Disclaimer: The Sentinel belongs to Pet Fly Productions, UPN, and Paramount. Star Trek belongs to Paramount. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made from the use of the characters and plot devices in the two shows.
Temporal Anomaly, Chapter One
Earth orbit, stardate 52891.3
Lt. Christopher Ellison was glad to be finally getting out of Internal Security. He had been transferred from that agency to Starship Security, and thankfully he would never have to deal with the spooks again. Of course, he wished that the circumstances of his leaving IS were far different. He had been on a mission to a Cardassian outpost world and hadn't been retrieved until six months later when he was discovered by the Enterprise during a routine scan. He didn't really remember much about that time, but he knew he was only one of a team of six. His had been the only human life signs on the planet. He didn't want to have to deal with the covert ops crap anymore, but he still felt the need to protect people, to do his part, so he'd stayed in Starfleet.
He looked at the ship that was about to become his home through the viewscreen of the shuttle. The U.S.S. Enquiri, an Ambassador Class vessel captained by Benjamin Peters that would soon be looking for Dominion warships. She was a fairly small ship, but she could get the job done and she saw action regularly. That was what Chris wanted. He wanted to have his mind held far away from that little hell hole of a moon he'd been stranded on, wanted to make sure that he would never remember it or the loss of his team. He had never been one to handle his emotions very well, something that his mother had once said was a trait common to Ellison men. He figured if he didn't remember, then he wouldn't have to deal with it.
As he stared at the ship that would be his home, a flash of light drew his gaze to the port side. A small drone had collided with a micro meteor and had exploded. The light drew him in and he began to loose focus, dwelling on the sight until it was all that made up his world.
There was no telling how long he would have stayed like that if another meteor from the same shower hadn't glanced off the hull of the shuttle. The sudden sound and the jolting vibration brought him back to himself in time that the pilot and co-pilot didn't notice. As the pair dealt with the situation, he thanked fate for the coincidence. It would be all he needed to get the reputation for blacking out before he even got onboard.
They flew into the shuttle bay and settled on the cold deck plating. As he set foot on it himself, he thought of how relieved he was to be on an assignment that seemed legitimate to him as the paranoid slinking around of the IS had not. He would be just another amber uniform, another face in the crowd in the mess hall, providing him with a kind of anonymity that he hadn't had in IS. He could hide from the world in plain sight now instead of in the darkness of covert operations. He didn't want to deal with the world, but he was tired of the tactics and the paranoia. This would be much better.
4 years later...
Dr. Emily Sandburg stepped off the transporter pad, finding herself glad to be in one piece. She'd never had to use the infernal contraption before, and with any luck it would be a long time before she had to again. She was mildly transporter phobic, not so much that she hadn't been able to force herself to use it when there was no other alternative, but enough that she could get very inventive about finding ways to avoid it. She was on the Enquiri as a civilian scientist, an anthropologist and xenopologist trying to find corolations between ancient human cultures and those of other humanoid races, specifically trying to find out if other races had Sentinels, individuals whose five senses were heightened far beyond the norm, though it was still a very unpopular theory. She was desperately trying to get the work of her ancestor, Blair Sandburg, validated so that she could base her own papers on his, not only for the sake of the long-dead detective, scientist, and Guide, but for herself and the rest of the galaxy at large. She was very Unitarian in her beliefs, being convinced that all the races should share information and culture and history, not huddle in their own circles, convinced that the universe was out to get them. Sure, there were those out there who gave the isolationists and the war mongers beliefs credence, and she didn't believe in being unprepared, but using preparedness as an excuse to horde valuable information was just wrong to her.
An out-shoot of those beliefs was that the Sentinels of the Galaxy should be aided and shared, allowed to commit their ancient duties without worrying about being hauled off to some lab and studied within an inch of their lives, or kidnapped into the military and forced to harm rather than protect with their gifts, or even worse, to be thought or driven insane and locked up because no one had the information necessary to help them. The Shaman in her hated what Sentinels had to go through because of the ignorance of the people, and she hoped to change that.
Emily had inherited the historical building containing the loft apartment that Blair and his Sentinel, Detective Jim Ellison, had shared. The building had passed to her a year after she received her twin doctorate from Oxford. Going through the building had been a treasure to an anthropologist. The building had been sealed in a plastic spray-on liner that had prevented the dust and weather of centuries from destroying it's contents. That had probably been done just before the Atomic Crisis, the combined meltdowns and nuclear wars that had lead to the Post Atomic Horror. That the building had survived that mess had been a miracle, though there hadn't been much fighting in the Washington State area.
The loft was like a snapshot of the lives of two men. Jim had been a neat freak, and until his death he had been the actual owner of the apartment, so all but one of the rooms was excessively neat and clean, save for the thin layer of dust particles that had settled all over everything, dust that had already been present when the building was sealed. That one room had belonged to Blair. The room looked very lived in, since Blair had moved back in with Jim after his wife had died. It was still neat, but it had a lot more character. In that room was a box that contained all of Blair's Sentinel research and his leather-bound dissertation, the document that had gotten him into so much trouble with the press and Rainier University. Lining the book shelves were fifty years worth of spiral notebooks, his case notes from being a detective with Cascade PD and his journals. Emily had learned a lot from her ancestor, and had decided to make his work her own, expanding it to include the rest of the galaxy as well as Earth.
She had taken the research to several scientists, working for nearly three years to get Blair's work validated by the academic community. In the end, it had been three men who had helped her the most, as well as several of the journals and looking up his record with the Cascade Police Department. Those men had been Dr. Gill Haris, Professor of Xenopology at Oxford, Sarian, the Vulcan Professor of Anthropology, and Commander Data from the U.S.S. Enterprise. The professors and Data had read the material and had concluded that the work was scientifically sound, as well as very thorough. Data had taken all of the information together and realized that Blair Sandburg was not the kind of man who would commit fraud, but that he would have been the kind to throw away his career to protect his friend.
The theory was still very unpopular, and Emily had been warned that it might be career suicide to follow up on the work, but she was convinced. There were several things that just added up when she started reading material from other worlds. The Vulcans had, in ancient times, had a far more tribal structure, and the tribes would always have a Guardian, one who was sent out to help protect the tribe from beasts, natural disasters, and encroachment from other tribes. But Emily doubted that there were any modern Sentinels on Vulcan. They would be far more likely on Romulus or Remus, as the Romulans had not suppressed their emotions and instincts as the Vulcans had, but the chances of studying Romulans to find a Sentinel were not good given their current relations with the Federation. The Klingons were also likely candidates, although they were far more individualistic, but the same problem with studying them existed as with the Romulans, not to mention the fact that a Klingon was far more likely to knock your head off if he didn't like what you were saying to him. No, the best chance, she thought, would be Bajor. If Sentinels existed on that world in modern times as they had in ancient ones, their abilities would be considered gifts from the Prophets, and they would therefore be more free to use them and more likely to get help.
That was one of the reasons she was on the Enquiri. Another was that she was tired of sitting behind her desk and conjecturing. She wanted to get out there and make a difference. Her family had been Shamen for generations, and academia didn't really lend itself to that. She was thinking about actually joining Starfleet's science department, hoping dearly to get assigned to a starship like this one so she could travel the stars and so she could help people. It would really be a dream come true.
Standing in the transporter room with her was a Security officer. He indicated the bag hanging by it's strap on her shoulder and asked, "Dr. Sandburg? Is that all you brought with you?"
She nodded. "Yep. Clothes, accessories, necessities, and note PADD, all in one convenient carry-on." He looked at her strangely. "Hey, I know how to pack! Actually, they sent the rest of my things ahead." She held out her hand and the man took it. "Emily Sandburg."
"Lt. Ellison. I've been assigned to show you to your quarters and then to the lab. From there, you should be able to get someone else to show you around the ship." He wasn't hostile, but he obviously didn't want to be here. He probably considered escort duty one of the most boring parts of his job. His name threw her, though. She wondered if he could be related to Jim Ellison. Wouldn't that just be a cosmic coincidence?
She decided to test her theory a bit. "Why don't you do that? Then I can get to know you better. After all, I'm going to be on this ship for a while, and I'd like to have at least one acquaintance outside the lab." The look on his face was so much like the one picture of Jim that she had that was pre-Blair and post-Peru it was uncanny. The closed off hell-no look was crystal clear. "Woah, man. Sorry I asked."
Ellison's expression softened a bit. "Sorry. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm kind of a loner."
She grinned at him. "That's all right. I can get a little overzealous sometimes."
They walked in silence to her guest quarters, where she dropped off her bag and picked up an odd box. It was old. It was actually made of cardboard, putting it's age somewhere between three and four hundred years old, but it was not yellowed or fragile. Even though it's contents obviously made it heavy, the slight scientist had no trouble carrying it, meaning that both she and the box were very strong. If Ellison was curious, he didn't indicate it to her.
He escorted her to the science lab and told her to have a good day, then left. As she watched him go back down the corridor to the turbolift, she wondered again if he was related to the detective she had read so much about. Then she shrugged and went into the lab.
Over the course of the next month, Emily aquatinted everyone in the lab with her research and that of Blair Sandburg. Most of the lab workers thought she was chasing phantoms, but they were willing to discuss theories with her. The great thing about people who worked with Starfleet for any length of time was that they saw a lot of strange things, things that often pushed the boundaries of previous beliefs, so they were a lot more open minded than planet-bound scientists tended to be.
She and one of the lab workers, Ensign Creid, were discussing the Sentinel theory one day in the mess hall over lunch. Creid said, "If these Sentinels exist in modern times, why don't we ever see them?"
"Think about it, Creid. If someone like that popped up today they'd either be ignored or forced to submit to testing because of the Eugenics laws, at least in the Federation. And if they don't find a Guide, they'll go insane when their senses start to go haywire. Jim was close to checking himself into an institution because he kept hearing voices, along with all his other senses. He had dinner with his ex-wife just before he met Blair and accused the restaurant of trying to poison him. But his senses were just out of whack. The noises were just a few rooms away, or a block away, or whatever. That's why I think the Bajorans are my best bet for finding a non-terrestrial Sentinel. They would consider it a gift from the Prophets and wouldn't question their own sanity so easily. They would go to the temple and get help."
Suddenly, there was a disturbance by the replicator. Lt. Ellison was standing there with his lunch arguing with an engineer who was apparently trying to fix the machine. Ellison shouted, "I don't care what you say, there is something wrong with this! There's enough cayenne in it to kill a horse!"
The harried engineer said, "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't change the program when you're the only one who tastes it. I don't have the authority to do that."
Ellison clenched his jaw and glared at the ensign, but the man , while intimidated, could do nothing about it. The lieutenant chunked his tray into the recycler and said, "I don't believe this!" Then he stalked out the door.
Sandburg and Creid had watched the altercation with interest, but for different reasons. Creid said, "Man! Who stuck a burr in his chair?" But Emily was on a different track of thought completely. If he was descended from Jim like she thought, could he have inherited the Sentinel gene? Blair had once calculated the odds of a child being a Sentinel. If both parents were carriers, if they both had at least one hyperactive sense, then the odds were still only one in four, and if both weren't carriers, they wouldn't have any chance at all. Still, if Ellison were descended from Jim, then the odds would be greater that he was at least a carrier. And if he were a Sentinel, then it was obvious that things were starting to get out of hand with his senses. That most likely meant he didn't have a guide, and it also meant trouble. That incident was almost identical to the one with Jim and Carolyn. She wondered what could have triggered his senses into coming back on-line.
Back in the lab, Emily started going through records. She had some access to the personnel files, though nothing in-depth. She pulled what she could of Ellison's file and his genealogy. Lieutenant Christopher Ellison was indeed the descendent of Detective James Ellison. He joined Starfleet twelve years ago, starting his career in Internal Security. After he was lost on a Cardassian moon for six months, he left IS, transferring to Starship Security and the Enquiri. Recently he had been complaining of hyperactive sensitivity on all five levels. The doctor could find nothing wrong.
Staring at the screen, Emily realized that things were quickly getting out of hand for Ellison. The time was soon coming where he'd be forced to seek psychological aid or he'd be kicked out. Something had happened to bring him back on-line, and whatever that might be, it was probably not going to recede again. He needed a Guide, and fast, at least a temporary one until he could find someone he could trust to take over.
Emily decided to talk to the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Janet Simms. She went to sickbay the following day, wondering how she was going to broach the subject. Ellison was not going to like the fact that she had been in his personnel records, even the surface records that had nothing to do with his personal life or what he'd done in IS. That problem was solved when just as she walked in the door someone from Security called for an emergency transport from Deck 8. In seconds, Chris Ellison materialized on the floor, screaming that his skin was on fire.
Seeing him like that, she simply reacted. She knew that she couldn't touch him. That would only make it worse. She got down next to him, ignoring Dr. Simms for the moment, and started talking to him. "Chris! You have to knock it down, man! Focus on my voice, Chris. Latch on to my voice and come back. Come on, man, you can do this. Come on, Ellison, this is not a good time to be doing this. Come on, you can do it, just follow me back."
After a while, the talking worked, surprising the hell out of the doctor. Soon Ellison was able to take control of his sense of touch and bring it back to an acceptable level. It was then that he really became aware of his surroundings and who it was he had been listening to.
Simms was arguing with that scientist he'd escorted about a month back. "How could you possibly know what's wrong with him? You have no medical training at all!"
The scientist (wasn't her name Sandburg?) said, "There isn't anything medically wrong with him at all! This isn't a disease or a condition, Doctor. He was born with more active sensory perception than most humans, that's all! It's genetic. I know you don't want to believe that my research has any merit, but if you block me from helping him, you'll be doing him absolutely no good!"
"Who are you to tell me how to treat my patients?!"
Ellison had heard enough. "Woah, guys. The patient can hear you both. Now what the hell's going on? How do you know what's been happening to me?"
Sandburg smiled lightly at him. "Let me throw a few things at you and see if you recognize what I'm describing. I witnessed that scene yesterday in the mess hall, so obviously our sense of taste has shot up, and just now it was your sense of touch. I'll bet it was just the uniform. So have you experienced any other sensory spikes lately, like smelling things no one else could, or seeing things that were too far away, that no one should have been able to see unaided, or hearing conversations that were taking place several decks away, stuff like that?"
Ellison stared at the scientist. How the hell could she know that? He just nodded, waiting to see where she was taking this. "I'm almost certain that you, my friend are what the explorer Richard Burton in the nineteenth century called a Sentinel. In ancient tribes, there would always be one person who would be responsible for protecting the tribe from encroachment and natural disasters, for helping to find game and water. This person was chosen because of a genetic advantage, a hyperactive response on all sensory levels. It was usually honed by time spent alone in the wild. Have you spent any time recently in prolonged isolation?"
"Yeah. Remember about three weeks ago, when the holodeck was on the fritz? I was the one that got caught in there. I was running a survival training program, the jungles of South America, trying to see if it would work for training cadets at the Academy, and the thing got caught in a loop. I was stuck there for a week."
"That's probably what triggered it. I'd guess you've been suppressing your senses for some reason or other, but that brought them back into use, and now you're on-line. I can help you to understand these senses. I have information about another Sentinel, one from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, that came from the man who helped him."
"This Sentinel. What was his name?" Something about this girls story was clicking, other than the facts of his problem.
Sandburg grinned. "Detective James Joseph Ellison, Cascade PD, Washington State. His partner and Guide's name was Blair Sandburg."
Chris sat back on the bed that he'd been moved to once his sensory spike had calmed, leaning against the wall of Sickbay. He remembered the stories his Dad used to tell of their ancestor, how he had better senses than those around him and it helped him to solve crimes. Chris had never believed those stories, thought that that's all they were. Now it seemed that he was the same way. He didn't know what to do about it. "What am I supposed to do about this? I'm gonna get kicked out of Starfleet because of those damned Eugenics laws if this gets out, and if not that, I'll be dragged back to IS and used like some pet assassin! I can't let that happen!"
"Woah, man, I don't want that happening either. I can guarantee you that the tests they'll run will come up negative. This is a natural genetic enhancement, not a splice, and if IS tries to grab you, I know how to raise a stink. I have friends that wouldn't mind helping me if it came to that, one of whom is Commander Data. Everybody knows that messing with him is bad karma. Even IS." She put her hand on his shoulder. "Believe me, I'd never let anything happen to you, man."
Chris looked at the scientist. 170 cm tall, brown hair and chocolate eyes made a lovely picture, and she seemed to have the bounciness that Jim Ellison's partner was described as having. She was honest. She meant it when she said that she wouldn't let anything happen to him. Wasn't he supposed to be the protective one? He didn't want to do what she suggested. She'd have to get involved with Security, and he wasn't sure he could swing that. But he needed her help. She had been able to stop the spike that had been so painful. "Damn. I know I'm going to regret this. All right. I'll see if I can get you permission to tag along with me, but you're going to have to promise not to endanger yourself."
"Hey, I can promise to try, but I can't stop fate if she decides to throw a curve."
Chris grinned. "Right."
Three months later...
Emily had known what she was talking about. It seemed that whenever a Sandburg started hanging out with an Ellison, the cosmos had to try it's damnedest to put them at risk. In three months she had been in as many hostage situations. At the time, she had been doing nothing dangerous. The first one happened when she was helping Dr. Simms to carry some heavy equipment into Sickbay since the antigravs were being repaired. One of his patients had awakened, disoriented, and thought he had been taken prisoner by the Jem'Hadar, though the war had been over for some time. It had taken all her skills at obfuscation to get him to let go, and she'd still made sure that Chris didn't try to stuff him in a shuttle bay to decompress. The second time, she was in the lab working on some of Blair's old spiral notebooks, when they were suddenly at Red Alert. A pirate ship surgically hit the Enquiri's shields, disabling them to allow boarding and then taking out the weapons and the engines without harming the rest of the ship. Chris had caught up with the main group of boarders. His team had them surrounded, but they had ended up right outside the lab. They took Emily, intending to use her against the Security forces, but they didn't take into account that this was her lab. She had several of the artifacts from the loft with her on the ship, one of which was Incacha's ceremonial dagger. She drove it into the pirate's leg and he dropped her. She ran to the door and told the computer to seal the lab in a Level 3 force-field, one that was still gas permeable so they wouldn't suffocate, but they couldn't get through it, either. She'd made sure that Dr. Simms gave her back Incacha's dagger, certain that the ancient Shaman would have approved of it's being used like that.
The last one had happened only an hour ago. She sat in Sickbay, her aching head being repaired by Dr. Simms, just waiting for Chris to come in and start yelling at her for getting into yet another situation. It would take a while for him to calm down enough to admit that it really hadn't been her fault. But she was getting to know him fairly well, and he would eventually see reason.
Sure enough, just as Simms was finishing up, the door opened to admit her Sentinel, whose face was a study in worried frustration. Could she call it or what? Maybe she could head him off. "Before you say anything, just remember, all I was doing was walking to my quarters after work. It's not my fault that Chinser escaped the brig or that I seem to make such an attractive hostage."
A smile broke through the worry. "I know. I guess I'll have to come to terms with the fact that my best friend is a cosmic trouble magnet. You know, I've taken the time to read some of those journals, Em. I think it's genetic. Blair apparently had the same problem. Just promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"If we ever end up dealing with a human whose last name is Lash, lock yourself in your quarters." She looked at him, knowing that he was talking about David Lash, the psycho who had come so close to killing Blair the first year of his partnership with Jim. She smiled and nodded.
Later that night, they were having dinner in her quarters, and she was trying to get him to cooperate with some of the tests that she knew would help him to attain better control. "Come on, Ellison. You know that this can only help you. Now that recipe has been in the family for a long time. I programmed it into the replicator myself, so I know everything that's in it. Dial up smell just enough to tell me what's in there, and if you guess the whole recipe then you get a prize."
Chris grinned, "Watch it, smart ass."
Emily returned the grin. "Hey, all of me is smart. Now quit stalling. Take a deep breath, then dial up your sense of smell. Identify the surface stuff, then filter it out so you can concentrate on the rest of it."
Chris did as he was instructed, using Emily's voice to ground him so he wouldn't zone out. "That's some weird meat, Em."
"It's ostrich. Come on, Chris, what else?"
"Pinto beans, tomato paste, diced tomato, onion, garlic," He paused for a moment, trying to catch the spices. "Cumin, basil, thyme...What is that?"
"What? What's it smell like?"
"Kind of peppery, but without the bite."
"Good! It's stewed coca leaves. You boil it to separate the drug part out so it doesn't get in the food, then you dry it and use it like any other herb."
"Ah, Sandburg..."
"Hey, don't worry. It's replicated, remember? No chance that the harmful part got into the food."
Suddenly, a new voice joined in, causing them both to jump out of their seats. "But where's the fun in that? You really should try the real thing some time."
Standing behind them, leaning up against the bulkhead, was a young man who looked about seventeen dressed in the uniform of a senior officer, though without any collar tabs to indicate actual rank. Both Sentinel and Guide recognized him from those reports from U.S.S. Voyager which had been required reading for all Starfleet personnel. It was Q2, the son of the Q who had always made himself such a nuisance to the crew of the Enterprise. The first new member of his race since before the beginning of the universe. Chris said, "What do you want, Q?"
The youth smiled, the same annoying smile of his father, the one that said "I am superior to you in every way." "Is that any way to treat a guest, automatically interrogating them?" Chris crossed his arms and glared. "Oh, fine! Spoil sport. I'm here to give you two the chance of a lifetime."
Emily cracked, "Why doesn't that thought fill me with confidence?"
Q pouted. "Oh, come now. Must you judge me by the actions of my father?"
Chris said, "No. I think your own actions on Voyager and your popping in here unannounced during dinner is enough to make me wary all by yourself."
He grinned. "Touché. Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do, at least. You see, there are several of us who are very interested in the Sentinel phenomenon. We'd like to see how you two do in an environment that neither of you has any real experience with, but that you would know enough to get by in normally."
Emily said, "So what's the catch? If we would know enough to get by, then where's the part where you're laughing your ass off?"
"That's the part you get to figure out for yourself." His grin widened and he snapped his fingers, enveloping Ellison and Sandburg in a cocoon of light.
I've finally gotten around to splitting this thing into chapters so the updates will show up. I still want feedback, though. :)
