Disclaimer: I do not own many of these characters, and I refuse to take responsibility for Toby, she is her own life-form now.
Author's notes: If I didn't have an alternate universe before writing this, one has been created, simply due to the nature of the story. I warn you, it's a long one, so if you're looking for a quick read, this ain't it. Thanks to everybody who reviewed Life Support, I'm trying to keep your suggestions in mind as I write this. Please, keep me on my toes here, too. Anyone sensitive about language, sexual situations (yes, there is some minor slash warnings), mental illness or violence, would be advised to stop reading now. Though why you would be reading a story rated 'R' for all those reasons, I don't know, but you can't say I didn't warn you.
Oh, and don't worry if you see some other work popping up while I write this: I AM following this through to the end. I'm just writing the others at the same time so I'm not tempted to rush my way through this to get to the next idea (Akin, I think that may be what happened to the last chapter of Life Support).
Author's notes II: To make it easier for my readers (not that I'm underestimating your intelligence, believe me, I'd rather over estimate, but I know puzzling things out can take away from getting into the story, oh and I don't want to repeat this if I don't have to) anything in square [brackets] is a flashback. Anything in {these} brackets is from Toby, and anything in bold font especially italicised is from Inner-Charles. Oh, as for the math? God Bless Excel.
Mirror, Mirror Chapter 1: Ten Impossible Things Before BreakfastMirror, Mirror on the wall…
-- Snow White
Does time travel imply pre-destination?
-- Toby Howard
Why do crises always have to happen on my watch? Well, technically this one started on the night shift, but had been growing ever since.
Because, Tucker, you were stupid enough to let them make you the Son-of-a-bitch-in-charge. Nice to know his inner voice was still on his side. Oh well, he needed someone to talk to about this situation, and since they were trying to keep it quiet so as not to alarm the crew, there weren't a lot of people on his conversation list. He hurried down the hallway, legs stretching to cover as much ground as possible without breaking into a run. Death wasn't quite that imminent, and as Malcolm would say: an officer never rushes, it demoralizes the troops.
Still, unless he hurried somewhat they'd be demoralized anyway. That tends to be a side effect of your ship falling apart around you.
"Oh, hush." Not one of his normal expressions, but somehow fitting to the occasion. He remembered something an old friend once said: 'Sometimes there's no swearing potent enough for the situation. At that point, oh, dear.' Just so long as nobody noticed him talking to himself. Everybody still wasn't sure he was entirely in his right mind; though when they said that, they generally wanted him in his left one.[1]
Puns, Tucker? Now I know you're in trouble. The higher the stress level of the situation the greater his tendency to speak to himself as a separate entity. Dissociation in the face of pressure? Isn't that one of the danger signs?
"Oh, hush." He repeated. Besides, his ship was going crazy; he'd fit right in. He wished Malcolm and T'Pol hadn't talked Captain Archer into secrecy. Sure, people might get a little antsy, but with everything that was going wrong, did they think that nobody would notice? The only effect an information lockdown had tended to be rumour, paranoia and panic.
Something's wrong, top brass doesn't trust us and we're all going to die. At least Trip and Inner-Charles agreed on something. Even if it was the fact that two of his friends were being idiots.
"So what if it's procedure?" He'd argued vainly "It doesn't work." The part of him that resented authority, and you wonder why you hate yourself, wanted to hit the nearest intercom and make a general announcement.
Attention, people. We are all going to die. That is all.
Trip snorted. Yeah, that about covered it all right. What happened, what continued to happen, should never have been able to happen. The main computer -- somewhere, somehow – had picked up a virus. Slowly but surely pieces of code were being eaten away, throwing the machine into chaos.
And therein lies the greatest danger of living in space. No one planetside has to trust their survival to a two-bit idiot. But on Enterprise everything: air, water, temperature, even gravity was controlled by the computer. Half the food supplies were in stasis modules, and a good portion of the rest came out of the resequencer. Never before had Trip the technophile felt so vulnerable. We should have had more failsafes.
The latest problem lay just around the corner. He turned, and stopped. A Maintenance tech was working on the junction he needed and two of his people reached around and over top of her, doing their own thing.
Bryson and Higgens. Always together, they formed what he thought of as the rude and crude contingent of his staff. Unfortunately Bryson's mother ran the Senate committee that approved Starfleet funding and Higgens was vaguely related to the Earth ambassador to Vulcan. He was stuck with them, much as he resented it.
Right now, they discussed some of the finer points of Lieutenant Hess' anatomy (safely away from the danger of Hess herself), seemingly oblivious to the obvious tension the caused for the crewman in front of them. He supposed he should be somewhat gratified that they took the initiative to fix a problem without being asked, but his natural dislike for the pair made the idea untenable.
"And can you imagine what that ass feels like?"
Bryson laughed at his friend's question, his hand making a grasping motion. "I would certainly love to find out." They both cracked up at that, and it was all Trip could do not to strangle the pair of them. And he would have, if not for the Maintenance tech – who was she anyway – who gave the impression that the last thing she needed was for somebody to snap.
That's a superior officer you're talking about boys. Inner-Charles took malicious glee in the thought of what would happen to them if that superior officer found out. And one who could dismantle you with her bare hands. With black belt ratings in three martial arts, Hess had made herself some extra money helping recruits to attain the self-defence standard necessary for Starfleet acceptance. Not to mention holding the dubious honour of possessing a temper more volatile than his own.
Finally, his mind threw up an answer to the tech question: Kaci DiLorenza. He knew her probably better than anybody did, he realised, which was to say not at all. She was a ghost in every but the literal sense: she drifted through, never appearing in the gossip files (and unless it involved him, Trip heard all the gossip) never being noticed by those around her.
Now why didn't I see that before? Technically Maintenance fell under his purview, though Lieutenant Mitchell usually handled the day-to-day operations. Still, he tried to make it a point to know, at least slightly, everyone under his command.
He felt his fingers curling into fists as Bryson and Higgens continued their banter. Sure, give them something to nail you with, Stupid. Stop being such a goddamn mother hen. Listen to me for once.
"Ahem." Every subordinate in history could recognize that cleared throat. Bryson and Higgens snapped to; their conversation ceased instantly. DiLorenza seemed to melt into the wall, trying to disappear. Is she afraid of me?
"Gentlemen, I think if you are going to continue that avenue of conversation it would be best if you did so elsewhere and on your own time." Implicit in the tone were the words and it might be a good idea if you didn't continue that avenue of conversation at all.
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." It came out a chorus; they were more surprised than embarrassed, he could tell.
"Now, I need both of you to get back to engineering. I want you to keep an eye on the plasma feeds, they've been a little sticky lately." Okay, not the best excuse, but he didn't want to have to explain what he was working on here, either.
"Turbolift is out of order, sir. That's why we're here. We were…" Only Higgens could come up with so lame an excuse to a simple request.
"Walk, Mr. Higgens. There are other lifts on this ship, I'm sure one of them can get you to engineering."
"Yes, sir." They left, snickering.
Guess what, Mommy. Commander Tucker is the lamest geek in the universe. He actually told me to be respectful and walk somewhere. Inner-Charles liked the two of them even less, if such a thing were possible. He also tended to be more politically astute than Trip himself.
"Sorry, crewman. I'll speak to them."
She looked up at him, dark bangs falling into even darker eyes. Less than five feet tall, she made him feel like a giant, imposing. She didn't fall into the classic category of pretty: her eyes were a little too big, her lips a bit too small. She carried some extra weight around the waist too, not much but enough to be seen. She bit her nails, too – the ragged edges testified to that.
She blinked for a moment, as though trying to place him then turned back to her work.
What? No 'Thank you, Commander?' No 'It's okay, Commander, it's not that bad?' Not even 'What do you want, Commander?' He was used to women with a tendency to talk; intense silence creeped him out.
"Mn-hm." He could see now that she'd made progress on fixing the problem here, especially given what she was up against. Oh, not the computer issue, but the ongoing incompetence of Higgens and Bryson.
Without warning, the ship lurched, stealing his balance. Falling, he grabbed DiLorenza for support – pure reflex that – but she was too slight, too off balance herself. Together they crashed to the floor of the lift; he heard a crunch and pain told him he had a broken nose.
"Ahhh." Why was it he could handle a broken anything else, but as soon as it was nasal cartilage he fell apart like an unsoldered joint under pressure? "Fuck. Shit. Goddamnit." Screaming, he rolled into a foetal position, clapping his hands to his face. Mucus filled blood seeped through his fingers and mixed with tears as he tried not to breathe. A full minute passed before the pain cleared enough for him to open his eyes. As he did, the ship shuddered again, and then the lights went out. Completely.
"This is not good." He muttered. There should be auxiliaries even with main power gone. Instead, the only light came from the glowstrips that wrapped the walls of the lift, about halfway up.
And to think that they didn't want to install those. He'd had to fight to get the luminescents in: auxiliaries were supposed to be more than sufficient; if the failsafes failed – the argument went – you were probably in too much trouble to worry about lights.
Don't get too full of yourself. If the virus had managed to knock out both systems…
"All hands, this is Captain Archer. Abandon ship. I repeat, all hands abandon ship."
Trip scrambled to his feet and hit the controls. Nothing happened, the doors refused to budge. He pulled at them but his bloody fingers slipped on the metal. Scrubbing his hands on his uniform, he tried again. Still nothing.
"Shit. Shit, shit, shit!" He punctuated his words with a series of kicks to the doors, which didn't do anything other than hurt. If the other senior officers saw him now, they'd give him the scolding of his life for acting like this in front of a subordinate. Hell, he'd give himself a lecture if he weren't too busy being upset. If Archer was willing to give the command to abandon ship, they didn't have much time. Catastrophe was here. He could hear the running footsteps of the other members of the crew heading for the escape pods and the shuttlecraft. So, this is what it felt like on the lower decks of the Titanic. Trapped, and well aware that the ship was going down and you with it. Isn't that supposed to be the captain's job? Well, whoever's job it was, it suddenly didn't seem like a romantic notion. He felt better damnit. More than a week, now, since the day when he would've welcomed it. This wasn't fair; he didn't want to die now.
{Well thank God for some small mercies} This voice in his head made him jump. Well, not quite in his head really, more to the back of his mind and off to one side.
You just can't admit that you're actually hearing voices, can you. The new one snickered at Inner-Charles' comeback, oh yeah she'd love to hear that he was going insane, that would be so much more interesting, wouldn't it.
"Depression, itself, is a mental disorder, Toby." He muttered, praying DiLorenza didn't notice. "And I seem to recall you having some trouble with that."
{Okay, okay. Don't get so snippy about it, Trip. I just think you should indulge yourself some more instead of being so responsible. You…}
The ship began to dance as the escape pods launched, and then, Oh, FUCK. The turbolift plunged as the last of the battery power to the electromagnets drained away. The inertial force yanked him forward, smacking his forehead into the front wall. And memory stopped.
He awoke to a rhythmic banging. His first thought was that his head was responsible, then realized that the noise came from outside his skull. Opening his eyes, he saw DiLorenza working a piece of glowstrip from the wall.
"I don't think we can get out that way." The space between the lift and the wall of the shaft was too narrow for a person to fit, even one as small as Hoshi. No way he and DiLorenza would make it. A more important question occurred to him, one that he half didn't want an answer to. "Why are we still alive?"
She glanced over at him as if to determine that he was still alive, then turned back to her work. Only then did he realise that she floated in midair, and so did he.
"Oh." Well that answered part of the question, why the fall hadn't killed them. The grav-generators must have kicked out too, meaning that everything on the ship would be in a state of suspension. The bigger part remained a mystery, however: why hadn't the ship self-destructed? If the abandonment order had been given, the ship should have been in such a state that no repairs were possible, that no time remained to effect repairs, even if they were. Even a complete loss of life-support didn't necessitate leaving the ship, at least not right away. So, what was going on? He wasn't the type to look miracles in the mouth like hell, you're not, Tucker, but he didn't like being part of the unexplained either. Miracles were fine, so long as they happened to other people.
{Uh, oh.}
"What?" Thankfully, DiLorenza didn't seem to notice him speak.
{Trip, we have a major problem here. Power surge coming from the…}
He screamed as gravity kicked in again, dropping him unceremoniously to the floor, and giving new understanding to the term 'pain in the ass'. DiLorenza faired better than he did, grabbing a rail and landing on her feet. As for Toby…
{Being dead does have its advantages. Not having to worry about certain annoying laws of physics is one of them. Oh, by the way, I'm getting better at the electrical thing; I don't think I'm going to short out as much stuff anymore. It's all a matter of keeping…}
"Another time, Toby." Unfortunately, Toby remained perpetually fifteen as well, and despite her maturity in other areas had never mastered the art of the double-sided conversation. In fact, silence scared her even more than him; she constantly tried to fill it with observations on anything that came to mind. He had mixed feelings on hearing her voice, however. On the one hand, her familiar presence brought with it a comfort – no one knew him better than her – but on the other, it meant that his stress level was high enough for his rational side to stop functioning. How did she put it? His brain no longer tried to exclude the reality he couldn't accept?
{I thought we were past all that.}
Luckily the fall proved short this time, they must have been close enough to the bottom of the shaft to minimise the effect.
"So nice. I'd hate for someone to have to find jellied Trip all over the floor." Which is how it could have so easily been: what few people seemed to grasp is that whatever speed the container they were in fell at, that was the speed they fell at as well. And when the container stopped… well it didn't take a physicist to figure out the next part, but it would take an anatomist a while to sort out what was left.
He saw that DiLorenza had succeeded in getting the strip from the wall, now she began boring a hole in the end of it. What the hell is she doing? When she accomplished that, she took a piece of wire from her tool belt and attached the strip to the belt. Then she looked up at the ceiling, contemplating.
Of course. They couldn't get out through the walls, but the roof of the lift opened into empty shaft. Empty except for the emergency ladder that ran up the side. What was it he had just suggested to Higgens? "Hang on." He climbed to his feet, and walked over to DiLorenza, cupping his hands in front of him. She looked at them, looked at his face then reached out and…
"Ahhh. Goddamn. You bitch!" She twisted his nose; she looked right at him then reached out and yanked on what was currently the most sensitive part of his entire body. He breathed in, ready to tear something off her, then realised that he could breathe. Through his nose instead of walking around like an idiot with his mouth hanging open. Now he only felt like an idiot. "Thank you." He reached out his hands again, and this time she placed her foot in them, stepping easily up onto his shoulders. Once there she set to work loosening the ceiling panel. He realized how graceful she was: despite her awkward position and newly elevated centre of gravity she didn't teeter or sway, even when she passed the panel down, forcing him to let go of her ankles to take it away from her.
She raised herself up through the opening so smoothly that it must have all been done by arm power alone. Strong, too. She swivelled around to lie on her stomach, one arm reaching down to him.
At least you're not too chauvinistic to not accept the assistance. If he'd had any tendencies that way, his mother would've knocked them out of him early. A gentleman -- yes he was supposed to be -- but if she'd ever caught him making any assumptions about who was the weaker sex… well she was perfectly capable of knocking him well into the middle of another decade.
When he scrambled topside, he felt a new rush of respect for DiLorenza. Had she not thought to abscond with the glowstrip, they'd be climbing blind, something he relished not at all. Bad enough to have to climb in this stale air all the way to…
"Oh, fuck no." The only two places to restore main power were Engineering or the bridge. Engineering on D-Deck was closest only -- lets see G-D is three decks, looking at an average of 3.10 metres per deck, plus about .66 of a metre between each for the maintenance shafts, add on the fact that we are actually below G deck by about 1.5 metres – 12.78 metres up. Didn't sound like much, then neither did 100 yards until you found yourself camped out on your own 1 yard line looking down the field towards infinity. This infinity ran straight up, a direction he'd never relished going in.
You just finished going rock-climbing with Captain Archer. You scaled sheer cliffs in survival training. You balanced on a ledge at the top of Starfleet Headquarters while bolting down a holographic imager. Don't tell me you're going to let a minor thing like acrophobia keep you from climbing a silly little ladder. He had done all those things, and been terrified while doing it. The trick was not to let anyone else know.
I know. Who do you think is the one hating heights around here? What do you think this is? Ignore it and it will go away? I hate to tell you this, Tucker, but at a 12.78 metre drop you're going to be going at 15.83 metres per second – if we're dealing with 1.0 gravity here -- which combined with your seventy-five and three quarter kilograms is going to create an inertial force of oh, around 742.35 kilogram force, which is perfectly capable of brewing up that jellied Trip you were talking about earlier. It's never the fall that kills you, it's the landing on an unyielding surface in a very yielding sack of meat, blood and ossified calcium, or in other wordsgoing from 56.99 kilometres per hour to zero in a single instant. And don't forget you're leaving out the thickness of the deck plating which doesn't seem like a hell of a lot, but is when you consider that each deck has dual layer flooring each layer separated by another .6 of a metre filled with all those struts and all that insulation, meaning you're actually falling 14.58 metres which means that impact is going to be that much harder. Then again, you're forgetting that E, like D is a double deck, meaning, that if anything happens you are fucked. Am I making myself clear?
Are you done? Because I think DiLorenza's leaving without us. Indeed, the light grew dimmer as DiLorenza climbed upward, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she left a senior officer behind. Then why should she care? He wasn't doing a hell of a lot to contribute to their survival situation around here. She was the one doing all the thinking, all the practical stuff. Besides, those calculations only fit if I fall from the top.
And since when have you ever fallen from the bottom of anything? He had to admit that was true; if he was going to fall, it was going to be from somewhere spectacular. Not to mention that you lied to Archer? That the rocks didn't slip under your feet; that you slipped because even thinking of the drop made you dizzy?
"Don't think about it then." Kind of like not thinking of pink, killer fuzzy bunnies (when did Gina come into this?) but… ten impossible things before breakfast, right?
"Six, actually," Gina'd told him the first day he misquoted, "If you do ten, you're just being contrary." So he told her he actually intended eleven, cracking her up for the rest of the day.
He gripped the first rung, and tried to convince himself that there wasn't another option. Anyone for twelve?
[1] For anyone unfamiliar with even the basics of neuroscience, the right brain is the visual, creative centre, whereas the left is the logic, language centre.