Everybody gather 'round now
Let your body feel the heat
Don't you worry if you can't dance;
Let the music move your feet
– Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine (Conga)
=/\=
So far as Richard Daniels and the rest of the Temporal Integrity Commission were concerned, the present date was August the eighth of 3110. They were unaware, except in the most abstract sense, of what was happening – or, rather, had already happened – in 2192. There had been certain changes made to the mirror universe, but they were not yet ready to repair them. Instead, they were being debriefed about a far greater present threat.
All of the Commission member species were being informed. The Vulcans went over all logical alternatives. The Imvari and the Daranaeans looked at a projection written in their various pictograph writings. The Ferengi busied themselves with figuring out how to profit from the coming chaos – they were the only member species still using any form of specie. The Klingons were ready to get their bat'leths wet with the blood of the new threat. For that was the nature of the meetings – the member species were learning about a new enemy that used time for its transportation and was shaping up to be quite a galactic threat.
In a small conference room, Human Unit leader Admiral Carmen Calavicci spoke with nearly all of her subordinates. She was peeved that one of them – Doctor Marisol Castillo – was missing. But this could not wait for the return of the prodigal daughter.
Carmen spoke. "I have received word from my superior, Bryce Unger, about a significant new threat. You all need to be prepared. It will likely be violent."
"Violent?" asked Temporal Agent Polly Porter. She was a middle-aged woman, a trained psychologist. Before working at the Commission, she had been a kind of therapist to the stars. She was certainly in no position to assist with open warfare.
"Yes, we are, sad to say, on a front line, suddenly," Carmen said.
"Can't they just move the Adrenaline?" asked the young Quartermaster, Crystal Sherwood. The Commission was located on a ship, the USS Adrenaline, which permanently stayed just outside the galactic barrier. Moving it was a reasonable idea under any other circumstance.
"They can, but it won't matter," Carmen said, "for our friends use a bit of a temporal displacement drive for their propulsion."
"But that's what the old Audrey Niffenegger uses," Kevin O'Connor said. Part-Gorn, part-human, he was the department's Chief Engineer and was the most likely of the entire group to save an injured robin fledgling and nurse it back to health – and the most likely to weep when it spread its wings and flew away.
"True," Carmen said, "but, oh, allow me to start from the beginning, all right?"
"Sure," said Temporal Agent HD Avery, who was the department's music and arts specialist.
"We were recently contacted by the Zetal," Carmen said.
"The who?" asked Temporal Agent Sheilagh Bernstein, who specialized in ancient computer systems.
"The Zetal are a non-humanoid species that hails from the Andromeda galaxy," Engineer Deirdre Katzman read off a PADD.
"Right," Carmen said, "they contacted us. Their galaxy has been decimated by a powerful species known as the Varg-i-yeh."
"I've never heard that word before. Or is that a phrase?" asked Otra D'Angelo. Otra was half-human and half-Witannen, and had the ability to see alternate timelines much faster than any computer. Her Witannen parentage gave her chavecoi, a kind of symbiotic bouquet of semi-conscious flowers in her scalp, in lieu of hair. But since she wasn't a full-blooded Witannen, she didn't have that species' vestigial wings.
"You are correct," Carmen said, "It's a phrase. It means scourge of the galaxy."
"That doesn't sound so good," said Temporal Agent Dan Beauchaine, who was still a bit drunk and a bit hung over from a recent bender. He didn't do them too often, but he had been wondering if that would now start to be a more regular occurrence. He had seen far too much destruction already, even though he was a new employee. But this also mixed in with the fact that he was not only a Section 31 operative, he was also in with the Perfectionists. He simply had too many balls in the air. Unlike Rick, he didn't seek solace with women, even though he could feel himself becoming clinically depressed by what he had seen. That was a little flaw in his character and genetic makeup, a thing that he had successfully hidden from the section and the Perfectionists and, now, the Commission. That tendency to tip into melancholy and then farther, all the way over, into full-blown depression, would have been a career-ender if anyone had known.
So he had a lot of things going on. He had to keep secrets from Carmen, from the Section, and from the Perfectionists. His work with the Commission required that he, sometimes, allow innocents to suffer and perish, all in the name of the almighty standard timeline. And he was fighting his own biology.
Another fifth of bourbon sounded like a damned good idea.
"Huh?" asked Engineer Levi Cavendish. He was pretty good at what he did but he was readily distracted. Unlike Dan, his foibles and idiosyncrasies were well-documented and on display for all to see. He had Asperger's and Adult ADHD. He rarely ever held anyone's gaze and his mind often wandered. But he understood time ships and temporal propulsion systems, and Otra seemed to like him, so Carmen kept him around.
"What are you looking at? Are you still on about that Manifesto file?" asked Doctor Boris Yarin, the department's other doctor. Boris was part-Klingon, part-human and part-Xindi sloth. The combination made him edgy and paranoid. Compounding his nerves was the fact that, up until relatively recently, he had been having an affair – Boris was the only married member of the department – with the missing Marisol. He knew exactly where she was, and that knowledge did nothing whatsoever to comfort him. She was putting the screws to him – at the request of the Perfectionists, although Boris did not know that particular detail about her – and the game of blackmail had been kicked up several notches, for she was, at that very moment, having tea and a nice chat with Boris's wife, socialite Darragh Stratton Yarin.
"No, I got the Manifesto on the back burner," Levi said, referring to a decrypted file they'd received from the Perfectionists. All but one paragraph was deciphered.
"People!" Carmen was insistent. "Allow me to finish."
"Yes, of course," Kevin said, "C'mon, folks."
"Thank you, Mister O'Connor. Now, the Varg-i-yeh have been seen but not by anyone who's known to be humanoid so the descriptions may not be the best. They are reportedly completely bluish-purple in color, including the eyes, which are compound, much like an insect's."
"What's so special about them?" asked Tom Grant, the last of the Temporal Agents. His specialty was military operations – he had made it as far as a Colonel's rank before being recruited to work for the Commission.
"Lots of things," Carmen replied, "first off, their propulsive systems are, like I said, temporal displacement-based."
"But that's old news technology," Deirdre said.
"Right, but they use it rather differently than we did," Carmen said, "instead of simply shifting straight ahead or behind in time, they also continually create new versions of themselves by shifting back and forth. So Varg-i-yeh number one goes to, say, January fifth and returns. Then that same Varg-i-yeh goes to January fourth. The second iteration then stays in the fifth, thereby creating what are two separate iterations."
"But if they touch, they'll merge under the temporal integration theory, right?" Levi asked. Even he was interested.
"But they don't, because they scatter. Now, imagine this on a grand scale, with ships and thousands of personnel, over and over again. Essentially it's almost a clone army," Carmen said, "kill off iteration number fifty and there are still another forty-nine of them out there. These iterations are all over the place, in different stages of development and different quadrants of, now, at least two galaxies. And the Milky Way is going to be the third."
"What about their military capabilities?" Tom asked.
"We know that the Zetal had more trouble with them than they've had with anyone. We don't know a lot about the capabilities of Andromeda galaxy denizens, and we know even less about residents of the Triangulum galaxy."
"Triangulum? Why are we caring about them?" asked Rick, who had been mostly silent.
"That's where the Varg-i-yeh are from. Now, there are a number of other things about them. I've sent informational packets to all of your PADDs. We are the front line, children," Carmen said, "and I'm afraid we are mostly going to have to stay in. I recognize that our pals the Perfectionists are going to possibly seize upon this opportunity and attempt to exploit it for their own gains. So we are going to be busy. I am sorry, but it has to be this way."
"Carmen, my wife is not going to like it if I cannot come home at all," Boris protested.
Tom was also concerned. He had a girl – Rick's younger sister, Eleanor. He didn't want to have to be apart from her for that long.
"I'm sorry," Carmen said, "I just don't know what to do about this. But unless you're going out to repair a timeline – and we both know you don't travel, Boris – then I'm afraid you'll have to stay in for the nonce. Dismissed."
=/\=
It's the rhythm of the island, and like the sugar cane so sweet
If you want to do the conga, you've got to listen to the beat
– Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine (Conga)