Star Trek: Absolution
Chapter XII: Non-Linear Discussion
From his position in the rickety utility shed on the second planet of the DNX-920 star system, William T. Riker carefully watched the two Breen guards stationed outside of their makeshift jail cell. He was able to see out into the camp only because there was a small crack in an uneven seam between two sections of the building's hastily assembled metal framework. Both of the guards stood firmly at attention with their rifles shouldered and were barely visible in the night time darkness except for the shimmering scarlet light that continually emanated from the center of the camp. Neither of them changed position very often, so the Commander was confident that they felt the area was secure and were convinced they would have no further trouble from their three prisoners.
Worf and Geordi quietly sorted through the few pieces of equipment actually available to them inside the small structure with no luck. Aside from five large shovels, two coils of barbed wire and a pile of large wooden fence posts there was absolutely nothing else laying around that could be of use to them. Their location was still on the outer edge of the encampment near its force field fenced-in perimeter and the lack of available items to use for escape showed. Malib had not chosen to imprison them here randomly – having been warned that they were on their way he had simply used the time available to prepare a place for them that provided little opportunity for escape.
"I don't suppose you have any way to signal Dr. Crusher to come sooner than the twelve hours you gave her," Geordi said with a small smile. "I don't much like the idea of trying to break out of here in the morning daylight once normal base activity resumes."
"We'll be okay," Riker said, still surveying as much of the outside territory as he could manage to through the seam in the metal wall panels. "This planet has a 28 hour day so it will still be mostly dark out when the good Doctor makes her move. Besides, whatever they're doing in that central tower is occupying most of their attention."
"They used the power plants and industrial replicators to construct the parts they needed for its superstructure," Geordi commented, "And I was also able to determine that they're now using almost all of their energy output to keep a series of nearly impenetrable force fields in place at the base of the tower. Whatever their underground antimatter reactor is doing, they need the force fields to keep it tightly contained within." He frowned slightly. "Before they took it, my tricorder recorded some deep rifts being carved into subspace, so I think they're trying to poke a hole of some sort in our space-time continuum."
Worf sat down on a pile of wooden fence posts and said nothing. Riker was about to ask him for his input on the matter when the room's tiny, single light bulb suddenly flickered eerily and dimmed. Before anyone could say anything the walls surrounding them and the entire base simply disappeared. As the fence posts vanished, Worf collapsed onto the ground with an angry shout and all three of them stared in shock at the instantly vacated planet's surface. Everywhere they looked there was absolutely no trace of the enemy presence. Daylight instantly flashed into being and the overhead sun filled the area in which they stood with staggering heat.
What they could see, however, was a medium-sized dark-haired human male standing in front of them dressed entirely in black. His hairline was slightly receding and he looked to be pushing forty-something years old. Riker put a hand on Worf to restrain him as the Klingon leaped to his feet and started to rush toward the mysterious newcomer. The man smiled at them and waved a hand casually at the empty surrounding area that – until mere seconds ago – had contained an entire enemy camp.
"My name is Daniels," the man said simply. "I have temporarily moved the three of you two decades into this planet's past so that we can speak privately. I have information vital to your survival and have assisted Starfleet several times in my past in order to ensure accurate continuity of this universe's primary timeline."
"I know who you are," Geordi said. "Your picture is in our historical database. You covertly served for a short time as a steward aboard the first warp five Enterprise ship built by Starfleet. Your visits and the assistance you provided were the first real evidence we had that helped us to establish time travel as fact instead of theory. You're from…"
"The 31st century," Daniels interrupted. "Forgive me for being blunt, but my time here is short and I need to warn you that the matter you are currently investigating is rapidly approaching one of the major focal points in the timeline that governs this universe."
"One of the major focal points?" Riker's implied question was two-pronged… he was curious as to what Daniels was talking about but he also wanted to prompt the man to provide details rather than confuse them with undecipherable technobabble.
"Many people describe time as a river that is constantly flowing in one direction – forward. This is a suitable comparison for our purposes, with the notable exception that the flow of a river is much easier to move backward through since all you need to do is turn around and physically walk upstream. Time travel is much more complicated, and requires at least some knowledge of the physical laws of our universe combined with technology to achieve."
"Why are you here?" Worf demanded. "It is my understanding that the Federation – even in the future – does its best not to tamper with the standard timeline. Your mere presence here threatens this, as does your conversation with us."
Daniels gave the Klingon an irritated look. "I have dedicated my life to the study and maintenance of the historical timeline," the man from the future stated proudly. "And my work has taught me that there are certain crux events – specific instances if you will – that occur at key points in history. One simple event that happens or fails to happen can change all of time forever, and that is why people like me keep careful watch on the timeline… to make certain that it isn't tampered with and to insure that these crucial events take place with the desired outcome."
"Are you concerned with what is happening on this planet with the Breen and the Xindi?" Riker asked him. "Is this the crucial event that you are talking about?"
"More so than you realize at this point," was Daniels' slightly irritated reply. "The river comparison works for most discussions but for this one it is not always an effective analogy. I would like to use a new example, this time asking you to imagine what would happen if we poured colored dye into a river to track a particular set of water molecules. We can watch them flow downstream and we notice immediately that they do not pass by the same point again, unless we were to break the normal laws of physics and travel back in time to the exact instance where they first passed that particular spot on the shore."
"During its exploratory missions, Starfleet has encountered quite a few of these crux events as you describe them," Geordi pointed out. "One of our first Captains, James T. Kirk, discovered a planet with a time portal on it and the interference in past history inadvertently caused by his Doctor almost changed all of history."
"Yes, we still use that Gateway in my time also," Daniels agreed with a small smile. "And the particular incident you have pointed out is exactly what I'm talking about and why I am here. I know that you intentionally allowed yourselves to be captured so that your Doctor could gather the details needed to make your mission a success. You are very brave men to risk your own lives in order to guarantee that the information needed by your commanding officers is successfully delivered to them."
Riker folded his arms in front of him, looking a bit impatient. "Yeah?" he prompted. "I'm hoping there's more to this than your traveling through time just to tell us how brave we are…"
"Certainly," Daniels replied. "You are courageous but you're also not stupid. I know that you have an escape planned and I came here to assure you that the facility on this planet in your time must be destroyed at any cost. The experiments here cannot be allowed to continue or the future will be filled with unending violence and bloodshed for centuries to come."
"You could have warned us about the Dominion when the Starfleet personnel at Deep Space Nine first discovered the wormhole in the Denorious belt," Worf argued. "But you did not. What makes this enemy operation so important but not the war between the alpha and gamma quadrants? Many lives were lost there, too."
"That was a conflict lasting years, not centuries," Daniels said as he stared directly at the Klingon glaring back at him. "It was part of the normal timeline and virtually all of the outcomes we took time to project favored the Federation. This is a vastly different crisis you are approaching because it is an attempt by both the Xindi and the Breen to conquer the alpha and beta quadrants, if not the entire galaxy. And if you do not stop them they will succeed," he said with an intense emotion in his voice so fierce that even Worf looked a bit surprised.
Standing in the afternoon sun with a curious look on his face, Riker helplessly held up both of his hands. "What do you want us to do?" he asked. "Why are you here?"
"To let you know how important your role in this will be," Daniels told him. "The Federation – and particularly your assignment to discover what is happening here – is quite literally a rock in the river of time. It is the boulder in the center of a river that causes the water passing by to flow around it rather than straight through. If the Breen and reptilian-Xindi alliance causes this theoretical rock to fall one way instead of the other, the resulting change in the flow of time will make all of the difference for centuries to come."
"Why are you here?" repeated Riker, his tone more insistent this time.
"I came to remind you of just what the Dark Nebula is and to give you an option that Starfleet would normally not approve of." He watched the Commander grow even more frustrated and held up a hand to request patience. "No doubt you noticed almost immediately upon your arrival here that there are very few star systems remaining within this nebula. It is almost completely filled with black holes, brown dwarves and other invisible matter that we cannot see but which greatly affects the local environment. I have run hundreds of thousands of simulations on this region of space during my time and in absolutely none of these projections does this star system survive longer than another two centuries. Eventually it will get caught in one of the nebula's stronger gravity streams and disintegrate just like all the other normal radiant stars have. This planet does not exist in my time."
"So what you're saying is that it's okay for us to bypass our normal laws against weapons of mass destruction damaging the environment. We should lay waste to the surface of this planet if we have to in order to stop whatever it is they're doing here," guessed Geordi. "If the star system itself won't even be around in a couple hundred years, there's also no chance that an indigenous life form could evolve on this planet in time to become an intelligent species."
"I'm saying blow up the damned sun itself if you have to," Daniels practically shouted at them. "It's that important to your future… and mine, gentlemen."
Without another word he took a step backward and in the blink of an eye Daniels was gone and they were back inside the utility shed – restored instantly to their own time. No one spoke for several long moments as each of them carefully thought over the information that had just been provided to them. Worf cast a suspicious glance around the room before choosing to sit back down on the pile of wooden fence posts, growling with frustration.
"Well that was an interesting conversation," Geordi decided. He noticed Riker using the spy-hole to peek at the area outside, once again shrouded in darkness except for the eerie flickering light from the scarlet radiation in the center of the encampment. "Are the guards still there?" he asked curiously, watching the Commander nod in reply.
"They haven't moved," commented Riker. "Why would they? Unless we get outside help we're not going anywhere." Checking the horizon outside he could see no trace of the morning sun. "Daniels returned us to the exact point in time he took us from, so it looks as though we've got some time yet before our good Doctor arrives."
Hours later the morning sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, casting its usual orange glow through DNX-920 planet 2's thin atmosphere. Both Breen guards remained at attention on either side of the door to the small utility shed, while around them the darkness continued fading away and daylight slowly returned. Neither of the two soldiers had moved much at all for well over twenty minutes. They had a random routine down, however, where every once in a while one of them would circle the small building once or twice to make certain that its structure was intact and the prisoners were still confined inside of it.
Ever since the initial capture of the three Federation officers, the camp had been pretty much shrouded in silence. There had been a brief period of commotion just after the prisoners were locked up as several battalions of marching soldiers were assigned to encircle the camp, separate and begin searching outward from the edge of the force field perimeter. Each of them carried a portable tachyon emitter as they carefully hunted through the surrounding countryside in a gradually expanding radius. They knew that the cloaked enemy shuttle had come through their detection grid at the nebula's entrance, so for them it was simply a matter of time until they located and captured the enemy ship as well.
The search was a non-issue for the two troops guarding the prisoners and they had both mentally filed away the issue of the shuttle's secret location as not their concern. They stood at attention and focused instead on the task assigned to them, meticulously searching the immediate area promptly at random intervals to be certain that it was still secure. Everything appeared to be calm and – as Riker watched from inside the shed – both of the soldiers had settled into a definite routine. The silence in the area remained completely unbroken until one of the aliens heard a soft scraping sound coming from the ground off to his left.
The Breen guard whirled aggressively with his rifle lowered, listening intently for additional sounds. He did not immediately hear anything and cautiously began walking in the direction of the sound that he knew he had heard. As he rounded the corner and continued toward the rear of the structure an orange Federation phaser beam caught him squarely in the chest and tossed him violently backwards. The second guard anxiously watched his companion stumble back to the front of the shed, where he finally lost his balance and landed flat on his back. His rifle made a soft thumping noise as it dropped into the soft dirt next to him.
The remaining Breen spun and fired several bright green bursts from his disruptor rifle over the top of his fallen comrade and hastily moved over next to him. He stood alertly next to the unconscious man lying by his feet and angrily swung his rifle around the corner of the shed, firing half a dozen additional shots back and forth through the open space alongside the small building. He stood at the ready for a moment, extremely puzzled since he could not see anyone and was unable to identify the source of the phaser shot. That was when he noticed fresh footprints in the dust by the rear of the shed and curiously took a couple of steps toward them.
He too was caught by surprise as a second phaser shot from behind him dropped him in his tracks. The energy surge shocked his body and he immediately felt numbed and began to lose consciousness. As he fell, the soldier was able to twist his body quickly enough to get a brief glance at the source of the heavy stun beam still burning into his body. Strangely, the source of the phaser appeared to originate out of thin air and he felt extremely confused as his brain shut down and he tumbled backwards onto the ground.
The electronic sound of a phaser setting being adjusted could be heard through the morning quiet and someone knocked lightly on the outside of the utility shed. "Stand back," Dr. Crusher warned her friends inside. "I'm going to shoot the lock." Another phaser beam appeared, again seemingly out of thin air and instantly vaporized the door's electronic locking mechanism. As the Doctor reset her phaser to stun Riker, Worf and Geordi immediately emerged from the shed and stepped out into the early morning sunlight.
"Nice job Doctor," Riker commented, watching Beverly deactivate her planet-side surveillance suit's cloaking device. There was a shimmering wave of energy in front of the escaped prisoners and suddenly she was standing there, carrying a phaser rifle and wearing what looked like an orange jumpsuit with a matching helmet. She had three extra hand phasers attached to her belt and Riker immediately grabbed the extra weapons as Beverly cautiously removed the suit's hood. She shook her long red hair free and then watched carefully for additional enemy activity as Riker handed two of the weapons to Geordi and Worf.
LaForge immediately noticed that the Doctor was wearing four electronic pattern-enhancing armbands, two of them on her left shoulder and two more on her right. She hastily removed three of the devices and handed them to her friends, continuing to cover the area with her phaser rifle as the other three each attached one of the devices to his shoulder and activated it.
"There are still transporter inhibitors active even inside of the fenced off area?" LaForge asked, watching her nod affirmatively at him.
"How come there are so many humans on this planet?" Crusher suddenly asked curiously. "That almost screwed up your whole plan Commander… I had to locate you by searching for Klingon bio-signs instead of human."
"We don't know for sure yet," Riker told her. "But it certainly appears as though at least some of the humans from the DMZ are cooperating with the ongoing effort here."
"There is only one way to find out for sure," Worf said irritably, wandering over to the nearest building. Before anyone could say anything the huge Enterprise tactical officer disappeared inside. Moments later they could see flashes of orange phaser fire light up the structure's windows and seconds later he reappeared with an unconscious human male slung over his shoulder. The entire incident had lasted less than thirty seconds and – aside from the two phaser shots – had occurred in complete silence. "Do we only need one?" Worf asked curiously.
"Yes you idiot," Crusher hissed softly at him, pointing to the armband she wore over the top of her orange cloaking suit. "I'm not even sure that the pattern enhancer will provide enough of a target to transport one person through their inhibitor screens, let alone two."
"Then I'll take him," offered Geordi, accepting the limp form of the unconscious prisoner from the tall Klingon and leaning the stunned man awkwardly against his left shoulder. "I'm a lot smaller than Worf… one of you guys can return to the shuttle and then adjust the power output as needed to transport two of us at a time."
"Where is the shuttle?" Riker asked in a low whisper, glancing toward the Doctor.
She pointed toward the sky and grinned. "It's hovering thirty meters directly above the structure they were holding you in. Your capture prompted them to send most of their troops outside the fenced-in perimeter looking for a ship on the ground." She pointed her tricorder at Riker and activated her Comm-badge. "You're our best pilot so you get to go first – I've still got one of Geordi's tricorders tied into the shuttle's computer and can remote command it from here." As she spoke, Riker vanished in a brilliant red surge of Klingon transporter energy.
They waited tensely for a moment while the Commander seated himself in the pilot's seat and adjusted the transporter settings to accommodate two people. "You're next Geordi," his voice crackled through Beverly's Comm-badge. LaForge held tight to their prisoner and breathed a sigh of relief as the scarlet energy surrounded him as well. After materializing on board the shuttle, he lowered the unconscious humanoid next to the small transporter platform and carefully rolled the man against the far wall. He joined Riker in the cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot's seat as the Commander beamed Beverly aboard, followed immediately by Worf.
"We're getting way too good at this type of thing," Crusher commented, tossing the helmet from her survey suit toward the back of the ship. "It's not supposed to be this easy."
"That is why the best Starfleet officers receive advanced tactical training," Worf pointed out. "So that we can utilize the art of misdirection and confuse our opponents."
"She is right though Worf," grinned Riker with a loud chuckle. "We are getting really good at this. When Geordi slugged you and complained that your Klingon shuttle can't detect tachyons, I almost believed him." He glanced at the engineer. "I think you've been in too many of the good Doctor's theatrical performances… your acting just gets better and better."
"We're not out of the woods yet," warned the Doctor. "We've still got to get past that blockade one more time."
"I'm activating the ship's sensors," said LaForge, his fingers dancing over the console in front of him. "As long as they let the Doctor fly all the way inside their campground we may as well get a detailed record of what's on the ground here." He shrugged. "They did confiscate our tricorders, after all."
Sitting beside the engineer, Riker took a wistful look out the two small windows at the front of the shuttle and studied the domed power station closest to them. "I'm tempted to decloak this shuttle and fire on that tower right now," he said grimly. "All we have to do is overload the underground antimatter reactor and – like our friend Daniels hinted at – this entire planet will just disappear in the resulting explosion."
"Daniels?" Dr. Crusher repeated with a confused look on her face.
"We will explain later," said Worf from behind her as he guarded their unmoving prisoner. "There will be time for talk when we're safely on our way home."
"This isn't the time to be impulsive Commander," LaForge warned him as he continued working. "The bottom of that tower is surrounded by force fields powered by the combined output from those six domed generators. There's virtually no way you'd be able to get a shuttle's weapons through them before the ground batteries on this base return fire and shoot us out of the sky. If you try to take out the domes first to cut off the power supply, same result…"
"We'll activate the warp engines and ram our shuttle into the tower then," the Commander suggested. "Our own engine pod explosion should be enough to pierce those shields and cause a chain reaction."
"And if it doesn't, we're all dead and the Federation still has no intelligence data as to what's going on down here," Geordi countered. "I'm with you on stopping the Breen Commander, but since when do we take orders from people who claim to be from the future?"
"I know," Riker replied. "I just needed to hear someone else say it, that's all." He grinned at the man sitting next to him. "You're a wise man, Geordi – how's that sensor scan coming?"
"We've got a complete recording of the entire base including its underground reactor," reported Geordi with satisfaction. Through the shuttle's windows they could see troops pouring out of the buildings all around them. As they watched, the sky filled with emerald green disruptor fire as the ground based cannons abruptly began firing random bursts into the surrounding sky. "They've definitely detected us though… I'd say it was time we were leaving."
Riker agreed with him by firing the ship's rear thrusters and moved the shuttle rapidly away from the enemy base. The shuttle accelerated as it climbed higher into the atmosphere, while Geordi hastily deactivated the main sensor array and once again rendered them completely invisible. The Commander engaged the ship's impulse engines the instant they cleared the atmosphere with Geordi monitoring the navigation console carefully.
"Can you reverse our course in and plot us a quick way out of here through all those pockets of gravity?"
Geordi answered him by transmitting a series of coordinates to the helm and Riker studied them carefully. The shuttle banked and weaved sharply at impulse speed as it followed the projected computer trail and quickly left the planet behind. "Approaching point alpha," LaForge said cautiously. "Set engines to warp one point four with a one second burst… now."
The small Klingon vessel suddenly leaped forward through the nebula, decelerating from warp speed as quickly as it had entered it. Riker glanced at one of the smaller monitors in front of him and switched its visual to an aft view. The star system they had just vacated was once again a small dot of gold with countless ribbons of swirling crimson energy streaming from its center. The hull shuddered around them as they passed through a wave of the intense radiation but their navigational shields easily held. Again he sent the small shuttle through a series of high impulse turns, angling away from the entrance to the nebula for several long minutes before the computer prompted him to once again turn towards it.
"None of the vessels in orbit above the planet are following us," noted Riker as he took a quick peek at the sensor display in front of LaForge. "I don't think they detected us leaving."
"Approaching point bravo," was Geordi's sharp response. "Set warp factor one point two two and prepare for a three second burst… now." Once again the shuttle jumped briefly into warp, and LaForge noted that the experience was quite different without the normal star pattern to use as a visual reference. The Daq emerged from its second jump on the perimeter of the nebula right where the computer had projected it should. "There's a lot of hard radiation out here. Slow to half impulse until we clear the nebula, then you can safely take us to maximum warp."
"Acknowledged," Riker said with his gaze riveted on the helm console readouts.
In front of them the normal stars of space appeared and they roared out of the nebula past the blockade of ships guarding the border and back into Federation space. As they accelerated once more to warp speed a series of warning lights flashed on the navigation console in front of LaForge. Gritting his teeth, he glanced over to Riker and shook his head with disgust.
"They've flooded the entire area with active tachyons," he reported grimly. "They knew we were coming and lit us up with them. Our navigational shields are literally glowing and – cloaking device or not – they can see us well enough to target."
"Well then, there's no sense wasting energy trying to hide is there," decided Riker as he dropped the shuttle's cloak and squeezed another couple of warp factors out of the ship's engines. "I'm powering up our shields… stand by for battle maneuvers everyone."
Geordi reactivated their sensor systems and briefly checked the edge of the nebula. "One of the Breen battle cruisers has left the blockade and is on a pursuit course," he reported. "There is also a smaller reptilian vessel right on their tail."
"We'll never outrun the Breen ship," was Riker's next comment. "Get on the horn Geordi and holler as loud as you can with that subspace radio. I'm going to flip us around into an attack run… hopefully we'll catch them by surprise."
"Detecting tachyons, ha!" Worf said proudly from his seat in the rear cabin. "This is what my shuttle was built for."