[In case you are wondering: Theresa couldn't process all the information within the short time of the last chapter so her character hasn't changed yet so much...]

Chapter 10

"Is it your first time in Ten Forward? I haven't seen you before," the barkeeper asked when a new Lieutenant Commander entered the bar of the spaceship USS Enterprise D.

"Yes. I've been ordered to the ship as new tactical and navigation officer about a week ago and entered when we were docked at Deep Space Nine," she answered. "I'm Lieutenant Commander Theresa Riddle."

"Well, nice to meet you Commander Riddle. I'm Guinan."

"When I'm not on duty, I really prefer 'Theresa'...is it true that you're an El Aurean?" she asked while Guinan poured some Red Leaf Tea into a cup and gave it to her.

"Yes, I am. And before you're going to ask, I'm more than just a few hundred years old."

"Wow, this is really cool," the Lieutenant said and wanted to add something, when suddenly the Captain's voice interrupted through the main communication unit, "all Senior Officers to the Bridge, please".

"On screen," Captain Picard ordered.

The big screen on the bridge of the Enterprise now showed the planet which the ship was orbiting.

"Data?" he asked his helm officer, who was the only android of his kind working for Starfleet.

"The planet has never before been registered. The map of this system does not seem to contain this planet. It also does not orbit around a sun or another heavy phenomena."

"You don't want to tell me it appeared out of nothing?"

"No, sir. But there are no life signs and the planet itself seems abandoned and dead. But the computer recognizes some monuments and cities on the surface, indicating that once a civilization has lived here."

"Can the computer tell what kind of civilization has lived there?" Commander Riker, First Officer, asked.

"No, sir. It is unknown to us."

"Great. Number One, you'll command an away team. You'll examine the biggest city and try to gather as much information as possible about the planet and the civilizations itself. And of course, what has happened to them," Picard ordered and Riker nodded. He pointed at the ship's Counsellor Deanna Troi and Tactical Officer Lieutenant Commander Riddle who left with him into the turbo lift.

Until they arrived at Transporter room 3, he had ordered two other officers and Doctor Crusher with him. Together they entered and Commander Riker checked the coordinates with Transporter Chief O'Brien. Then they walked onto the platform and were beamed down onto the planet's surface.

It was dark but they seemed to be in some kind of huge building. "It looks like a government complex. The corridors are huge and so are the rooms," Troi mentioned when she looked into some halls.

"Everything seems to be intact. But all life is gone," Data explained and they started walking around.

"I think this was the assembly hall," Crusher said and walked into a very huge room. "I don't remember it being so big from the scans."

The room indeed was extremely big and they had entered onto a stage from where they could look at the many platforms in different heights. "I am reading a very high energy pattern, Commander," Data mentioned and scanned the area with his Tricorder.

"I think I know why," Lieutenant Commander Riddle said. Surprised, all the other officers turned around and saw what was happening. Her hands were glowing golden and so was her head.

"What the hell is happening?" Riker shouted.

"She seems to be caged into an enormous energy fluctuation and her body seems to adapt and change to it," Data said looking at his Tricorder.

"What's happening to me?" Riddle asked and looked at them confused and scared.

"That's impossible," Dr. Crusher mentioned while looking at her medical Tricorder. "Her DNA is being rewritten. As if someone extracted all human cells from her and transformed them into something unknown. It looks as if she was a yet to us unknown species."

Suddenly, the Lieutenant Commander seemed to explode. Golden energy sparks were flowing into all directions and the whole hall seemed to be filled by bright light. These golden patterns and lines were flowing through all over the big room and her whole body seemed to be spun around by yellow-orange lines that whirled around herself.

Troi could see her mouth opening and due to her telepathic half – which was inherited as she was half human, half Betazoid – she heard her scream silently while her physical appearance started to change. Then, all of sudden, the whole spectacle was gone and Lieutenant Commander Riddle fell down to her knees. Slowly, she stood up and looked at her hands. She turned around and touched her face and her hair. She had completely changed what she looked like and confused, she stumbled towards the other officers.

"Commander Riddle?" Counsellor Troi asked and touched her arm.

"Too much information," she only muttered and stared on the floor.

"It looks as if billions of neurons suddenly start to exist and form new pathways in her brain. She's getting more and more information but she cannot process them fast enough. She must have a terrible headache," Doctor Crusher said while she continued scanning the officer with her medical Tricorder.

"We should bring her to sickbay. We should all return to the ship until we know what happened down here," Commander Riker decided and hailed the transporter room so that Chief O'Brien beamed them back up.

"What happened?" Captain Picard wanted to know when he entered the medical station on the Enterprise.

"We were entering a big assembly hall in the planet's biggest city's building complex. When she followed, her body began to glow golden and her physical appearance changed. Since then, she could only mutter a few words," First Officer Riker explained while Doctor Crusher and her assistant Ensign Ogawa still examined her body.

"She's under immense stress. Whatever happened to her, rewrote her DNA and formed her into a new species, one that we have never encountered before," the Crusher explained. "Look at these scans. Her brain is growing and out of the size of her head, but still it stays inside with new problems. Pathways of neurones are building and giving her new information. She can't process them fast enough and therefore she can hardly react to her environment. And her body stays a mystery as well." She walked over to another screen at the wall and showed the body scan she had done three minutes ago.

"Are there two hearts?" Picard asked surprised.

"Yes, there are. Her whole nervous and blood systems are dual, leading to two hearts that are beating in a regular, but alien frequency. I would say that she has been converted into another species. But the fact that this is happening so easily, makes me think that she is only changing back."

"You mean, she has always been of this species and was turned human for whatever reason?" Picard wanted to know.

Doctor Crusher nodded. "The planet has been deserted. Probably it has been destroyed by a natural catastrophe and all its inhabitants had to flee. Perhaps they had enemies and needed to hide."

"These are only speculations," Picard said but suddenly Officer Riddle muttered something.

"What has she said?" Doctor Crusher asked Nurse Ogawa when she walked back to them.

"I don't know. I think it was the word 'war'."

"Time war," Riddle murmured and suddenly she opened her eyes. They weren't blue as before but the pupils were jet-black. Her skin seemed paler than before and beside the fact that her face had changed, she now had long, curly, black hair. Slowly, she sat up and looked at the other Officers.

"Lieutenant Commander Riddle, can you tell us what happened to you?" Picard said to her.

"My whole life was a lie. I'm not human, my race is no member of the United Federation of Planets. I was born on Gallifrey during the Time War," she said with a monotonous voice. She hadn't fully recovered yet and could hardly think straight. There was too much she was learning right now, about the war, about Gallifrey's history, about her lives.

"Gallifrey, the planet you have just visited. It was destroyed in a war. Against whom have you fought and where are the others of your species? And what is your name?"

He heard the door opening and Guinan entered sickbay. She was more than just a barkeeper to the Captain and had an incredible knowledge of the history of this Quadrant.

"My people are called the Timelords. We have fought against other species, such as the Daleks," Riddle answered.

"And you have slaughtered most of them," the El Aurean said and came closer.

"Guinan!" Picard said.

"Oh, but it's right, isn't it? The Timelords were so overwhelmed by the power they have reached that they had entered a war with the most feared race in the whole universe. No sane man would challenge the Daleks."

"It wasn't my fault. I wasn't born when the war started," Riddle answered.

"I heard that all Timelords died in the war. Nobody survived, not even a Dalek."

"No Timelord but The Doctor. He had ended the war. He had sacrificed his whole race in order to bring peace. But now the fall of Gallifrey is over. The planet shall rise again."

"If I understand this correctly, both races who fought the war were extinct. But the Timelords have found a way to bring back themselves, and you are the clue to that," Picard intervened, but Guinan answered immediately, "who are you, The Soldier, or The Warrior? You shouldn't even exist."

"I'm The Soldier. And I have served my race with all I could do."

"You have slaughtered the Daleks, even if it meant sacrificing some of your own. Captain, she is a genetically engineered Timelord. They have enhanced her in order to end the war but she was then punished when they realized what kind of monster they have created. She and her sister would kill everyone who is an enemy of the Timelords...and they are not few."

"How were you enhanced?" the Captain asked Riddle. He stayed calm although Guinan was upset. She had probably heard or even lived at the times of the war, but Captain Picard needed to settle everything with knowing every fact and the story from both sides.

"I was given the power of the Heart of a TARDIS. A TARDIS is a very powerful being and I have nearly infinite energy which I can produce. I'm not limited to time and space, not even to the timeline."

"Which is wrong. It's too much power for a single person. She could enter your timeline, Captain, and kill you as a baby. She could destroy the whole universe with such actions," Guinan arguemented.

"But I haven't."

"You haven't yet. You only retrieved your memory because of one reason: You should bring back Gallifrey."

"You could bring back whole planets?" Nurse Ogawa said surprised.

Riddle nodded. "Guinan is right, I should bring back my planet with all its people. Those who created me but then despised me. After all, I have only become what they wanted me to be. I have never done anything wrong, I only did as ordered, that is what I was created for. And then they charged me and found me guilty. They splintered me through time and space and sent me to Earth to be reborn and suffer over and over again."

"The Time War," Guinan then started to explain to the Captain, "was time-locked. Which means that nothing could ever enter or interfere with what has happened there. One Dalek once saw the Time War and it became insane. When The Soldier brings back Gallifrey, it would rip apart the whole space-time continuum."

"And how can we prevent this?"

"We cannot. We can only stop it," the El Aurean said desperately. It wasn't the first time she had warned Picard about enemies. She had explained him who the Borg were, one of the deadliest race the United Federation of Planets have ever encountered, cyber-drones who built a collective, shared every thought and were controlled by one person. Then there was Q, a nearly almighty being who popped up now and then to test mankind or play games with Picard and his crew.

"We can't," The Soldier said. She sighed, and explained, "there must have been a space-time disruption before. The planet of Gallifrey was destroyed but it suddenly reappeared right here, actually in mid-space. But it is dead. Which means that no one deliberately tried to restore it. One of the 'I's must have discovered who she was and gained all the power of a TARDIS.

"Of course, she couldn't control it at first and Gallifrey returned unintentionally. Then, we explored it and my appearance in the main assembly room triggered my regeneration. I became a Timelord with all my memories. I bet that the high council of Gallifrey had planned that this would happen one day. Now, that I know everything about the universe, Gallifrey is already rising again. I didn't control it but as soon as I gained my powers back, those powers were directed into the Time War to make Gallifrey survive."

"You mean, you didn't do it intentionally but only the fact that you found out who you were brought your planet back to life?" Crusher asked.

Riddle nodded. "The Timelords were more powerful than you could imagine. But why should I rescue any of them? After all, they created me for only one purpose, murder, and then find me guilty for murdering the enemy – and their people. When they decided about my eternal punishment, it felt as if they killed me and I do not want them back under any circumstances. The universe is at balance right now and their return would have fatal consequences. Even if the space-time would survive this huge paradox, other races would follow...and the Daleks would return as well..."

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