Chapter 17: Forgotten Past
"Captain's Log Stardate 86719.12: After notifying the Benzite government as to the whereabouts of the missing freighter discovered on Carnan II, we have returned to the Sol System. The trip was mostly uneventful, i say mostly as on the way back to Sol we encountered a temporal anomaly. It was short lived as it appeared on sensors for only a few minutes. Sensors detected a Federation Vessel appeared momentarily before it vanished completely along with the Anomaly. As the Yeager pulls into the San Francisco shipyards I await the arrival of DTI agents to be debriefed."
The Yeager was a small ship, one of the smallest in the fleet. A Sabre class starship rounding off at about a little over 160 meters, it was agile and sharp. The Yeager had enough armaments to challenge one of the larger cruisers that made the backbone of the Starfleet, it was a tough ship as Andre liked to believe. Being a pure warship design, the hull had little to no windows. The Captain's ready room was lucky to be provided with a window to look out, Andre stared out the window as the shipyards in orbit of Sol came into view. One of the large drydock facilities encased the ship as it slowly came to a halt, it was good to be back home. Turning back to his desk Andre activated the computer terminal and began sorting through the information which was coming through. All of it was mostly routine, refit orders from the yard staff, shore leave requests and latest intelligence briefings. One specific file labeled "Captain's Eyes" caught his attention, it was from the Department of Temporal Investigations. Two agents named Lucsly and Dulmur would be coming aboard to discuss the report filed on the anomaly encountered. The door chime sounded causing Andre to jump in his seat from his reading.
"Enter" he said looking at the door as it opened, his first officer walked in with a data padd in her hand. The blue skinned Andorian female who was named Tarsi smiled as she approached the desk, her antennae slowly moving with each step.
"Here you go Captain" she said as she handed him the padd "These are the results of the last combat drill done before arrival."
Andre grabbed the padd and scrolled through the report "seventy two percent efficiency from the engineering team?" he looked up at his first officer, appalled at the report.
"I observed the test myself; we were two minutes behind the standard in ejecting the warp core if we lost antimatter containment."
"Have Zarva and her crew redo the drill, we need to get those numbers up. Command needs all its crews at peak performance" he said placing the padd down on his desk.
Tarsi nodded in approval "I'll let her know no shore leave until they get it right"
A smile formed across Andre's face and he chuckled slightly "Temper, Temper Number one" he stood from his desk and walked over to the replicator "Not too long ago the bridge crew was in a similar place"
"Don't remind me" Tarsi replied sheepishly thinking back to the maiden voyage of the ship and how the response of the bridge officers to simulations led to the ship being destroyed. Not only did they fail it on the first try, they failed on the subsequent two times before passing the metrics.
"Do you want anything?" Andre asked, turning to face Tarsi, she waived her hand declining the offer. "Coffee Black"
"You drink too much of that stuff" she said as Andre grabbed the mug that materialized and took a sip.
"It helped Janeway defeat the Borg, I can see how it helps." He took another sip before raising the mug "If you ask me i don't drink enough" he walked back over to his desk to sit down, he motioned to Tarsi to sit.
Tarsi leaned forward and grabbed a mint out of a bowl on Andre's desk "I hear DTI is on their way to speak with you"
"Yea i just saw the notice" he replied placing the mug down leaning back in his chair.
"Any idea what about?" Tarsi asked as her cheeks grew and shrunk periodically as the mint floated in her mouth.
"I'm guessing the Anomaly we encountered must have been something serious," He said sitting back straight in his chair and pulling up the message on his computer.
"But we only saw it for less than a minute before it vanished." she replied in disbelief, and she was right. From when the anomaly first appeared and they reached the bridge to when it vanished took less than a couple of minutes, of which only one was Andre and his senior officers viewing it on the bridge.
"True, I wish i had more but the message doesn't have anything else." He closed out the file and looked at Tarsi "Must be something serious" Before Tarsi could give a reply to him, the door chimed. Before Andre could acknowledge the inquiry the doors opened and two men in black uniforms walked in. Tarsi quickly stood and made her way to the door, even she knew when to leave without asking if it was okay to leave.
"I'm guessing both of you are with Temporal Investigations" Andre asked as he stood up and extended his hand to the agents.
The blonde haired caucasian man shook his hand introducing himself "Agent Dulmur" he turned to introduce his partner "This is Agent Lucsly", the second agent who was a bit older shook his hand in turn. The trio of men took their seats, Dulmur began the conversation "So Captain, we received a report that you encountered what may have been a temporal anomaly on your return to Sol"
Andre nodded confirming the statement "That is correct, we were returning from Carnan"
"Can you describe the encounter with it? Were you present on the bridge?" Lucsly asked, looking up from his padd where he was taking notes and reading the report.
"I was in my quarters" Andre replied, "Ensign Flores had the conn when we dropped out of warp rather violently. I was called to the bridge and upon arrival that is when I saw it on the screen."
Dulmur pulled a padd from his briefcase and placed it on the desk so that Andre could see it "Is this what you encountered?" The image on the padd showed what could best be described as a tear in space, it was a bright white opening, the edges had a bluish hue and small vein like entrails stretched around it.
"Yes" Andre said in surprise as he grabbed the padd and looked at it "This was it, we tried running scans but our sensors could not give us a reading. The only thing we could tell was the chroniton levels. Which were off the charts" he handed the padd back to Dulmur who grabbed it and continued looking through it.
"So it's the same anomaly" Lucsly said jotting the information down "Did you observe anything else?"
Andre leaned back in his chair and thought back to that night "Yes we did, but for a brief moment. Seconds at most."
"Was it a ship?" Dulmur asked, looking up from his padd and staring at Andre intently, his body had tensed and to anyone observing it seemed like the answer would mean life or death.
Andre looked at Dulmur "Yes"
"Was it Federation?" Lucsly asked cutting off his line of thought
"Yes, it had Federation design" he said, Andre began thinking to himself that something bigger was at work here. The fact that they had some of the answers to their own questions and were just confirming was worrying. What bothered him the most was that it was an encounter, as far as he knew nothing had happened or changed.
Dulmur handed the padd back to Andre "Was it that ship?"
Grabbing the padd Andre enlarged the image and rotated it. This was it, this was the ship which he saw that night along with his crew. It was a large ship, bigger than the Yeager; the saucer section was blended with it's secondary hull. Two nacelles swept back behind the ship above the hull attached by pylons which held what looked like a weapons mount. As he observed the design Andre couldn't help but feel like it was familiar, he knew it from somewhere.
"This was the ship, but we only saw the front profile." he kept studying the image as Dulmur and Lucsly shared a concerned look. "I've seen this design before at the academy."
"It's a 24th Century design, it's based on the Sheppard Class from the mid 2200s" Dulmur said, lucsly was about to follow up but was cut off by Andre.
"But this isn't a Sheppard" Andre felt a wave of what could best be described as space sickness come over him "It's a Gagarin Class Cruiser"
"How do you know that?" Lucsly asked, placing down his padd and looking at Andre, who looked back at him and could offer nothing more than a shrug of his shoulders.
"That design doesn't exist." Dulmur said "Well to be more specific, it does not exist in our plane of time."
Lucsly reached into his briefcase and pulled out a holographic projector and placed it on the desk. "Captain what do you remember from Starfleet History regarding the USS Gagarin from 2256?"
"Not much, it was a Starfleet ship in service during the 2250s" Andre replied "But considering the fact that i can remember the design of a ship that does not exist, and it is based off of an old vessel, it must be significant"
Lucsly tapped the holographic projector, the image of the USS Gagarin immediately materialized in the air between the officers. The ship seemed to be under attack by klingon ships as disruptor blasts landed on the ships hull.
"What we are seeing is a holographic recreation of a skirmish between six kloingon birds of prey and three starfleet vessels" Dulmur said "That is the USS Gagarin, the data shown here was taken from the USS Discovery which responded to the distress call"
Andre observed the projection as a third ship made its way into the field of view, it was exactly like the Gagarin but something was off. It's hull was painted white with black trimming and it's nacelles glowed orange and blue. "That's the ship from the Anomaly" he said in surprise, leaning in to get a better view.
"Good eye" Lucsly said "Keep watching", as the battle unfolded two klingon ships were trailing the Gagarin and could not shake them. The fired torpedoes which Andre assumed would destroy the ship, but just as they were going to hit, the mystery ship crossed in between and took all three hits across the hull.
Dulmur tapped the projector rewinding it to when the ship crossed behind the Gagarin "One of those hits was supposed to hit the USS Gagarin, but the intervention of that ship prevented its destruction."
"You see Captain, as Agents from Temporal Investigations." Lucsly explained "We have a complete record of the correct and most reconciled history of the Federation since it's formation. It is shielded against temporal differences with a chroniton particle shield."
Dulmur picked up the thought "Every so often we pull the that record and the duplicate which is set aside unshielded and run it through a computer system looking for divergences no matter how small. We then try to follow the trail of divergences to see what is causing them"
"And this ship and anomaly appeared in both?" Andre asked, trying to follow the agents.
"The Anomaly appears in both the shielded records and the unshielded" Dulmur said "But in the shielded records of the battle that we just witnessed, the Discovery is the only ship to respond. The Gagarin is destroyed and is honored by two ships being named after her and one of them the first of a class named in her honor."
Lucsly handed a padd to Andre "So we pulled the information from the permanent record to see what ship encountered that anomaly"
Andre grabbed it and looked over the information "How is this possible?"
"That is what we have been trying to figure out" Lucsly replied "The ship and crew that you have in your hand, encountered the anomaly. Participated in that battle, and changed the outcome."
"How come i don't remember this?" Andre said, trying to stay calm "Why didn't we notice a change?"
"You did" Dulmur said "When the ship came out of the anomaly and vanished it was the timeline reconciling itself, merging as one. The problem is that it caused a butterfly effect throughout the timeline"
"Are you telling me that me and my crew changed everything?"
Lucsly grabbed the projector, turning it off and placing it into his briefcase "Yes and no, the mechanics are confusing even for us. We have never encountered this sort of anomaly and a change of this magnitude."
"But the effects are big, at first it was small diversions here and there." Dulmur said, he stopped for a moment. "But I remember things that Lucsly does not remember and Vice versa. Which is why you remember the name of that ship without ever seeing it or stepping a foot on it."
Andre handed the padd back to Dulmur who placed it in his briefcase. "How bad are the changes if you don't mind me asking."
Dulmur and Lucsly looked at each other for a moment, Dulmur nodded and Lucsly turned his gaze to Andre. "Tell me what you know of President Bacco, the Attack on Mars and The Borg"
Andre seemed confused by the inquiry but responded to him "Well Bacco was Assassinated back when i was younger in 2385, My mother was present on Deep Space 9 when it happened." He stopped thinking through his history "The Typhon pact attacked Utopia Planitia in 2382 trying to steal our slipstream technology, and the Borg don't exist anymore. They vanished back after their attack in 2381."
"That's what you remember, and i remember partially" Dulmur said standing from his seat "But President Bacco lived past 2385 and served two full terms as President, Mars was attacked by synthetic beings leading to a ban on Synthetic life forms and the Borg are very much supposed to be around"
The information given almost knocked Andre out of his chair as he tried to process in his mind everything he had been told and the information that was on the padd he had been given. Regaining his composure he looked back at the two agents "How do we fix it?"
"We'll come back to you on that" Lucsly replied as the two agents made their way to the door "You'll be getting a reassignment from Starfleet. Detached Service for DTI. You'll get the message soon"
With that the two agents walked out of the Captain's Ready room leaving him in shock. Andre meditated on the information trying to make sense of it and what had happened. He thought back to his first day as Captain on spacedock when he ran into Admiral Janeway and how she told him to avoid time travel. I really wish I had listened to her, he said to himself, but if the repercussions were really that significant; he could not deny the fact that it needed to be corrected.