Chapter Text
Black alert.
Sylvia Tilly presses her eyes shut and holds her breath. It’s not much, but she always feels a little nauseated by the jumps. It was never a problem before the navigation upgrade, but seeing Lieutenant Stamets plugged in, all those needles, all that strain on his anything but frail body – the mere thought is enough to make anyone’s stomach turn.
This jump is different. They stay in black alert a little too long. When things stabilize and the klaxons stop, she can feel the moisture soaking her hair, her uniform, like she just went for a long run or got thrown in a pool. She wipes her eyes with the back of a hand, then opens them.
Her console is covered with a layer of condensation, but she can see underneath it that something isn’t right. She wipes the droplets away, squints. They’re nowhere near their original target coordinates. She wipes at the console again, brings up a map, zooms out. They’re not near the Klingon front, not near Earth. They’re in the Alpha quadrant, out past Betazed. Farther than any Federation ship has successfully gone in the past. Dozens of light years from home; weeks or months at warp six. They’re lucky the Discovery can travel much faster.
Something clatters to the floor, and Sylvia looks up to see Dr. Culber fumbling with the doors to the connection chamber. She taps in the sequence to completely disengage the spore drive and unlock the door, then walks down the steps to join him.
Lieutenant Stamets is as alright as he can ever be said to be after a jump. He sees things, in the mycelial plane. Some of the things he sees are hopeful, some omens, some unspeakable horrors, mostly the unending expanse of space. Sometimes he emerges from a jump laughing, sometimes crying. This time, he’s collapsed against the wall, murmuring about war and the fate of the quadrant. Culber and Tilly are both used to it by now.
Stamets is no longer alone in the chamber. That, they’re not so used to. A slim figure lies on the floor, motionless. By their hairstyle and dress, the figure appears to be female. By her wrinkle-free face, she appears to be young, maybe the equivalent of Sylvia’s age. By the grey pallor of her skin, the ridges on her forehead, her brow, her nose, her neck – she appears to be a species they’ve never encountered before.
Culber picks his tricorder off the ground, scans the girl. No respiration. Weak heart rate and metabolism. Grade 4 phaser burn. She needs treatment if she’s going to survive, but there’s certainly hope.
The doctor leans over to press a kiss to his boyfriend’s forehead. Paul starts giggling. It’s absurd, really, and Hugh lets himself smile fondly at him for just a moment, but no longer. He looks up at Tilly, murmurs a quick, “take care of him, okay? You know the drill.”
She nods solemnly and steps over the alien girl to kneel by Stamets’ side, taking his hand in hers, pressing a finger to his wrist to monitor his pulse.
Culber pulls out his communicator and lifts the girl’s shoulders off the ground. His voice shakes slightly, its volume louder than necessary in the room whose quiet is only marred by Paul’s ragged breathing, the omnipresent hum of machinery, and the occasional drip of water off some saturated surface. “Transporter room one, this is Dr. Culber. We have a medical emergency. Two for site to site transport to sick bay, stat.”
The air feels sharp, static. The smell of ozone envelops the doctor and the girl, and they shimmer and fade. Seconds later, Sylvia and Lieutenant Stamets are alone.
After a jump, Stamets’ heart rate spikes, and is relatively slow to recover, but a fair chunk of time has transpired, and now his heart rate is merely fast, like that of someone taking a brisk walk. Sylvia’s is faster.
First Contact is the Federation’s most important diplomatic function. For Starfleet personnel, it borders on sacred. Every command-track cadet dreams of serving on an exploratory ship like the Enterprise. In another world, the Discovery would have been one of those, and Tilly would have found herself the luckiest cadet in the quadrant, had not the war broken out. She’s still lucky. It’s still the opportunity of a lifetime. But she isn’t expecting first contact missions anymore. And yet, one just dropped itself at her commanding officer’s feet.
“These people are ancient,” Stamets mutters.
Tilly almost doesn’t hear him, but how often do his ramblings contain any useful content anyway? She responds with a noncommital “hm,” already thinking at a breakneck pace about how this could proceed, how she would frame her role in this undeniably historic moment. And she lets Stamets talk.
“There’s a lot of time. The mycelia are so old here, Tilly. Maybe even forever. They’re so old,” he pauses to take a shaky breath, “there’s so much horror here. You see, this spot, this is the center. But it’s also a battlefield. She was dying, and she was there - or, she will be. I couldn’t let her die, Tilly. She’s a key. She’s a chosen one. She’s the king’s greatest weakness. They need her to win the war.”
“Against the Klingons?” Tilly replies absentmindedly, but now she's listening.
He grabs her arm with both hands. “No. Not the Klingons. That war is now. This is later. The Klingons aren’t just enemies, but the Dominion, they are. They want to destroy us. All of us. Most of all, her.”
Tilly doesn’t know what to think, so she smiles nervously, leans back from him. “Lieutenant, you’re scaring me.”
“Don’t be afraid, Tilly. We’re all long since dead and gone.”
She’s even more afraid. She remembers ancient history texts that speak of oracles muttering mysterious, senseless prophecies after spiritual experiences. Stamets is always like this after a jump: senseless. This is the first time she’s considered his ramblings to be anything more.
This spot. This is the center. But it’s also a battlefield.
She’s a key. She’s a chosen one. She’s the king’s greatest weakness.
Sylvia knows only that she needs more information, before Stamets recovers too fully to provide it. “Who is she?”
“She is a daughter of light, begat of darkness.” He says it with the same tone one might say ‘duh’ to a friend.
Sylvia cocks an eyebrow, suspicious. “And she’s necessary, for the light to win?”
He meets her eyes, tightens his grip on her arm. “She’s essential.”
Sylvia breathes deeply, tries to process some of this – any of this. It doesn’t make sense, really. Michael would probably tell her she’s crazy for listening to it. But Stamets has saved their hides before. He’s weird, and something is definitely wrong in his head, but he’s still trustworthy to a fault.
She searches his eyes for something, anything to help explain what he’s been saying this whole time. Unfortunately, she only sees the increase in clarity that indicates he’s coming back to his senses.
“The jump was successful?” His voice rings clear now. Sylvia snaps back into duty mode.
“No. We didn’t get to the Destiny.”
“Right. I didn’t take us to the Aldebaran system. We were too late. The Destiny was already... destroyed.”
“So where are we?”
“Somewhere.” He furrows his brow, flicks his eyes from place to place, then stands up too quickly and leans against the wall for balance. “The spores, they’re, it was a strain on them. I pulled her out of another time, and that's, like, really hard. We need to check on them.”
She grabs his arm, helps stabilize him as they walk across the laboratory to the spore chamber. He presses his palm to the scanner, reads his entry code, and the door opens. When he gets inside, Stamets falls to his knees, too shocked to cry out. The spores are still there, and alive, but they’re so very sparse. Where before the room had been teeming with life, now only a handful of specks remain.
Tilly isn’t certain what this means, but she can guess. They need more spores to make a successful jump. Until then, they’re stuck in uncharted territory, dozens of light years from the Federation in the wrong direction. They just picked up an alien of a completely unknown species. They won't be able to go home until they replenish their spore supply. And Paul Stamets is insisting the fate of the quadrant hangs in the balance.
This is by far the most exciting mission Sylvia’s been on yet.