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Syron, pausing her Orion video drama, checked the navigation console. She reported, “We’re making excellent time!”
C’Mal yawned, nearly stretching her long Ferasan body out of the captain’s chair, and replied, “I’m sure Sovak is ready to return to the Talon. It’s commendable she wants to spend quality time with her son, but that amusement park looked downright weird.”
“Well, her son is weird,” remarked Syron snidely.
C’Mal quoted from the brochure: “The Park is constantly shifting, growing, and transmutating. The bots redesign the Park every morning, but even they can't control the organism. New attractions are not always built—often they just grow. Some rides don't even have names and don't make any sense! That's why the Park is absolutely unmappable.”
“Unmappable?” repeated Syron.
C’Mal continued reading: “We are also the galaxy's first theme park designed to transform into a fully functioning giant robot. This mode is for emergency use only and has not been tested.”
Syron chuckled. “Now, that part’s got to be a joke.”
C’Mal threw the brochure aside in disgust. “What were the Omicron Deltans thinking?”
A spray of brilliant sparks surrounded the starship Talon, lighting up the forward windows.
“Wow,” said Syron, trying to interpret the sensor readings. “Shields went up. We just flew through a giant dispersed cloud of antimatter.”
C’Mal approached and looked over her shoulder. “How is that possible?”
“Well, my scientifically deficient friend, it isn’t really possible. But it happened, so there must be an explanation.” Syron pulled her salt and pepper hair behind her ears and furrowed her brow.
“Well?”
Syron turned to her. “Remember the primordial filament you guys encountered in the twentieth century? There’s no reason there shouldn’t be other primordial filaments floating around, especially in a turbulent spiral galaxy. I bet that’s why we’re making such good time. In passing through the filament, we hit a different pocket of space-time, or rather we jumped right over it. And probably it’s filled with antimatter that’s leaking out as the filament tries to normalize.”
“Antimatter?” asked C’Mal.
Syron’s dark eyes flashed. “Antimatter. It’s like discovering a vein of pure dilithium. Imagine if—instead of having to scrape antimatter off a pulsar beam, or having to build a complex antimatter production facility—you could just drain it straight into a transport ship.”
“You’re suggesting we stop and try to monetize this?”
“Hell yes.”
C’Mal bit her lip. “If Sovak were here, she’d say that Starfleet procedure discourages dropping from warp into cold interstellar space because that is how starships are never heard from again. Finding a dead ship in the middle of space is near impossible.”
Syron considered. “Well, A, we’re not Starfleet. And B, Sovak’s not here.”
“Yeah, but it’s her ship,” said C’Mal.
“But I’m in command now.”
C’Mal threw up her hands. “Fine.”
The Ferasan sat at the nav-helm console, turned the corvette-class starship around, and dropped it out of warp. Red lights then flared across her panel and the emergency alarm sounded.
“Oh crap,” she cried. “The—the engines are going critical.” She looked desperately at Syron, who, seeing the rising indicators on the panel, knew precisely what had to be done and nodded her approval.
C’Mal jettisoned the Penning bottle holding the ship’s antimatter fuel before containment failed, which would have caused the annihilation of the Talon amidst an eleven exajoule explosion.
Simultaneously, the surrounding stars disappeared and a blue ocean-covered moon appeared ahead of them, growing exponentially.
“What is happening?” cried C’Mal.
Syron pushed her aside and rotated the ship one-hundred and eighty degrees, then pushed the impulse engines to maximum thrust.
C’Mal jumped behind the security station and strengthened and modified the ship’s shields to lesson the force of impact. The sound of the Talon screaming through the moon’s atmosphere was the last thing she remembered before the crash.
—————
C’Mal awoke in bed and sat upright. She flexed her right arm and paw, trying to work out the stiffness and tingling. Her leg ached as well.
She found Syron working on the bridge. Outside the forward windows, a tranquil ocean stretched to the horizon beneath a cerulean sky.
“What happened?”
“You had a few broken bones,” explained Syron. “I had the EMH patch you up.”
“I mean, what happened with the ship?”
Syron pointed toward the engineering panel. “We have no warp drive. Zero! And the impulse engines are trashed. We still have auxiliary power and the batteries. This appears to be a water world. I’m floating the Talon above the surface using the landing panels.”
The felinid bared her canines in anxiousness. “Syron, where the hell did we land? Where are we?”
“Brace yourself, C’Mal. There are no celestial beacons here and no subspace chatter. I think that we’re inside a primordial space-time filament. We were right about that part, at least.”
“But…what about the antimatter?”
Syron became contrite. “C’Mal, the antimatter cloud we passed through before we got here—that was our antimatter from the Talon…the same antimatter we ejected later when the engines went critical.”
The Ferasan scrunched up her face. “What?”
“We were straddling two space-times with different field values. Somehow there was a time reversal in the antimatter we ejected.”
“…Oh,” C’Mal said.
“Yeah, ‘oh,’ goddammit. We’re to blame for this.”
C’Mal was incensed. “As I recall, I said this was a bad idea and then you pulled rank on me.”
Clank—clank—clank.
C’Mal and Syron both stopped to listen.
Clank—clank—clank.
“Look at this.” C’Mal’s security panel showed several Vulcanoids in dark metal armor standing on the upper surface of the Talon, framed by a bright sky. One was kneeling, beating on the locked hatch with the butt of a knife.
Clank—clank—clank.
They looked at each other.
“So…do we answer the door?” asked C’Mal.
—————
“Daehlna ko jihmna?”
Those were the first words out of the Vulcanoid’s mouth. The universal translator always paused a second when a new language was added to the mix to indicate the original tongue.
“Friend or foe?” the translation came through.
“Is that Romulan?” Syron whispered to C’Mal.
“Older,” said C’Mal. “Ancient Vulcan. The words still have the case endings.” C’Mal turned to the Vulcanoid and replied, “Aeo hnafirh’rai.”
“How is it you speak Ancient Vulcan?” asked an astounded Syron.
“In the Mirror Universe, the Romulans who enslaved me still worshipped the old Vulcan gods, and we had to recite their invocations before every battle and after every assassination.” She shook her head. “Sorry, too much information.”
The Vulcanoid woman pointed toward a warship that was quickly approaching the levitating Talon.
“They wish to kill us,” she said. “I’ll ask you again, are you friend or foe?”
They heard the crack of a large weapon firing and a projectile struck the sea-going vessel—presumably belonging to the Vulcanoids—parked on the port side of the Talon. Smoke, flame and debris filled the air. The damaged ship began to sink.
“Looks like the decision was made for you,” the Vulcanoid woman said, motioning for her fellows to crawl through the upper hatch and into the relative safety of the Talon.
—————
The destroyer, visible through the command deck windows, had fired several projectile explosives at the Talon from a distance. The warheads impacted the shields and blossomed into brief incendiary flowers, but did not harm the ship.
The Vulcanoids were greedily absorbing the details of their new environment, and the female finally asked, “Are you from aeliri-enhira, the outside universe? But of course, you must be.”
“I’m Syron,” the Orion said. “And this is C’Mal.”
“Jolan'tru!” C’Mal chirped, guessing that the standard Romulan greeting would be better understood than any modern Vulcan phrase.
The female Vulcanoid, obviously the leader, stood up straight, somewhat regally, and said, “I am Tehilma, last of the Aevri clan.” She indicated a large-boned Vulcanoid with long, reddish hair and a full beard. “This is Wayir.” She turned to the other, a short but muscular balding male. “And this is Samyat.”
C’Mal stared in fascination at Tehilma’s very dark skin, luminous green eyes, and particularly at the armor she wore. The heavy dress was a mesh of thumbnail-sized metallic hexagons, dark with oxidation and worn down with use. The others were similarly dressed, sporting short swords and sling bags. They bore the scars of battle and the hyper-vigilance of the refugee.
“This planet…,” said C’Mal to Syron, “it’s a refugium. Their ancestors must have left Vulcan two thousand years ago, just after the revolution, and, just like us, they became trapped inside the primordial filament.”
“The past is the past,” said Tehilma. She sat down at C’Mal’s security station and zoomed in on the sensor profile of the attacking vessel. Then she shifted the scan to high energy.
“Shielded radioactive material,” noted C’Mal. “Tehilma, you seem familiar with the controls of my security panel.”
The Vulcanoid replied derisively, “It’s intuitively obvious.”
“Are they preparing to fire a nuclear-tipped device at us?” asked Syron.
“I suggest you fire first,” said Tehilma. “Quickly.”
Syron met C’Mal’s eyes and nodded. C’Mal, with practiced efficiency, primed a torpedo, reduced the payload size, and targeted the hostile destroyer’s array of large guns.
“Torpedo away,” she reported.
They watched the red glow of the fusion thrusters propel the weapon toward the destroyer. It quickly dropped, disappearing beneath the surface of the water.
“What just happened?” asked Syron.
C’Mal looked baffled. “We missed.”
Syron said, “Computer, target any incoming projectiles with phasers, then target the weapons that fired them.”
C’Mal grabbed Syron’s arm. “There’s a chance the phasers won’t work either.”
Syron jumped behind the helm panel; the Talon submerged and dived, the shields locking out the pressure of the ocean water around them.
“You’re wasting shield energy,” said C’Mal.
“Less than if the shields had to neutralize a thermonuclear blast. What do you suggest? With no impulse drive, we can’t fly away. We’ll exhaust the attitude fuel if we use the thrusters. Using the landing panels, we can hide underwater using minimal energy.”
“Landing panels?” asked Tehilma.
Syron explained, “They repel or attract nearby objects using virtual graviton exchange. We use them to gently land the Talon—our ship. We also use them to provide gravity for our bodies in space.”
“Gravity!” declared C’Mal. “Gravity is why our torpedo missed. Think about it: this is a tiny moon, but with an ocean, an atmosphere, and near standard gravity. Trapped in this primordial thread, we exist in a different universe, one with different rules. Remember Sylvie Brumaire’s universe? It lacked the arrow of time, and even physical existence as we think of it. All that existed there were coherent energy patterns, built of force carriers. It would explain why the Talon’s antimatter reactor went critical: the reaction began to go faster than the Penning field could manage.”
“C’Mal, you’re a clever woman…,” cooed Syron.
“Thank you.”
“…no matter what anyone says.”
—————
With the Talon hiding far beneath the planetary ocean’s surface, C’Mal and Syron showed their guests how to create food suited for to the Vulcan palate using the ship’s replicator. The Vulcanoids ate ravenously, clearing their plates of several of Sovak’s favorite recipes.
At Syron’s urging, Tehilma recounted the violent history of the moon, which was named Ihhuina.
“Our world slowly cycles between ocean and ice. When our cities become grounded during the ice cycle, there is less warfare. But during the water cycle, the struggle for resources intensifies. The various floating cities send out long range raiding fleets to attack each other. Our city—Vautha—was taken by the warriors of Laevala several star periods ago. It was they who attacked your vessel. After our defeat, the captured warriors were flayed alive, while the other survivors were enslaved. We three escaped.”
Samyat interrupted his feast long enough to add: “We had hoped to find sanctuary in one of the other cities. But your arrival has changed that.”
“We don’t intend to stay long,” said Syron.
“My people have been trapped here for two thousand fuckin’ years,” said Wayir, the universal translator pausing slightly to parse the curse word. “You think you’re just going to fly away like a night beetle?”
Tehilma laughed at his crudeness, then said, “I saw you dial back the explosive yield of your torpedo before you launched it. How much of Laevala could one of those destroy at full intensity?”
Syron stood and motioned for C’Mal to join her. “We have to try to fix our ship now. Feel free to rest and to use the food replicator.” Syron then added, “But Tehilma…I’ll be watching you.”
—————
“I locked every door on the Talon, except for the mess hall,” said Syron.
C’Mal paused thoughtfully, “Despite being emaciated, they’re still Vulcan. They’re several times as strong as we are, and they outnumber us.” She glanced at Syron. “And Tehilma is whip-smart.”
“I realize that.” Syron was trying to think of a way to re-energize the warp core, but particle physics and math in general were not her strong suit. “I wonder why, after two thousand years, the city-states of Ihhuina are still at war with one another. I mean, the idea of the common good appealed enough to the Vulcans of our universe—and the Caitians, for that matter, although you’re a race of softies—that the Vulcans joined the Humans in forming the Federation. Even the Romulans aren’t particularly fractious toward one another.”
“I’m sure,” said C’Mal, “that it’s the same here as it was back home in the Mirror Universe. The different Vulcanoid clans each had their etiological deity, for whom they fought. A victory for their clan was a victory for their god. And a loss—well, gods don’t like to lose.”
—————
C’Mal opened her eyes and found she was slumped over, at the back of the bridge, her arms fixed behind her and tied to the bulkhead frame. Syron, similarly secured, was slouched next to her. She was annoyed, but not really surprised, to see Tehilma sitting in the captain’s chair, Samyat at the helm, and Wayir at the weapons panel.
She tried to say, “What the hell are you doing?” but found she couldn’t articulate. Tehilma stood and approached her, a small, dried twig of some plant in her hand.
“Your clever replicator allowed me to produce an incapacitating agent based on this branch of Keroi leaf. Don’t worry. It’ll wear off.”
Syron was now awake and demanded something, but found she also couldn’t control her tongue.
“I’m going to assume that you’re asking me why I’ve done this,” said Tehilma. “We’re going to destroy Laevala.” She turned to Wayir, who met her gaze and shook his head. “But we’re having some trouble priming your weapons.”
Syron tried to speak. “That’s because they’re very dangerous.” She coughed and cleared her throat. “And very expensive.”
Tehilma nodded comprehendingly. “Unlock the weapons.”
“Or what?” asked Syron.
The Vulcanoid woman marched determinedly toward C’Mal and kicked her upper arm against the wall of the hull with a heavy boot. C’Mal cried out, her face twisted in pain. Syron had heard the unmistakable crack of a bone breaking.
“C’Mal?”
The felinid did not answer.
“EMH,” Syron called out desperately.
The Emergency Medical Hologram appeared and asked, “Nature of the medical emergency?”
“C’Mal’s arm.”
Tehilma, startled and angered by the sudden appearance of the doctor, attempted to thrust the fine-edged blade of her short sword into the doctor’s side. It passed through the temporary assemblage of gluons and photons which comprised the holographic doctor’s body without any effect.
The doctor was more troubled by the broken humorus bone. “This is the same arm I just mended, if the ship’s chronometer is correct.”
Several medical tools beamed into the doctor’s hands as he repaired the bone.
Tehilma smiled. “Oh, but this is delicious! I can break her bones again and again, and each time this golem will come to mend them. What fun.”
The EMH paused to glance acidly at Tehilma. “Charming.”
“These Vulcanoids have taken over the ship,” said Syron.
“That’s unfortunate.”
She whispered through clenched teeth: “Do something.”
The hologram addressed Syron. “As you are fully aware, my very strict protocols prevent me from harming any living thing. C’Mal’s arm is now mended…again. My advice is to call me if you need me.”
The EMH disappeared.
“Unlock the weapons,” suggested Tehilma. She glanced at C’Mal, who was smoldering with anger, then back to the Orion. “Which bone should I break next?”
“Tehilma,” said a woozy C’Mal, “you’re no better than the people of Laevala.”
“I think that’s obvious,” the Vulcanoid said. She kicked C’Mal, who could not defend herself, first in the ribs, then the collarbone. Tehilma’s fellows watched dispassionately from their stations.
C’Mal cried out involuntarily in pain.
Looking defeated, Syron closed her eyes. “Computer…unlock torpedo stores. Unlock phaser turrets.”
Tehilma smiled widely, revealing that several of her teeth were missing. She declared, “It’s a great day.” She returned to the captain’s chair and said, “Samyat, resurface the Talon and bring us closer to Laevala.” She turned back to Syron. “And, thanks for recalibrating the torpedos for Ihhuina gravity. Very helpful.”
Daylight flooded the bridge. In the distance, spanning the horizon, was an oddly cobbled-together city structure, at least a kilometer in size.
“Computer,” asked Tehilma, “how many of your torpedos would it take to blow that city into tiny pieces?”
The computer replied: “No less than six torpedoes at optimum dispersal would result in a complete loss of structure.”
“Wayir, load them up.”
Syron whispered, “EMH!”
The Emergency Medical Hologram appeared, causing Tehilma to throw a knife-like look at Syron.
“C’Mal needs medical attention,” Syron explained. “Tehilma, please….” C’Mal was wheezing, barely able to pull in a breath.
The Vulcanoid returned her attention to the city.
“C’Mal is injured again?” the EMH asked, annoyance turning to concern.
“Help us,” mouthed Syron.
The EMH, his brow furrowed, scanned C’Mal with a medical tricorder. “She is bleeding internally. I’ll have to transport her to sickbay.”
“She remains here,” Tehilma commanded without looking back.
“Then at least let me transport some of my medical supplies to the bridge,” he said with an air of desperation.
“Fine, Golem,” Tehilma said, watching the city grow in size and several destroyers launch from its ports.
A medical bag and portable scanner materialized beside C’Mal on the deck. At the same time, a type-2 phaser materialized in the hand of the EMH.
“Tehilma?” he said.
Enraged, she turned to address him. He fired the phaser and she, stunned, fell roughly from the captain’s chair to the floor. Samyat and Wayir both attempted to rush the EMH, but he was able to fell both of the powerful men with the hand phaser.
The EMH looked at Syron. “It is recommended that Vulcanoids undergo a generalized exam for cellular dysplasia every ten years. The exam is invasive and requires sedation.” He loosened Syron’s bonds and she crawled over to C’Mal to hold her. He continued, “I was only concerned about their medical welfare. And incidentally, they’ll be out for hours.”
“Help C’Mal,” prompted Syron.
“Oh, right.”
As Syron re-submerged the Talon, hiding it from the Laevalan fleet, she asked the EMH, “Doesn’t sedation require some kind of prior consent?”
“Considering the circumstances,” he said, gently loosening C’Mals bonds, “I thought I would ask them afterwards.”
—————
“Explain this to me again?”
“Look, C’Mal, it’s easy. Since, in this bottle universe, matter and antimatter annihilate in such a way that an electromagnetic Penning field can’t entirely contain the reaction, it means that we have no warp drive. Also, we destroyed the impulse engines during our initial crash on Ihhuina. We still, however, have auxiliary power—the fusion reactor that powers the impulse engines. So—bear with me here—if we shoot a proton beam from the deflector dish directly into the fusion fuel, it will cause a burst of energy, including a cloud of virtual antimatter particles. I’ve reconfigured the Penning bottle to separate out those particles before they annihilate, giving us just enough antimatter to hop from this space to normal space before the reaction goes critical.”
C’Mal groaned and hugged the tight bandage around her ribcage. “What you’ve just described sounds like a bomb.”
“It’s a ‘controlled explosion,’ just like almost every other form of propulsion,” retorted Syron.
“But Syron, you’re horrible at math.”
The Orion growled. “Is there a non-zero chance that we’ll both die? Yes. Are you happy now? Are you satisfied? But I had the Talon’s computer measure and re-measure all the variables and constants. Would you rather stay here with your psychopathic Vulcanoid friends?”
—————
C’Mal and Syron threw the three Vulcanoids into an orange inflatable raft, filled with several days of provisions, and informed them that the cuffs binding their hands were timed to release in one hour.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Tehilma shouted at them.
“Wouldn’t be the first,” Syron yelled back, waving goodbye.
The EMH, who had been instrumental in defeating Tehilma, Samyat, and Wayir, declined to witness the crew’s attempt to return to normal space-time.
“You’re saying there’s a chance the Talon will blow up into a cloud of plasma?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Syron.
The EMH waffled. “It’s not that I fear non-existence, since I don’t really exist, but…I’m not sure I want to be there when it happens.”
So, the two women, Orion and Ferasan, hugged each other, sat at their respective helm and security stations, and activated the “Rube Goldberg” drive, as C’Mal had christened it.
Once the Talon was back in normal space, stranded and without fuel, a Starfleet ship that was fortuitously nearby came to the rescue, as was their wont. Suffice it to say, Sovak was not happy about having to refuel the Talon with antimatter, one of the most expensive substances in the universe. But then again, what is more valuable than a good crew?