"Ms. Masterson," Picard finally said, "we understand your hesitation. But I am rather curious. We have noticed some anomalous energy readings in the area. Might you have any idea what is causing that?"
EK interjected, "The remains of the old gravimetric spheres still give off all sorts of weird readings, even though they were destroyed around 200 years ago."
"No, it's not that." Darragh nudged him. "I get the feeling it's something else, because I know you and your kind have been sniffing around here for years. You never go in that far, at least, not until now. So what gives?"
"Your associate," Picard stated, "he isn't from here. Perhaps you aren't, either. But that doesn't matter. We are of the belief that the odd readings brought him here. It's time for you to go back, Mister, eh …"
"Hoberman," Dana interjected.
"How the hell do you know me, girlie?"
"Someone a lot like you – he and I went out for a while." Dana glanced down for a second, as a brief flash had caught her attention. It was a notification of an incoming internal message. Trying not to let it distract her, she hit a quick switch to see who was calling. It was Rick.
"Now, I can almost buy that," EK allowed, "but the rest of it? Seriously, what you're talking about is ridiculous. I want some of what you people are smoking, eh, Darragh?"
"Heh, right," she bolstered his argument, such as it was. "We are natives. I don't know where you're getting your ideas, but they're dead wrong."
"We can prove it," Picard offered. "We can meet you in a neutral locale and prove that he doesn't belong in this universe, and perhaps you don't, either, Ms. Masterson. In the meantime, kindly deliver the coordinates to the neutral location of your choice and arrange a time with our helmsman, Mr. Crusher. Picard out."
M'Belle nodded and the image of Darragh Masterson and EK Hoberman disappeared from the front view screen. Picard turned to Wesley. "Give us at least three hours, no matter where they wish to meet us."
"They've got to know we can go a lot faster than that to any part of the Expanse," Wesley pointed out.
"Tell them that navigation is difficult in the Expanse, and this is under my direct order – but don't volunteer that, unless asked. Tell me the time immediately."
"Where will you be, sir?"
"In the first available conference room we can get. Madden, MacKenzie, you're with me. M'Belle, you have command. Have Tamsin Porter and Michael Daniels join us. Oh, and Richard Daniels, Geordi LaForge and B-4, too."
"Yes, sir." The Caitian worked to do his bidding.
Dana finally answered Rick's call as she strode with Marty and Picard to the meeting. "MacKenzie here. Rick, what's going on?"
"I'm about to tell you."
"Well, you're in luck. There's a meeting, and we're both invited."
"Oh?" he asked. "Who else is coming?" Once she'd told him the guest list, he requested, "If you could, please, have the captain add Yi'imspi and Guinan to the list, and I've got a longer list of people to add – I'll send you a note on your PADD. I'll explain when we're all together. This is important."
"Got it." She ended the communicator call and said to Picard, "Rick has asked for a few more people to be added to the guest list. He says it's important."
"Very well," replied Picard.
"It'll be standing room only," Marty observed as they rushed to the meeting. He wasn't kidding.
It was one of the larger conference rooms on board, but it was still mighty crowded. "What the hell is he doing here?" snapped Yi'imspi as soon as she saw Rick. "Don't you know he's the enemy, Captain?"
Picard just answered, "I suggest that an open mind be a requirement for everyone in here." He glanced over briefly at Dana and Marty, who were standing near the back. The door opened and Tamsin and Geordi walked in and came over to them.
There were a few moments as the rest of the guests arrived. It was nearly forty people from Dana's prime timeline team, plus the known members of the Doug Hayes family, with Picard, B-4, and Guinan. As Marty waited, he glanced at his PADD, which was flashing with an incoming message. He looked at it for a second and then blanched. It was a copy of the Federation's Incest Law, with the second cousin provisions oh so helpfully highlighted. He glared at Tamsin. "You're on thin ice," he warned her.
"Not as thin as yours," she replied coolly.
"Tamsin," Geordi cautioned, "whatever it is, it's got to wait. I think this meeting is going to be a lot more important."
Once everyone was there, and all of the other seats were taken and the standees were all crowded together, Picard sat at the head of a table and just asked Rick, "Mr. Daniels, what the devil is going on?"
"I –"
"You need to come completely clean, and right now, this very instant," the captain insisted. "No holds barred."
Rick nodded. "Very well." He glanced around the room for a second before continuing. "There is a Temporal Cold War going on. There are numerous factions, all vying for supremacy. They're playing a kind of tug of war with the timeline."
"But why here, and why now?" the captain pressed. "Is there an importance to this year, or to the Enterprise-E?"
"Eh, not exactly. Let me start from the beginning, all right?" All eyes were on the professional time traveler as he spoke. "Forget the war for a moment, because the only reason they're interested in the here and the now is because of something that happened less than a week ago. So let me tell you about the prime timeline, and what happened with it, that caused this. Because, you see, and you might have even suspected this, but certain things are beginning to unravel."
"How bad is it?" asked Picard.
"It can be fixed. I just have to find the origination point. And I'm pretty sure I have."
"Do go on," encouraged the captain.
"In the prime timeline, Dana and Marty own a sports team, and she owns a ship. The ship's got interesting tech on it, and so there's an interest from outside parties. An operative is sent in, to observe the tech, maybe even to steal it."
"Section 31?" asked the captain.
"Possibly. That person either does something or is close by when it happens – although my money is on them being the culprit. There's a temporal shockwave, and that displaces all 105 people on board. Even the ship is flung out of there – wherever they were at the time. A fairly large number of those people end up temporally connected to Dana, and possibly to Marty, or even to Wesley Crusher."
"Why Wesley?" asked Marty.
"He's one of the 105 people on the ship. There are also M'Belle and some others, like Darren Shaw here, and Grosk, and Yi'imspi," Rick explained, gesturing wildly. "See, the Temporal Cold War exists anyway, but once this act occurs, it ignites an interest in this time period that hadn't existed before. Add in the radiation band cycling – I know not everyone here knows about that, but bear with me, please – and you've got a time period that's all too attractive for Temporal Cold Warriors."
"What do they do?" asked Dana.
"They go to time periods and try to jigger things one way or the other. One of the factions is in the Mirror Universe. See, I think they're the ones who brought the MU Masterson and Hoberman over. For them, pushing and possibly opening up any Augment front is helpful. Never mind that the Augments don't look too threatening right now. When you're a Temporal Cold Warrior, you're thinking of the long-term big picture."
"So that's the effect, but what's the cause?" Marty pressed.
"Dana's ship has – her and Wesley and her sports team don't know this in the prime timeline – a dark matter collector and a primitive dark matter drive. Those things allow for time travel. But this one wasn't calibrated right. Hence the shockwave."
"So whodunit?" asked Dana. "Who flipped the wrong switch? I'm guessing there are 105 suspects."
"Unless someone else beamed aboard your ship," Picard pointed out. He turned to Rick. "Do you know the answer to her inquiry?"
"I had to think about it. Here," he clicked on his PADD, and an image was projected onto a view screen in the room. It was a schematic. "This is Dana's ship, the Cookie. Anyone in Engineering ended up here, on the Enterprise-E. In fact, the radius," here he drew on his PADD's screen with a finger, and the effect was like a Telestrator, "goes up to here, I believe. Anyone outside this radius seems to have ended up elsewhere in this alternate timeline. This is why the ship's doctor, the pilot, and the Communications Officer – among others – aren't here. That narrows down our suspect list by over one-half. Now for the trickier parts. Of the remaining people, who's the most likely suspect?"
Shaw, one of the people in the room, commented, "Why are we here? Dana and Tamsin asked me some questions the other day, about whether I felt like I belonged here. I take it that's related to all this."
"It is," Dana confirmed. "Rick, there are a lot of balls in the air, and there are a good forty or so suspects, I thinking now. So I repeat – whodunit?"
"I'm getting there. Computer," he addressed his PADD, "find anyone on the list of temporally displaced individuals who ended up on the Enterprise-E and who had a bunk outside the temporal shockwave radius." After a few moments, his PADD chimed with the results. "Ah and there it is. See, the shockwave occurred in the middle of the night. Most people were in their bunks and were sleeping. If you lived on the other side of the ship, the temporal shockwaves shot you somewhere else. But it says here that Darren Shaw, Grosk, Dana, Yi'imspi, Wesley Crusher, M'Belle, and Dathan were all in the wrong place. To my mind, that means they were awake. Now, there could have been others, because if you lived on the right side of the ship, there's no reason why you couldn't also be awake. But let's start with these seven contestants." He thought for a moment. "In the prime timeline, Shaw is a guy who had washed out of the MACOs and failed at any number of regular professions. While he might have had motivation to steal the technology, I doubt he would have had a buyer. At least, no one among the prime timeline Federation's allies, and we're not talking about someone with obscure contacts. Plus Shaw was a loyal guy. I'd put him in the not guilty bucket, at least for now."
"Man," Shaw commented, "aside from not being guilty, my life in this so-called prime timeline doesn't sound so great. Mind if I stay here when you change it?" That got a bit of a chuckle from the assembly.
Rick just ignored the comment. "Now, Wesley was there because I suspect he was either on duty, or was closing up for the night. Like any other active ship, the Cookie needed regular maintenance and monitoring. His presence in the radius is completely understandable. Dana's probably there for understandable reasons as well. After all, she's the captain. While she has the means and the contacts to sell any piece of the tech, she's trying to go straight. Plus why this, and why now? That leaves us with Grosk, Yi'imspi, Dathan, and M'Belle."
"M'Belle is currently in command," Picard said. "I trust her implicitly."
"People can be quite different in the prime timeline. All four are athletes. But only one has an Engineering background. That person also studied languages, and can speak several, even without a Universal Translator to back them up. That's quite useful if you have to go to a pre-Warp civilization or the power is out or you just can't risk being caught with any sort of Federation hardware."
"Indeed," Picard remarked.
"That person," Rick continued, "also had studied these languages at a guard training program offered at Canamar Prison. That's kind of fishy because, in the prime timeline, Dana is an ex-con, and was held there. This person may have had at least part of a hand in observing her, or at least there's the connection. And so the people who hired this person had bolstered confidence in him or her."
"How very interesting," Dana interjected.
"That person," Rick added, "is playing both sides against the middle, and is engaging in dealings with the Mirror Universe. I believe Section 31 hired this person." He glanced at his PADD. "And it looks like a hack and a decryption command I made have delivered preliminary findings. I can tell everyone what it says. Or would you care to do the honors, Yi'imspi?"