"The Third Charles Tucker"
Part One: Vanishing Act
October 31, 2161
He laid his head down on the pillow, weary from his day's work. Being a department chief was one thing, second officer another. But first officer? One step down from captain? It was exhausting sometimes, it really was.
Not that Charles "Trip" Tucker III regretted taking the job as Columbia's second-in-command. Truth be told, he rather liked the crew looking up to him, either because they needed his help with something or simply because they admired him for one reason or another. No man (or woman, for that matter) could ignore that feeling, the one where your chest swelled with pride because you were liked and respected by the people you worked with.
Didn't mean a long day-or long night, as he'd just gotten off his last third shift of the week-wasn't capable of wearing you out.
Trip lay still, his eyes closed, hoping for sleep. Real sleep, mind you, not the kind where his psyche was plagued with dreams of what would never be. Of a life that had ceased being his years ago. He didn't know how much time had passed since he had lain tiredly on his bunk, but he finally felt himself starting to drift off, his last thought another fervent prayer for dreamless sleep.
Erika Hernandez, captain of the Starship Columbia, sat in her office, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand, going over Trip's third shift report. He'd had a busy night, supervising the repairs and upgrades in the engine room, the armory, and here on the bridge. They were on their way back home for an inspection, and like she, he was determined that Columbia would be in top form. Chances were they were on the verge of being decommissioned-it had been almost seven years since their launch, after all, and the warp 7's were in production now-but hope ran abundant through the crew that they might just get a few more years out of this ship.
The sudden jolt that nearly had her turning her cup over in her lap and scalding herself with the hot liquid was, naturally, quite unexpected. Erika quickly set the cup down and dropped the datapad containing Tucker's report on her desk, stumbling as she rose and made her way across the office, the ship still shaking forcefully.
"Report!" she called out as soon as she made her way through her office door and out onto the bridge.
Rachel Walcott, her second officer and pilot, left the command chair and shooed the relief pilot out of her seat so she could take the controls herself, calling over her shoulder, "Some kind of spatial disturbance, Captain. We just … ran into it!"
"Well, run us out of it, Lieutenant!" said Hernandez, struggling to get into her own chair as the ship shook a third time. She hated to do this to a man who'd just gone off duty, but it looked like they might need him, so she looked over at her communications officer and said, "Get Commander Tucker up here-now."
The young man nodded and started to carry out her order. Hernandez finally seated herself, though she held tightly to the arms of her chair as the ship shook yet again. "Mr. Brace, any idea what's going on out there?" she asked, directing her question to her science officer.
"None yet, ma'am," Daniel Brace said over his shoulder, his eyes pressed into the reader at his station. "All I have so far is some sort of spatial flux. It looks to be stationary, though, so as soon as we get through it-"
As he spoke, the trembling of the ship mercifully ceased. "All stop," Hernandez said to Walcott, standing and walking over to the science station. "I take it we're out?"
For a moment Brace didn't answer, then he turned around and nodded. "Yes, Captain, we're clear."
"Keep scanning the area, Mr. Brace, I want to have a look at this thing. If it's dangerous, we'll leave message buoys to warn other ships," Hernandez said, and turned to her pilot. "Move us another hundred thousand kilometers away, Rachel, then come about."
She then walked over to her communications officer. "Leo, where's Commander Tucker?"
Ensign Leo Thomas shook his head. "I don't know, ma'am. I've been calling his quarters, but I haven't gotten any answer."
Hernandez pressed the comm button herself. "Commander Tucker, this is the bridge, over." She waited about thirty seconds before she tried again. "Charlie, this is Captain Hernandez on the bridge, respond please."
She'd thought calling him Charlie would work-in the nearly seven years they'd been serving together, it had become something of a running joke that she would call him Charlie when she wanted to get a rise out of him. He had no idea how very much she liked that she was the only one who could get away with it. How very much she liked him, in fact.
Still no response. And it was not like Trip to ignore the comm, even when he was fast asleep. If it went off, he always answered.
"I'm going to go see what's keeping him. Rachel, you have the bridge. And get me a damage report while you're at it," said the captain, as she marched over to the lift to see what was going on with her first officer.
When she reached his quarters on C Deck, she tried ringing his buzzer. "Charlie, this isn't funny anymore, open the door," she said after the third try. When still he did not answer, she heaved a frustrated sigh-he had to be here. He'd told her that he was going straight to bed when she'd relieved him hardly more than half an hour ago.
Reaching over to the keypad, she pressed a series of numbers that would allow her to override the lock and enter without consent. When the door swished open she stepped over the threshold, fully prepared to yell for at least a minute because she'd had to come all the way down here.
Erika Hernandez did not expect to find his bunk empty. Turning around, she reached for the comm panel next to his door, calling down to the mess hall, then the armory, then the gym, and finally engineering. He was in none of those places. Next she called the bridge to see if he had reported in, and they still hadn't heard from him, either.
"Rachel, alert security: I want a deck-by-deck search for him," she said, a sense of dread beginning to form a knot in her stomach.
"Captain?" Lt. Walcott queried.
"Just do it, Lieutenant. Commander Tucker is missing."
More than an hour later, after a deck-by-deck, room-by-room search and a scan of all the access tunnels, nooks, crannies and closets on the ship, her crew had no other choice but to report the worst…
…Commander Tucker had vanished.
But they did find something very interesting in his quarters. Hernandez had not noticed at first, hadn't even looked there because she'd expected to find him in his bed. A more thorough search of Tucker's personal space, however, turned up an exact replica of Rachel Walcott in the head, unconscious on the floor.
Hernandez had the doppelganger carried to Sickbay. Dr. Lena Rosenbaum was scanning the woman as their own Rachel Walcott walked in, having decided to go down when she heard that someone-who was not Commander Tucker-had been found in his quarters.
She stopped short upon seeing her own face on the unconscious form. "What the hell?" she muttered, looking from the person on the bed, to Dr. Rosenbaum, to Captain Hernandez, and then back again.
"I found her in Tucker's bathroom," said the captain. "I don't know how she got there, but then I have no idea how Charlie disappeared, either."
"I have run every bioscan conceivable," said Rosenbaum at last, putting down her instruments. "I've checked her DNA, her RNA, blood samples-I even did a micro-cellular scan of her bone marrow. Except for some sort of quantum level fluctuations, the reason for which I have yet to identify, this woman is Lt. Rachel Walcott."
"But that's impossible!" declared Columbia's pilot. "I am Rachel Walcott!"
"Well, apparently, so is she," Hernandez mused, gesturing toward their unconscious guest. "The question is: how did she get here? And where's Charlie?"
"That spatial disturbance we ran into, do you think it had anything to do with this?" asked the doctor.
Hernandez shrugged. "I'm open to any theories at this point, though considering Charlie disappeared and this Rachel apparently came aboard during the time we got caught in it, I'd say that's a very distinct possibility."
"So how the hell do we send her back to wherever it is she came from?" Rachel asked, clearly unnerved by the presence of her mirror image. "And get Commander Tucker back?"
Hernandez looked at her, placing a hand on her shoulder in a comforting gesture. "I don't know, but we will try. I want him back, too, Rachel."
At that moment, Daniel Brace walked into Sickbay. Hernandez started to ask her science officer to report on his findings, but the grimly determined look on his face stopped her, especially as he walked right up to the unconscious Rachel on the bed and scanned her with the hand scanner he carried.
"Just what I was afraid of," he said, turning slowly to the three women staring expectantly at him.
"Just exactly what were you afraid of, Lieutenant?" Hernandez asked slowly.
Brace sighed, his countenance one of defeat. Erika didn't like that one bit.
"My preliminary findings determined that the spatial flux was some kind of quantum rift. Quite possibly some sort of gateway between dimensions," Brace began. "When I heard about our friend here, how she was in the place Commander Tucker was supposed to be in, I got a hunch that when he was taken, she was traded for him. In layman's terms, it's called the equal exchange theory. To make up for the fact that he appeared in her dimension, she appeared in ours-it's all about maintaining balance in both places. It could even have happened simultaneously. That's why I scanned her, I had to be sure. Her quantum signature matches that of the energy readings emanating from the rift."
Rosenbaum nodded. "Then that explains the readings I got when I examined her," she said. "Her body is in a state of quantum flux, because she was somehow…transported, from her universe to ours."
"Would Commander Tucker be going through the same thing, wherever he is?" Hernandez wondered.
Rosenbaum exchanged a look with Brace, who nodded. "It's reasonable to assume so, yes," the doctor replied.
"What I want to know is can we send her back?" broke in Rachel. "She doesn't belong here, she belongs…wherever. Is there any way to send her back through the rift and get Commander Tucker back? To rebalance the dimensions or whatever?"
Brace's second sigh, coupled with his crestfallen expression, caused the knot of dread that had formed in Hernandez' stomach to twist painfully. She didn't want to hear what he had to say, even while knowing she had no choice.
"I have some really bad news," he said softly. "For one thing, the rift is entirely too unstable to risk sending anything through. The gravitational forces could very well tear a shuttlepod apart—to be honest, I'm surprised we didn't sustain any more damage than minor hull fractures, but that could just be due to Columbia's size. Secondly, there's really no guarantee she would end up where she came from, and there's no way for us to communicate with whoever is on the other side to find out if Commander Tucker is even alive over there."
Hernandez swallowed, not wanting to ask because she feared she already knew the dreadful answer. "Why do I get the feeling that's not even the worst of it?" she forced herself to say.
Brace looked her straight in the eye, himself wishing he didn't have to bear the terrible news. "Because it's not, Captain. The worst part is, the rift is closing. At the rate it's collapsing, in less than two hours it will be gone."
Gone, the captain thought, a deep sadness settling over her. Meaning no way to send the second Rachel Walcott back to her own dimension…
…and no way to bring Charlie back to his.