That evening, Tw'eak invited Aurora and Octavia to meet her at the Academy shuttlebay. It was an unexpected, last-minute idea of Tw'eak's, and had been surprisingly easy to have her request for a shuttle put into reality. She was starting to think that maybe this admiral's rank might be worth the trouble after all.

"I didn't expect to go on a shuttle ride," Aurora said shortly after she arrived. She was, as always, the last one to do so. "Where are we going?"

"Climb in," Tw'eak said with a smile. "I'll explain on the way."

She and Aurora sat along one side, while Octavia took the operations chair next to the pilot, whose hairless head and pleasant demeanour indicated he was a Deltan. "Hello," he said after a few checks of the controls. "I'm Lieutenant Aewon, and I'll be your pilot."

"Commander Eight of Twelve," Octavia replied. She seemed somewhat put off by the Deltan. Tw'eak thought to herself that it may be simply that Octavia had never encountered the particular energy and seductiveness of a Deltan before. Then again, Tw'eak knew, Octavia hated surprises.

"Are we all aboard, ma'am?" Aewon asked, turning to Tw'eak.

"We are. Let's get underway."

"Very well. Setting course." Aewon turned back to his controls and initiated the shuttle lift-off sequence. "Academy control, this is shuttlecraft Hypatia requesting permission to lift off."

"Hypatia, Academy control," a voice relayed through a speaker. "Stand by for clearance... you are clear for lift off on vector 17 Bravo."

"Hypatia, one-seven Bravo confirmed... airborne."

Tw'eak felt her stomach flutter as though it too had just lifted off once the shuttle's nacelles cleared the ground. A brief rush of inertia as the shuttle's thrusters found their aspect and they were off. Tw'eak took a quick peek, leaning forward, to see the green hills of Earth, the vast expanse of the Pacific, and the curve of its warm, moist atmosphere being left behind.

"So," Aurora said after a moment. "Where to?"

Tw'eak offered only a wry smirk as a response.

"According to the shuttle logs, we-"

"Octavia! That's cheating." Tw'eak feigned protest.

"Oh, now she knows. And you know. Why can't I know?"

Once again, Tw'eak merely smirked.

"I bet the helmsman knows." Now Aurora offered a smirk of her own. "And I could order him to tell me!"

Tw'eak furrowed her brow. "I'd belay your order."

This deflated Aurora's sense of prerogative. "Aw, damn it!" She went from flustered to secretive with an unexpected rapidity, leaning in towards her commander. "This isn't... y'know... some sort of..." She mouthed the words 'section thirty one' in an exaggerated fashion.

"No, not at all." Tw'eak gave Aurora a look of alarm. "What gave you that impression?"

"No! No, I just- what?" Aurora laughed nervously. "Never mind."

"Right." Tw'eak offered another suspicious glare. She was fairly certain Aurora was being paranoid, but now that paranoia was becoming contagious.

"May I simply tell Commander duBois our heading, Admiral?" Octavia asked, her voice slightly exasperated. "The suspense is clearly causing her an undue level of stress."

"Now clearing Earth atmosphere," Aewon interrupted. "We're free to go to warp whenever you'd like."

Tw'eak ignored Octavia's request. "If you would, please."

"Engaging warp engines." The shuttle leapt into warp speed and, after a few moments, unexpected turbulence began to buffet and tumble the small craft.

Tw'eak stood up with some difficulty. "Status?"

"Something wrong with the engines, ma'am. A misalignment or- no." Aewon stared at his console with amazement. "That can't be right." He looked up towards Octavia.

"I can confirm the lieutenant's statement. According to these readings, we are traveling via some form of quantum slipstream. Our current speed is substantially faster than warp ten."

"How is that possible?"

"I don't understand, the shuttle should be tearing itself apart," Aurora added, reaching a hand to the steady, unshaken bulkhead. "A shuttle this size wouldn't even have a quantum slipstream drive installed."

"The controls aren't responding," Aewon noted. "All navigation functions seem to be locked out." He tapped a few more controls. "Correction. All functions are locked out."

"This would appear to be intentional," Octavia reported. "I have discovered the presence of a series of subroutines programmed into the shuttle computer." She looked at Tw'eak. "Our heading appears to take us towards the Omega Leonis sector block."

"Klingon space?" Tw'eak mused. She shook her head. Why would Klingon intelligence - or someone, anyway - go to such lengths in order to fling a shuttlecraft across the galaxy? Was she the target? Or was this all a case of bad timing?

The shuttlecraft began to slow down, and Tw'eak felt herself breathe something of a sigh of relief to feel the ship return to impulse. Her antennae leaning forward and angled inwards, she stepped forward to look outside, expecting to see a Klingon battlecruiser or Orion slaver hovering right above them. Nothing was there. "Anything on sensors?"

"All sensors systems are offline," Octavia replied. "So are the engines. However, our shields are up and life support is normal."

"I don't even have RCS," Aewon said, futilely pressing buttons on his console. He shook his head. "If I could just get thrusters, we could at least look around a bit better... even viewscreen control would be good right now."

Tw'eak scowled. "Did we stumble into a trap? This certainly isn't the Bajor system."

"Bajor?" Aurora stood up. "We were going to Bajor? Aw, I always wanted to go to Bajor."

"Bajor VII is where they're building Warspite." Tw'eak grimaced, sharing Aurora's disappointment. "I thought we could go take a look and see our new home."

"I recommend we arm ourselves and prepare for the worst," Octavia said after a moment.

"That seems reasonable. Aurora, pass out the phaser belts from the arms locker over there."

"Right."

"Lieutenant, see if you can at least get an idea where we are."

"I can try. If I'd been able to follow the star patterns I could attempt to astrogate our pathway here, but I had my head down trying to steady the shuttle. I'm sorry."

"It's all right. Octavia? How about you?"

"As far as I can tell, the star patterns are incorrect."

"What does that mean?"

"Maybe we're upside down?" Aurora asked sincerely as she handed phaser belts to Aewon and Octavia.

"There is no upside-down in space," Octavia corrected.

"You know what I mean. Inverted z-axis."

"Of course, but this is not the case. The positions of the stars are not consistent with observed patterns from the Omega Leonis system block."

"So we're further than that?" Tw'eak asked.

There was a buzzing notification. "We're being hailed," Aewon said.

"Let's hear it."

"-repeat, unknown shuttlecraft, this is the starship Bonaventure, please respond. This is the USS Bonaventure hailing shuttlecraft, requesting communication. Repeat-"

"The Bonaventure?" Aurora said as the voice repeated itself.

"The Bonaventure has patrol orders that would place them a great distance from Omega Leonis," Octavia added.

"Yeah, but how do we know we're in Omega Leonis?" Tw'eak leaned around, trying to look out the shuttlecraft's windows. "And where are the launched flights? You'd think there would be a runabout trying to tow us or something."

"Our shields are up," Aewon responded. "It could be preventing them from tractoring us."

"Shields do not typically impede tractor beam effectiveness," Octavia replied.

"Let's face it, those aren't standard-issue shields, so anything's possible. If they held up under that kind of strain to get us here, wherever here is..." Tw'eak continued looking around and, leaning far off to the right, she saw it. "Or perhaps... whenever..."

Approaching slowly, off the starboard side, she could see a sheen of reflected light from a white shape, its saucer section and warp nacelles just visible as discernible concepts. As it approached and became a clearly recognizable starship profile, she could read its registry - NCC-1000.

"Is that-?" Aurora began to ask as the Bonaventure came into view.

"The first ship of her class," Tw'eak said, dryly cutting her off. "A hundred and fifty years ago..."

Octavia looked up at Tw'eak with considerable alarm. For her part, Tw'eak simply looked back at the ship as it hung in space before them, neither growing nearer nor moving away.

"Uh, I'm getting something." Aewon tapped at the controls. "It's a different hailing frequency, I think-"

"Hello, Tw'eak." A voice from the back of the compartment caused all four officers to turn. Tw'eak had her phaser out. "I wouldn't use that. You'll destroy the whole aft compartment."

"Corbin!" Tw'eak found herself staring angrily at a holo-projection of the Section 31 contact she had last seen while they had been stationed in the Breshar system. "What, was sneaking into my bedroom not fun enough for you anymore?"

"I had nothing to do with this."

"Why do I not believe you?"

"In fact, I'm here to help you through this. It's over my head, but I'm just trying to make sure you don't get in over yours."

"Oh really? And how's that?"

"There's a mission you were being considered for - given that you've found yourself here, I take it they chose you for it!" Before Tw'eak could interject, Corbin continued. "In two hours' time, the Bonaventure - that Bonaventure out there - will be destroyed."

"Let me guess... that's not how it happens in the timeline."

"Very good," Corbin replied with a bit of a sneer. "We need you to stop it from happening." He nodded towards the Bonaventure. "Obviously it'll require you to get over there to fix."

"What are we up against? How does it happen?"

"The information is all there in the computer. Oh, you'll want to mask your energy field. This shuttle is built for covert operations - you'll be completely invisible for a period of time. You'll have to act quickly. They know you're here but they can't scan the interior of the shuttle, so they'll be curious."

"I don't understand - why us?"

"I know. I tried to tell them, Tw'eak, really, I did. We had important matters to still carry out. You're good for more than just starship command, but for now I wanted them to leave you alone, let you get your command organized. Looks like they disagreed."

"I... can't promise you we'll succeed."

"That's what worries me. We usually only send expendable assets on these kinds of missions. Perhaps I was too quick to praise you in my reports. Fighting off an Undine hand-to-hand like that... that's no small feat!" Corbin shook his head. "Ah well. There's always more where you came from, I suppose."

Tw'eak saw Aurora's face snarling into a knot of rage, and put a hand on her chief engineer's shoulder. "We'll see what we can do."

"Do that. I'd like to say we'll see each other again, but-"

"Lieutenant... can you close that channel?"

"Maybe?" Aewon pressed the button and the holo-emitter disconnected. "Yep."

"Accessing computer database," Octavia declared, turning to her station.

"I can help," Aurora said, squeezing in next to Octavia.

Standing back from the window now, Tw'eak looked across through the window at a starship whose design her great-great-great-grandparents may have served upon and wondered at the reason why.

The fervent, frantic efforts of her three crew members made Tw'eak feel hopeful, if not quite reassured. Here she was in - when? the 23rd century? - facing the namesake of the ship she no longer commanded. There was some mission to be performed, some outcome to be prevented (or perhaps made to happen?), and her crew was tasked with doing so by a shady member of a reprehensible organization that continued to operate as tumours do within the Federation.

Aewon, the Deltan helmsman, was the first to speak. "I've input the current star setup into the computer and I have a reasonable idea of the present stardate."

"Which is?"

"Sometime in the 2230s."

"That puts us... wow." Tw'eak considered for a moment. One hundred and eighty years in the past. "So what do we know about what happened then?"

"Not much," Aurora admitted. "I never liked history."

"Well, let's see. The Earth-Romulan War is over, the Federation exists, as does Starfleet... the Klingons are a fact of everyday life, and the Enterprise is probably still commanded by Christopher Pike."

"That would appear to be correct," Octavia noted. "According to historical records, USS Bonaventure is declared lost in 2237. Its last report, taken from an emergency buoy, indicated they were engaging with an unknown enemy of considerable power."

"The fact that they launched an emergency buoy tells us they didn't expect to survive."

Octavia nodded, her face concerned.

"So what are we going to do?" Aurora asked. "We can't just beam over there and expect to be taken seriously. 'Hey, don't fight anyone!' They may have just been defending themselves."

"I'd be willing to bet on that. Those are still Starfleet officers over there. They're only going to engage for defensive purposes. Still... if we could get an idea of who..." Tw'eak turned to Aewon. "Are we in the Omega Leonis sector block?"

"No. Tau Dewa. If I'm not mistaken, the Azure nebula should be about ten light-years... that way. And the Carraya system is about a light-year in that direction. Gravitational sensors confirm some sort of field consistent with a star system at that distance."

Tw'eak sat in her chair. "Tau Dewa... the Romulans probably aren't out this far yet... and if there's no Romulans, there won't be Hirogen either."

"We can't be sure of that," Octavia noted. "The Hirogen could have accidentally happened upon this region of space through their various technological means."

"Somehow I don't think that anything we're going to encounter here will originate in the Delta Quadrant."

"Iconians!" Aurora exclaimed. "It's Iconians, isn't it!"

"It could be, but... well, how would we know?"

"It seems unlikely that the Iconians would engage with a single starship," Octavia considered.

"That's true," Tw'eak added. "And I doubt the Bonaventure would've gotten a buoy launched if they had. What little I know about Iconian ships... they're big and they're incredibly powerful. They would simply tear anyone apart who got in their way."

"Maybe a planet-killer? Or a whale probe? Or maybe they got pulled into the Delta Quadrant and never made it home?" Aurora looked around, and, realizing she sounded ridiculous, mumbled, "Crystalline Entity..." and went back to her computer screen.

"Of course," Tw'eak concluded.

"Really?" Aurora replied.

Octavia's voice was completely unenthused. "Really."

"No, not any of that - Tholians. We know the Tholians are still active - and they have an active interest in time travel and future technology." Tw'eak leaned forward and looked at the clean hull lines of the Bonaventure and her trim, straight warp nacelles. "They'll make contact with the Tholian Assembly and then be captured."

"So how do we go about helping them?" Aurora asked.

"Infiltration." Tw'eak moved to the aft compartment and retrieved several armbands containing emergency transporter sequencers. "Am I correct in saying that we could successfully beam in and out of this ship while its shields are still up?"

"Absolutely." Aurora smiled brightly. "Their shield cycles have variances of whole microseconds. We could beam all of Earth Spacedock through those shields."

"And not be detected by onboard sensors?"

"Don't know about that. We could replicate uniforms, though... to blend in."

"I sincerely doubt that I would be so capable," Octavia noted.

"That's true," Tw'eak noted sadly. "You can stay out here with the shuttle." She turned to Aewon. "You'll come along, though."

"I... can't help but think I'd be pretty obvious, too."

"Not the way I have planned. If I can pose as a security officer and say that I captured you trying to board the ship, they can go through the process of interrogating you and trying to figure out your time-travel mysteries. Octavia can beam you back at any time."

"I can conceal a commbadge in your outfit that is constantly in transmission. We can work out a phrase or term that allows me to know you need emergency beam-out."

"A safe word?" Aewon smiled. "But what's my role?"

"Let's see... this shuttlecraft has Academy markings, does it not?"

"It does."

"So you're here for historical research. You don't want to say anything - and don't you dare say anything - but you're a civilian researcher and you can't believe they found you." Tw'eak whirled a hand around. "Tell them you were assured the shuttle would be invisible, maybe tell them that any attempts to board it by someone other than you will result in it self-destructing."

"There's a corbomite device on board," Aurora added helpfully.

"Corbomite," Tw'eak confirmed. "Just try to impress upon them their importance and your interest in them."

"But... Captain, I'm in a bit of a difficult position here."

"Admiral," Octavia corrected.

"I... As a Deltan, I can be far more... persuasive than might otherwise be admissible. I took an oath as a Starfleet officer to ...be very careful with other humanoids."

"I appreciate that, but in this case, if you can see some way to use that ability of yours to turn a situation in our favour, it could make the difference."

Aewon looked distinctly uncomfortable. "It's not something I would want to commit to unless I was certain it was unavoidable."

"Of course. I'm not ordering you to do that, just... saying it might be an option." She turned to Octavia. "Any way we can replicate him some hair?"

Octavia was clearly not expecting the request. "Hair."

"Hair. If we can conceal that he's a Deltan, it might make a difference."

"I will see what can be accomplished. Without a surgeon, however, such an effort will be quite obvious."

"Obvious to us, yes. Obvious to them, not knowing he's a Deltan? I'm not so sure." Tw'eak looked back towards the small replicator unit in the shuttle. "This thing is capable of making historical uniforms?"

"I'm working on that now," Aurora noted.

"Good." She turned to Aurora. "Let's see if we can't get you into shield control - see if you can boost the power to the shields. Tholians tend to use tetryon beams, thermionic torpedoes, really advanced stuff compared to what a crew of this era would expect. Let's see if we can't give them a fighting chance."

"What about weapons?"

"Short of taking out the beam bank units we're not going to be able to do much to help - just make sure, once the fighting starts, that you're someplace where you can boost the EPS flow as much as possible, get me emergency weapons power as it's needed."

"Got it."

"I will do my best to keep the shuttle safe," Octavia said after a beat. "I doubt it will survive a sustained attack by the Tholians, so to prevent its capture I will initiate the self-destruct sequence if necessary."

"Absolutely. With any luck it won't come to that."

Octavia took a brief look at the transporter unit on Aurora's arm, then pulled it towards her. "Admiral... these are subspace transporter units. They are far more powerful than those typically equipped aboard shuttles."

"How can you tell?"

Octavia tapped her eyepiece. "I can distinguish the subspace modulator's resonance from that of a typical pattern buffer." She looked at Aurora's arm again, then considered. "These will be visible, and quite obvious, to the crew of the Bonaventure once you beam over."

"We'll have to conceal them under the uniform sleeves." Tw'eak considered. "Or beneath the belt. Or something. I don't know. Let's just get the uniforms replicated."

"Already have yours ready to go, ma'am," Aurora noted. "Red for tactical - lieutenant's rank okay?"

Tw'eak sighed. "It's been a while, but yeah. No sense pretending to be an ensign at my age."

"Replicating now. Boots will go after you take the fabric portion out."

"And a phaser-two. I'll have to look convincing."

"It's up after the boots," Aurora said with a smile.

"Admiral," Octavia interrupted. "With the subspace transporter units active, I could conceal myself in the Carraya system and still manage to co-ordinate all aspects of the mission."

"You might as well. I'd just as soon not have to account to Temporal Investigations for every last piece of this thing."

"Agreed."

"All right." Tw'eak took a step towards the replicator and removed the uniform. "Aurora, there's something wrong."

The replicator hummed, producing a pair of long black boots, as Aurora turned to look at her admiral. "Ma'am?"

"There's no pants."

"I know."

Tw'eak flustered slightly, her antennae bending inwards. "You expect me to beam over there without any pants?"

"Yep!" Aurora giggled. "It's regulation."

"I believe what the lieutenant commander is inferring is that you are currently holding a uniform skirt," Octavia gently noted.

Aewon laughed. "Skirts nowadays are a bit more... sensible."

"I'm going to feel like I'm at a Betazoid wedding in this," Tw'eak quipped. "All right, people. Eyes front." She reached back to unfasten her uniform tunic and change into the relatively sparse fabric of the all-red early Starfleet skirt outfit, well aware of the irony in the fact that her Section 31 handlers had seen fit to throw her head-first into a temporal incident wearing nothing but a slightly larger-than-regulation red shirt. At least the boots are comfortable, she thought.