"ETH?" ensign ch'Kurn asked the other two people on the bridge at the moment. Ordinarily he was a security officer, but there wasn't much need for that role at the moment and so he was filling in at ops while the senior staff had their meeting in the conference room.

Lieutenant Sila looked to the Andorian chan a moment, one eyebrow raised in an almost Vulcan-like manner. "Emergency Temporal Hologram," she said. "Like the EMH, but, y'know, with temporal emergencies rather than medical."

"Never heard of it," ch'Kurn said. "Is it new?"

Sila nodded as she turned back to the communications station. The panels were cracked open, and she was in the process of replacing the bio-neural gel pack behind there, an operation that was a bit like a combination of surgery and engineering but for which she had received training, at least for the comms station – which was good, because it turned out that some genius at the Corps of Engineers had tied the long-range sensors into Hydra's communications for reasons that probably made sense to them but made no sense to Sila. "Just had it installed last week when shore leave started," she continued to ch'Kurn. "Hydra was one of the first ships in the fleet to get one installed…I think Starfleet Command was trying to tell us something." She glanced out the viewscreen, as though she could see how far back in time they had gone. "Didn't work."

"But is time travel really that common – "

"It is for us," ensign Vanoni, over at the helm, noted. "Each time every single member of the crew got a visit from the Department of Temporal Investigations and glared at like we'd kicked their cats. And that was with all those times being under orders…can't even imagine what they'll do this time – "

"Ha! Got it," Sila exclaimed, as the bio-neural pack took on a blue glow and dormant systems around her began to come to life. She made sure everything was secure, then replaced the panels, stood, and went over to sciences. "Okay, if I did everything right…" she tapped a button, and the long-range sensors on Hydra came to life.

Ch'Kurn scratched the back of his head. "This time was technically under orders as well," he noted. "We were ordered to scan the anomaly by Admiral Quinn."

"Yeah, but somehow I don't think Temporal Investigations will care all that much," Vanoni noted. He stood himself, joining Sila at the science station. "From what I hear they practically treat Starfleet as the enemy. Probably because of the tribbles."

Sila rolled her eyes. "Tribbles were not repopulated due to time travel, Marco, that's just a stupid conspiracy theory."

"Oh yeah? Better than eighty years without a single tribble sighting, and then all of a sudden they're everywhere again?"

"They're tribbles. What makes more sense – that someone went back in time just to bring tribbles back to the galaxy, or that the Klingons just missed a world with a few tribbles on it somewhere, and then that world was later found?"

Vanoni shook his head. "I've been in Starfleet enough to know that Occam's Razor is usually wrong." He noted ch'Kurn and Sila's confused looks. "'All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one,'" he provided.

There was a pause as the lieutenant and the other ensign thought over the human idiom. "Yeah, that's not true at all," ch'Kurn decided. He hadn't even been assigned to a starship for very long and he already knew that that couldn't be the case, no matter how much the majority of Starfleet personnel wished it was. The only constant in the universe was that it simply wasn't simple.

Sila turned back to the long-range sensors, and frowned after a moment when she saw it was highlighting something. "What the…?" she asked, sitting down at the science station and typing in some commands, verifying what she was seeing. "There's a warp trail leading towards Earth."

Vanoni glanced over the data that Sila was looking at, ch'Kurn glancing over his shoulder to do likewise. "A warp trail?" Vanoni asked. "From who? This is the late twentieth century. Zefram Cochrane won't even be born for another fifty years."

"Might just be some explorers," ch'Kurn said. "Vulcans, probably."

Sila leaned back in the chair and putting a hand to her chin. "They haven't detected us," she noted. "They'd probably have tried to hail us if they did. Warp trail is fairly dissipated, too…whoever's at Earth they've been there for a while. Long-term observations, maybe…" she sat up straighter in the chair. "Computer. Identify ship that left behind warp trail."

"Analzying," the computer responded, then after a few moments, "Analysis complete. Warp trail is too dissipated for assessment."

Vanoni looked to Sila. "If we moved out of Ceres' shadow for even a second, we could probably get a clear sensor reading."

Sila shook her head. "I'm not even going to bother asking the captain for her opinion, ensign, the answer is no."

Vanoni sighed, but couldn't exactly object to taking things carefully where the timeline was concerned. "Well, if we boost the power to the sensors a little we might be able to…" he leaned forward, dialing up the sensor's power and angling them slightly to be more directed at Earth. The sensors couldn't get an accurate read on Earth due to Ceres being in the way, but there were a few tricks involving utilizing the gravity of the dwarf planet and rebounding signals off of nearby asteroids that could increase their gain regardless.

"New analysis," the computer volunteered. "Ship utilized artificial singularity warp core. Narrowing possibilities…"

"Artificial singularity?" ch'Kurn asked, turning fully from ops at that and joining the other two at the science station. "This couldn't be Romulans, could it?"

Sila pursed her lips. "Computer, what were the Romulans up to in Earth year 1979? Did they use artificial singularities yet?"

"At this date, the Romulan Star Empire was under the leadership of Emperor Traxus and Praetor T'Varo. The Star Empire consisted of twelve claimed star systems, all in close proximity to Romulus. Romulan ships at this time did not utilize artificial singularities. The exact date of the introduction of the artificial singularity drive is not known, but it is believed to have occurred between 2251 and 2257. Romulans of this time period utilize matter/antimatter warp drives."

"Almost two hundred years from now." Sila noted. "It can't be the Romulans, then."

"Additional information," the computer provided. "Artificial singularities are utilized in Romulan ship design despite higher maintenance requirements than other options because they neutralize the emissions of a cloaked starship and those of Romulan design leave behind almost no warp trail. The detected warp trail is too old and too intact to have been created by a Romulan artificial singularity drive."

"So what are the other possibilities? Who else uses artificial singularities?"

"Analysis complete. Warp trail does not match any known species that utilizes artificial singularity warp drives in this time period. Note: Warp trail is highly dissipated. Accurate analysis could not be performed. Recommend a more direct scan of the ship that created the warp trail."

Sila leaned back in the chair again, then glanced to Vanoni and ch'Kurn. Vanoni himself looked to the helm. "One second," he said. "That's all we'd need, lieutenant."

The Tril scratched the back of her head at that, not liking being trapped between the need to preserve the timeline and the need to know what was out there, the entire reason she had joined Starfleet in the first place. After a moment, she tapped her combadge, glad that she could pass the choice up the chain of command. "Bridge to captain sh'Sihl."

"Sh'sihl here, go ahead lieutenant."

"Captain, we've detected a warp trail leading to Earth, from a ship powered by an artificial singularity. The computer can't identify the species based on the warp trail, though, it's too dissipated – a few weeks old, at least. All we know right now is it's not the Romulans – the Romulans of this era don't have drives like that, and Romulans from later time periods that do have one wouldn't leave behind a warp trail this old."

There was a several moments of silence – probably the captain discussing the matter with her senior staff. "Lieutenant, what are you suggesting?"

"There's an unidentified ship at Earth, captain, or there might be. It could just be twentieth-century explorers, but I'd like to know. For all we know we might have been brought back to Earth right now to stop an invasion or something. Predestination paradox." It was unlikely, but unfortunately possible. Temporal Investigations hated them, and for good reason, since they were essentially a justification for time travel – an action Temporal Investigations preferred to think of as unjustifiable.

"Captain," ensign Vanoni said, "all we'd have to do is move Hydra out of Ceres's shadow for one second. We know exactly where we'd point our sensors, but whoever's at Earth wouldn't, they'd still be just scanning the entire system with passive sensors. The chances of them noticing us are basically nil. If they detect our scanning at all, they'll think it's just a sensor blip."

More silence, then, "Alright, lieutenant. One second – one single second of scanning. We'll have to come out of Ceres' shadow at some point anyway if we want to utilize Sol for a slingshot maneuver; it would be a good idea to know who might be watching."

"Confirmed, captain," Sila said, looking to ch'Kurn and Vanoni and nodding her head back towards their stations. The two complied. Sila herself wished she could have been taking the captain' chair, but someone needed to operate the long-range sensors.

"Maneuvering thrusters only, ensign Vanoni," Sila ordered as her fingers hovered over the sensors' commands. "Give me a five-second countdown."

"Aye, sir," Vanoni acknowledged as Hydra's maneuvering thrusters came to life and propelled her forward. "We'll have line-of-sight to Earth in five…four…three…two…one…line of sight."

Sila activated the sensors. "Thrusters full reverse," she ordered.

Vanoni had already been doing just that, and Sila felt a very slight shift in the ship's inertial dampeners as Hydra shifted into reverse. She focused on her sensor readings. "We detected four ships," she noted. "One big one, designating it as a cruiser-analogue, and three smaller frigate-analogues, all holding position about three hundred kilometers over Earth's south pole. Putting what we saw on the main viewscreen – what the…!?"

The last came as her console went dead, showing only a black screen. A glance around the bridge showed the same thing had happened to every other screen on the bridge – as one, they flashed out and went completely dark. Sila stood, about to call the captain, when another change occurred – the screens lit back up again, each of them displaying a cobalt-blue symbol. When she looked to the viewscreen, she saw nothing different – the same symbol against a black screen.

"Uh – " Vanoni said. "Lieutenant…I'm locked out of helm. Everything just went dead. Our inertia would have carried us back into Ceres's shadow, but it's gonna carry us back out of the shadow, too…"

"Everything's offline," ch'Kurn provided. "No – not everything. Shields, weapons, and short-range sensors are online, but targeting independently – I don't have control over them. Long-range sensors are offline." He looked to Sila. "What is that symbol?"

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head and tapping her combadge. "Captain…?"

Several minutes earlier, the Emergency Temporal Hologram came online and didn't waste any time studiously avoiding making friends. "Ach," he said once his startup phrase was out of the way. "You know that under ideal circumstances, captain, I'm never supposed to be activated, right?"

Throttling a nonliving hologram would have been a pointless act, of course, but captain sh'Sihl looked like she was considering it. Tsegaye, meanwhile, was trying to place the hologram's accent. It sounded almost Scottish to his ears, despite the hologram's appearance being Bajoran. "The same can be said of any emergency hologram," sh'Sihl noted.

"And after barely a week, too," the hologram noted, walking over to the table and sitting down, crossing his arms and leaning back. "So. What's the trouble, then?"

Sh'Sihl glared at the hologram, antennae folded back in an annoyed posture, but she nevertheless took her place at the head of the conference table, the other senior staff members sitting down along the side opposite the ETH. "We're more than four hundred years in the past and need to fix that," sh'Sihl said. "That's the short version, anyway."

"Mmn. And I take it no helpful 29th-century ships have appeared to put you back where you belong?"

"No," sh'Sihl answered, then paused. "Wait, 29th century? We're from the start of the 25th."

"Aye, captain," the hologram said. "But the lasses and lads of the 29th century handle most of the time accidents, usually. Provided your little excursion into the past hasn't wiped them from existence, anyway, or that they're supposed to help you. Might be that you get back to your own time on your own. Or die here. Or any number of other possibilities. It's all very non-linear, makes my head hurt. Or it would if I had a real head!" He chuckled at his own joke.

"I think I hate him," Omak said, teeth grit.

"Your personality is very…confrontational," T'Lal said to the hologram, probably the closest a Vulcan could come to sharing the sentiment.

The hologram looked between the two, then put a hand to his chest as though hurt. "It's not my fault. I'm just programmed this way. Could be that the Department of Temporal Investigations wanted me to be as unpleasant as possible to discourage time travel. Or perhaps Agent Nidav Dettenn – that's who I'm based on – was having a bad day when his memory engrams were copied. Dunno." He leaned forward, hands on the table. "In all seriousness, though, captain. Fill me in on the necessaries, and we'll start looking for a way to put things right." He pointed a finger. "Oh, and if you need to, call me Agent. That's the closest thing I have to a name."

Sh'sihl rolled her eyes. "We were doing a routine patrol of Sol asteroid belt…" she began.

Several minutes later, she finished briefing the hologram – Agent – on how they had ended up in the past. Tsegaye provided that all of the crew were fine, save for ensign Anderson who needed to recover from his concussion; while Omak reported the current status of the warp core – 61% power and rising – that primary systems, including navigational shields but excluding combat shields, and that most secondary systems were offline but relatively easy to repair with the resources aboard the ship. "In short," sh'Sihl said, "we plan on returning to our own time via a slingshot maneuver around Sol."

Agent considered. "There are better stars nearby," he mused. "Proxima Centauri would be easier at this point in time…but that would require leaving Sol. Hydra might be spotted, and we can't have that…alright, captain. Slingshot around Sol, good idea. Commander Omak, how soon 'til the warp core's at 100% power? You're gonna want it."

"Two hours," Omak provided.

"Ach, two hours? Well, I'll put that in my calculations, then. I'll need access to the long-range sensors at some point to take some readings of subspace and local temporal distortions and so on. Shouldn't be hard. Don't you worry, captain. If the HMS Bounty could do this more'n a hundred years ago – subjectively speaking, of course – than we can certainly get everything right today! I'll have you home right quick and then you and Temporal Investigations can have a nice long – "

"Bridge to captain sh'Sihl," the Andorian's combadge interrupted.

Sh'Sihl breathed out a sigh of relief as she tapped her combadge. "Sh'Sihl here. Go ahead, lieutenant."

"Captain, we've detected a warp trail leading to Earth, from a ship powered by an artificial singularity. The computer can't identify the species based on the warp trail, though, it's too dissipated – a few weeks old, at least. All we know right now is it's not the Romulans – the Romulans of this era don't have drives like that, and Romulans from later time periods that do have one wouldn't leave behind a warp trail this old."

The senior staff looked between each other. "Odd," T'Lal noted. "An artificial singularity drive is used precisely because it leaves a difficult-to-detect warp trail. It is unlikely that there would be one weeks old."

"Unless whoever created it has been going back and forth over the same area," Omak noted. "But this region of space is underdeveloped in this time, isn't it?"

Sh'Sihl leaned back. "The Andorian Empire is at its height in this period," she noted, "but it never bothered with Earth, I don't think."

"Vulcan in this era also had only scientific curiosity in Earth," T'Lal provided. "The Tellarites had only been warp-capable for a short time and would not have come to this system. The Orions are more active in the Beta quadrant, the Malurians never ranged this far, and the Klingons were expanding towards their rimward frontier. Those are the only interstellar species of note in this region of space."

"And none of those species use artificial singularities," Omak said.

"An unidentified species?" Tsegaye asked. "One that the Federation hasn't made contact with?"

"So close to Earth?" sh'Sihl asked, unconvinced. She glanced up slightly. "Lieutenant, what are you suggesting?"

"There's an unidentified ship at Earth, captain, or there might be. It could just be twentieth-century explorers, but I'd like to know. For all we know we might have been brought back to Earth right now to stop an invasion or something. Predestination paradox."

"Ach," Agent put in. "No, no, no. We're not even going to consider that one. It's just an excuse to justify time travel."

"I'm not justifying anything," sh'Sihl countered. "We're in the past by mistake. But we know that sometimes these temporal accidents prove to be necessary to maintain the timeline."

"Are you lecturing me on time travel?" Agent asked.

"Captain," ensign Vanoni interrupted, "all we'd have to do is move Hydra out of Ceres's shadow for one second. We know exactly where we'd point our sensors, but whoever's at Earth wouldn't, they'd still be just scanning the entire system with passive sensors. The chances of them noticing us are basically nil. If they detect our scanning at all, they'll think it's just a sensor blip."

"Please don't," Agent begged.

"We'll need to move out of Ceres' shadow anyway to perform a slingshot maneuver," Tsegaye noted. "Unless you want us to wait here for however long it takes the ship at Earth to leave. And if we stay in one spot, it increases the chances of us being noticed if the other ship ever goes on patrol."

Agent glanced up to the sky as though imploring the Prophets that Bajorans venerated, but then looked back to sh'Sihl. "Your doctor has a good point."

Sh'sihl considered a moment more, before nodding to herself. "Alright, lieutenant. One second – one single second of scanning. We'll have to come out of Ceres' shadow at some point anyway if we want to utilize Sol for a slingshot maneuver; it would be a good idea to know who might be watching."

"Confirmed, captain," Sila said.

Sh'Sihl looked to Agent. "Okay, throw possibility out the airlock – what species in this region of space use singularity drives at all at this time?"

"The Xindi Aquatics had a prototype vessel around now," Agent said, after a few moments of processing the request – for obvious reasons he was well-programmed with historical data. "It was lost with all hands, they abandoned the technology. A species called the Makrians – no, wait, nevermind. Can't be them, they went too into artificial singularities and accidentally destroyed their home star system about twenty-two years ago, relatively speaking. Hmm…"

There was a small, but notable, shift in the inertial dampeners of Hydra, then quite suddenly all the viewscreens in the room flickered to life, switched to showing a black screen, and then had that black screen replaced by a cobalt-blue symbol, looking almost like a horseshoe. Sh'Sihl's antennae rose high at the sight of it as she shot from her chair.

"What?" she demanded. "Oh, that is just contrived!"

The ETH leaned back in his chair, glancing at the ceiling again. "Great. Commander Omak, what broke now?"

"I don't know," Omak responded. "That's…I've never seen the computers do that."

Sh'Sihl, meanwhile, spun around, looking at the hologram. "Why are you still active?" She demanded. "You should have shut down."

"I should have?" Agent asked, surprised for a moment, though then he shrugged. "I'm a VIP – Very Important Program. My operations are entirely independent of the rest of the ship. Why?"

Sh'Sihl's eyes narrowed. "You…you don't know what this is, do you?"

"Haven't the foggiest. Don't care much, either. Jut fix it so I can get back to – oi!" This came as sh'Sihl turned in place, walking towards the conference room's door. "Where are you going? Very important meeting right now! Timelines to preserve! Just get your engineering teams on this…"

Sh'Sihl stopped at the door, turning around. Before she could say anything, however, her combadige beeped. "Captain…?" Sila's voice came over it. "All the screens on the bridge – "

"Just went dead and are showing an omega symbol, yes," sh'Sihl interrupted. "I'm on my way there now."

"Yes, sir, although we have, uh, a problem – we're locked out of just about everything. Including helm control. Our inertia is about to carry us out of Ceres' shadow…"

The advantage of the small Gallant-class was that it didn't take very long to get anywhere, but that didn't seem to apply when you needed to get somewhere right now. Sh'Sihl fairly ran through Hydra, followed by T'Lal and Agent, while Omak and Tsegaye returned to their battle posts. Even still, by the time she got to the bridge, it was already too late – they had drifted out of Ceres' shadow and were in full view of Earth, and their scanners were still actively scanning, gathering all the data on Omega that the ship was programmed to think that its captain needed and, as a consequence, lighting Hydra up to every ship in the Sol system.

"This directive was poorly thought through!" Sh'Sihl objected to herself as she got to the ops station and typed in her command codes. Instantly the consoles on the bridge came to life again as the senior staff rushed to their positions.

"Ensign Vanoni, take us back into Ceres' shadow now," she ordered.

"Too late, captain!" Sila called from comms, having abandoned the science station, while T'Lal took over ops and sh'Sihl moved over to the captain's chair. Ensign ch'Kurn, meanwhile, left the bridge, rushing to his battle station down in security. "I'm getting hails from the unidentified ships. They know we're here, trying to scan us…"

"Of course they are!" Sh'Sihl lamented, sitting down in her chair. "Bridge to engineering. What's the fastest you can give me, Omak?"

"Warp seven, sir," Omak responded. "But only for a few minutes at most. Cruising speed right now is only warp four"

"Warp seven will do. Ensign Vanoni, ready warp seven – "

"No!" Agent interrupted, walking in front of the captain's chair an glaring down at the captain. "Warp seven is twice as fast as the fastest ships in this time can go. The appearance of a ship that fast could have immense repercussions – "

"So could being scanned or talking to them, and we don't want to risk them catching up." Agent threw his hands up at that, but at least he stepped out of the way of the viewscreen. "T'Lal, where is Jupiter right now?"

Over at ops, T'Lal glanced to the captain. "Approximately six hundred million kilometers distant, captain. If we can maintain warp seven for five seconds we should be able to reach it. You wish to utilize its magnetosphere to hide?"

"I certainly do. Commander Omak, give me just five seconds of warp seven, no matter what it takes. Ensign Vanoni, set course for Jupiter."

"Aye, sir. Engaging warp drive…"

The ship lurched at the sudden acceleration. The stars around them seemed to stretch despite the shortness of the trip – an effect of the warp bubble – then suddenly returned to normal as the largest planet in Sol system loomed before them. It got a lot bigger as Vanoni engaged Hydra's impulse engines at full, covering the remaining few thousand kilometers in a matter of seconds, taking up a close orbit to the gas giant.

"T'Lal, status of the other ships?" Sh'Sihl asked.

"One moment, captain, I am compensating for Jupiter's radiation…done. Three of the vessels – the frigate-analogues – are spreading out around Ceres, while the cruiser-analogue has remained over Earth's south pole. They are scanning our warp trail. Captain, they will be able to track us to Jupiter with little trouble."

"Wonderful," Agent noted, reminding sh'Sihl that he was here. He was staring at the viewscreen in panic.

Sh'Sihl ignored the hologram, leaning back into her chair. "That's alright, we bought ourselves half a minute. Ensign Vanoni, take us into Jupiter's atmosphere. T'Lal, how deep would we have to be to hide from their sensors?"

"I do not know, captain. My training did not include the details of atmospheric interaction with subspace scanners on four hundred year old vessels of uncertain origin." Sh'Sihl wasn't sure if T'Lal was trying to defuse the situation with whatever the Vulcan equivalent of humor was, but the Andorian didn't appreciate it and let T'Lal know with narrowed eyes and folded antennae. "However," T'Lal continued, "if we reach a point where we cannot detect them, then they will almost certainly not be able to detect us."

"That'll be about five hundred kilometers down, captain," Vanoni said as he turned Hydra into the gas giant, plunging her into the Jovian atmosphere. "Beneath the cloud layer, in the liquid-gas hydrogen layer."

"Can Hydra take the pressure?" sh'Sihl asked.

One of T'Lal's eyebrows raised. "Hydra is a combat vessel, captain. She can take 'a little stress'."

Sh'Sihl glanced at T'Lal, one eyebrow rising in an almost Vulcan-like expression at her choice of words – they echoed what she herself had said to the commander a few hours ago and several hundred years in the future. "Alright, then," sh'Sihl, taking in a deep breath and letting it out. "Get us down four hundred kilometers, Ensign Vanoni. Lieutenant Sila, commander T'Lal, keep an eye on the intruder vessels. If they show any signs of detecting us, then take us down to five hundred kilometers, but I'm willing to gamble that their sensors aren't nearly as good as ours."

"The intruder ships have identified our warp trail," T'Lal said. "They have engaged their own warp drives, proceeding to Jupiter at warp four. They will arrive in twenty seconds."

"Everyone cross your fingers…" Vanoni said, as the unknown ships advanced. There was a solid standard minute of silence as they dropped out of warp near Jupiter and Hydra reported the scanners of two of the ships lighting up and sweeping across the gas giant, while the third proceeded towards the cloud-covered volcanic moon of Io and started its own scans. With nothing else to do but wait, an image of the black-and-red frigate-analogues was placed on the viewscreen. They were split into two sections, a rear cylindrical section containing the engine, and a forward, more tapered part in the front that was shaped like a double-headed axe. Two additional "wings" extended from the middle, almost looking like nacelle struts but containing instead what were obviously torpedo launchers.

"Their scans…are penetrating two hundred and fifty kilometers into Jupiter, captain," T'Lal reported after the minute had passed, once she was sure of the limits of the vessels' scanners. There were sighs of relief from around the bridge.

"Captain, the intruder vessels are hailing us again," Sila reported from comms. "Broad call – they can't detect us, they're just trying to contact us. The universal translator has been able to decode the language, but it isn't in our databases."

Sh'Sihl considered a moment. "Alright, then, let's hear it. No response, lieutenant."

"Aye, sir. Onscreen."

The main viewscreen lit up, switching from showing the murky environs of Jupiter's liquid-gas hydrogen layer and instead showing the bridge of a starship, the configuration of which sh'Sihl did not recognize but looked intensely military. The species revealed was equally new to her: Humanoid in appearance, they appeared thin and fit, dressed in uniforms of black jackets with red stripes along the hems and gray undershirts. The species itself had heads that were bald but for topknots – whether this was a natural feature or the result of shaving was impossible to tell – with intricate cranial features, eyes with black sclera and white irises, and subtly pointed ears. Their faces and the visible parts of the front of their necks were a very deep brown, but faded almost immediately to midnight black away from those locations.

"Unidentified vessel," the humanoid standing in the center of the bridge – the ship's captain, most likely – said. His voice was deep and smooth. "I am captain Avarar of the Hegemony Ship Katar. You have entered a system claimed by the Ikroden Hegemony." The captain pressed his two gloved hands together, and leaned forward. "I am certain that you bear no ill will towards the Hegemony. If you reveal and identify yourselves, I promise safe passage from this system."

"Ikroden Hegemony?" sh'Sihl asked, glancing towards Agent, who was standing with both hands covering his face. "Agent, can you identify them now?"

"Honestly, what does it matter?" Agent asked. "They've seen the ship, they've seen how fast Hydra can go, we've probably ensured that four hundred years from now all of the Alpha Quadrant is controlled by the Lyssians as a result." Sh'Sihl's eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth to rebuke him, but Agent lifted his head and sighed. "Ikrodens. From Ikroda – Epsilon Indii on Federation star charts, about fifty light years from Sol. In the twenty-fifth century they have a population of just under a billion."

Sh'Sihl's antennae went high in surprise at such a low number. Granted, the Andorian population wasn't much higher, but that was because her species had only recently solved a genetic crisis back on Andor. It was by no means desirable for an interstellar species to have such a low population, and the Andorian government was offering generous incentives for Andorians to have large families in order to recover from centuries of population decline. "How come we've never heard of them?"

"Because they're not Federation members. They're not even warp-capable."

"That seems unlikely considering that these ships just moved at warp four," T'Lal noted, tapping some commands into ops. "I am analyzing the closest frigate…singularity core warp drive, armed with three photon torpedo launchers and a half-dozen phaser cannons. I am also detecting a mine launcher and shield generator. Maximum warp I would estimate at warp six."

"That's pretty fast for this era," Sila noted from comms.

"In fact, lieutenant, that would make these likely the fastest ships of this time period," T'Lal noted. "Beyond prototypes, Vulcans would not begin building ships of comparable speed for another twenty-one years, and no other power would have warp six capable ships for more than a century after that."

Sh'Sihl turned to Agent. "Explanation?" she asked.

Agent shook his head. "It's not that the Ikroden haven't developed the warp drive, captain. They did, and it was based around artificial singularities – Epsilon Indii has no native sources of dilithium to maintain matter/antimatter reactions, so it was their only choice. But the Ikroden never ranged far from Epsilon Indii, and all records state that they gave up warp travel in the early twenty-first century. There was some sort of social upheaval in their home system, the Federation doesn't have any records of it, but the Ikrodens of our time are by and large anarchists, without any real central government above city-state level. They keep to themselves, mostly. They don't have anything to trade and don't want to trade for anything."

Sh'Sihl looked back to the viewscreen, where the Ikroden captain Avarar was speaking to another Ikroden, inaudibly. "Those don't look like planet-bound anarchists," she noted.

"And what's this about Earth being claimed by an Ikroden Hegemony?" Vanoni asked. "Earth had no contact with extraterrestrials until the 2060s, and that was with the Vulcans."

"Aye, no confirmed contact," Agent said. "There's some evidence of prior contact on an individual scale, though. If these Ikrodens were keeping close orbit over Earth's south pole, then they'd be effectively invisible to the planet's detection methods of the time."

"But what are they doing on Earth?" Sila asked. "Does it have anything to do with that…omega thing?"

Everyone looked to the captain, and sh'Sihl grimaced. "Commander T'Lal. Scan the Ikroden ships for evidence of Omega. The ship will know what it's looking for, and the radiation of Jupiter should hide our scans."

"Confirmed, captain. Scanning now…no results. The Ikroden do not appear to have noticed our attempt."

"Are we able to scan the Ikroden cruiser-analogue over Earth from here?"

"Yes, captain. Scanners do not detect 'Omega' – wait." T'Lal tapped a few buttons. "Scans are indeed detecting a phenomenon designated as Omega, not from the cruiser-analogue but rather from Earth's surface – two locations, one in northeastern Eurasia, the other in the South Atlantic Ocean. I am not receiving any data as to what Omega is, however."

"Nor will you. It's classified, captains and flag officers only. Too dangerous, can't tell you more than that right now – "

Agent barked out a laugh at that, hands on his hips. "Captain, I'm standing here. I'm locked down so only senior officers can activate me, but I'm not secret, and I can change all of history! I find it hard to believe that there could be anything more dangerous than me in all of the galaxy at this point in time."

Sh'Sihl rolled her eyes as she stood from the captain's chair, antennae following the motion. "Well, there is," she said. She looked to the rest of the bridge crew, pressing her lips together tightly as she thought for several moments. "Commander, transfer all data the computer has gathered on Omega to my ready room. Ensign Vanoni, keep us at this depth in Jupiter. If the Ikroden ships show any sign of coming in after us, do anything necessary to avoid contact. Lieutenant Sila, monitor their communications, see if you can learn anything useful. Agent – pretend the Ikroden aren't here and you don't know what's going on. Just concentrate on your calculations for time warp. No one, and I mean no one, is to discuss Omega with the rest of the crew. T'Lal, you have the bridge."

Sh'Sihl didn't wait for any responses as she turned and walk into her office.

Once she was safely within her ready room and had the room locked down, sh'Sihl took in a deep breath and let it out. It didn't help. She then went to the replicator and called for the blacket, hottest coffee it could manage. That didn't help either.

"Computer," she said, moving over to her desk and sitting down, "access secure data file Omega One. Clearance code sh'Sihl 2306-red, clearance level ten. First priority before anything else: cross-reference Omega Directive with Temporal Prime Directive, namely, which one takes priority."

"Clearance confirmed. Omega Phenomenon has been detected 2.8 astronomical units from this vessel. Implement the Omega Directive. All other priorities are rescinded. Error: ship has become temporally displaced. Temporal Prime Directive is highest priority, no action is to be undertaken that may alter the timeline. Error: Omega Directive is highest priority. All other priorities are rescinded. Error: Temporal Prime Directive is highest priority, no action is to be undertaken that may alter the timeline. Error: Omega Directive is highest priority – "

"Computer, cease." After making sure she hadn't just broken the damn thing, she pressed on. "Computer, am I right in guessing that there is no precedent for the Omega Directive and Temporal Prime Directive coming into conflict?"

"Affirmative."

"And am I correct in assuming that Starfleet didn't bother to program you to determine which one had the higher priority?"

"Negative. Omega Directive has absolute priority. Error: Temporal Prime Directive has absolute priority. Error: Omega – "

"Yeah," sh'Sihl said, leaning back in her chair and taking a very long sip of her coffee, letting the computer run through its endless loop. "That's what I thought."