A/N: Hi! Good news, my city did not burn down, hopefully it rains tomorrow so everywhere else will stop burning... anyways, have some alien space station. I haven't seen the sun in a week -_- Thankfully the sky has stopped glowing orange. Now everything is just, grey. And covered in ash. Have some more escapism!

Also, extra disclaimer just in case, this section of the story is still from the novel The Wounded Sky.

"We got the drive," Kirk announced, dropping in on her gym lesson the next morning.

Elle startled and tripped on her own feet, tangled up in the jumprope. She hit the mat and rolled. "Ow," she said, blinking up at him.

"I'm so sorry," he said, stifling a smile. He reached down and helped her up. "Where's your gym teacher?"

"Lt. Mioni's got quarterly review," Elle said. "I'm supposed to get to two hundred."

"Where are you at?"

Elle sighed. "I lost count."

He grimaced. "Sorry."

"Meh." Elle untangled her jump rope. "So what's goin' on?"

Kirk sat down on the bench. "Star Fleet doesn't think that a summary of a book is a basis for dropping something that might free us for intergalactic travel."

"They believed me all the other times," Elle protested.

He gave a shrug and a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "That's how it is. People want something bad enough, they'd ignore almost anything."

"So they're not worried about ripping a galaxy in half?" Elle asked.

"They are, that's why we're getting the drive. If something goes wrong, we'll have K't'lk and Spock, and you."

Elle snorted. "I don't think I'm going to be helpful at galaxy repairing."

"Well if it's true that the barriers between space and time and thought will be breaking down, you're the perfect person to have," Kirk replied. "You understand the concept, you've already experienced it."

"Nuh-uh."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you or are you not speaking to someone you thought was a fictional character a year ago?"

Elle grinned. "Oh yeah. Okay, I guess."

He ruffled her hair. "And if nothing else, you keep up the crew morale tremendously. I saw your vacuum bot, by the way."

Elle blushed. "How?"

"Yeoman Rand thought it might cheer me up, she sent it in to clean while I was doing reports," Kirk said dryly. "Scared the tarnation out of me, coming at me with a knife."

Elle giggled. "Sorry."

He shook his head, grinning. "Good reflex training, I'll tell you that." He stood up. "I'll let you finish your gym class. We'll be arriving at Starbase 18 in a couple of hours and I want you to come on the station with us, I think you'll enjoy the experience."

"Awesome!"

-/\-

"It's like that commercial," Elle decided, staring at the starbase as the tumbling cigar-shaped base grew larger in their viewscreen.

"What commercial?" Sulu asked, idly turning the Enterprise in a victory roll.

"The weebles," Elle said.

Chekov turned in his seat to stare at her. "Veebils?" he asked. "The worm-things?"

"No, the toys. You know. 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down'. Those things."

"I think that's a relic of the past we've lost," Uhura said, amused. "Sounds entertaining, though."

"It's a weeble," Elle said firmly.

Spock kindly did not roll his eyes.

They got closer and Elle began to pick out details from the glittering gold and silver space station. "Never mind," she said, edging closer to Spock. "It's an alien egg."

"How do you know what an alien egg looks like?" Chekov challenged.

"I don't, but it's giving me the creepie-crawlies," Elle replied.

Spock's eyebrows went up. "The creepie-crawlies?" he repeated, incredulous.

Elle pointed out the miles long strands of carbon steel, the praying-mantis-like protrusions. "It looks like it's gonna skitter away any second," she said. "Creepy. Crawly." She grinned.

"Considering the base was built by the Hamalki, who do 'skitter', that is an apt description," Spock said dryly.

Elle grinned. "I'm so excited."

-/\-

The interior of the base was crawling (ha!) with dozens of different species. This close to the Federation center, the starbase was a hub of officers, cadets, professionals, and tourists coming and going. Elle gave up trying to look professional and clung to Kirk's sleeve, lest she be swept away in the flood of tourists. Eventually they landed in the Commodore's office.

"Commodore Katha'sat," Kirk said, greeting the hestv in its own way.

"Captain Kirk," she said. "Your officers, and your hatchling?"

Kirk stifled a grin. "This is Commander Spock, my First, Commander Scott, my CE, and Elle Wilcott, our civilian mission consultant."

"A pleasure to meet you," the commodore said.

They sat and were offered drinks, Elle got juice, and it wasn't two minutes before a chiming crystallline spider hurried into the room. "Are they here? High time."

Elle stared in fascination at the Hamalki. K't'lk was literally a glass spider. Okay, transparent chitin, but, still. Glass. Spider. If she wasn't so in awe of the twelve legs, and the cluster of bright blue eyes, and the sheer vibrance coming off the engineer, Elle would be terrified.

"-And this is our civilian mission consultant, Elle Wilcott," Kirk said, finishing the introductions.

"El W'l'c'tt," K't'lk said, bobbing her head. "You are the one who posited the disintegration of spacetime?"

"Yes ma'am," Elle said, blushing.

"What made you think this will happen?"

Elle glanced at the captain for permission.

He shook his head. Right. Unsecured location.

Elle turned back to face the Hamalki. "I can't really explain it here," she said.

"Hmph. While onboard we must discus this," K't'lk said. "if there are going to be problems, best to be prepared! You must come with us while we install the drive. If that's all right, c'ptain?"

Kirk waved a hand. "Go ahead."

-/\-

"I am what people call a creative physicist," K't'lk said, after Elle's lengthy explanation of her own universe-crossing origins, "and even that is almost unbelievable."

"It is true, however," Spock said serenely.

"I believe that," K't'lk said. "Now the question remains, since the parameters have been invoked, will it occur?"

"Like reading your own gravestone?" Elle asked, thinking of the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who.

"Precisely," K't'lk said. "You say these things have already happened once, then they will happen."

"But in a book," Scotty pointed out.

"And the elective inversion drive is only flimsiplast," K't'lk said. "Time and space and thought are more intricately connected than anyone can comprehend."

Elle gave a crooked smile. "Maybe I should just think really really hard that nothing will happen."

K't'lk jangled a laugh, like ringing a windchime. "I wish it were that easy." Her blue-fire eyes burned brighter. "We have the drive, it is our job to test it and accept the consequencces."

Elle nodded. "I get that."

-/\-

Elle took another bite of pudding. Replicator-pudding was better than real pudding, for some reason. She flipped the page in her book-

A feeling of all-encompassing awe, the universe spreading out in front of her, all energy and fire, brimming with life, burning gold.

-and her eyes froze on the next sentence. She shivered, a whole-body shudder that made her neck twinge painfully. Somehow, suddenly, her whole body felt too small, too contained. She stared down at her hands and the innocuous bowl of pudding until the feeling subsided.

"That was weird," she said aloud. Suspicion tickled the back of her neck and she hit the comm. "Elle to Engineering."

"Scott here."

"Scotty, did you test the drive?"

"Aye, lass, we just flipped it for a second. Did you feel something?"

Elle scratched at the back of her neck. "I don't know, but, I feel like I missed it, whatever it was."

"So did we," Kirk said, over the comm. "Apparently it's normal to miss it."

"Right," Elle said slowly. "No time, no time to miss it."

"Something like that."

Elle shuddered again. "Anyways. Elle out." She went back to her pudding and her novel.