Chapter Text
Chapter 1 — Death's Embrace
Liminal Space — Relative Time: January 30, Year 14
USS Relativity — Proximal to Timeline 1882.41 Alpha
Act natural.
You are about to go on duty.
This is normal.
Go to the command console. Log yourself on duty. Just like you do every day.
Now enter the command codes you watched the girl in Engineering use.
The one you had a relationship with.
Do not forget to put the console into diagnostic mode first.
Almost forgot.
That would have been bad.
Now place all internal sensors on maintenance hold.
Good.
They are down.
You have at least seven minutes before they can be cycled back online.
Weapons locker.
Take Tyler’s phaser.
Use the spanner in your pocket to disable the identity-recognition system.
And…
Done.
Now disable the communication device that links it to the ship.
Link severed.
Set it to kill.
Done.
Holster it.
Exit the weapons room. Move through the common area. Enter the security access corridor.
Now into the hall.
Take a breath.
Nothing is wrong.
Nobody suspects anything.
Just another day on duty.
Cross to the turbolift.
Be friendly.
“Deck one.”
Good.
You said that confidently.
The doors open.
Move.
You are already down to three minutes.
Only a few more steps.
You are there.
The bridge.
Control your heartbeat.
“Commander,” Morgan La Fae said from the engineering console, “the internal sensors appear to be down.”
She frowned at her readout.
“That’s weird…”
A loud crack erupted behind her, accompanied by a streak of light.
A second.
A third.
Pain.
She could not catch her breath.
The lights were fading.
Before he could pull the trigger a fourth time, Ensign Dion Adama felt something touch him.
He did not have time to see what it was.
The bridge vanished beneath him.
Then he hit the floor.
Hard.
Pain exploded through his arm. The one that had been holding the phaser.
Broken.
The bridge faded out.
The brig faded in.
For a moment, Dion only stared upward, breathing hard, the ruined weapon gone from his hand.
Still, he thought.
He got three of them.
“Medical emergency on the bridge!” Commander Avasarala screamed.
She had barely risen from her chair.
Captain Pax lifted the phaser from the deck, the same weapon that had been in Adama’s hand only moments before.
He surveyed the scene.
Three shots.
Three officers.
Three bodies motionless on the deck.
Pax looked down at the weapon and disabled it.
Medical teams beamed onto the bridge and rushed to the fallen.
Doctor Calrissian appeared a heartbeat later. She gasped once, then forced herself into motion, scanning each officer as her emergency team stood ready behind her.
There was nothing for them to do.
Calrissian lowered her tricorder.
“They’re dead, Captain.”
Commander Avasarala moved closer.
Commander Sulu stood over her fallen science officer, silent and rigid, as if any movement might make the moment real.
Tyler beamed in with two security officers flanking him, weapons drawn.
“It’s already over, Commander,” Avasarala said. Her voice had gone flat. “I expect an immediate investigation.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tyler said.
Then he saw one of his own officers on the deck.
His expression changed.
Sadira looked across the bridge and slowly shook her head.
Lieutenant Charles Black.
Ensign Tregan Amari.
Chief Engineer Commander Morgan La Fae.
All lost.
But why?
She replayed the moment in her mind.
The captain had been in his ready room when the first shot was fired.
The shots had come so quickly that Morgan had not even had time to turn around. Black had been drawn on so fast he never had a chance to react.
Sadira could not even remember the angle from which Pax had entered the bridge.
One moment Adama was reorienting the phaser.
The next, Pax was there.
He had broken Dion’s arm and engaged the transporter almost in the same motion.
How had he reacted so quickly?
The thought chilled her.
This could have been so much worse.
The entire bridge could have been wiped out.
They had been caught completely by surprise.
Sadira clicked her communicator.
“Engineering. This is Commander Avasarala.”
“Engineering here,” came the reply.
“Send Lieutenant Commander Grymm to the bridge, please.”
“Right away, ma’am.”
Pax looked toward Tyler.
“Commander Tyler,” he said, his voice carrying a stern finality none of them had heard from him before. “Have Dion placed in the interrogation room.”
Tyler straightened.
“Right away, Captain.”
He moved off the bridge quickly, security following in his wake.
Vela looked to Olivia.
A moment later, the three bodies vanished from the deck, beamed away to the morgue.
The absence they left behind somehow made the bridge feel worse.
Vela approached the first officer.
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
Sadira looked at the place where Morgan had fallen.
“I do not know,” she said. “He just snapped, I guess.”
Vela exhaled.
“What a disaster.”
Pax and Tyler sat in security for quite some time, reviewing everything Dion had done to cover himself.
Through the one-way mirror, Dion sat in the interrogation room, staring toward the glass, hardly moving.
Tyler’s face was tight with anger.
“He put a console into diagnostic mode,” Tyler said. “That stopped it from confirming the identity of the user, which allowed him to enter a stolen code and gain engineering access. Then he placed the internal sensors into a maintenance cycle, forcing an unavoidable reboot.”
Pax listened silently.
“That gave him enough time to set a weapon to kill without the sensors delivering a warning to anyone,” Tyler continued. “The backup for something like that is the signal device inside the phaser itself. He disabled that too.”
Tyler looked down at the report.
“He took my phaser because he knew it could be set to kill. I was the only guarantee. He could not know which other officers had authorization for lethal settings.”
He paused, jaw tightening.
“He also disabled the fail-safe identification system. This was clearly premeditated. It took him time to figure out every workaround. It may take me a few days to go through all the logs and determine how far back the planning goes.”
Tyler looked through the glass.
“Or he may be willing to tell us.”
“I will question him,” Pax said.
Tyler glanced at him.
“His rank and position are suspended,” Pax continued. “This level of planning shows a deliberate violation of his oath and an immediate threat to the ship. His normal privileges are suspended under emergency command authority.”
Tyler considered that for a moment.
It was within a captain’s authority to suspend certain privileges under emergency conditions, but Tyler could not think of many examples where those limits had been pushed this far.
Then again, he could not think of many examples like this.
Pax stood and left the observation room.
A moment later, he appeared on the security monitor outside the interrogation room.
Tyler triggered the door.
It hissed open.
Dion saw the captain in the reflection.
He had come again.
Just like last time.
Dion had expected the captain.
Good.
He assumed Tyler was watching from the other room. Perhaps a few others from security as well.
He sensed Pax move behind him, then watched as the captain came into view and sat across from him.
Dion lifted his eyes.
“Good morning, sir,” he said. “Or is it afternoon now?”
“Why did you do it?” Pax asked.
His tone was measured.
Steady.
“Why do you do it?” Dion asked.
“This is about you.”
“No,” Dion said, smiling faintly. “It is not. If you can answer my question, you will know the answer to yours.”
Pax’s expression did not change.
“I am not following.”
“This ship. This mission. You have the ability to be the most powerful being in existence, and everyone just accepts it.”
Dion leaned back in his chair.
“I was beholden to your every whim for years. I did everything you asked of me. I trained. I went to Rome. I lived an entire life. Then I came back home and got punished for it.”
His voice shifted into heavy sarcasm.
“I did my time. Learned my lesson.”
He lifted his fingers into lazy air quotes.
“Then I got promoted back to ensign. But security is a pile of nothing. I have done nothing while everyone around me advanced. New people passed me. People who were not even here when I bled for this ship.”
His smile faded.
“I ruined my entire life, apparently. So what did I have to lose?”
“I am not here for your manifesto,” Pax said. “Commander Tyler was your superior. I am sure he had his reasons for his assignments. I need to know why you decided taking the lives of my crew was your only option.”
“Because of what I had to gain.”
Dion’s voice became almost sing-song.
“Nothing to lose. Everything to gain.”
“What could you gain?”
Dion’s eyes brightened.
“Oh, I admit it. I underestimated you, Captain. I had everyone dead to rights. Everyone.”
He leaned forward, broken arm resting on the table, still unrepaired.
“I got Black. Amari. La Fae. I was about to get Sulu. I could have gotten them all before the time ran out.”
His face tightened.
“But you. Where did you even come from? I was on my ass before I could feel the pain from my arm breaking.”
Pax watched him.
“You wanted to take the bridge.”
Dion smiled.
“Bingo.”
The word came out soft and pleased.
“I wanted to take the whole fraking thing for myself. And I could have. I could have killed you too, you alien freak, if you had not been so goddamn superpowered.”
Pax did not react.
“You have been lying to all of us,” Dion said. “You always have been. You are some kind of—”
He stopped, searching for the word.
“I do not even know. But whoever made you captain did not understand what they were doing. You do not deserve this power.”
“And you do?”
“Why the frak not?”
Dion’s voice rose.
“Whoever controls this ship controls reality. You are god.”
The room went very still.
Pax looked at him for a long moment.
Then he spoke.
“Dion Adama, by emergency command authority, I am remanding you to indefinite internment in the long-term isolation chamber.”
Dion’s smile faltered.
Pax tilted his head slightly.
“I do not envy you. It contains a simulation occupied by someone who spends his days fighting one thousand five hundred opponents who are all trying to kill him.”
A pause.
“Now it will be one thousand five hundred and one.”
Dion stared at him.
“Perhaps you can break his perfect streak.”
For a moment, Dion said nothing.
Then he began to laugh.
The transport beam took him mid-laughter, carrying him away until the sound faded into nothing.
Pax remained seated for several seconds.
Behind him, Tyler and several security officers stood in the observation room, watching.
Eventually, Pax rose and left the interrogation room.
Tyler did not move.
He had a bad feeling.
This could not spread through the ship.
Not like this.
If the crew understood what Dion had really tried to do, it could destroy everything they had built.