DISCLAIMER: I do not own Star Trek: Enterprise or any of its characters. I make no money off this story, only a tremendous sense of self worth.

AUTHORESS' NOTE: This chapter starts out during the events of E2, however is mostly set during the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Again, this story is branching into AU territory, but I am attempting to keep as much of canon as stable as possible. I know a lot of fans aren't too big on that, but for me, the stability of canon is a big deal. However, some mistakes are too great to ignore.

Living Beyond

Part 23

By Arianwen P.F. Everett

Lorian Tucker moved through E deck with a lifetime of certainty. The ship had changed a lot since his boyhood, but its basic layout had remained constant. He could navigate every room completely blind and deaf. He had thirty years ago, but luckily his senses had been returned to him once the virus that had left him in that condition had been neutralized and corrective surgery performed. Suddenly, as he rounded sub junction B, Lorian stopped mid-stride, his eyes widening. He didn't know where he was, but he knew he wasn't on Enterprise and lying on the deck, six meters ahead of him were two still bodies, one human, the other of a species Lorian had read a lot about in his childhood but had never actually met any member of, an Andorian. Quickly, he pulled himself out of shock and methodically checked for signs of life from either, realizing in seconds that both were dead. He hadn't expected either to be living; the Andorian throat was cut, and his body, near completely exsanguinated, while the human's head was at a very odd angle that suggested a broken neck. "What is going on? Where am I?"

"You're on a Federation Science Station in the year 2285. Everyone aboard is being massacred by a group of genetically enhanced humans who survived the Eugenics wars and escaped Earth," Daniels explained gravely as he approached the outwardly calm man who knelt by the bodies.

"Then why don't you stop them?" Lorian asked, his emotions coming to the surface. Daniels was doing nothing in the middle of a bloodbath.

"This event has to happen. It's part of history," Daniels explained sadly. He wished he could stop the madman Khan, but he knew he had to let this event complete itself.

"Then what's the point of bringing me here?" Lorian asked, struggling for his Vulcan control. Allowing a laugh or even a P.O.'d glare manifest was one thing, but the ancient Vulcan call to battle was pounding in his head, and he had to control it, lest he loose himself to the chaos and join in this hellish disaster.

"Follow me," Daniels instructed, leading Lorian into a large cargo hold. Bodies were strung up, obvious signs of torture on all the bodies surrounding him.

"I ask you again, Daniels, WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE?!" Lorian howled, the gruesome sight one of the worst he'd seen in his 113 years of life. Suddenly, his eyes were caught by a puddle of green blood, and something instinctive began drawing him to it.

"For that," Daniels replied, his own unease written all over his face. His stomach was churning and he felt like throwing up, but he had to stay here, to do this. He had to ensure the future and he and his superiors had all come to the conclusion that this was the only means to get this man to listen, but knowing that, and watching the man inch his way to the equipment closet the pool of Vulcanoid blood was dribbling out of were too different things.

Opening the door, Lorian caught a body that immediately fell into his arms, a body, suffering exsanguination and a huge, gaping wound in the chest. Several other, non-lethal holes adorned the limbs, as if the individual had been tortured with a plasma drill, only being killed outright when their interrogator was finished with them. He fought looking at the face for as long as he could, but he knew he had to, had to acknowledge the lifeless body in his arms as a person, a person whose life was over.

Lorian couldn't breathe. He didn't want to breathe any more. He wanted to die here, didn't want to go on living with this knowledge. His baby daughter lay dead in his arms. He hadn't expected someone he knew; finding his own child was completely ungluing him. He couldn't talk; he couldn't think; he could only rock and shake, his eyes glued to Jomala's lifeless ones. She looked even more like his wife now, at the age of 148, but the slightly lighter variant of brown that were his mother's eyes, her pointed ears, and the infamous Tucker nose gave her away. His baby was dead, brutally murdered, and all he could do was rock and shake, and not breathe.

A gentle hand rubbed his back, and his lungs expelled their contents, picking up their long held rhythm on instinct. A far away voice penetrated his shock "Lorian, this can be changed! This doesn't have to be!"

After a moment, Lorian looked up at Daniels, venom in his eyes. Right now, he couldn't understand how Jonathan Archer had come to trust this man. Still he had to fight his revulsion if he was to discover how to save his daughter. He wouldn't take this man at his word, but he would listen to whatever he had to say. Somehow he would save his child's future. Nobody deserved to die like it appeared his daughter would. "How?"

"In the original timeline, Jomala never came to this station. In fact, she wrote several letters of protest to the Federation Council to try to sink the project before it reached stage three. She saw the danger it posed in the wrong hands, when everyone else saw only benefit and an end to hunger and overcrowding throughout the galaxy. Look, in this time period, there is a test every Star Fleet officer must take before graduating; it's called the Kobayashi Maru, and it determines a potential officer's ability to deal with a no win situation. If Jomala finds a way to prevent the natural healing of the timeline in regards to your ship, she will never have faced a no win scenario. From engine design to starship building to circuitry improvements, most of her career is one success upon another. As a result she never learns to loose, and even develops a bit of a god complex. While I can't go into the specifics of the project these people were working on, I can tell you that unless she has learned the consequences of loss, unless she has faced her own vulnerability and limitation, she will not see the folly of this work, and find this place, this project, irresistible. She will be here when this massacre occurs, and she will learn at the point of a plasma drill that she is not a god," Daniels explained, pointing to the wounds on the older version of Jomala's body, trying to prove to the man before him that his daughter had a chance, even if the rest of these people didn't. Still, his mind was on several others, some from this time, some from before it, who would be forced to learn that very same lesson this day, on this very station; the universe had obviously lectured to a full classroom of great and infamous men and women here on Regula I.