"What's going on?" Julie asked.
"That's a good question," Josh replied. Addressing the Guardian, he demanded, "What do you mean, we already have? Explain."
The Guardian said only, "You already have. It is self-evident. Observe." A series of scenes flashed in the portal, too fast for Josh to comprehend.
T'Katha spoke up. "Captain, I believe I may have pertinent information. Look," she said, showing Josh the results of a tricorder scan she had just completed.
Josh examined the results, a puzzled look on his face. "But, according to this, we don't have any ships in Pemra system. Only the Klingons," he pondered. "But, that's impossible. I just left Constitution a few minutes ago." He tapped his comm badge. "Travis to Constitution. Come in please."
Silence. "Travis to any Starfleet vessel. Please respond."
Still nothing. Alarmed, Kramer asked, "What are you saying? That our ships have just disappeared?"
Stunned, Josh answered, "It would appear that way," he replied.
"But…how? Surely they couldn't have all been destroyed?" the doctor asked, echoing Josh's earlier question.
Josh shook his head. "No, I don't think that's what happened. If they were destroyed there would be signs, traces left over. These readings show nothing,
"Indeed, you are correct, Joshua," T'Katha said. "According to my readings, there are no Federation ships, nor any Federation presence anywhere in the Pemra system, including the colony or my research team. It would appear that reality has been changed somehow, and clearly the Guardian is somehow connected to this change."
"You mean we're alone? Stuck on this rock?" Kramer asked. The Vulcan woman nodded; Josh said nothing. "Then what the hell do we do now?" the young doctor demanded.
"Patience, Doctor," T'Katha replied. "As the Guardian was the mechanism responsible for the changes in the reality around us, it may also be able to provide us with the information we need to determine what has happened here. Recall, it is capable of showing us events that have occurred in the past, both ancient and recent. If we observe carefully, we can glean much useful data from the Guardian's display."
Kramer shook her head. "I don't see how. At the rate the scenes are changing inside the Guardian it's not much more than a pretty picture show. Maybe Vulcans can speed-watch but I know I certainly cannot."
"Then we'll have to be creative, doctor," Josh answered. Addressing T'Katha he asked, "The tricorder?"
"Precisely," the Vulcan woman replied. Holding her tricorder up to scan the Guardian, she asked it, "Guardian. Can you repeat the scenes you have recently shown us. Specifically, your reference that we have 'already have' gone back in time."
"Of course," the Guardian boomed, and the scenes once again flashed in the portal. Using the tricorder, T'Katha recorded these scenes as they appeared, in the same order and speed as before.
While this was going on, Josh asked, "Guardian, I am curious about something. Are you aware of the Guardian that Captain Kirk and his crew discovered a century ago on the Time Planet?"
"Yes," the Guardian replied.
"If I remember my briefing on this subject correctly," Josh continued, "the Enterprise discovered your, er, colleague because it was sending out waves of temporal distortion – 'ripples' in time - detectable by that ship's sensors. Yet, in all the time our colony has been here, there has never been a single report of temporal distortions of any kind on this planet. Can you explain the difference?"
"We are awakening," the Guardian replied. "For too long we have been dormant. I merely took slightly longer to awaken than the other. My brethren may still yet be asleep, undetected by your primitive science. Or they may exist in places your people have never seen," it replied. "Now that I am awake, you would be able to detect the distortions you speak of. They have protected you from the changes in time. That is why you remain when all that you know is no longer present. You are outside the flow of the changes in the stream."
"Hold on a second," Josh replied. "Did you say that there are others like you, out there, that have been dormant but are now awakening?" Josh asked. This whole thing was getting more and more out of control by the second.
"Yes," the Guardian replied.
"How many? And why are they all awakening now? Is there some special reason?" Josh asked.
"Many others. We awaken now because it is our time," the Guardian replied, characteristically enigmatic.
"Elaborate," Josh demanded.
"I cannot. I have told you all that there is to know," the alien portal answered.
Annoyed, Josh was going to ask another question but T'Katha interrupted. "Joshua," she called out. "Please observe this," she said, pointing to her tricorder. Both Josh and Julie Kramer crowded around T'Katha's tricorder, watching the display screen intently.
The tricorder had recorded the images that had been flashing through the Guardian's portal. Josh recognized bits and pieces of the history being shown; decades and centuries were rushing by with every passing moment. Now, T'Katha adjusted the playback on the tricorder, slowing down the rushing images to a more manageable speed, allowing the trio to observe each scene at a rate that their minds could absorb and comprehend.
"That's us!" Kramer exclaimed as a new scene came up on the tricorder.
Sure enough, the scene presented was like looking in a mirror. On the tricorder's little screen, they could see the very same cavern they were currently standing in. The ruins were the same, and the Guardian appeared exactly as it was before them.
And there they were, the three of them, looking into a tricorder just the same as they were now. On the screen, they seemed to be intently studying one particular image. Then, suddenly – so suddenly that Kramer jumped backwards, startled – a trio of Klingons appeared, literally out of nowhere. With their vicious bat'leth swords at the ready, they fell upon the Federation group. Completely taken by surprise, the Starfleet officers were no match for the Klingons in hand-to-hand combat. Within seconds, it was over, and the Joshua Travis, Julie Kramer and T'Katha on the tricorder's viewer lay dead on the ground in front of the Guardian, a massive pool of their blood slowly oozing from their lifeless bodies.
"Gee, that doesn't seem so good," Kramer remarked laconically.
"This is hardly the time for inappropriate humor, Doctor," T'Katha chided.
"Shut up, both of you," Josh snapped. Genuinely afraid, he glanced around, checking to see if the Klingons were in the chamber at this very moment. They did not appear to be, however.
"Look, Joshua," T'Katha urged. Turing his attention back to the tricorder, Josh peered at the scene now being played out in its screen.
He could see the three Klingons laughing over their lifeless bodies – gloating, probably. One of them turned around, giving the observers a good look at his face.
Julie gasped. "That's General Kalor!" she exclaimed.
"So it is," Josh mused.
"But how could the Klingons know about the Guardian? I mean, it's supposed to be top secret, and T'Katha hasn't even filed a report of its discovery to Starfleet yet," Julie wondered.
"Maybe the Klingons just got lucky," Josh replied. "Their intelligence-gathering capability isn't that great. But, somehow, some way, they obviously gained knowledge of the Guardian. That would explain why General Kalor was – is? – so interested in
"I believe I can answer that, Joshua," T'Katha replied. She held up the tricorder again. "Do you recognize this scene?" she asked.
Josh examined it for a moment. Though the images were almost a century old, he recognized them instantly. "Of course," he replied. "That's the Khitomer Conference, where the original peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire was signed."
"Yes," T'Katha verified. "As you are no doubt aware, my father Spock, along with Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, played a key role in ensuring the conference's success," she explained.
Josh nodded; he knew the story by heart, but Kramer seemed to have a vexed look on her face.
Incredulous, he asked the young doctor, "Don't tell me you don't know what happened at the Khitomer Conference!"
"Well, sure," Julie replied. "Like you said, the Federation and the Klingon Empire signed a peace treaty. And Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew was there, too, and did…um, well, something," she finished lamely.
Josh could only gape in astonishment. He thought everyone in the Federation knew this story!
Julie looked sheepish as she explained, "I may have slept through parts of my history classes."
T'Katha regarded the young doctor for a moment with a puzzled glance, then responded, "Very well. To summarize, a conspiracy had developed between Starfleet and Klingon officers opposed to the peace treaty. The conspirators planned to sabotage the peace negotiations by assassinating both the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon and then the Federation President. It was the hope of the conspirators that these killings would be blamed on the other side, thus re-igniting the war between the two sides and destroying any chance of peace. My father and his crewmates were instrumental in exposing this conspiracy. Though they did not do so in time to save Chancellor Gorkon, they did prevent the death of the Federation President and revealed the conspiracy's intent to all at the conference. Because of this, the peace negotiations were not sabotaged and were eventually successful. The rest, I believe, you know."
"Or so we hope," Josh added. "Remind me to get you into a remedial history class if we ever get back to the Constitution."
Embarrassed, Julie asked, "Well, what does this have to do with General Kalor and this time portal?"
T'Katha nodded. "I have been studying further images. It would appear that General Kalor and his comrades went through the portal, back in time to the Khitomer Conference. Specifically, to the critical moment when the Enterprise crew prevented the assassination of the Federation President. The general and his henchmen appear to have altered history in such a way as to allow the assassinations to occur."
"When this happened, the conference was quickly abandoned. Both sides accused each other of treachery and the 'hard-line' elements of each government won the day. This lead to a cataclysmic war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire."
"And the Klingons won." Josh assumed.
"No, it would appear not," T'Katha answered. "The ultimate victors appear to have been the Romulans."
"The Romulans!"
"Yes. It would seem that the Romulans allowed both sides to batter each other to exhaustion, then, when neither side was capable of fighting any longer, they invaded and conquered both the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The Klingons they exterminated, along with humanity. The rest of the Federation races exist in various states of servitude."
There was silence for a moment. The magnitude of what was happening overwhelmed them all.
Earth – gone.
Humanity – gone.
The Klingons – gone.
The Federation – gone.
The bewildered Julie Kramer spoke up first. "So whatever General Kalor was trying to accomplish backfired on him."
"So it would seem. I cannot say that Romulan involvement is a complete surprise, however," T'Katha stated.
"Why?" Josh asked.
"The Romulans were deeply implicated in the conspiracy to destroy the Federation/Klingon peace process. Behind the scenes, they were manipulating the conspirators on both sides – Klingon and Human."
"This may also answer the question of how General Kalor learned of the Guardian. Klingon intelligence gathering is not particularly sophisticated. However, the Romulans are master spies. Perhaps when they learned of the Guardian they saw a chance to use General Kalor to undo the original results of the Khitomer Conference. They could have contrived to arrange a situation whereby the general could come to know of the Guardian's existence along with the suggestion that he use it to change history so that the Federation/Klingon peace accords never occurred."
"But why not just come here and do it themselves?" Julie asked.
"Because, Doctor, the Romulans would find it hard to sneak into a war zone with Cardassian, Federation and Klingon ships all flying around. Plus, if something went wrong, they wouldn't want their hands dirty. If General Kalor got caught, it would just be more bad blood between us and the Klingons. Which would be fine with the Romulans," Josh replied.
"This still leaves many unanswered questions," T'Katha replied. "If we saw ourselves in the tricorder, we must assume those events occurred in the past. The Guardian also implied as much when it said that we have already gone into the past. Yet I do not have any recollection of going through the portal."
"I was just thinking the same thing," Julie replied. "It doesn't seem to make any sense. Any we haven't seen any sign of the Klingons. Not that I'm ungrateful about not being hacked up yet," she added quickly.
"I know," Josh said. "There's still a lot of unanswered questions, but right now I don't particularly care about any of them. We have to focus on undoing the damage Kalor's done."
"How?" Julie asked.
"Simple," Josh replied. "We're going to go through the portal, back into the past. And we're going to make sure General Kalor and his cronies don't stop the conspiracy from being exposed. We're going to go back to the Khitomer Accords and make sure history happens the way it's supposed to."
"I was afraid you were going to say something like that," Kramer groaned.
In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Josh grinned. "Look at it this way, Doctor, you'll get a chance to catch up first-hand on all that history you slept through!"