Chapter 1
"Captain's log, Star date 5.6972. Just a few minutes ago I thought I was talking about my son, David, to my sister in the drawing room of a huge Gothic mansion, but now I find myself on the bridge of an immense starship. It feels so weird and alien, and yet somehow... it seems so right!"
"Captain," First Officer Barnabas turned around at his post toward Captain Roger Collins. "I'm picking up a ship on the sensors."
"Something tells me it's more Leviathans." Ensign David Collins responded at the navigator's post. Roger always did prefer his son close to his side and the young man had already more times than anyone could count proved himself a valuable ally.
"They're hailing us." Security Officer Maggie Winters controlled the communication channels. Her uniform, unlike the others, included a metal Klingon accessory over her shoulder with a light saber hanging off her belt.
"Uncle Roger!" Helmsman Carolyn Stoddard froze at the face on the screen. "It's Petofi!" She stared into the horrible visage of the mad despot. She couldn't believe he was still alive after their last confrontation with him. Every time they clashed, she had always hoped it would be the last time, but he continued returning time after time.
"Thank you, Roger, for giving me a target." The fat former despot turned to reveal a Romulan crew under his psychic control. "Fire at will, Aristede!" His Romulan associate fired up their phaser banks.
"Shields up!" Roger commanded his crew. "Willie, Put more power to the engines!"
"Right, Roger!" Loomis's Scottish accent called from Engineering. Roger gripped his seat as the other ship fired. Carolyn was nearly thrown from her seat as she moved her long golden locks out of her face and held course. The entire ship shook as the Romulans fired upon them.
"Right hit to a starboard shield." Barnabas stood at ops. "Leaking plasma on Decks Three, Four and Five."
"Roger!" The voice of Dr. Julia Hoffman echoed over the ship. "I'm getting wounded from all over the ship." She turned to Liz as Lt. Commander Quentin Collins carried Victoria Stoddard in to sickbay.
"Vicki, my daughter!" Liz shrieked out of habit. "Woops, did I say that?!" She paused a second and looked around as she wondered if anyone else had heard her.
"She was in a Jeffries tube that exploded." Quentin laid her out a nearby bed. The medical stat screen above her lit up in her presence as Julia read it with a glance and administered a shot of cordazine to the lovely Ensign. Quentin hovered over her and held her hand as the ship shook from another phaser attack. "Damn that Petofi, won't he ever leave me alone." He mumbled under his breath.
On the bridge, Roger sat in his Captain's chair as he contemplated his next move. His First Officer Barnabas Collins moved closer to him with a stragedy in mind as their ship fired photon torpedoes on the Romulan ship.
"Roger," Barnabas spoke astutely. "It would be logical to strike at their ship just before they follow us into warp. The damage we've wreaked so far on them wouldn't hold them together if we lead them through a deviated course through parallel time."
"Excellent, Barnabas." Roger agreed as he gave the order.
"But a partial trip through parallel time gave Ambassador Angelique all those powers!" Carolyn remembered several years before when the lovely Starfleet Ambassador and former First Officer Nicholas Blair tried to take over the Enterprise. "What would deliberate trip into parallel time do if we barely if we could barely stood the first one?!"
"I've upgraded the shields since then." Science Officer Willie Loomis entered the bridge as his Scottish accent as distorted his words. "We won't feel a thing!"
" I have your pawn in play." Nicholas Blair and Q hovered over a chessboard in another plane of existence as they viewed the continuing conflict from beyond time and space. Various pieces represented the USS Collinwood and her crew as Blair trumped his ace. Blair's face curled up with his usual confident smirk as he looked upon the arrogant extra-dimensional.
"I like this mix in realities." Q moved the ship into Parallel Time as he along knew the reason for the distorted time-line and transported Collins Family. "Trelane was getting so boring."
Petofi sat amidst the Romulans held under the thrall of in the power of his left hand. Since he had wiped the gypsies into extinction, his last objective was to get revenge on Quentin for turning him over to the Jedi Knights. Vader was easy to turn to the Dark Side of the Hand, but Quentin becoming a protégé of Magda and a master of the Light Side of The Hand had to be stopped. He had never intended it to happen.
"Quentin, I'm coming after you." He laughed with the power of a starship behind him.
"David, hard about!" Roger ordered with a cocktail in his hand. "Barnabas, show them what we did to Gerard Stiles."
Barnabas fired one blast from the ship's phaser banks as it turned with a course into Parallel Time. Petofi felt his ship buckle slightly as they joined chase. From their dimensional chessboard, Q and Nicholas Blair watched from their godlike positions beyond time and space.
"Who do you think it will be?" Q asked Blair. "Who will join us as controllers of the universe? Roger? Quentin? Barnabas? Who has the potential to be… what you did call it, a god?"
Several centuries before in the Twentieth Century, Jim Kirk walked across the landing within his family estate. He wasn't sure why, but something felt wrong here. He had seemed to live here his entire life, but a strange shudder overwhelmed him as he paused and looked over the foyer. Why did these surroundings seem so weird to him? Enterprise, Maine was a nice little town, but there was so little to do for someone with obvious desires for adventure. He could go to the Blue Whale and pick up Deanna with Picard and Beverly, but after all that trouble with his cousin Montgomery Scott, he didn't dare. Why did Uncle Leonard ever invite him to stay on the estate? Maybe going over to the Skywalker ranch and taking up Han and Leia's invitation to dinner was looking better and better. A knock came to the front entrance as he turned to the drawing room. Uhura stopped dusting a moment to answer it.
"I can get it." Jim told her as he opened one side of the immense oak doors that stood as entrance to the estate. Beyond them in the dark moonless night was a nervous figure holding a silver-tipped cane. "Yes?"
"Is Leonard McCoy at home?" The shadow responded.
"Yes... he is." Kirk sometimes behaved rather like the Sci-Fi actor he watched on television and wanted to be. " Who... may I ask ... is calling?
"Spock, a cousin from England."
Chapter Two
"Willie..." Captain Roger Collins felt his starship buckling as it lured into Parallel Time the Romulan ship which Petofi was controlling. "Hold my ship together."
"Right, Roger." Willie remembered the last time. Roger's First Officer at the time was Nicholas Blair and Angelique Bouchard was the Chief Science Officer in love with Barnabas. The brief trip back then made both of them something close to gods and left Roger to bury his old friend Nicholas in the West Wing System after a fight for the USS Collinwood. Angelique helped him to defeat Blair before going on to better things in Starfleet, but she returned often to vie for Barnabas's love, but his half-human, half-Leviathan nature affected his chance for human emotion.
"Roger!" Barnabas stood his ground in the shaking bridge. "Pull out! Parallel Time is distorting the structural stability of the ship." The mighty craft rattled around him like a toy in the hands of a spoiled child. A ceiling panel crashed to the floor as David clung to his console.
"Not yet..." Roger held to his order as his ship and the Romulan ship both rattled apart together. He just needed a few more seconds. David lifted his head and looked over as his cousin Carolyn screamed, grabbed her head and fell to the floor. The young man looked around expecting to see the ship fly apart at any moment in the tumultuous warp of energies affecting the ship.
"I don't understand what you mean." In the Twentieth Century, family patriarch Leonard McCoy suspiciously and incredulously looked his new cousin over as his nephew Jim Kirk stood by listening to the strange new relative's claims. "What do you mean we are not supposed to be here?"
"Allow me to reiterate," Jonathan Spock tried to explain. "But a causality loop in time and space has disturbed the timeline and exchanged us with this Twentieth Century family living in contact with the quantum irregularity in the west wing of this structure. I believe it may be something to do specifically with the extensive electromagnetic registry further imbedded in this house which I am as yet unable to identify."
"But it just seems so... impossible." James replied a bit stunned as he felt a new link to his science fiction pursuits.
"I'm a McCoy, not a doctor, you slant-eared Vulcan..." The family patriarch paused in shock. "What did I say?" Leonard looked to Jim.
"Soon, our memories will leave us." Spock answered "And we may be trapped here to live out these lives."
"But what of Uncle Leonard's son, Chekhov McCoy, or my good friend, Will Crusher. What of them?" Jim asked.
" I believe they are all somehow linked to the past, present and future history of our ship. They also will be trapped here." Spock answered. "Unless you allow me to do a mind link to restore your memories that we may better work together to return to our proper places in time."
"Quentin!" Petofi beckoned over the video link as his Romulan ship blew apart from the seams and Romulans were pulled out into empty space. "At hell's heart I stab at thee and.... oh, whatever...." The screen went white as the Romulan ship exploded. The terrific blast blew the Collinwood further in to Parallel Time as Quentin felt the disturbance of a hundred voices screaming out at once, and then silenced, much as Magda must have felt when Petofi blew up Bangor and killed his beloved Jenny.
"Quentin..." Victoria looked up from her bed in sickbay as the ship rattled around them. "My love," He kissed her and shielded her from the flying debris.
On the bridge, Barnabas gripped at his equipment to veer the Collinwood out of this area of space before they too were pulled apart. Crewmembers across the ship were screaming of incredible headaches as he charted a quick course out of the lethal area.
"Willie," Roger screamed on the bridge. "Get Carolyn to sickbay. Barnabas, get us out of here!"
"Clearing Parallel Time in 10.8 seconds," Barnabas estimated as the ship moved quickly out of the area. The anti-matter engines were screaming as they pushed the ship forward. As everything redlined before him, Barnabas heard another blip from his console. "Sensors detect another ship. It's the Blue Whale!" He called out as the emerged from parallel time. The rattling stopped as the static on the hex field cleared to another Collins-class ship and then to an electronic image of its captain.
"Roger," Captain Burke Devlin watched as the Collinwood rushed to meet them. "I came to help, but you obviously did okay on your own again. I'm willing to tow you to DS-9 for repairs. Oh, and I've got a visitor for you."
"Hello, Barnabas." Ambassador Angelique's melodious voice chimed in as she appeared from behind him on the hex-field. Roger turned and looked up to his science officer as the coldly analytical Barnabas lifted one eyebrow as his own personal reaction to her affection return.
Chapter Three
Barnabas stood watching before the transporters as Lt. Chris Jennings transported Angelique and the Jawa senators over from the Blue Whale. There were five shimmering balls of energy as one shapely female image appeared transparent and gradually returned to full corporeal form amongst the four short hooded figures. Angelique gasped a moment in the transporter beam to her Barnabas and then checked to see she was all together present from the transporter beam. She then leaned over the alien ambassadors as she talked to them.
"Yes, yes, I understand Bocce." She smiled toward them. "Eeekh an bey tei, so nay to hacci." The short hooded creatures mumbled and chattered around her as they passed her and down the corridor. Barnabas excused Chris for the moment as Angelique rushed to meet and embrace him. He did not respond as she had hoped.
"No hug for me, Barnabas?" She looked up to him with the eyes of a woman in love.
"You look as healthy as the last time." He spoke analytically and coldly, but she could only cringe frustratingly and look with love into his eyes.
"If only you could love," She pined as only a woman could. "If you were human, would you marry me?"
"It would be the logical thing to do." Barnabas answered.
In his ready room, Roger dropped satisfied into his chair after seeing the last of Petofi. He beamed knowing that this was positively the end of the tyrant after so many repeated confrontations."He's dead," He replied smiling ear-to-ear as the repair crew of Commander Bill Malloy of DS-9 conducted the ship's repairs.
"No," Quentin wandered in to join him. "He's not !"
"How can you be so sure?" Roger scowled a bit miffed at his cup on the floor and then rose once more to fill it.
"I've always sensed Petofi when he was around." Quentin replied with a dark air. "He's like an evil spirit I can't shake. Sometimes, even space can't shade his presence from me and right now, it's very strong as if he were right above me."
"Tea, earl grey, hot." Roger told his replicator as a new cup appeared in the replicator for him to take. "But how could he survive again? He was on the ship when it exploded."
"He's also survived molten magma and being buried alive" Quentin added a bit alarmed. "May I add he's harder to kill than MacGyver's Murdock?"
"But still…" Roger paused as the ship's boatswain whistle sounded.
"Captain Collins , please report to sickbay." Julia's voice called. Before he could sit down in his quarters, Roger realized he was being paged off to sickbay. A brief sip of his tea, Roger stood with a small jerk of his shirt to lower it and responded to the hail to sickbay where Julia was in an obvious quandary.
"Roger," She turned with a covert whisper to him and acknowledged Quentin with him. "Carolyn is showing the same progressive symptoms of Parallel Time Acceleration that Blair and Angelique exhibited five years ago only her's is much more progressive. If she is the first known individual to receive the full magnitude of the effects, I'll have to comply with Starfleet Regulations, and terminate her life functions while I still have of chance of doing so." Quentin gasped at the realization.
"But Parallel Time only affects individuals with psychic potential." He lightly argued back. "What will I tell Liz? She's on ship; I can't give the order to kill her daughter."
"Star fleet Regulations!" Julia pushed protocol.
"No!!" Roger reacted quickly as he himself died a bit inside. "Yes… But let me be the one to do it… as I tried with Nicholas so long ago."
"And you did that just right." Quentin glanced over to check on Victoria. "He's only come back to kill us about hundred times!" He added his own sarcastic grin.
Several more feet away, Carolyn lightly stirred. Her body felt as if it was not her own as if it belonged to someone else. She gasped lightly for the moment and lifted her hand to look upon it. It sort of tingled to her now as if it were special and capable of so much more. She watched as tiny wrinkles vanished and her skin became perfect - too perfect. She exhaled deeply as she suddenly felt more alive than she'd ever been.
Chapter Four
It had been weeks since her last lesson with Quentin. Her interest was in becoming like him a Jedi Knight. Meditation and self-discovery was wonderful, but here was her favorite place in becoming an accomplished warrior. In the Holodeck, Maggie flicked on her light saber and practiced on simulation of Tusken Raiders, the nomads of Earth's African wastes. She killed one, flew through the air, landed on her feet and felt the breath knocked out of her by a Klingon. Severing its head with one stroke, she confronted another one and caught the chakram of an Amazon warrior, burying her electric blade deep into her chest.
"Quentin has taught you well." Ambassador Elizabeth Stoddard beamed from the Holodeck arch. The Collins matriarch clapped her hands as Maggie undid her hair buns back into long braids.
"Cease Program." Maggie smiled secretly as she glanced up to Mrs. Stoddard. Liz beamed for a second and then became oddly repentant before turning out of the Holodeck. Maggie felt something forlorn from the woman's past as rushed to catch her before she could return to DS-9. "Ambassador!"
"Yes?" Liz turned to her a bit distantly.
"Would you answer me a question truthfully?"
"I don't know any other way."
"When were you going to tell me that you are my mother?" The inquiry brought out a look of shock from the older woman.
"When will this work?" Picard asked Data, the artificial man created by Dr. Edward Lang, a traveler from the future. Lang was reportedly from the same time as they were supposed to be from, but oddly enough, Data had no real memory of the man.
"It is hard to say," Data assisted Spock in the west wing room that had been showing images of alternate realities. "We had to construct this from materials in this century, but thankfully the Collins Family left their fortune behind to buy the necessary equipment."
"I hope its quick." Dr. McCoy had his memories back after his mind link with Spock. "I'm tired of Chekhov calling me dad!"
"How will this work?" Kirk asked as he recalled his true past.
"Theoretically," Spock turned as his improvised tricorder rattled off the readings from the room. Data continued to create from memory the devices they needed to nullify their exchanges in time. "The equipment will send a signal bandwidth through time that will accelerate as it heads to the future, much as a band of light through a mile of darkness, linking the causality loops, and forcing them to cancel out each other."
"Theoretically…" Data added.
"Just as long as I get back to my ship!" Kirk and Picard chorused together.
Carolyn inhaled deeply as she heard voices coming into her head from all over the ship. She heard talks of ship design, personal plans and intimate discussions... She was a bit scared as she looked around wondering where it was coming from as she laid in her bed in sickbay and started wondering if the huge starship was suddenly haunted. She wanted to be scared, but something else wouldn't allow her to be. She felt incredible as her mind felt as if it was expanding everywhere around her and becoming one with everything.
"How does it feel to have me coursing through your veins?" Q appeared next to her.
" Q! " She leaped up off the bed. "What have you done to me?"
"Done?" the trickster smirked. "Can't you feel it? The power of the Q coursing through your rather petite little body." He loomed over her as seductive and charismatically as any devil. " It's transforming you into what into what you simple minded humans call gods. You can do anything, go ANYWHERE, you can finally leave this ship and go on adventures you never dreamed. You could even..." He brushed against her ear and whispered. "Bring your beloved Jeb back to life!"
"Jeb?" Carolyn remembered. How could she have forgotten him?! He lived in that other time with her when she was the mere heiress of a vast family estate, but here... she was a goddess!!!
Quentin placed his hand on the pommel of his light saber as he headed to Victoria's quarters to check on her medical progress. As the door opened, he looked up ready to beam to her unflawed beauty, but her mother Liz Stoddard stepped out and slapped him across the face.
"What was that for?"
"It's your fault!" Liz yelled at him." When you began to teach Maggie how to be a Jedi, she used her new powers to read my mind and learn that I am her true mother."
"I'm sorry," Quentin smiled his grin of a scoundrel. "But she obviously wanted to know. However she used her ability is not up to me but her."
"You cannot see my daughter, Victoria, ever again." Liz ordered him.
"You cannot do that!"
"I just did." Liz turned back around with the stern, defiant look of a mother. Overhead, the ship's boatswain whistle sounded.
"All ship's officers come to sickbay." Julia called out. Quentin took one long look at Liz and tried to think of something to say. Vicki was but a few away as they looked upon each other as lovers torn apart. Right now, he loved her as much as a man could love a woman, but right now, he also had his duty. He turned and hurried for the turbo-lift.
With Julia's announcement, Roger wondered what had occurred now in sickbay this time. He thought of Carolyn and of her reluctance to join Starfleet. It had all been set up by Liz to keep Carolyn from running loose across the universe. Carolyn saw herself as a solo hero in adventures of her own instead of as one of a band of explorers. With that ensconced in his mind. Roger headed to sickbay to meet his officers concerned about Carolyn's advancing omnipotence and the risk the worldly would-be vagabond now posed to them. As the doors opened, his eyes widened as he noticed sickbay littered with dozens and dozens of...
"Tribbles?" Roger cringed. "Please, not on my ship again."
"She created them." Julia pointed to Carolyn sitting in sickbay cuddling and talking baby talk to the things. She lifted her head with a mischievous smirk and then continued stroking the tribble in her hands.
"Carolyn..." Roger's fears overtook him before his niece. "You must not..."
"No!" The ship shook inexplicably with her voice as Barnabas and Quentin entered sickbay. "I'm not staying cooped up on this ship another minute!"
Roger peered worriedly over to Barnabas and Quentin as they entered to assess the situation. Barnabas rose an intrigued eyebrow as Quentin gasped fearfully and pulled his hand back through his hair.
"Quentin... the power of the Hand.... perhaps?" Roger asked.
"Sorry, Roger." Quentin was a bit nervous himself. "But even this is beyond my power...."
"Don't bother whispering." Carolyn jumped up from her bed in front of Julia and stood defiantly on her feet with a sort of heroic pose to her stance. " I can hear every word you..." Her eyes rolled back as she fell to the floor. Julia stood behind her grinning with an empty bio formerly full of a sedative.
"I acted on pure instinct." She grinned ear to ear grateful that Carolyn's godhood was not complete.
"Set the ship on a course for the Leviathan home world," Roger watched as Quentin lifted the form of his diminutive distant relative and placed her back into bed. Barnabas helped Julia strap Carolyn's unconscious form into a bed as they plotted. "We'll also leave the Tribbles there with her." Roger listened as the annoying things chirped and cooed all over sickbay as they reinfiltrated the vents, the hallway and the rest of the ship.
"On our present course," Barnabas began, "We will arrive in 10.8 minutes."
"Quentin?" Roger looked on him. "What's the status on Petofi?"
"Sensors indicated a transporter signal just before the Romulan ship exploded." Quentin reported as the trio of security officers entered sickbay. Talking as they returned to duty, Roger and his two officers entered a turbo lift. "Petofi could be hiding somewhere in the bowels of the ship."
"Any indication where?" Barnabas asked as the turbo lift slowed, stopped, started again and slowed before continuing to the bridge.
"My guess would be Engineering." Quentin rolled his eyes.
Chapter Five
"Everyone's out." Willie and the Engineering crew left their posts and got out of the way of the confrontation to come. The Scottish-speaking Chief Engineer made one last look as ADAM, the Automatic Diagnostic Android Module, made one more sensor scan then turned to depart the hold of the ship. Unshearing his light saber, Quentin looked around carefully in the shadows and niches around the warp core. His nearly nervous but obviously confident gaze peered around everywhere as he turned effortlessly on his heel. There were too many places to hide in here. He flicked on his energy blade as the pommel vibrated in his palm.
"My former apprentice..." Petofi's sandpaper voice emerged from somewhere around him. Quentin veered around with his sword lit as the huge dark shape of Petofi sailed down off the top of the overhead balcony like a huge black vulture of death. Saber drawn, their energy blades exploded into an epic barrage of sparks as Quentin fought to keep the huge madman off him. Rolling backward and landing on his feet, his light saber drawn, Quentin stared at his hated enemy. The old mystic was scarred across one half of his face from the explosion of the Romulan war bird. Clad in black robes and tarnished silver armor, Petofi lunged at him with frenzied madness burning in his eyes.
"Strike me down, Quentin!" the half-demonic overlord beckoned him. "Turn yourself to the Dark Side!!"
"What?" Quentin effortlessly jumped over his opponent's head and landed on a control board. "And give up my sparkling good looks and personality?" He quipped with his usual sense of humor.
Julia sat in sickbay updating her patient files on her console. Eager for the arrival to the Leviathan home world, she had no viable or accurate way of charted or reading Carolyn's ascendance, but she knew she was afraid of her for the first time in her life. Trying to pray for the best, she continued working as she lifted her head to a sound out the corner of sickbay. She listened for a moment; it sounded like fabric ripping or perhaps..... concentrated wool straps! Leaping up fearing the worst, she rushed past the corner and watched in disbelief as Carolyn used incredible strength to wrest herself free. One arm loose, she was ripping her left arm free and then her ankles.
"Carolyn, No!!!" Julia rushed for another full sedative. It was concentrated enough to poison a full city or knock out a young immortal, but one moment of eye contact and Julia felt an invisible force throw her backwards ten feet into the wall. Bouncing off that, she gasped a second and tried to gain her bearings.. Momentarily dazed, she heard two feet hit the floor near her. Looking up above her, she watched from her point of view on the floor as Carolyn innocently stroked her long hair out of her face smirked abashedly innocent and vanished in a small burst of light! Her godhood was complete!
Backed on to a catwalk descending over the warp core, Quentin fought harder and harder as Petofi refused to yield. The young Jedi had used everything from the martial arts he learned at Chiron's Academy to the Matrix Force movements from his friend Keanu of Reeves Colony, but the old madman had out-smarted him on every turn.
"Quentin, join me!!" he continued to pick away at his ego.
"Never…" Quentin used his sword to shield himself from the poltergeist attack of Petofi's psychic powers. "And don't try telling me that you're my father again, because that never works." He whirled around trying to strike Petofi from behind, but the madman countered that attack. "I mean, if you was my father, I'll kill myself!"
"If I turned out to be your father, I'd kill myself." Petofi snarled back with another gesture and several more objects thrown psychokinetically at Quentin. Jumping through them, Quentin landed on his feet again, danced up some barrels and stepped on to a higher balcony as they neared the ship's anti-matter streams. His saber vibrated less now in his hands as Petofi merely glided up to meet him once more in another fight of swords. Their energy blades continued to bounce off each other as they matched each other move for move. The dashing hero against the murdering overlord Quentin thought to himself. Petofi swung as Quentin's feet trying to knock him off the precarious perch, but Quentin leaped from beam to railing then to balcony
"Give it up, Quentin!!" Petofi matched the young Jedi move for move as their battle continued into the adjacent hall, up the ladder in the turbo lift shaft and into the starboard nacelle of the ship. Beneath them, pure anti-matter contained in an electro-magnetic shell propelled the ship at sub-light speed as they fought inches above possible disintegration in the pulsating anti-matter contained in fields of electro-magnetism. "Your friends are doomed and their fates sealed." Petofi snarled with an unholy grimace.
"Don't you ever shut up?!" Quentin felt his feet leave the floor as he nearly fell past the intangible fields holding the anti-matter. Striking his foot to the railing, he flew inches from mere non-existence and sailed the fifteen feet to the next ledge.
"Not when innocents like Maggie Winters are so easily bent to my wishes. If you cannot be turned, maybe she will follow me!!!" Petofi laughed as he too easily sailed the distance. Becoming impatient, Quentin gritted his teeth as he struck harder and harder on the evil mystic's sword. The dark lord grinned demonically at him and spotted a opening as he struck hard! Quentin screamed as his hand with his light saber was simultaneously severed at his wrist and cauterized in one sadistic movement. Collapsing into a heap, he almost passed out from the pain as he looked up to his enemy. Petofi hovered the end of his light sword at him.
"You are dead to me." Petofi came closer to him. Setting one foot down, he stepped on Quentin's rolling light saber and lost his balance. Struggling to regain his equilibrium, he tumbled over the railing and straight into the crackling anti-matter. A brief "What the...?" came from his lips as he was immediately disintegrated!
"Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy...." Quentin quipped as he looked over the ledge then collapsed back in pain.
Chapter Six
"Barnabas, you have the bridge." Roger ordered as he, Angelique, Willie and Maggie beamed down to the surface of the decimated planet with a large detachment of men. Almost nothing but arid wastes and vacant deserts, the Leviathans were almost extinct now and their planet worth only for its natural resources and serene beauty. Not much here to worry about except the petite blonde officer with delusions of godhood.
"Don't try to confront her." Angelique took charge. "She can't be in complete control of her powers of this is the only planet she could reach." She closed her eyes a second as she mentally scanned the planet. Several smugglers were on a sea port to the west, a deserted Leviathan village was becoming home to some human colonists and to the north was a string of oasis, but somewhere Carolyn was concealing her presence from even her.
"I'm heading north." Maggie spoke out loud as she raised a solid silver chakram replicated from the ship's replicators. "And I don't plan on having to get that close to her." She rolled her long braids rolled up on to her head to stay out of her way as ten men joined her in her search.
"Headstrong female security officer..." Willie mumbled. "Roger, how can we stop someone who can reshape reality with a twitch of her nose?"
"You out smart her." Roger trailed off in his own direction with his own team.
In the desert heat with eight sweaty officers, Angelique was still flawlessly beautiful. Not a bead of sweat, not a hair out of place, she still smelled like roses as she telepathically listened to the unconscious catcalls and favorable ratings the men gave of her figure. She smirked as Jennings wanted to replace Barnabas and Haskell wanted to show her a good time on Risa 5, but then she sensed their thoughts were turning into nightmares. Haskell dropped clutching his head and screaming of pain. Jennings grabbed at his heart in his chest and the other four went down as well as Angelique stood perplexed.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong?!" She felt a powerful force attacking their minds more powerful than her own powers as they clutched their heads in pain and crumbled into mere boys.
"Just call me the little dream-weaver." Carolyn called down giggling from a cliff above her. Jumping down the twenty feet, she landed unhurt in a small crouch as her mind projected a psychic force of energy to throw the beautiful ambassador almost twenty feet. Separated from the men, Angelique shook the blow off and tried to reach for her combadge to call for help. It was ripped from her uniform by unseen forces as Carolyn lifted her up off her feet.
"We need some privacy." Carolyn replied casually as she gabbed Angelique by her arms and then flew the two of them back up to the top of the cliff and on to the flat the rock face. Angelique reeled momentarily from being thrown around as she pulled herself up to her feet.
"Carolyn, we need to talk...." She started.
"I'm not going back." The tiny blonde folded her arms and thought of new ways to reshape reality. "As soon as I can, I'm leaving the planet, and it will be under my own power."
"I'll have to stop you."
"You ?" Carolyn giggled as if she amused her. "You haven't a chance." Her blue eyes faded into white glowing corneas as she became deadly serious.
In his own quarters on the ship, Quentin clenched and unclenched the fingers on his restored hand. Bio-surgically reattached and partially cloned, it still felt a little numb. Wondering if it would ever be the same again, he also thought of his distant cousin and her sudden godhood. He wanted to go help look for Carolyn as he looked up into Julia's face.
"Anything new on Carolyn?" He asked.
"Roger just beamed back aboard to recheck the large sensors." Julia confirmed. "Any minute now."
Back on the planet, Angelique whipped out the light saber Maggie had given her. Activating it, she sliced through the large rocks being telekinetically broken off the cliff and thrown at her. A twist of her hand, she caused a tree to fire wooden spears, but Carolyn ran up the straight edge of the rock, bounced off a boulder and struck Angelique in the chest with her feet. The light saber went flying as it flew from Angelique's hand.
"Come!" Angelique held her hand to it.
"No, you don't." Carolyn held her hand to bring it to her. The saber stopped frozen in mid-air, held aloft by their minds, and then went to Carolyn as Angelique mentally aimed the blade for her heart.
"Noooooo!!!!" Carolyn screamed as the blade struck her left breast, bounced off and fell to the ground unfazed. Crushing that weapon under her boot, she glared back to her former friend with another unspoken warning.
"Carolyn, please!"
"I'm not going back." The petite one snarled.
The two would-be sorceresses both simultaneously knocked each other off the cliff into different directions with more psychic force. Feeling herself falling, Angelique collected her bearings, mentally slowed her descent, stopped two feet from striking the ground and put her feet down.
"I need more practice." She mumbled to herself as the ground shook. The sky was thundering and growing darker as she looked up and up and up. Wondering what was happening, she heard Carolyn screaming as if she were a spoiled brat not getting her way. Turning to the direction of the hostile screams, her heart missed a beat as she fought for her breath. It just wasn't possible! Her eyes looked up and up and up over twenty feet of rock and then over the top of it as the top of the cliff fifty feet above her head was crushed under two titanic hands.
"Want to try for another round?" Bent over the rock precipice, Carolyn peered down grinning quite satisfied with herself while her height now at reached nearly more than thirty meters tall!!
On the Collinwood, Victoria thought of her sister. She loved Carolyn very much, but she never understood her all consuming urge to leave the family and strike out on her own. They had so many wonderful memories together growing up, but the vivacious blonde obviously wanted to get out from under her mothers influence. Now as a goddess, she could now possibly do it and the concept scared her. She needed Quentin to confide in now more than ever.
"Quentin," she entered his quarters. "I couldn't stay away. I need you." She became a little girl in his steely eyes as they embraced in a kiss. She felt his heart close to hers as his hands pulled her close. She looked into him and as a sudden perplexed wave of confusion overwhelmed her. She gazed upon his strange uniform and her matching clothing and recoiled from him.
"Who are you?!"
"Who are you ?!" He was just as confused as her as they broke up and looked around their odd surroundings. Liz now stormed in with an argument on her mind. Angry one minute, her expression became surprise as she looked at her daughter.
"Vicki! You're alive!"
"Mrs. Stoddard?" Vicki's true identity as the Collins governess returned. "Where are we? What are these clothes?" Quentin looked around as he recognized Liz, but not the girl or these weird surroundings.
On the bridge, Barnabas felt a strange surge of emotion overtake him as he watched the titanic Carolyn bury his love alive under the cliff! He stared at shock at Carolyn towering over Angelique and then recalled the love lost when Angelique was killed by Lamar Trask.
"Angelique! Alive! I won't lose her again!" He fumbled with the controls, but he was quickly losing his memories of the ship and it's design. As his mind tried to vaguely recall the transporter devices, a Vulcan appeared out of nowhere and stopped his hands.
"Mr. Collins, Allow me to help you." Spock looked upon him.
"Who the devil are you people and how'd you get on my ship?" Roger yelled at the strange Starfleet officers appearing out of thin air. Chekov returned to his station as David Collins wondered where he was. Lt. Nyota Uhura slid into her chair as reality started realigning.
"It's not your ship," Captain James T. Kirk smiled as he prodded Roger Collins gently out of the way and reassumed command. "It's my ship! Scotty, how is everything?"
"Tip-top, sir." Montgomery Scott reported from engineering. "My counterpart even up-graded the engines and improved the shields."
"What am I doing here?" Willie spoke with his familiar Brooklyn accent back again as he looked around. "I thought I was... chopping wood for Barnabas."
"Phasers charged." Spock locked them on Carolyn.
"Transporter ready."
"Now!!" Kirk gave the command to blast Carolyn with everything they had. Still trying to bury Angelique alive, Carolyn held on to her godhood with all her might felt the full power of the ship's phaser banks fired upon her. Blasting the ship back with all the energy she could muster, she turned to her new enemy as Angelique hid scared for her life in a tiny little hole. What was she doing here? How did Carolyn get to be so big and why was she trying to kill her? Tears were streaming down her face as her little window of sunlight got smaller and smaller, but then she felt herself being beamed into the Enterprise. Yes, the ship was called the Enterprise. She didn't know how she knew that, but she did. One moment she was watching herself being buried alive, and next she saw Barnabas and a strange Vulcan officer before her.
"Noooooo!!!!" Carolyn screamed at the level of her full power. She liked what she became and was not letting it ago. From her eyes and her hands lightning bolts mixed with phaser blasts rained across and through the Collinwood as it turned back to the Enterprise, split off from it and re-merged it again.
"Party's over." Q looked back upon Nicholas Blair. He was a mere human warlock again before the omnipotent Q.
Chapter Six
"Carolyn!" The entire family in the house heard the diminutive heiress screaming in bed. Liz rushed to her daughter's room and sat next to her as Carolyn came out of her nightmare and grabbed her out of some forgotten childhood habit. At the Old House, Barnabas Collins woke from his nightmare convinced he had lost Angelique in his trip through time to 1840 and rolled over as she sat happily married to him. She looked at him with concern from her book at the screams from the main house as he rose to call the main house. On his way to the caretaker's cottage, Willie pulled his coat tighter and rushed to the main house known as Collinwood.
"Carolyn, are you okay?" Dr. Julia Hoffman sat on the bed and checked her pulse.
"Yes, it was just a..." Carolyn looked at Quentin, Maggie, David, Hallie and her Uncle Roger crowding in her room and her doorway. The young blonde heiress' room had not changed since she was a high school student. The red and white banners of Collinsport High School were still on the walls and a picture of Frank Sinatra was taped above a picture of Marlon Brando on her vanity mirror. Maggie pushed in the French doors of the closet as she entered.
"Really, really bad dream." Carolyn continued. "I dreamed we were all on a space ship and I was trying to kill you. Uncle Roger was captain, Vicki turned out to be my sister..." She giggled at the concept as Liz looked away secretly as everyone else breathed a sigh of relief. Her mother seemed to be harboring a secret as her relatives chuckled at the perky blonde's wild dream.
"I guess I've just taken David to one to many sci-fi movies." Carolyn continued.
"Well, kitten, it was just a dream...." Roger grinned abashedly as he turned away. "Just calm down and go back to sleep."
"You'll have forgotten it by morning." Liz told her daughter as everyone dispersed for his or her rooms. Julia stood up as Carolyn pulled her blankets and sheets up to her shoulders.
"Sometimes dreams can seem very real." She replied.
"Was I in it?" Quentin stayed behind a moment to ask.
"You were the hero who killed the villainous Petofi." The answer got a worried look out of him. Quentin knew he had never mentioned Petofi too her. That was too long ago for her to know. A bit distressed as he tried to figure it out, Maggie reached in past him and closed the door.
"Good night." She wished her. Maggie romantically tugged at Quentin to get his attention as they closed the doors behind them. Carolyn yawned tiredly alone once more and continued sitting up in bed as she found by herself once again.
"I wish I had a hot chocolate to calm my nerves." She mumbled under breath. In her hands, a glass mug of hot chocolate appeared out of nothingness. She looked at it as she accepted it with an eager smirk. Raising it to her lips, an evil grin curled up on her lips...
End