With the Elachi rift closed and Andoria safe, Tw'eak had little left to be doing in a Starfleet uniform. There was, of course, the minor issue of her dear friend and former first officer, Captain Eight of Twelve, better known to her as Octavia. She and her crew aboard the starship Warspite had gone into hiding, and now Tw'eak was trying to understand what had come about to cause this to happen.
With her, in the Minerva's briefing room, were the duBois sisters, Aurora and Bianca. While Aurora was captain of the vessel, her sister Bianca had spent time in command of her own ship, as well as working as a representative of Starfleet Intelligence. She knew people who had information, and if she didn't, Tw'eak could certainly call in a few favours.
"So what do we know?" Tw'eak asked.
Bianca took a breath before she began. "Right. I haven't had a lot of time to verify the specifics, but basically, it goes like this. Sometime last year, during my court-martial, the Warspite was working with-"
"Hold on," Tw'eak interrupted. "Court-martial?"
Bianca pursed her lips. "Is this off the record?"
"I don't technically have the authority to put it on the record," Tw'eak noted.
"Computer," Aurora stated aloud, "no recordings or loggings of events in this room until further notice, authorization duBois alpha four-seven Zulu." She then turned to Bianca. "Go on."
"Our mission to the Na'Kuhl system was a total failure. The Tholians were able to steal the Tox Uthat, ruin the star, and just generally wreck my life."
"They railroaded her," Aurora muttered.
"Like on a train?" Tw'eak asked.
Bianca shook her head. "It's an Earth expression - you know what the Tox Uthat does, right?"
"It messes around with how stars work," Tw'eak ventured.
"A quantum phase inhibitor. Hand-portable. Couldn't believe it could be so small. But the inventor, Kal Dano, was alongside me to use it. He'd shown up at the Lukari system and played a critical role in rejuvenating the star in that system. But his arrival at Na'Kuhl set in motion a temporal paradox. We think. His ship was damaged by the Tholians and went hurtling through time. By the time we rescued him, just a few minutes later, he'd been dead for centuries."
"Because of the temporal paradox," Aurora added.
Tw'eak shook her head. "Time travel. Makes my stomach turn."
"Me too," Bianca affirmed. "But - and I mean, this is only our take on it, but - Starfleet needed someone to blame, to try and keep the Na'Kuhl from getting angry. They told me the temporal operations department started having Na'Kuhl problems from here to eternity because of what I did, so putting some consequences into evidence might help show the Na'Kuhl some goodwill, and make them less likely to hold a grudge."
"Consequences - for you," Tw'eak noted.
"Well, yeah. Kal Dano was dead, there's no sense blaming the Na'kuhl for what happened to their star, and the Tholians are outside Starfleet's jurisdiction."
"So they demoted her," Aurora added.
"And quietly reassigned me - to Starfleet Intelligence."
"Not to Temporal Ops," Tw'eak realized.
"Intel was considered a better fit, especially given how the Lukari felt about me being court-martialed. I mean, they're basically building statues on their homeworld in honour of Kal Dano and I, so their lead researchers - one of whom was Captain Kuumaarke, who's commanding the Reskava - requested that I be the co-ordinating officer as liaison between them and Starfleet. And so that's what I do now. It's actually pretty great. They're wonderful, generous people."
"And you did get to command the first-contact mission to their homeworld," Aurora said, a tinge of jealousy in her voice.
"It was a lucky break, what can I say. Not like it advanced my career any."
"I never got to command a first-contact mission," Tw'eak observed. "But on a number of such missions, I was along for the ride, back when I was on the Nelson. Captain Slutskaya oversaw at least three or four. They were... intimidating. A lot of pressure. So I'm very impressed that you were able to handle the Lukari first-contact mission well enough to remain in their good graces. Whatever happened over Na'Kuhl might've also been a temporal paradox. It was just your ill fame to stumble on that occasion."
"I tried mentioning that to Temporal Investigations," Bianca noted. "They didn't buy it. Something about how 'people always say that'."
"But if it hadn't gone down like that, you'd be out there commanding somewhere else right now, not here with us, right?" Aurora said, trying a little too hard. "And then it'd be a lot harder for you to get here and help us help Octavia."
"Let's get back to that," Tw'eak suggested. "So Warspite went where?"
"The Briar Patch. It turned out that somehow Chancellor Martok was still alive."
Tw'eak was dumbfounded. "You're kidding."
"No."
"But - remind me. To become Chancellor, J'mpok had to kill Martok."
"That's the story, yeah. But apparently, not the truth. The House of Torg had him as a captive. And they were working with the Tzenkethi."
Tw'eak nodded vigourously. "The same Tzenkethi who went crazy and brought down the Hur'q invasion on us."
"No, that was going to happen anyway, it seemed. They came to my notice when they started using protomatter bombs to solve the Hur'q problem. They were just a little too eager to wipe out entire civilized worlds. So we stopped them. And then the Hur'q began hatching from their hibernation cycle." Bianca took a pause. "There was more to it than that, but a lot of it's pretty highly classified. Ran into our old friend Captain Nog during that business."
Tw'eak smiled. "I wondered how he was doing - after how he helped us solve the Krenim situation and the last temporal mess we got into, with the Iconians. My mess, as it were."
"That wasn't really your fault," Bianca started to say, before she caught herself looking inwards. "On account of the temporal mechanics involved. Not that they let you use that as an excuse."
"It's more than an excuse," Aurora mused, "We didn't have any other options."
Tw'eak's antennae faded a bit in recollection of those desperate moments in the final twilight of the Iconian War. "I didn't realize you had been mixed up in that Hur'q business."
"At the same time as I was being court-martialed, too! Trying to survive in combat, co-ordinate with the Dominion AND prepare my legal defense at the same time was ...a lot."
"We both would've been involved," Aurora continued, "if this ship had been combat-ready yet at that point. Lousy timing, that's all."
"Lousy timing," Bianca joked.
"Temporal mechanics?" Tw'eak asked, a twinkle in her eye.
Bianca nodded and laughed, as did Aurora.
"So," Tw'eak said after a moment, "go back to the Briar Patch. Octavia rescued Martok from there."
"That's right. J'mpok was NOT happy about it, either, but he let General Martok resume command once he killed Torg and returned to Klingon space. Somehow, the Sword of Kahless re-appeared, and now Martok wields it, but then House Mo'Kai and re-surfaced and it's Throwback Tuesday with yesterday's Klingons using cutting-edge weapons. So J'mpok is apparently really feeling threatened. Our agents inside the Empire are convinced things are about to escalate."
"We just barely managed to close a rift that threatened to destroy all life in the universe," Aurora said with a gesture. "How are things possibly going to get worse?"
Bianca sighed. "Not like that - politically. Especially for Captain Octavia. She's taken J'Ula's side."
Tw'eak's antennae flattened forwards, in disappointment. "She's done what?"
Aurora and Bianca looked at each other. "We know," Aurora said with a roll of the eyes.
"I can't see her doing that without good reason," Tw'eak said after a moment. "After today, I know it's probably hard to imagine what that reason might be, but it's Octavia. She's as rational as a Vulcan - she's never done anything without very good reason."
"The last sighting of Warspite that Starfleet can confirm is shortly after the incident over Khitomer. Not unlike what happened here, only J'Ula fired the weapon directly at the planet, rather than overhead. Starfleet's last report says they think that Warspite is both in the company of House Mo'Kai ships... and House Martok. Possibly the Rotarran itself."
"But do we know where?"
Bianca shook her head. "Unfortunately, after Khitomer, the trail runs cold. I've tried to dig up some leads, some idea of what the real story would be, but I haven't gotten very far. Now, admittedly that wasn't me looking very hard, just asking a few of my Intel contacts if they had anything. If we're committed to finding her, I can make a much better effort from here."
"We need to contact Emlyn Downey," Tw'eak suggested.
Aurora blinked. "Vice Admiral Downey?"
"The very same. She was someone who meant something to Octavia. Still does. Maybe she reached out to Downey for help. Quite frankly, I'm surprised she didn't reach out to any of us."
Aurora and Bianca both shook their heads. "I mean, we would've contacted you right away, if she had," Aurora said with a shrug. "We just figured you'd contact us if - you know, same thing. Get the band back together."
"Let's start working the contacts we do have, see who else is on the 'likely to contact' list. Lio'wan, for instance. Other people we've served with - a lot of those folks would be willing to talk if they knew where Warspite had gone, because they'd want to help. Plus we could call in favours from a few other places. I don't know."
Both the duBois sisters nodded, but neither really knew what to say. Neither did Tw'eak. This was Octavia they were talking about, potentially in peril. She'd saved each of their lives, at least once or twice before. She had been willing to go to the wall for Tw'eak without her even asking, most notably during the rescue of her own sister Dashii from Orion captivity on Nimbus III. Now, it was their turn to help her out in her time of need.
"Alright," Tw'eak said finally. "Now, what else is going on? Clearly I've missed out on quite a lot."