Chapter Title: That Which Shapes our Future

Chapter Synapses: An anomaly sends a Hyperion runabout with Collins, Sen, VonBach, and West back in time to the prime of the Dominion War, and Collins's is faced with a choice; to warn the Valiant and alter the future, or to let time flow as it had before.

Written by: Seraph Koji

"And the lecture Dr. Langford gave on contemporary warp field theory was amazingly good. I'm sure Chief Phran would have enjoyed it." Collins rattled on. She, Commander VonBach, Counselor West, and Doctor Sen were returning from a conference in the Ceti Alpha system.

"The lecture on modern hand weaponry was interesting. I got some replicator patterns and am going to train our security staff in some top of the line weapons." VonBach glanced over a few data padds.

Sen stared out the viewer, "Commander Collins, how was the seminar on modern command styles? I hear Captain Starwind came up."

"It was rather dull, actually. But yes, they mentioned Captain Starwind. Specifically dealing with the Tenkian First Contact a few months ago." Collins nodded.

"Osaka to Hyperion, how is everything?" West smiled, opening a comm. channel.

"We're ready for you to come home, runabout Osaka. How was the conference?" Starwind's vice replied.

"Wonderful, sir. You would have enjoyed it." Collins reported, "But we're glad to communicate with you again. Our E.T.A. is 1500 hours."

"Can't wait." Starwind replied, "Hyperion out."

A bleeping sound came from Sen's console, "A gravimetric distortion off our port nacelle."

"Adjusting course to compensate." Collins announced over the continuing bleeping.

"No effect." Sen called.

"Ma'am…" VonBach stared off the port viewer. Outside the shuttle was a large swirling anomaly moving closer.

"Osaka to Hyperion, mayday!" West made a frantic call as the anomaly consumed the runabout. The vessel shook wildly for a moment or two and returned to normal space.

"Report." Collins ordered.

"Judging from star positions, we have barely moved." Sen reported.

"Osaka to Hyperion, come in." West called a few times, "Nothing." She finally sighed.

"Long-range sensors?" Collins asked.

"Reading a debris field about 100,000 kilometers along our present course. Well short of the Hyperion's position, but the weapons' signatures are Federation and Jem'Hadar." VonBach reported.

"Nearest Starfleet vessel?" Collins inquired.

VonBach shot Collins a glance, "Homesick, Commander?"

A Defiant-class ship appeared on the viewer. "USS Valiant. Reported M.I.A. shortly before the Dominion War. Contact was lost as she got trapped behind enemy lines. She was a ship operated by Red Squad cadets. Upon losing her small commissioned officer staff, Cadet Waters took command and took a mission sent to his late C.O.. The Valiant took on two passengers bound for Feranginar, Ensign Nog and Jake Sisko. Valiant was then lost upon encountering a Jem'Hadar Heavy Battlecruser. Only Jake Sisko, Ensign Nog, and Chief Petty Officer Dorian Collins survived." Collins briefed the others, "We can agree, given the fact that I am a crew member of this ship, contact must not be made if avoidable."

"So we are in the heat of a war that ended four years ago?" West asked.

"More the early stages of the war." Collins answered, "We need to find a way to get back. Options."

"Locate on a small, out-of-the-way planet, and send ourselves a warning, detour plans." Sen suggested.

West offered an alternate plan, "Re-create the anomaly, and go back through."

"We might not be able to control when we end up." Sen countered.

"Better than just sitting here!" West snapped at him.

"Save Valiant." Collins suggested, not stopping to think about reproductions on the timeline.

"Commander, that would do some serious damage to the timeline. Warning Valiant about the situation coming up could in fact lead to your death in the incident." West pointed out.

"We could take command of Valiant, explain our situation, and prevent any harm to the vessel." VonBach suggested, "And with our knowledge of weaponry of the future and future threats, we can minimize loss of life on the Federation side."

"No." Sen replied.

"What of the Temporal Prime Directive?" West asked, "Shoot it to hell?" She paused, "Commander Collins, a little temporal mechanics lesson, please."

She sighed, "Theory one: Our future is contingent to this one. In which case, the choices we make here have already happened. If this were true, and we chose to save Valiant, Valiant would have been saved." Collins paused, "Theory two: Multiple possible futures. An action we perform creates a divergent reality."

"In which, Destiny may stay stuck in the alternate universe, or Collins might die, or the Federation might lose the war." West added.

"Destiny might stay stuck where?" Collins and Sen asked.

"So we do nothing?" VonBach asked.

"Except go to a nice, quiet, planet and prepare to undo this series of events." Sen nodded.

VonBach quickly became confused again, "If we prevent our falling back in time, how would we warn ourselves."

"A temporal paradox." West shrugged, "An event happens with no event to trigger it."

Collins nodded, "Effect with no cause."

Sen actually answered the question the only way it could be answered, "It is fact without logic. It will work, even if logically it shouldn't. Drives Vulcans crazy."

"I have a planet for you, Sen." Collins reported.

Night fell on the planet shortly after landing, and much of the crew slept in the aft compartments, while Collins sat, staring down at the communications relay, "Theory One, Dorian…" In a few keystrokes, a recording began, "Hello. Seeing me, wearing this uniform of a Commander, it might seem a little odd. Let me explain. I am you. I'm you a while from now, four years after the war is over. This is a message I got when I was a Chief Petty Officer aboard Valiant, and so I am sending it to you. Why this always works is a mystery of temporal mechanics, so take it for that and don't worry about how I can tell you this. In a short while, Captain Waters will save an Ferangi ensign and a Terran civilian. The civilian is Ben Sisko's boy. Once that happens, time is on the clock. Look, the Captain is taking pep pills and is about to send you into the belly of the beast, hear? And you won't believe me until everyone else is dead, I know. I didn't either. But you have to live, here me? And stay in Starfleet, because one day a starship named Hyperion will offer you First Officer, and you'll take it. And you may question why, but believe me, you'll regret it if you don't." Collins paused, "Dorian, live as well as I know you will, and you'll be alright." She paused, "And take up painting, you'll like it more than you think, and so will Dad, and so will Vi-"

"Commander?" West called from the adjacent room.

"Gotta go. Dorian out." Collins quickly transmitted the message.

West entered, "What are you up to?"

"A log entry." Collins lied.

Across space, a cadet Collins sat at her terminal in the dead of the night, watching herself on the incoming message, "Stupid pranksters. Probably some holodeck program."

"…And you won't believe me until everyone else is dead, I know. I didn't either. But you have to live, here me?" the image of her in a uniform of a Commander said.

Petty officer Collins sighed and decided to humor the rest of the recording.

"Dorian, live as well as I know you will, and you'll be alright." She paused, "And take up painting, you'll like it more than you think, and so will Dad, and so will

Vi-"

"Commander?" West called from the adjacent room.

"Gotta go. Dorian out." The image vanished.

"Dad and who?" Collins was rather puzzled.

"Bridge to Chief Collins, we're taking on strays, report to Transporter Bay Three." Waters' voice rang from her comm. badge.

Across space the Commander Collins analyzed Valliant from afar. She soon encountered a large Jem'Hadar vessel, and for the second time in her life, she watched her first ship burst into a million or so pieces. Tears swelled in her eyes as she saw all the events again, "Captain Waters, rest in peace." She watched the single escape pod float away from the debris field that was the Valiant.

West placed a hand on Collins' shoulder, "There was nothing you could do, here or there."

These were a counselor's words. Ones Collins heard in similar terms from dozens of people since. Still, the sight of the Valiant bursting into pieces like that, the thought of all those lives claimed by the tragedy of the USS Valiant… somehow West's words felt empty.

Aboard the runabout, time passed. Days became weeks, weeks became years… Repairs to the Osaka went on with great impairment, as none aboard was a real 'engineer' so to speak, but time passed.

The runabout had become a sort of home for the four. The years had been hard, claiming the life of Lieutenant West, much to the dismay of Sen and VonBach. Collins had felt dejected for some time, being a rather shut-in person since West's death. It was also true that VonBach's days were numbered. He had contracted an illness which he concealed, but could feel consuming him. Truly, the only one still in remotely sound mind and body was the physician, though none were willing to give themselves or one another up.

"Computer, time to target stardate?" VonBach, now sporting a beard after over half a decade on the planet's surface, coughed. His illness was wreaking havoc on him. Time did pass, but the ability to use the computer was limited, to conserve energy, so just how much time was a prudent question.

"Four hours, ten minutes."

VonBach's weary eyes drew wide, "Commander." He slowly stood up, "Commander!" He bolted for her quartering in the aft compartment, chiming on the door.

Collins had not said much more than a stray syllable in a year. She had lost her ship, again, her confidante, her Captain (to the flow of time), and her entire universe to this stupid accident. She wondered what she had left in her life, if anything at all. In this depression, she refused to acknowledge VonBach's urgent chiming.

"Ma'am, it's the day. Time to transmit. If we don't do it now, we never will." VonBach urged.

Collins rose to her feet, "We never received that message, Joseph."

"What?"

"We never received a warning. If we were supposed to transmit one, wouldn't we have received one? The cycle must have to perpetuate. So we have to go through this, to let West die again, to let Valliant go up in flames again, to lose Hyperion to the future again… it is a cycle. We can't eliminate cause and still have effect."

"Commander?"

"Damn you, Joseph! I stopped being 'Commander' or 'ma'am' a hell of a long time ago!" Collins snapped, yelling at him through the wall, "I'm just Dorian now, you understand? This uniform…" She threw her comm. badge at the door, "This uniform is all I have left of the ideology of Starfleet. That golden, shining, ideal. Damn it all to hell!"

Having followed VonBach, and overheard the conversation, Sen had an idea, "Comm- Dorian, do you remember a lecture on modern warp field theory given by a Francis Langford at the Ceti Alpha Conference? I had given thought to these doubts you have… I have an idea."

On another Osaka, the events began to repeat themselves. "And the lecture Dr. Langford gave on contemporary warp field theory was amazingly good. I'm sure Chief Phran would have enjoyed it." Collins rattled on.

"The lecture on modern hand weaponry was interesting. I got some replicator patterns and am going to train our security staff in some top of the line weapons." VonBach glanced over a few data padds.

Sen stared out the viewer, "Commander Collins, how was the seminar on modern command styles? I hear Captain Starwind came up."

"It was rather dull, actually. But yes, they mentioned Captain Starwind. Specifically dealing with the Tenkian First Contact a few months ago." Collins nodded.

"Receiving a transmission." An image of a disheveled VonBach, Sen, and Collins in the exact same runabout appeared on screen, "Osaka to Osaka, please come in, we have a very important course correction for you." The on-screen Collins said, "Transmitting data now…"

"Who are you?" West asked.

"Amy, you have no idea how good it is to see you again." The on-screen Collins replied simply, "Don't screw this up, or you'll be where we are."

"Implementing course correction and deploying beacon into the given coordinates." Collins, the not-so-scruffy one, reported.

"Amy, Asim, Joseph, Dorian…" The on-screen Collins closed her eyes and began to tear up slightly, "Godspeed." The on-screen image blinked back to the vastness of space.

"Transmission cut. Unable to trace source." West reported.

"The beacon is gone, Commander." Sen reported.

Aboard Hyperion, Collins discovered a log entry, buried amongst other transmitted materials.

"Dorian, if you are watching this, we were successful." Rattled off the unkempt version of herself, "The vortex that took your beacon. Your beacon is using a modified warp field written into the programming I gave you to conceal itself. It will transmit twice and then self-destruct. This message and the one back on Valiant. As for what happened… we were flung back in time with that dumb anomaly, and spent the better part of a decade on an out-of-the-way world, waiting to stop what happened. West died. VonBach is ill, though he wont admit it… and you? So caught up in the second loss of Valiant, the lost of your close friend, and being cursed to not be there, on Hyperion, with him… well you don't talk for a year, more than a sentence here or there… honestly, I think about how my death on this rock will be a welcome reprieve from life here. But if I'm successful, there is no life here, its all erased…. Just do me one favor, Dorian… take care of Vic. And don't live the rest of your life with that regret over your head. I know how that can be." She paused, "Oh, and if there is one thing I learned spending the last few years knee-deep in temporal mechanics, its that you'd be better off not trying to understand. You wont." She sighed, "Dorian Collins out."