> :)