A World For Dreams

Foreword

Disclaimer: Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no money made.

Summary: Follow-up to 'Big Bad Wolf'. All is calm in the Mirror Universe, until Reed pays a visit to the Jupiter Yards, where he encounters some old friends. Revised and expanded from the M version with eight new chapters. Part one of the Dreams series. Posted in collaboration with LoyaulteMeLie.

Authors' Notes: From the moment I got sucked into the Enterprise fanfic universe, LoyaulteMeLie has been one of my favorite authors. In a few weeks, I had read her entire Jag series and most of her other works, staying up late and going to work like a zombie because I just couldn't turn away. When I finally got around to posting my first few stories, I did quite a lot of fangirl squealing (not attractive behavior in a middle-aged woman, but I couldn't help myself) to find she had left me lovely reviews on every one. One in particular left me grinning for days because it showed we were on the same wavelength, as she discovered when I posted the next chapter.

Back in October, when she gifted me the original version of this story, I was thrilled, delighted, flattered, and did some more fangirl squealing (it was still not attractive). I was privileged to beta it, and that experience plus the thoughtful reviews she had left me emboldened me to approach her when I saw potential for a sequel(ae). I sent her a couple of scenes that had been percolating in my brain since I'd beta'ed this, and she agreed that there was more story to tell. Then she generously offered to collaborate with me on some additional chapters to this story, in order to set up the sequel, which we have been assembling for a while now.

This has been a true collaboration. LML Brit-picked my slim additions to the Malcolm parts, and I Trip-picked her Tucker parts. Sometimes, I would be working on a scene until late in the evening, finally quit owing to the need for sleep, and come back to it the next day to find it finished, not at all in the way I'd imagined, but so beautifully done that I happily abandoned my own plan and followed on from LML's addition instead. Other times, she would complete a section, only to discover a few days later that I had inserted an entire page or more of text that she liked enough to keep. I know she improved my writing, especially when it came to dialog. I'd save a conversation thinking it felt sterile and lifeless and come back the next day to find it vibrant and alive, often with the exact same dialog, but with the addition of actions and descriptive writing that brought it to life. I may be flattering myself to think that I improved LML's writing, but I know I gave her some ideas, and boy, did she run with them!

You will find spelling inconsistencies. Malcolm is British, so his chapters follow British orthography. Trip and the other characters are written with American accents, because that is what they seem to have, and their parts follow American orthography. You will find inconsistencies in Trip's accent, and they might not be quite what you'd expect. For example, his diction actually becomes more precise and his accent less pronounced when he is angry or under stress. A comment from LML about dropping the –g from words that ended with –ing led me to hours of research on both the variations of the authentic Southern accent and the accent used by Connor Trinneer as Trip Tucker. I watched several Trip-heavy episodes, including "Unexpected," "Dawn," and "Shuttlepod One," and discovered four 'rules' to his accent, which I have tried to follow in his scenes.

I am proud of the work LoyaulteMeLie and I have done together and grateful that she has allowed me to play with the brilliant story she initially wrote as a gift for me. I hope you enjoy reading this revised and expanded version as much as we have enjoyed writing it together.

~Mandassina

It has been one of the most enjoyable writing experiences of my life to collaborate with Mandassina in this series.

Over the past couple of months it's been a pleasure to see a number of excellent new authors find their way into the Enterprise fandom, and Mandassina was one of the ones whose work really stood out for me. It was a bit of a surprise when she mentioned additional chapters that could be added to A World for Dreams, but I was more than happy to work with her on the revised edition, and it has certainly followed that the new story is infinitely richer than the old, at least in my opinion – and has, moreover, left the door open for the sequel, on which we are currently working.

This was my first collaborative work, and I had no idea what a joy, a fascination and a challenge it would be to work with such a talented writer. Mandassina has been a treasure to work with, and I look forward to continuing the labour of love during 2018.

I hope that readers get as much pleasure from reading this story as we did from writing it.

~LoyaulteMeLie

A World for Dreams

Prologue
Orders
(Commander Charles Tucker III)

"Understood. Tucker out."

I close the comm. link and sit completely still at my desk for a minute. When I look down at my hands they're shaking just a little, and I reach out and pick up a hyperspanner to give them something solid to hold on to.

Here in the Empire, life's always been what you'd call uncertain. Especially at the top, because the higher you go, the more desperate the people below you are to make you fall so they can take your place. You'd think someone would have realized by now that this just puts them square in the position you were when they put a knife in your back, but the sorry game just goes on and on, at least till the pause when someone stronger than most gets into power, and then we all have a little breathing space till the next round.

Right now we're in one of those breathing spaces. It's actually lasted a while, so that people are starting to get comfortable with it (never a good sign). Empress Sato's image is everywhere, and mostly people accept her rule because she's clever enough to keep her ruthlessness undercover except when it's necessary to give a little demonstration of the iron fist in the hand-embroidered Triaxian silk glove. Strength is respected, though, and most think a demonstration of what happens to people who try to disrupt the peace of the Empire is only what the perpetrator deserves.

And in case anyone thought that the Empress might lack support, they've only got to look at the two guys who stand at either side of her at official functions, not to mention the woman who stands a pace or so behind either one of them. They're not called the Triad for nothing, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that they give me the shudders.

Reed:Hayes:Gomez. Though these days you don't hear Hayes much. They refer to him as Alpha instead, a nickname that presumably Hoshi tolerates – though sometimes I wonder if she has any option. For all that the three of them defer to her as the Empress on camera, I'm all too familiar with the sly gleam in the eye of that little English bastard who used to serve aboard Enterprise in the bad old days. He was loyal to that scumbag Archer in his own way then I suppose, though I never understood why, but personally I wouldn't give a plug nickel for the chances of anyone who had to depend on his loyalty now.

Gomez used to be his sidekick on Enterprise, so it's probably no surprise that when he rose, she rose with him. Not sure which of them I'd distrust the most, though as far as I know she never actively tried to do me any harm – which her boss definitely did, and it's no thanks to him that I'm still here to tell the tale.

Nobody seems to know where Alpha came from, not that it's safe to speculate anyway. He's a MACO, so presumably he came up from the ranks somewhere, but there's something about him that makes my skin crawl. He's not bad-looking and he's very polite when he speaks to you, but believe me, you can hear the threat. The day he gave me command of Jupiter Station I came out from the interview and spent the next two hours trying to convince myself I hadn't really been talking to something pretending to be human.

And those eyes – bright blue. Almost metallic, like shiny blue coins, they're all iris, no pupil, but as creepy as they are, I can't say for sure that they're what made him seem so…inhuman. Got to be fake lenses, of course, but ... Jeez.

I swallow, and set down the hyperspanner.

When you've got shuttles with impulse drive, Jupiter Station's really not that far away from Earth. But it's far enough away for the Triad to leave me alone, at least as long as I continue to report that things are rolling along and as long as the ships they send me for repair continue to leave in A1 battle-order. They've got other things to think about, and it's always seemed they weren't going to waste their energies fixing what's not broken.

A few days ago, however, I got the notice that one of them was coming to check the place out for himself.

Reed. Of course, it had to be Reed. At a guess, he volunteered for the job. He won't have forgotten our little history any more than I have, and though now he has more than enough power to order me put against a wall and shot out of hand, he undoubtedly knows that the station runs a heck of a lot better with me in charge than it ever did for anyone else. The war may be going better than it has for years, but it still relies on a fast turnover on its ship repairs, and for just as long as I can provide that and manage not to give him enough provocation to make him forget it, I guess I'm safe enough. It did make me cuss some at the thought of having to bow and scrape to the little asshole, but hell, he'd only be here for a couple days and then he'd slither back to the other two snakes and I'd get his quarters disinfected and forget about him again.

And now this.

I run my hand across my mouth, which is suddenly dry with nerves.

'This' is probably one of the most dangerous things I've ever done in my life. Hell, cancel that: 'this' is the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life.

I glance at the clock on my monitor. Fuck, they don't give me much time to arrange things, do they?

The communicator on my desk chirps. "Sirius and her escort ships are on an approach vector, Boss," says Lieutenant Eloise Chastain, my PA. She sounds almost sympathetic, because it's obvious that the next few days aren't going to be a walk in the park.

Hell, she doesn't know the half of it.