200 years in the future
"The two would spend the next 85 years taking down Section 31, sometimes winning battles, other times losing battles, they in their journals called it one step forward two steps back. Their struggles were long and hard, and not without losses, either themselves being thought lost a few more times or them losing members of both crews to retirement, age, and at least once sabotage by Section 31 but they never gave up, there was even one time that the whole crew of the Enterprise was thought dead, though not because of Section 31, but that was determined after the fact...yes Cadet?"
"If they knew so much how come it took them so long to take down Section 31, and how do we know that the group truly no longer exists?"
"As to your first question the reason it took so long to take down in the first place is that they needed hard evidence and that took time to gather because there were times that they had the evidence they needed to finally take the group down only to lose part of the evidence due to Section 31, then there was the fact that it also took time to gather all the members of Section 31 for trial, as for knowing if Section 31 is still gone today that I can't be sure about but all of the leaders had been arrested, charged and imprisoned so it's very unlikely that they still exist
"What happened to them afterwords?"
"According to our records Odo died 100 years ago while Admiral Data died about 40 years ago, as for how they died Odo would die on Earth saving the President of the Federation from a group of terrorists who refused to acknowledge the change in the Dominion even after such a long term peace agreement with them and didn't want their admittance into the Federation, they were to sign the papers that day, due to that event the Dominion would delay entrance into the Federation for two years, one year spent mourning the loss of Odo and the next year simply spending time on Federation planets proving just how much they had changed over the years and that they were worthy to be part of the Federation. Admiral Data would die on a mission to bring peace to warring factions that would only negotiate with the highest authority of Starfleet and Admiral Data was chosen, the peace between the factions gained not just through Admiral Data bringing them together in a process but also through the two factions being forced to fight the Borg who had survived the loss of their Queen so many years before by the hands of the crew of Voyager who had spent seven years getting home from the Delta Quadrant, a journey that should have rightfully taken over 70 years. Admiral Data refused to be assimilated and forced two officers to shoot him seven times, six times just to bring him and the Borg that had captured him down and the seventh was a direct shot into the Admirals head where his processing unit was stored"
"So there may be a chance that Section 31 has returned"
"It may have, but considering just how careful the Federation is regarding the possible return of Section 31 it isn't very likely"
"I see, could we have the story about the whole crew of the Enterprise being thought dead?"
"Sure, it was four years after Odo's remarkable return and everyone thought it would just be a routine mission mapping a new star cluster that had the potential to go supernova, as they were the nearest vessel they were the one's sent to observe the phenomenon and part of the mission was indeed to see if it would go supernova. According to Captain Picard's logs what happened on the mission was..."
Four year after Odo's return
Odo and Data were both on the bridge, Odo covering for the Security chief due to a combination of a nasty cold, an unknown virus keeping her in isolation and a broken bone while Data was simply at his usual station on the bridge manning helm
"Mr. Data how much longer until we reach the designated area?"
"About two hours sir"
"Right, Odo we're going into an area that we haven't really been in before so I want you read to go to red alert on my order, also make sure that photon torpedoes and phasers are ready should they be needed"
"Yes sir"
The group drops out of warp two hours later and is immediately attacked by Romulans
"Odo, call for backup immediately!, helm evasive maneuvers!"
The Enterprise lasts for a good three hours but by the time the USS London, which was the closest vessel to the area arrived all that was left was the apparent debris of the Enterprise and no sign of escape pods leaving either
"Johnson, contact Starfleet Command priority one, I'll take it in my ready room"
"Aye sir"
The Captain goes to his ready room and sees the Admiral available to talk to him on screen
"Admiral Janeway I have bad news to report"
"What is it?"
"The Enterprise...is lost with all hands, we weren't able to get here in time"
(Sighs) "I understand, what about the Romulans?"
"It appears that they've left already"
"Understood, get back here immediately for further debrief, and hopefully..."
"Hopefully be there in time for the memorial"
"Exactly"
"I'll get back to Earth at all possible speed"
"Understood Janeway out"
The Captain leaves the ready room and it's obvious that they're waiting for orders
"Helm, take us back to Earth maximum warp"
"Maximum warp aye sir"
And so the London leaves the place where they believe lives have been lost, meanwhile the Enterprise had not been lost in battle, they had also not been sent to an alternate universe or the past instead they were in a very...unique position
"What happened Data?"
"It would appear sir that we are in what I can only call a time bubble"
"What does that mean?"
"Time is not moving for us, at the moment before we would have completely lost shields and thus been destroyed by the Romulans we were instead frozen in time, unlike when we were caught in a time loop this time it is just us"
"Okay, let's try and figure out a way to escape"
"Yes sir"
They didn't know it at the time but the Enterprise would spend the next three and a half months doing what they could to escape from the time bubble, DS9 had gone into deep mourning when they found out they had lost two officers at once, and they were just finally truly healing from the three year period they had believed Odo to be dead, Bashir was a little concerned about Section 31 but he also knew better than to take any sort of actions on his own until he could figure out a safe way of continuing their work solo. But finally the Enterprise did manage to escape from their prison
"Okay, now Odo try and find a time beacon and get our systems back in sync, we also have to assume that someone else completed our mission so we're going to contact Command and see where they want us instead"
"Captain, it appears that we've been frozen in time for three and a half months"
"Three and a half months...that means..."
"That means that we're most likely considered dead Captain"
"Indeed number one, hm...this is a problem"
"Sir, what about Dominion war protocols?"
"Sorry Ensign Keeler but I'm afraid those protocols don't apply to us?"
"Because of the Romulans sir?"
"Exactly, there's a possibility that the ship sent to help us detected debris of the Enterprise"
"Oh"
"Exactly...Odo contact Command, in the meantime, get us back into Federation space"
"And if we come across another Federation vessel?"
"We surrender to them if so requested"
"Understood sir"
"First we need to fix our comms, coming out of that bubble did some serious damage"
"Understood LaForge
Three days into returning into Federation space the Enterprise, who was going basically at full impulse power was indeed stopped by a vessel, fortunately Geordi had managed to fix the comms just hours beforehand
"Sir, we've been given orders to surrender"
"Who's giving the order?"
"The USS Sarek"
"Tell them that we surrender, send our registration code as well if they haven't scanned for that"
"Yes sir"
As soon as the message was sent they were boarded by several officers
"Hello gentleman how can I help you?"
"You can start by no longer pretending to be a dead ship and it's crew"
"Well...we aren't faking our identities, I'm Captain Picard of the USS Enterprise and everyone on the bridge is part of my crew"
"Lies..."
"Wait...we have a means of proving that it's them"
"Oh...him I almost forgot about that, Locksley to Sarek"
"Sarek here go ahead"
"Could you send over the delegate? I think you might also want to send over Lt. Porka as well"
As soon as the two were beamed over it was obvious that one person was a Vulcan the other person wasn't so obvious but Deanna spoke up immediately
"Captain...he's a Betazoid"
"Well, this is surprising you're also Betazoid"
"Half Betazoid, I assume you have already read my thoughts?"
"No, just everyone's emotions, T'Pak is to be the thought reader"
T'Pak does a mind meld with Picard, though he did get permission first and quickly withdrew from his mind
"It is indeed Captain Picard, and these are indeed the rest of the crew of the Enterprise"
"Get me Starfleet Command, Captain you have a lot of explaining to do"
"I know, but the quickest explanation is that we were trapped in a time bubble where time passed around us but we were stuck"
"You'll have to go deeper than that because all reports from the USS London was that you were destroyed in that fight against the Romulans"
"Yes, this is going to take some explaining indeed"
"A lot of paperwork too, Odo, Data you two are going to be dealing with a lot of emotional people again"
"Indeed"
And so eventually Picard managed to debrief Starfleet Commanding and all the paperwork to declare them alive dealt with, Command had also mentioned that they had yet to build another ship for the name Enterprise but that was because they needed to rush construction on the new Lexington due to not only Enterprise being lost but because the Dominion had requested the ship as part of a special program and unfortunately the ship had been damaged beyond repair recently which had been explained to the Dominion, but they insisted that they would wait for the new Lexington before going forward with the program. And once they returned to DS9 Odo and Data did indeed have emotional officers to deal with, unfortunately both also knew that being thought dead but not was always a risk until Section 31 went down but it was what it was, as for them being involved in the time bubble it turned out that they weren't the ones responsible, instead it was almost exactly like the aliens from before that had taken the shape of Romulans one time, the difference was it was a different group with similar needs plus Q played a part in saving the Enterprise as well, he unfortunately just couldn't get them unstuck as he had wanted to due to the other members of the Continuum refusing his request to bring the Enterprise home as planned because the Enterprise had actually needed to be caught in the time bubble as it saved them and the Federation due to an engine flaw that had been thought fixed but it turned out that over time the flaw returned and the crew of the Enterprise needed time to fix the flaw permanently while at the same time getting free for future generations who might be trapped in a time bubble situation
Present
"After that day a new policy was put into place regarding presumed destroyed vessels and that policy is still in use today"
"You said that the two were thought dead a few times, was some of those periods deliberate?"
"That we're not sure of, what we do know is that was the only time they and the entire crew that they were serving with was presumed dead, eventually both Admiral Data and Constable Odo would transfer to a different ship but that was only after Section 31 was taken down because of the risks beforehand"
"Wow, they were amazing people then"
"Indeed they were, indeed they were"
What no one knew was that Data and Odo were in fact alive and well, that their apparent deaths were complete fiction, not because of the fact that them still being alive was impossible because everyone had come to accept that Odo's people and Data as an android could live for a very, very long time but because them being alive had been deemed dangerous at the time and so they were "killed" for their own safety, though Data had almost been killed for real during that Borg incident he hadn't been. The Federation as a whole also didn't know that Section 31 did exist once more, but it was run under Odo and Data and the group wasn't so secretive anymore, they also weren't known as Section 31 anymore, instead they were known as the United Federation Specialized Emergency Task force The members of the Task force were regular Starfleet officers most of the time, but all Captain's were aware that if a major planetary disaster, a terrorist threat on a planet, or potential Borg sighting happened then depending on where their ship was and the exact situation happening the Captain's would either temporarily lose members of their crew or they would be the first ones on the scene but that a lower ranking officer would be in charge of the crew and that more people in the group was coming as backup, they just had to hold out if it was the Borg. No one knew that Data and Odo were in charge of the Task force, not even the members of said Task force, whenever they received their orders it was always either through text or their voices and features were disguised and they went by the code names Task force 1 and 2 while the rest of the group was known by either numbers, or if their mission wasn't quite so secretive their last names, but group to group conversation was done the same way and always with their numbers, this was a security measure put into place when the two were first approached with that idea shortly after they had taken down Section 31, not so much as a means of deliberately being secretive but as a means of making sure that the members would never be hunted down for their work by terrorist organizations that would want to take them, and also their ships if at all possible down. All members were handpicked by Odo and Data, including any potential future successors to their roles through observation of Cadets (very few Cadets were handpicked straight out of the Academy for the Task force but it had been known to happen a time or two) and service records, and if they passed the initial tests they were given special private testing to see if they would receive an invitation to the Task force which also meant getting specialized training, the specialized testing was always done in person by either Data or Odo, or sometimes both but they would always be disguised. If the officer passed the test, accepted the offer and successfully completed the extra training then when the officer either returned to their posting or was sent to new posting the only noticeable uniform change that signified their status as members of the Task force was a very subtle change to their commbadges (the changes were necessary for long distance communication with either a ship further out or to Task force 1 or 2) and their actual uniform would also have brown and gold stripping down the arms, the legs and their waist that was about an inch wide so that the stripes were visible but at the same time not so blatantly obvious that you could point them out as completely different. They were also observing the class due to that particular student that had asked about them and Section 31
"Well Data what do you think?"
"We shall see, they are still two years away from being close to graduating"
"You know I hate it when you go all formal on me, you've been able to use contractions for the past 150 years"
"It is...habit for me to speak like this"
"I know but still that has almost given you away a few times"
"I know, I'm still working on it but..."
"Like you said habit"
"Shall we get going?"
"Indeed, we have that candidate to test today in two hours and I was thinking of something new to use as a test after that recent incident on Bajor"
"Right I remember that incident, that's a good thing to test how about..."
The two continue walking and talking in the hallways knowing how to keep their conversation private while in public through code words worked out long ago. Two years later the Cadet they wanted for the group would be given the test but would not pass, the first time around, each candidate was given three chances if they accepted the offer and either five different offers or only two offers if after the second time the candidate stated that they didn't feel like they wanted to join the Task force because it didn't meet up with their goals for their careers. And so the group would continue for many generations, with Odo and Data eventually needing to let their chosen successors know that they were to now be known as Task force 1 and 2, also revealing the truth about who they really were before truly dying, and that tradition would continue throughout the history of the Task force which would last beyond the United Federation of Planets for over 80 years after the United Federation of Planets became the Galactic Alliance and the only reason the Task force ended 85 years after the formation of the Galactic Alliance was because all officers of the former Starfleet but now known as Galactic Guardians were trained to the level of the Task force, thus making the Task force obsolete, but their history was remembered and shared all over the Alliance, including the real identities of the founding members, the original Task force 1 and 2, a member of the species known as the Founders and an Android that was sentient and given all the rights and privileges of other Federation and eventually Galactic Alliance members that were born into either group