Chapter 3
Gasping against the agony in her head as she slowly woke, Ivanova lay still and blinked hard until the ache slowly receded into a more bareable sensation – something merely on par with having a white hot railroad spike driven through her skull. Opening her eyes against the pleasently dim overhead lighting, she took a moment to study her utilitarian surroundings, and recognition set in. She was in the quarters she'd been given aboard the Enterprise, and now more than ever she appreciated not having to had to sleep on the White Star. A forty-five degree angle would not have mixed well with her hangover. She frowned at the thought, and tried to remember how she'd ended up like that; one thing she did remember was Guinan telling her that synthehol didn't leave someone feeling like they'd gotten caught in a mob of green and purple Drazi. Which meant that somewhere along the line, she'd gotten ahold of the real thing.
Most of the night was a blur after the long conversation she and Marcus had had with Captain Picard. She remembered ruthlessly quashing Marcus before he could come out with any French jokes, after he'd learned of Picard's roots. Though the captain's decidedly non-French accent had thrown the Ranger for a proverbial loop.
She sat up, forcing down a surge of sour bile. She desperately hoped that she hadn't thrown up, or done anything obscene during the peiod she couldn't remember.
In sharp contrast to her self-imposed misery, an alarmingly cheerful voice with a very familiar English accent intruded on her well-earned mope. "Well, look who's finally awake! Feeling any better, Susan?"
A fresh throb of pain seared through her brain, but she still had time to be completely mortified. "Marcus! What the hell are you doing in my quarters?" A second, much more alarming thought occurred before he had a chance to respond, and she looked down at herself, afraid to see what she might or might not be wearing. She let out a breath when she saw that she was still wearing the same uniform from last night, with the exception of the jacket, which had been neatly folded and placed on the nightstand.
To her surprise, when she looked back at him, she saw that he had flushed an improbable shade of crimson at her implication. "To answer your questions;" he got out, "First, you aren't in your quarters, these are mine. Yours were locked, and you weren't in any condition to tell me the passcode. And second," his face grew even redder, "nothing happened, nothing at all. I spent the night – the whole night – on the couch in the other room."
He was expecting nothing less than a full-blown tantrum from hell, replete with grevious physical violence on his person. So it was with some surprise that he watched her simply sag back and run a hand through her bedraggled hair. "I'm sorry, Marcus, I know you'd never do something like that. Thank you." It came out as a harsh whisper, her eyes focused on the floor. "But do you think you could stop talking so loud?"
"You're welcome," he replied in a much softer tone, trying not to push his luck. By now, his face had turned so red, Ivanova found herself absently wondering if she'd hear a noise when the vein in his forhead popped. But he pressed on. "I'd never take advantage of you, Susan. Never." Then he managed to ruin what could have been a tender moment by adding, "Particularly when you were so entertaining that it took fourteen security guards to restore order after you got up on stage."
Even reflexes honed by training with Durhan himself weren't fast enough to dodge the small pillow she hurled at him.
He grinned at her furious expression, then brought up his peace offering, in the form of a cylindrical metal hypospray. "It's a detox compound Doctor Crusher gave me," he explained. "I can vouch for its effectiveness. I had a few too many last night myself," he confessed at her bemused regard, and shrugged. "When one lives among Minbari, the opportunities to indulge are few and far between. Nonexistent, actually. And I needed some way to cover the taste of Klingon blood pie."
Ivanova sighed. Arguing with Marcus was one thing, arguing with her splitting headache was something else entirely. Unbuttoning the cuff of her right sleeve, and rolling up the fabric, she resignedly held out her arm.
"Uh, uh," he said, shaking his head, "it has to be injected into the shoulder."
She glared daggers at him, and tried unsuccessfully to roll her sleeve up over her shoulder. Foiled by the unyielding fabric, she tried tugging her collar to one side to free one shoulder, with similar results. The daggers became broadswords. Reaching for the hypo, she firmly told him, "Out, Marcus," and pointed towards the door.
Instead, he twisted the hypspray around her grasping hand, and up against her shoulder. She felt it press against her skin, heard a hiss, and a barely tangible pressure through the fabric of her shirt. "Done. It, ah, goes right through fabric."
She stared at him indignantly. "You knew that." Her tone was fiercely accusing, and he raised his hands meekly. "You knew it," she repeated. "And you let me squirm. I oughta..." She stopped her tirade before she really got going, and blinked several times, licking her lips. The roaring headache and pressure behind her eyes had suddenly abated, taking her fury with it.
Picking up on her suddenly changed demeanor, Marcus grinned, and said, "Care to join me for breakfast? I've already made enough for both of us. Oh, and the head is over there," he added, pointing to another door beyond the bed.
For a moment, she wondered why he had bothered to point out the location of the bathroom, but that slipped away in the face of other questions. "Breakfast? What time is it, anyway?"
"About nine-thirty in the morning. We should be reaching Earth in another hour, or so." He motioned towards the partition that seperated the large room. "That'll give you enough time to eat, then get over to your own quarters, shower, and change."
"An hour!" She scrubbed her hands through her hair, grimacing. "And I don't know about how Rangers prepare for really short missions, but I sure didn't bring any change of clothes. What was the point? We only should've been gone for – ohhh..." She trailed off, and bolted for the head, as the effects of a complete detoxification in a matter of seconds made itself apparent. That Marcus had anticipated her need only irked her more.
When she emerged, she saw that he had moved into the other room. Grabbing her uniform jacket from the nightstand, Ivanova followed him, stopping short at the threshhold, as she caught sight of the table he'd set. She knew her eyes must be as big as saucers, but she didn't care. She hadn't see a spread like that since Londo's ascension day, and that had all been Centauri delicacies. Pancakes, carefully topped with pats of butter, were piled high alongside a repectable mound of bacon and sausages. Hash browns and a platter of eggs sunny-side up sat beside a steaming pot of coffee, and a pitcher of maple syrup.
Marcus was already heaping food onto his own plate, and he motioned her to sit opposite him and do the same.
"First things first," she said, using an irritated tone to cover her bemusement. "As I had been trying to say a few minutes ago, I didn't bring a change of clothes."
"Neither did I, actually, but that's less of a problem than you might think," Marcus replied, spreading syrup over a small mountain of pancakes on his plate. He made no move to stand, or explain further.
"Now, Marcus."
Heaving a sigh, he favored his food with a comically mournful expression, and jumped out of his seat. From experience, he knew that when her tone reached that particular level of annoyance, it was time to play nice or get hurt. He strode past her, leading her to the wall directly across from the table, and next to the room's entrance, where a small alcove was set into the surface, alongside a small control panel, who's precise function he couldn't guess at. As far as he could tell, the ship's computer was so omnipresent, you could fly and fight the whole ship just by talking to it. To Ivanova's consternation, he yanked off his left boot, and stuck it in the alcove, shoving it to one side.
"You uh... got our food from that thing?" She sounded less than thrilled, and more than a little sickened.
"I didn't stick my dirty socks in the food," he said, exasperated. "Just watch." Looking back at the alcove, he said in a louder voice, "Computer, duplicate that object."
There was, as far as Ivanova was concerned, a disgustingly cheerful chirp from the computer. And within the alcove, something hummed briefly before a sparkling column of light filled the unoccupied half of the small chamber. And then there were two virtually identical boots.
Ivanova shook her head disbelievingly. "Think they'd give me one of these things to put in my quarters back on B5?"
Grinning hugely, Marcus pulled out the cloned footgear, and held it up for inspection. "You can even have the computer do a little tailoring work. There's also a regular laundry bin in the bathroom, though I don't suppose you noticed it."
Taking a small measure of revenge for that remark, she grinned. "Well, I can see this would come in handy for you, Marcus." At his puzzled gaze, she put on a devilish smirk, and confided, "I always knew you had two left feet."
*****
"Have you detected any signs of civilization yet, Captain?"
Sheridan glanced over his shoulder and acknowledged Lennier's silently shaking head before turning back to the rippling image of his Starfleet counterpart. "Not a damned thing."
Flying in tandem, the three starships had come out of warp just outside the system, where the White Star was detatched to continue the flight under its own power. Now arcing on a sunward trajectory calculated to swing them past the Jovian micro-system, which was heavily settled in both of their own universes, the three ships were looking for any of the visible signs of humanity's presence. They had been disappointed so far. As they approached the asteroid belt, avoiding it by travelling above the ecliptic, Captain Picard had insisted that they look for evidence of asteroid mining. Again, thus far their efforts had been fruitless.
It had been disturbing enough passing Jupiter, with no hint of hyperspace beacons, the Io jumpgate, or any other vessels in the normally crowded spacelane, but the continued silence was becoming downright frightening. Sheridan shivered, briefly wondering if perhaps in this version of what he considered reality, the Minbari hadn't surrendered at the Line, and finished the job. Or more distressingly, that humanity had simply strangled in the cradle. He had heard about what the Starfleet officers had been expecting to find at Epsilon Eridani, and intellectually, understood the possibilities, but damn it, this was Earth, not some alien planet he'd never heard of or seen before.
"Understood," Picard said evenly. Evidentally, this sort of impossible happenstance didn't affect him as badly. "In another forty-nine minutes, we'll begin a low-level decceleration that should put us into Earth orbit twelve minutes later." His holographic image faded and the faint rippling in the air dissapated.
Sheridan turned back towards his own bridge, directing his eyes towards Lennier. "Have you got that?"
"Yes Captain." He made a movement that might have been a bow, without actually being a bow.
Barely noticing that much, Sheridan glared out at the stars visible in the forward windows, and the brighter yellow sun that drowned out almost all of them, even at this distance. Of their own accord, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists atop the armrests of the wide command chair. He hated having no idea of what to expect, especially on his own home planet. But more to the point, the concept that everything he knew and remembered, his family, his home, even Earth Alliance, never existed. That was the only thing he could imagine more terrible than death.
It would take a machete to cut through the tension on the White Star's bridge, and Sheridan was painfully aware that nearly all of it radiated from him. That shouldn't have surprised him much – the rest of the crew was Minbari, and to them, for the moment, the issue was more of an intellectual curiosity than anything else. Aggravated, he hoped that they would take it just as badly if they had gone a few dozen light-years in the other direction, and had to face the non-existence of the Minbar they knew. And then he remembered that they already had faced it; no one had ever heard of the Minbari in Picard's universe. Somehow, that bothered him even more, as if they had simply accepted it as the whim of the universe that in some realities, none of them had ever existed.
"Can you detect anything at all, Mr. Lennier? Something that might at least try and explain what happened here?"
Lennier looked pained, but he hid it well behind his customary impassiveness. "Captain, I regret to report that my answer is the same as it was ten minutes ago."
Sheridan grumbled darkly, continuing to glare at the forward windows, where the sun was growing steadily larger and brighter.
"John," a soft voice called, slicing through his aimless brooding. When she saw that she'd caught his attention, Delenn smiled sternly. "We will get there when we get there, and will find what we will find. No amount of frustration will change that."
"Yeah, well its a little tough for me to relax. While we're off on this interdimensional joyride, I've just dumped responsibility for a quarter million people, the Rangers, and the alliance we've created to fight the Shadows, all in the laps of Lieutenant Corwin and Zack Allan." He shook his head distressingly. "For all I know, the whole place has already been blown to hell by the Shadows, the Centauri, Earthforce, or all of the above."
Now her expression grew vaguely troubled. "That is all true." But she firmly set her uneasiness aside, saying, "Since we have no way to go home without finishing this... joyride, for now, we must accept that the universe will attend to itself."
"Which universe, though?" he mumbled. Then taking a deep breath, he watched her emerald eyes take on a pleased light as he said, "Faith manages, huh?" Even as he said it, he felt the tension melting away, retreating with the anxiety back into the darker corners of his subconcious.
Her smile broadened. "Yes." Then she added, almost as an afterthought, "And besides, you were becoming a..." she struggled for the words, "I believe the phrase is; pain in the ass?"
Sheridan's dignity crashed and burned as he ogled the petite Minbari ambassador, not quite sure he'd heard right.
"Though I still do not know what an Earth pack animal has to do with someone making themselves irritating," she went on, purposely oblivious of his unconcealed shock.
"You have got to stop talking to Mr. Garibaldi. He's a bad influence. No, that's an understatement. Next time he tries to tell you something like that, let me know so I can shoot him."
Eyes glittering maliciously, she innocently replied, "Mr. Garibaldi has already been shot in the back once... but if you shoot any lower, he will have a real pain in the – "
"Delenn!" Sheridan dragged the word out pleadingly, and she finally relented with a gentle laugh.
"See? You are feeling better already," she pronounced, as if daring him to contradict her.
He shot her a dismayed look, which turned into a chuckle when he realized that she was right – he was feeling a bit better. At least he wasn't brooding anymore. Though he was definately going to have to have a long chat with Garibaldi, and explain a few things in a way that would penetrate even the security chief's thick skull. As he tried to decide between thumbscrews or a cat-'o-nine-tails, the small blue planet that was their destination grew steadily nearer.
*****
Hurrying down the brightly lit corridor on course for a turbolift, even without a clear destination in mind, Garibaldi was prepared for almost anything. Which is perhaps why the universe chose to blindside him. Focused on the various bleak scenarios his brain was coming up with in anticipation of their arrival at Earth, while trying to simultaneously keep eyes in the back of his head without looking conspicuous, he turned the corner into a transverse hallway without seeing the obstruction until several instants after impact.
"Ooof!" The air evacuating her lungs in one swift whoosh, Ivanova sprawled backwards, landing squarely on her rump with an undignified squeak.
Garibaldi was rocked backwards, but handled the impact much better. "Whoa! Sorry about that, Commander." He reached down to make amends by helping her up, which she grudgingly accepted, irritably brushing an errant auburn lock out of her eyes. She looked like hell as far as he was concerned, though better by far than she had been the previous night, passed out under the table. Her hair was a frizzy cloud around her head, her eyes were just starting to lose their puffiness, and her uniform was rumpled and creased. At almost the same moment as he pulled her up, he realized that one reason he hadn't seen her coming was that she had just come out of the door closest to the corner he'd rounded. A door that was the only way in or out of Marcus's cabin.
She saw the route his gaze was following, and cut him off at the pass. "One word, Michael, just one lousy word, and I promise that you will live just long enough to regret it." There was a familiar snap of authority in her tone, along with a blatently non-nonsense attitude.
Naturally, his mouth opened of its own accord – a trait that had gotten him in heaps of trouble on more than one occasion, as if he couldn't resist testing her limits by uttering the first word that popped into his head, whatever that might be.
Again though, she cut him off before he could even peel his tongue off the roof of his mouth. "Not a word!" she repeated sharply. "Nothing at all happened, so if you know what's good for you, you'll drag your twisted mind out of the gutter, and pretend this never happened. Got it?"
He blinked, feeling blood rush to his face at her implication, and took a step back in the face of her blustery tongue-lashing. She knows me way too well, he thought, disconcerted. Out loud, he said, "Yes ma'am!" He hoped he'd managed a suitably chastised tone, but inwardly, he doubted it. He consoled himself by reminding himself that if they ever managed to get back home, there'd be plenty of opportunities to make pithy comments about her relationship with Marcus, not to mention the way things seemed to be going between the Captain and Delenn. Yes, he could hold off on the embarassing jokes and pranks for now.
"That's better," a mollified Ivanova responded, intruding on his malicious thoughts.
Garibaldi hadn't been looking for her, specifically, but now that he'd found her, it was as good a time as any to mention that they were only a half-hour from finding God-knows-what at Earth. But before he could begin, his nose picked up on a very distinctive smell. He stepped in front of her, blocking her path as she tried to go around him. "Commander," he started, inhaling deeply, "is that bacon I smell?"
"Yeah, why?" Then she noticed his despairing expression, and clapped a hand to her mouth, as if trying to take the words back, or maybe just trying to stifle a giggle. He had his suspicions about which one it was. "Couldn't you figure out how to work the replicator?" She was trying to look chagrined, but not very well, and his suspicions were confirmed.
"Of course," he lied through his teeth. "But as far as I'm concerned, synthetics can't do it justice." In fact, he knew damn well that replicated foods tasted a hell of a lot better than synthetics, but he figured he could pass off that excuse more easily than he could admit to the fact that he'd spent almost an hour of the morning tapping randomly at the unmarked control panel next to the replicator, and only eventually ending up with a substance that smelled and tasted almost but not quite entirely unlike tea. That mess was only mitigated by his discovery of the Enterprise's extensive database of Loony Toons vids. He snorted softly. If this ship wasn't carrying around the sum total of all human knowledge, it was at least making a sporting effort at trying.
Ivanova, of course, saw right through him. "Right. Well, I'd better get back to my quarters and get ready for the six kinds of hell we're almost definately gonna get caught in today."
"Good to see you're as cheerful as ever, Commander."
As she walked away, she looked over her shoulder, and said, "Oh, Marcus is still eating. There should be some food left."
Wincing at her parting shot, he ducked into the cabin set aside for the Ranger, not too surprised to find the occupant working his way through a small stack of pancakes.
"Good morning, Mr. Garibaldi," Marcus said around a mouthful.
Garibaldi shook his head on seeing the remains of the breakfast. From the looks of it, Marcus could have hosted a small army comfortably. "'Morning, Marcus," he greeted. Before he said more, he grabbed a plate that might have held sausages, and started piling the food onto it. Marcus looked curiously surprised, but didn't say anything.
"You look like you've been awake for a while," Marcus observed. "Have you found out anything I should know about?"
Shrugging as he continued to shovel food onto his plate, Garibaldi said, "Not really. Well, not unless you should know that none of us ever existed in this little slice of reality."
"Oh, is that all?" Marcus paused, watching the food vanish from the chief's plate at an alarming rate. "You did know that the replicators are voice-activated, right?" He laughed when Garibaldi only coughed and bent over his food with all of his attention. "How do they know that none of us exist in this universe?"
That at least, was a question that Garibaldi was willing to answer. "I talked to the Captain earlier, and he says that as far as he can tell with the White Star's sensors, there's nothing here that's not on Earth. Io had no tranfer point, we can't get communications traffic on any channels, including gold channel, and from what we can tell, Mars is barren." He chewed another bite thoughtfully, then swallowed. "We might not be getting clear readings just yet, but it doesn't even look like there's anything artificial in Earth orbit. It's like they never even made it into space... or somebody blew them back into the Stone Age," he said, scowling.
"Glad to see that you're remaining so optimistic," Marcus remarked drily. "There are other possibilities, you know."
"Name one."
Marcus drew a complete blank. When the silence had dragged on, and the reason become perfectly clear, he finally snapped, "That doesn't mean anything! Give me a few minutes, I'm sure I can think of something."
Garibaldi only grunted dubiously, and finished clearing his plate.
"I've got it!" Marcus said suddenly, snapping his fingers. "We crossed between universes, right? Well why not back in time, too? It's not like we didn't just finish sending Entil'zha a good thousand years back. Who says we haven't done it again?" He looked like he was going to say more, but a soft tone sounded through the cabin, followed by a stern voice.
"Picard to Chief Garibaldi."
Garibaldi nearly tapped his handlink out of sheer habit, but stopped himself quickly when he saw a grin split Marcus's face. "Garibaldi, go," he called out to the empty air.
If Picard was thrown by the irregular response, there was no trace of it in his voice. "I hope I'm not disturbing, Chief, but I'd like to ask you to join us in the conference room as soon as possible. There's something you should see. Something you all should see."
"Copy that, Captain Picard, I'm on my way." He hadn't needed to add the name, but he felt like he had to set his captain apart. He stood, deliberately avoiding Marcus's quirked eyebrow. "I think he wants all of us there," he said unecessarily.
Nodding, Marcus said, "You go on ahead. I'll clean this up," he motioned to the pile of mostly empty dishes and serving trays, "and fetch Ivanova."
Running a hand over his scalp, Garibaldi let out a long breath. "Make it quick, Marcus. I have a feeling we're about to have the frying pan yanked out from under us."