Chapter Text
Chapter 1 — It’s All Relative
Liminal Space — Relative Time: Unknown
USS Relativity — Proximal to Timeline 8921.1 Alpha
Xia Sulu was wary of her new passenger. It was clear there was something off about him. It was equally clear, from the way he had arrived onboard, that there was a degree of mystery perhaps neither of them understood.
Regardless of the red flags, she was happy someone was here.
She was happy the isolation was over.
As she guided her visitor, Captain Sebastian Storm, through the ship, she eventually brought him to the central corridor surrounding the liminal core.
It could hardly be called a corridor. It was more like a donut between rooms and connecting halls, wrapping around the core at the center of the ship.
When Cooper saw it, he figured this would be a good place to play dumb.
“What is this?” Captain Storm asked.
“Oh. This is the liminal core. It’s how the ship pumps the space around us through the core and gives us power,” she answered. “The chow hall is this way.”
They walked around the ring and entered through another door.
The room was roughly rectangular, with angled corner panels that softened the ninety-degree edges. The metal looked old, with concentrated buildup in the places more prone to collecting residue. Along one wall was a small bank of replicators.
Those, Cooper thought, looked at least comparable to the technology aboard his Relativity—which made sense. The underlying technology probably came from roughly the same era.
There was only so much you could do to change a replicator.
The rest of the ship, however...
It looked more like something designed to be a prison ship than a vessel of exploration.
Cooper stopped in front of the replicator bank.
Once again, he couldn't reveal that he had any idea what was going on.
“You tell it what you want, and it makes it for you,” Xia explained. “Although, I don't know what qualifies as food for you, so...” She looked down, apparently trying to remember some distant first-contact training. “Yeah. I don't know. What do you like?”
“I think I can figure this out. I've been around the block once or twice,” Cooper said, trying to make the character land a little better. “One filet mignon, medium, with green beans, steamed, and mashed potatoes with butter, bacon, cheddar cheese, and sour cream.”
The computer chirped, and the meal appeared.
Xia looked slightly impressed.
“One bowl of chicken ramen soup, configuration Xia two-three-one.”
A bowl appeared with an assortment of toppings.
They carried their food to a table and sat down.
“Thanks for dinner. This is the best food I've seen in a very long time,” he said.
“What time do you come from?” she asked.
“It’s difficult to explain. Where I'm from, this space is uninhabited by anyone but myself.” Cooper cut into his steak. “I was going to ask you the same thing, but your name gives me a few context clues. You come from the Federation, and...” He pretended to think about it. “I'm guessing twenty-ninth century?”
Cooper knew that was wrong, but it was the published history of Federation time travel—the version someone might reasonably know because of Voyager. It didn't fit particularly well with her claim of being Sulu's great-great-granddaughter, but that was fine.
Captain Storm was testing her story.
“Twenty-fifth, actually. Early twenty-fifth.” Xia blew across a spoonful of broth.
“Right. Great-great-granddaughter of Sulu, from the Enterprise under Kirk. Famous ship. Famous crew.”
She nodded slowly.
“I imagine, though, after being out here as long as you have, all of that feels pretty far away.”
She rolled her head from side to side.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“What have you been doing out here this whole time?”
“Mostly trying to figure out how everything works. I am...” She paused. “Was just a pilot. Green. Hardly out of the Academy. After long enough, I figured the only thing I could do was use the logs and everything stored in the ship to try and learn.”
She moved her spoon around the bowl.
“I've done a lot of reading, but sometimes, without a proper teacher, it's hard to figure things out. I watch lectures in the timeline sometimes, but if I don't understand something, it's not like I can ask questions.” She shrugged. “Mostly it's been me fucking up one thing after another and trying not to die.”
She was amazingly candid.
Cooper could understand why.
“Seems like you did all right. You lasted this long. That's longer than most people get to live. Even some of those elves. Have you seen those?”
“Mhmm.” She swallowed. “Yeah. It's like that.”
She looked at him.
“Do you have a crew where you come from?”
“No. Just me. I like the isolation.” He took another bite. “I can kind of tell, though, it isn't your cup of tea, to coin an Earth parlance.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, no, no. I didn't mean it that way. You're a welcome change. Just an unexpected one.”
She looked up and held his gaze for a little longer than he was comfortable with.
Cooper broke eye contact and returned to his food.
He liked his relationship with Sadira, and he had just spent twenty-seven years in Star Wars. He wasn't about to complicate this—especially with all the other worrying complications already involved.
Dammit.
If he stayed too distant, that could have consequences too.
The Temporal Prime Directive was astoundingly difficult to function under in this situation.
And, of course, he had introduced himself with an absurdly heroic name and title. He should have picked something neutral, something deliberately uninteresting, so she wouldn't find him mysterious or fascinating.
As if that would have mattered to a nineteen-year-old woman who had been alone for fifteen hundred years.
Ugh, Cooper. Get it together. She's still looking at you.
“Perhaps we could help each other,” he said. “I'm pretty well versed in the multiverse. I could help you understand some of it, and you could help me understand where we are. That way I can try to help you fix your situation, and you can help me fix mine. How does that sound?”
She finally returned her attention to her soup.
There was no telling what was going through her mind.
“That sounds like a good plan. After we're done eating, I can show you around some more.” She hesitated. “One of my projects, in the med bay, is... different. I don't want you to get freaked out.”
Oh, sweet heavens.
What in the world could that possibly mean?
“Project?” he asked, despite whatever implications that question might carry.
Better to rip off the Band-Aid than drag it out.
“I learned xenobiology. It was the thing I attached to most easily. It was my best class at the Academy.” She sounded almost embarrassed now. “I've been trying to create life, since I couldn't bring it here. I haven't been successful, but I do have some living creatures. They're just... behind glass. Suspended in liquid. I could never get past the gestation phase.”
“You didn't have anyone, so you decided to create someone.” Cooper nodded. “That sounds pretty logical.”
It actually wasn't as bad as he'd assumed.
“How many living creatures are there?”
“Eight. I was working on the concept for the ninth.” She looked back at him. “I can show you them and explain. I just didn't want to scare you. Medical sciences can be intimidating.”
It was a little mad scientist.
But Cooper had seen worse
“So what do I call you, Captain Sulu? You have the uniform, but no rank.” He said, looking at her.
“Just Xia. I was a Lieutenant when the accident happened, and Aoli calls me Captain, but it’s part of the protocol for the computer system.”
“Okay Xia.” He thought about calling her ‘Just Xia’ but then the joke might make her laugh, and look at him again. He needed time to cool her off, and set boundaries. If that was even possible. He might end up being here a very long time. He might not even be able to leave.
One step at a time Cooper.
His plate was finished, he brought it back to the replicator and it re-incorporated ins plate.
“That’s fancy,” he said. “Okay, I am ready to see your science fair project.”
She giggled.
Dammit. It’s like I’m too charming to even stop myself.
She returned her bowl as well, then led him through the central corridor to a room on the other side of the ship.
The med bay.
Twelve pods had been arranged around a series of central hookups. From the markings on the floor, it looked as though she had moved the biobeds out and replaced them with growth tubes. They were large transparent cylinders, with equipment mounted above and below each chamber.
Eight were occupied, with varying forms of life growing inside. The ninth was filled with fluid, but contained no tissue. The remainder were empty.
Each had a designation scrawled across it in some kind of marker.
XA1. XA2.
And so on.
The ninth had already been labeled:
XA9.
Xia stopped beside the first.
“This one came after I scanned a timeline where there’s this thing called the ‘Speed Force.’ It was an anomaly there, and I was trying to see if I could recreate it. I’m not sure what I did wrong.”
“Perhaps because the Speed Force created it, and you can’t recreate those conditions here?” Cooper asked.
“Oh.” She put a hand to her chin. “I guess that might explain it.”
“It’s a common issue. I had the Force where I just was, but it doesn’t work elsewhere. It’s a local phenomenon. You might be able to figure out how to inject some into it, or contain some. I’d have to look at its properties.”
“Okay. I guess we can look at that.” Xia glanced at him. “Are you a scientist?”
“Yes. I am a multiversal scientist,” he said. “That’s why I go in and out of universes. I might even be able to help you with your transporter issue.”
It wasn’t really a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive if the technology already existed and the ship had merely been upgraded in his time.
Right?
He at least hoped not.
Xia moved on to XA2.
Inside was a bright crystalline structure. It almost looked as though she had simply grown an enormous crystal.
“It’s fascinating. What is it?” Cooper asked.
“It’s supposed to be a crystalline life-form. This is basically a giant brain. It’s supposed to communicate through vibrations. I thought it might be able to augment the computer, but it never started vibrating.” Xia rested a hand against the tank. “I think it’s because it didn’t have access to others to learn from. I think it’s alive. I just don’t have any way to figure out how to make it work.”
“I don’t really have an answer for that one. Sorry.” Cooper leaned closer. “A crystalline brain is fairly interesting, though. Why did you think it could augment your computer?”
“It’s supposed to function like a living quantum computer. They don’t just communicate through vibration. They use some kind of quantum superposition to process information.”
“Oh.” Cooper regarded it more closely. “I guess if you could access that, it could provide a wealth of information. Pity it didn’t work.”
Crystalline brain.
Why did that sound familiar?
“What does XA mean?” Cooper asked.
“Xenomorphic Anomaly. They’re all fairly unique life-forms. Across everything I’ve been able to observe in the multiverse, there really isn’t anything else quite like each of them. The Speed Force being was the only creature I ever found that seemed to have been created from—or by—the Speed Force itself.” She shrugged. “I kind of thought it might be really fast.”
“Oh.”
Cooper looked back toward the first chamber.
“That changes my analysis. If it actually is Speed Force...” He rubbed his chin. “Hmm. I’m going to need to research that.”
It was actually a novel concept.
If the organism itself contained the phenomenon, rather than merely drawing power from it, perhaps some portion of the Speed Force could persist even in the absence of its source.
“Oh. Sorry if I wasn’t specific enough,” Xia said. “I’m not used to talking to people.”
“No. Not your fault. This is some advanced stuff.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and crossed her legs somewhat coyly.
Dammit. Not again.
Xia motioned toward the crystalline organism.
“This comes from a civilization of crystalline life. There are lots of things throughout space that are kind of like it, but this one isn’t actually crystal, per se. It’s crystallized protein and guanine. Organic crystal. Every other crystalline life-form I found was basically inorganic matter that developed lifelike properties. This one is actually biological.”
“Oh.” Cooper leaned toward the glass again. “That is actually very interesting. I haven’t heard of anything like that.”
And that was true.
She had done some serious research.
Xia moved to the next chamber.
“This life-form has forty times the muscle-fiber density of anything else I found. It develops underwater. Since the first two had difficulty, I thought maybe I could get this one to survive in the tank by using a solution similar to its natural environment.” She frowned at it. “I still don’t really know what I did wrong. It grew this much, and then it just... stopped.”
Cooper nodded.
She moved on.
“This one has bones with the best density-to-rigidity ratio of anything I’ve encountered.”
It didn’t particularly look alive to Cooper.
It looked like a mass of calcified, densely packed bone.
“Only the bones grew,” Xia admitted.
Yep. That makes sense.
“It’s a lot of failures,” she said.
She walked to the next tank.
This one looked almost like a skeleton wrapped in a thin layer of skin. It was easily the most horrific of the collection.
“This...” She winced. “Yeah. It was supposed to have the ability to circulate blood in extreme temperatures. It was the only living thing I found on a world close to absolute zero.”
She looked at Cooper.
“I know it looks terrible. It didn’t suffer, though.”
“Why didn’t you try to make, like... a person?” Cooper asked.
It seemed like a fair question.
“I had to be able to replicate and synthesize the biology first. These are complex organisms, but their biological material is still relatively straightforward to reproduce.” She looked across the tanks. “Their genomes aren’t necessarily simple, but the anomaly is. They’re close to the first generation that developed the trait, so I can isolate what changed without sorting through thousands of generations of additional mutations.”
She paused.
“That might also be why they keep failing. They’re miracles. They were created by extreme circumstances that I just can’t replicate.”
“Now that you explain it, I understand. It does make sense.”
“I know I failed with all of these, but they still produced something valuable.” Her demeanor brightened slightly. “I have samples of their biological material. Real, organic material. I figured if I could collect enough of these basic mutated biologics, maybe eventually I could make—”
“A hybrid?” Cooper interrupted. “You’re trying to make a hybrid?”
“Well, a synthetic chimeric organism built from an engineered composite genome, but... basically, yes.”
She seemed pleased that he understood.
“All of these things have individually interesting traits. If I combine them, maybe I can create something fascinating—and actually produce a successful organism.”
She moved to the next tank.
“This one is a liminal-space life-form.”
Cooper looked at her.
A life-form?
They had never found any life in liminal space.
Then again, Relativity had only been studying it for a couple of decades.
Xia had been here for fifteen hundred years.
She had them beat by a fairly substantial margin.
“It was only a few cells when I found it,” Xia continued. “I had to adapt it and evolve it bit by bit. This is the ninety... um...” She looked upward. “Aoli, remind me?”
“Ninety-third,” a voice answered from the speakers.
“Yes. That. Thanks, Aoli.”
“You are welcome.”
“So, yeah, it took a great deal of directed evolution. I had to do quite a bit of research, and I even built some specialty equipment for it based on scans from various timelines.”
Cooper was starting to understand how her little hobby had managed to consume fifteen hundred years. She might very well be one of the most advanced xenobiologists in existence.
Because of her obvious flirting, he decided not to offer up that little piece of information. Flattery would only make things more complicated.
“How close are you to making number nine?” he asked.
“I’ve created an embryo, actually...” She looked upward. “How many, Aoli?”
“Seven hundred and thirty-two.”
“Yeah. That.”
Oh. Only seven hundred and thirty-two?
“Why haven’t they taken?”
“I haven’t been able to figure that out yet.” She looked toward XA9. “I got that far, became frustrated, and stopped. I haven’t worked on it in a few...” She paused. “Decades.”
Xia chuckled nervously and placed a hand behind her head.
“I’ve been kind of slowly going crazy.”
The humor left Cooper almost immediately.
“You coming here has been pretty significant,” she continued. “I haven’t even been in this room since the last one failed.”
“Oh.” Cooper looked around at the tanks again. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m glad I caught you now, too. Hopefully we can work together and fix some of this.”
“Me too.” She hesitated. “I really... I...” Her eyes settled on him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Let’s come back here after I’ve looked at some things. Can you show me how you scan the timelines?”
“Oh. Sure. Up these stairs.”
At the rear of the med bay, a narrow staircase climbed to the level above.
They went up together.
The room at the top looked almost like an office, with windows surrounding it on several sides.
Except the windows looked down into the pits.
Cooper stopped.
It was the bridge.
Or part of it.
The layout was remarkably similar to his own Relativity, but where the entrance to sickbay looked into the pits on his ship, this appeared to be what had once been the chief medical officer’s office—if this version had even designated it that way.
Across from them he could see a table and chairs. Apparently, on this version of the ship, the conference room could also look into the pits. On his Relativity, the main corridors occupied that space. Here, those corridors seemed to have been compressed into the ring surrounding the liminal core.
It was actually more like his ship than he had realized.
Just smaller.
Much smaller.
And configured slightly differently.
Above them, he suspected, was the main bridge.
Xia led him back out, and there it was exactly where he expected: the liminal core. She took him into Pit Two, the center pit.
“That station can show you sensor data from liminal space and from nearby timelines. We’re still positioned outside the one I beamed you from.” She gestured toward the controls. “The scanner only has a three-year total range. About a year and a half in either direction.”
A year and a half before and after my extraction?
That would do.
It had been bothering him badly—how everything had happened. How his mother had fallen far enough to create some bizarre imitation of Jedi, and then kill him in revenge for the death of the very son she was killing.
Cooper activated the scans.
The interface was primitive compared with what he knew, but the fundamentals were familiar. Before long, he could see events unfolding inside the timeline.
He located his shuttle first, then isolated the Jedi droids. He took a baseline scan and saved it.
“How do you know how to do this?” Xia asked.
Cooper froze.
Dammit, Cooper.
He had gotten lost in the moment again.
You need to stop doing that before you break the Prime Directive outright.
“It’s fairly intuitive,” he said, easing back from the controls. “My systems are almost analog compared with these. You’re lucky.”
Xia accepted that for the moment.
“What are you doing?”
“I was a Jedi for more than twenty years. I never understood how things ended the way they did. There was a mystery I couldn’t solve.” He looked back toward the display. “It’s been bugging me.”
“Oh.” Xia stepped closer. “Do you want to go forward or backward?”
“Here is fine for now. Give me a few more minutes. I’m still figuring this out.”
“Sure.” She watched the display. “What’s a Jedi?”
“Like a space wizard,” he said. He was already in too deep to give her much more of an answer.
He was tracing the droid backward.
The units were being produced in limited numbers aboard a ship.
A CR90 corvette.
Cooper narrowed his eyes.
The Tantive IV.
My mother’s ship?
She was producing them there?
That was an extraordinary amount of secrecy.
He expanded the scan.
“Oh, wow.”
Xia looked at him.
“What?”
“I did not see that coming.”
There was another droid aboard.
A Darth Veritis model.
Cooper stared at it.
She had created droids for both sides.
Just like the former Chancellor had once been accused of doing.
Ugh.
Did he dare look any further?
He already knew the answer.
He was in too deep now.
Cooper searched Balmorra, comparing factories until he isolated the facility responsible for manufacturing both designs.
The Villecham family factory.
It had been producing the droids for years.
Cooper had only a year and a half of history available to him, but it was enough. He began scrolling backward.
Dammit.
Fourteen months before he had been discovered, C-3PO entered the factory to inspect the progress.
Cooper locked onto Threepio’s temporal trace.
He had come directly from Coruscant.
Directly from Leia.
Cooper went farther.
Threepio had been monitoring the factory for her.
And afterward—
Leia wiped his memory.
Cooper sat back.
C-3PO hadn’t been suffering from memory-core failures.
His mother had been wiping him so frequently that she needed a plausible explanation for why he kept losing information.
Threepio had been acting as her agent.
Cooper stared at the timeline.
She was behind it.
The Sith.
The plot against Villecham.
The droids.
The destruction of the Jedi.
His death.
It had all been revenge.
And somewhere along the way, Leia Organa had begun to fall.
Cooper took a slow breath.
Time to look forward.
He watched his mother begin grooming Ray toward the dark side. They argued several more times about her name, but within a year, Ray was actively using Palpatine.
Leia’s safe room was where she remotely piloted the droids. Behind a false wall was a concealed interface connected to the entire system.
She had terrified the galaxy so thoroughly with the manufactured Sith threat that the Senate eventually granted her emergency powers.
Cooper stared at the timeline for another moment.
“Can we move forward, using this point as the farthest point back in the scan?”
“Aoli, make it so,” Xia said.
“Transiting,” A.O.L.I. replied.
As the ship moved, Cooper continued scrolling through everything still available to him.
“Transit complete,” A.O.L.I. announced several minutes later.
Cooper adjusted the scanner into the newly accessible future.
Then he stopped.
He slumped back in the chair.
“What is it?” Xia asked.
“She...” Cooper rubbed his face. “She declared herself Empress of the Second Galactic Empire.”
Xia waited.
“She convinced everyone she wouldn’t repeat Palpatine’s mistakes. That his reasoning for creating an Empire had been sound, but that he had simply been a terrible person. She promised to reform the galaxy, keep everyone safe, and eliminate the Sith threat.”
Cooper stared at the display.
“Meanwhile, she’s the Sith.”
He shook his head.
“She’s like Palpatine on steroids. She...” He stopped. “I... ugh.”
Cooper leaned back.
“Sorry. I solved my mystery.”
“Oh... kay.” Xia gave him an uncertain look. “Well, happy I could help.”
The display went dark, leaving Cooper looking at his own reflection in the black surface of the console.
He barely recognized it.
“Do you have some quarters I can stay in? I think I’m getting a little tired.” He looked toward her. “We can work on your project more tomorrow?”
“You sure you don’t want a drink or something?”
“No. I think I need to sleep off this headache. Thanks, though.”
“Okay. Perhaps tomorrow, then.” Xia looked upward. “Aoli, can you lead him to an empty room?”
A hologram appeared beside them.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Cooper said, looking back at Xia. “I appreciate it.”
“No problem. Glad to have you.”
He followed the hologram out.
They descended several decks, some of them by ladder. There didn’t appear to be any turbolifts at all.
This had to be some kind of prototype vessel.
How had the ship he knew become so refined?
He was obviously still missing an enormous amount of information.
But right now, that seemed almost secondary.
He could hardly believe that his mother—the entire reason he had entered that universe in the first place—had ultimately become the thing that destroyed it.
The irony was palpable.
The tragedy of it all was almost too much to process.
He hadn’t been lying or exaggerating about needing sleep. He needed to decompress.
He had taken in far too much information since arriving, and he still had no idea where he had arrived.
Or when.
As he climbed into bed, something kept circling through his mind.
XA9.
Xia drew her nines with a straight line.
He didn’t know why that bothered him.
Before long, exhaustion won out, and he fell soundly asleep.