Chapter 2
The coordinates Garcia provided was not to Earth, but to a place outside the galactic arm.
Until Garcia had found it, it wasn’t named. It didn’t even have a reference number. It was obscured by its own feature, just outside the galactic arm holding Earth. They would have had to pass the Galactic Barrier to arrive here, another visual barrier to see it from inside the galaxy, but with transwarp jump, it wasn’t even noticeable as air turbulence. They simply arrived.
The Elemartay star system was not unique, but it was something that almost had to be seen to believe. El, Mar, and Tay were three relatively young, G-type stars, in a close, stable orbit. Looking down on them, you might think they were chasing each other, and corona ejections frequently shook ephemeral hands; their pursuit could be discerned in real time and clocks could be calibrated to their spinning. There was a proto cloud, or ring of dust, gas, and primordial debris from which the planets would eventually form from. This prominent feature was peculiar in that it was perpendicular to, or at a right angle of the triple star’s rotation. The inner space of the stars was relatively clean of all dust and debris, with the disk beginning at approximately 1.5 AUs, or 228 million KM from the stars. The most inwardly part of the disk glowed with intense white, tapering to yellow, oranges, and then pink, and from there the disk bulged like ominous thunder clouds, with frequent lightening being observed across the surface of either side. The outer edges of the planetary ring were crisp and thin, as if cut by a tool. That tool happened to be the remains of a dead star, a planet size diamond.
The ancient, dead star was once a g-type star that had become a red giant and dwindled into a white dwarf. This particular dead star was almost as old as the Universe itself. It was approximately the size of earth, and had a solid surface, tens of thousands of kilometers thick, of solid carbon crystals. Star diamonds! The thickness of the diamond dimmed the inner light to the point it was like looking at a swimming pool at night. The flaws along the surface added to that pool like illusion, causing ripple like shadows to fall over the Pathfinder. If one could acquire a piece of that diamond, a hand held shard, they would find it glowed with a pulse that mirrored the inner light, as the molecules were entrained with the star. It was florescent spooky action at a distance. There were rumors such shards existed, but outside of Garcia who knew there was the splinter of one contained with his temporal loop wristband, no one in the Federation knew of one existing outside it's of the stellar remains. It was the size of the Earth, but had a gravitational well twice that of Jupiter. No one would be beaming in and taking samples.
“The bones of stars,” McCoy said. “I have read of them, seen photos of them, but in all my travels, this is my first time seeing one up close in person.”
“It’s absolutely lovely. The most amazingly beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Losira said. And that included her entire civilizations data base of discoveries.
“You really like it?” Garcia asked.
“What girl doesn’t like diamonds?” Losira said. “Pff,” McKnight said. “Right?!” “With this ring, I de wed…” Garcia said.
“Seriously?” Losira asked.
“OMG, I am going to cry,” McKnight said.
“It’s big enough to share,” Losira said.
“It took me a life time of study to find this place,” Garcia said. He had everyone’s attention. He seemed happy with the blue light playing across his face. “Athena and Clio helped. The harmonic characteristics of the inner stars as it stirs the space/time continuum, juxtaposed to this dead star, makes this an idea position for a temporal base.”
“You’re serious?” McCoy asked.
“I was charged with finding a working Iconian Gateway, or making one,” Garcia said. “This is where humanity will seriously start to understand space-time. Before now, we were children playing in the sand. We grow up here, now, or not at all. Tesla was right. It’s about energy and frequency, and we will learn more about our true nature doing this than we have learned in all the years we have been a species combined. What we will do here affects everyone in the Milky Way, from cradle to grave. This is no small task. This is why the Icoanian disappeared. This is why the Mayans disappeared. This why… So many volunteered to go away. They’re bettering everything on us. There betting everything on the best of us, the ideals established and promoted by a Federation of beings come together to coexist in peace. This is our first lunar landing, our first giant step, with no other steps to follow because we learn to fly.”
“Impromptu speech?” Losira asked.
“Yeah, what do you think?” Garcia asked, suddenly more grounded.
“You’re having a bipolar moment is what I think,” McCoy said.
“Admiral,” Sendak said. “There’s life inside the proto-disk.”
“Giant tardigrade like space bears eating spores? Ignore them. Harmless,” Garcia said. “They’ll be migrating soon. On the far side you’ll also find Junior like creatures. Space herd. The disk also holds several other species, baby jelly fish like things, the ones Picard encountered at Far Point. Fortunately, no space amoebas. Really think they must have leaked in from another time line…”
Garcia closed his eyes, sorting. “You should have the vectors and recommended volcities coming up on your screen, McKnight. Let’s thread the needle.”
“Wait a minute,” McCoy said. “You’re not just planning to slingshot around a sun, you plan…”
“Go right through the eye of Elemartay,” Garcia said.
“The gravitational forces alone could tear us apart!” McCoy said.
Garcia turned to Sendak. “How’s the math look to you?” “It will take me weeks to go through this…” “Did the computer flag anything?” Garcia said.
“No,” Sendak said. “But…”
“McKnight, can you thread that, or do you want Captain Losira to pilot?” Garcia asked.
“I can do it,” McKnight said, still studying the planned trajectory. Under her breath was “I think I can…”
“You can’t have accounted for all the frame shifts we’ll encounter…” Sendak said, disapprovingly.
“Probably not,” Garcia agreed. “But, if not this time, then maybe next time.
McKnight, punch it.”
“What do you mean…” McCoy was saying, even as he grabbed the back of the command chair. “What was that?”
“Passed through a frame shift from Starheart,” Garcia said.
“You named the dead star Starheart?” Losira asked. “Yeah, why not?” Garcia asked. “Little space music?”
“Hewey Lewis and the News?” Losira asked.
“We’re going back further than the 80s. How about Blues Image, Ride, Captain Ride,” Garcia said.
“That’s 1970. You could jinx us and miss your mark,” Losira said.
“Close enough. Blues Image, Ride Captain Ride, full orchestra accompaniment, through an ELO filter,” Garcia said.
“You’re really messing with things, aren’t you,” McCoy said.
“Oh, I am just getting warmed up,” Garcia said. Musical prelude filled the bridge.
“Brilliant lead in for this Starheart montage moment. MicKnight, takes us there.” McKnight began the acceleration, around the diamond then downwards into the Elemartay system, heading towards the center of mass of the three stars. Had these stars been three neutron stars, the frame dragging would have been severe enough to see space/time torn into whirlpool, like water going down a drain, but since they were ordinary stars, the effect was subtler. A LaGrange point marked the dead center of three stars; a spherical asteroid fifty kilometers in diameter would sit perfectly still there, where as anything greater than fifty one kilometers would start to spin due to the stars’ gravity pulling at space/time itself. Garcia relaxed into the command chair, undaunted by turbulence, or uncharacteristic vibration through the hull plating. McCoy on the other hand…
“You want a chair, Admiral?” Losira asked.
“No,” McCoy said.
McCoy was tapping her foot. The transwarp was tripped just as they pushed through breakaway speed. They arrived back in space normal time with engines spooling down just outside the Sol system.
“Finally!” Garcia said. “I knew it would work.” “Are you not telling us something?” McCoy said.
“It’s better you don’t know,” Garcia said. “McKnight?”
“Based on radio signals from Earth, I would say we have arrived 1968,” McKnight said.
“I’m recording all frequencies,” Losira said, having taken over Trini’s function. “Based on other astronomical measure, I concur with McKnight’s reckoning,” Sendak said.
“Cloak us, take us to Earth,” Garcia said. “McCoy, do you remember how far out you were?”
“You don’t have that in the records?!” McCoy asked.
“Of course, just messing with you,” Garcia said.
“Stop it,” McCoy said.
♫♪►
Garcia, a Losira agent, McCoy, Tuer, and several other Klingons, armed and weapons at ready, stared into an empty transporter alcove.
“What now, we just wait and hope…”
Losira noticed Garcia was subvocalizing and understood he was counting. Gary Seven, holding a cat, materialized on a transporter pad. The Gorn weapons spooled up to active status and Tuer brought his weapon to bear, taking front point. Gary frowned, his eyes seeking authority and stopped on Garcia.
“You!” Gary said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
McCoy looked at Garcia. “You’ve met him before.”
“Yes,” Gary said as Garcia was saying “No.”
“Okay, yes, but, technically no,” Garcia said. “It’s complicated. This is our first time, but I gather he has met another me, a transporter clone… Don’t you temporal guys sort that stuff?” Garcia asked. He raised a warning finger. “Eh, eh eh… Keep your hands away from her collar or you will have a dead cat.”
The cat let out a complaint that went through several octaves.
“Seriously, Isis, I would rather not shoot you, but I will,” Garcia said. “Tuer, take the collar first, and then, Seven’s right front pocket, empty it.” “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Seven said.
“Not yet,” Garcia agreed. “Not fully. If you would, please surrender the cat to
Losira.”
“I will not,” Seven said.
“I promise, she will not be harmed,” Garcia said. “You, I, and McCoy are beaming down.”
“We are?” McCoy asked.
“You are?” asked Tuer. “Without me?”
“You really need to stay here,” Garcia said.
“Tam, you’re being weirder than normal. What’s up?” McCoy said.
Isis mewed, and Gary reluctantly consented to the exchange. “Isis wants to know how long you’ve been cycling through time,” Seven said.
“Actual forays into the future or virtual inclusive?” Garcia asked. Isis mewed something from Losira’s hand.
“Seriously? If you don’t discern between the two, how do you tease out the difference between daydreaming arcs and actual deja-vu downloads?” Garcia asked.
“We don’t,” Seven said. “You understand her?”
“I speak cat, yes,” Garcia said, taking a spot up next to Seven on the pad.
“Father?”
“What have you done?” McCoy demanded.
“Nothing,” Garcia said. “Honest. Losira, if we’re not back, make sure you take out that orbiting nuclear missile thing the US intends to launch.”
“Aye,” Losira said. “Have fun storming the castle.”
“Oh, believe me, it’s going to take a miracle,” Garcia said.
“Would two you stop that?!” McCoy said. “Where are we going?”
“Seriously?” Garcia asked. “Earth?”
“You’re not dressed for this time period,” Seven said.
“Yeah, well, we’re not staying that long, either,” Garcia said. “Losira, you have the coordinates. Energize.”
“Wait, at least…” Seven was saying on the platform… and trailed off on arrival.
“Let me have my tech.”
“Yeah, no,” Garcia said, patting his shoulder. “If I can’t have a sonic screwdriver, you can’t.”
“It’s not a sonic screwdriver,” Seven said.
“Servo, potahto,” Garcia said, proceeding through the room as if he had been here before, moving quickly, even as McCoy was still orientating, complaining about transporters. They appeared to be in a city morgue. The basic storage equipment hadn’t changed much from McCoy’s time.
“Quickly, father. I need you to tell me the cause of death,” Garcia said, tossing him a medical tricorder. He opened a cold closet and rolled out tray. On it lay a human female, Asian in appearance. The injuries that had killed her were challenging to look away from. McCoy didn’t hide his sadness. “Was she assaulted?” were the first words out of McCoy’s mouth.
“Autopsy suggests a car accident,” Garcia said, opening up a second closet.
“If you know the cause of death, why are we…”
“Agent 201,” Seven said, sadly, identifying the body. He read her toe tag, “Jane
Doe.”
Garcia rolled out a second slab. ‘John Doe’ was a cadaver of a Caucasian male, approximately fifty years in age. He began scanning.
“And 347,” Seven said. “I sent them here…”
“I detect no drugs or alcohol in his system,” Garcia said.
“Tam, sometimes a car accident is just an…” McCoy said. He blinked. “That’s odd. There’s no evidence of Gyrification…”
Garcia moved his scanned to the head. “Same here.”
“That’s impossible,” Seven said, coming closer to McCoy to read over his shoulder. “What could explain this?”
“Nothing explains this. At this level of malformation, neither of these individuals would have held the cognitive ability to drool, much less be driving a car…” McCoy said.
“Something has to explain this…”
“Rapid cycle clones, with no cerebral stimulus would explain…” Garcia said.
“Meat bags to hide an alien abduction!” Seven said.
“Tam, are you counting?”
“We come in peace…” Garcia said, loudly.
Two individuals entered, the entry doors swinging suddenly wide, phasers drawn and firing. Seven, McCoy, and Garcia fell to the ground. One of the two pulled out an old style communicator.
“Vengeance, five to beam up.”
Chapter 3
Admiral Alexander Marcus puzzled over the medical tricorders which were non responsive.
“It’s definitely Star Fleet issue,” one of the tech was saying. “Maybe a thirty years ahead of us?”
“Thirty?” Carol asked. “This is more than that.”
“What’s up with the front pack the bald one is wearing?” Alexander asked.
“It’s a portable womb,” Carol said. “He’s carrying twins.” “Why?” Alexander asked.
“I don’t know,” Carol said. “His mate died?” “But he’s definitely human?” Alexander asked.
“Well, mostly. He is a Human Vulcan hybrid for sure, but there some other resonant signatures I can’t identify. He’s been genetically altered beyond just his hybrid status,” Carol said. “Scans put a probability of him being the parent of the twins he is carrying at 99.9 plus percent.”
“The portable womb is Vulcan technology,” the tech said. “It shielded the occupants from the stun setting.”
“Fortunately,” Carol said. “The report says he stated ‘we come in peace’ before your extraction team took them out.”
“How did he even know we were there?” the security officer who had led the Away Team asked.
“He heard you sneaking up on him?” Carol said.
“Not likely,” the security officer said, his feelings hurt by her suggestion. “Star Fleet sent us back in time to see if we could determine how we lucked out of having a nuclear war at this particular moment in our history, and the first thing we detect is transporter activity on the surface. That can’t be a coincidence,” Alexander said. “They must have a ship here. So they have cloaking tech,” the tech said.
“Our ship is cloaked,” Carol pointed out. “If they’re Star Fleet, from our the future, then it seems reasonable that all our ships use cloaking technology. Or there was a change in the treaty banning cloaking development…”
“Or we lost the war and they work for the Klingons,” the tech said. “There are traces of Klingon DNA on the Fleet uniforms, suggesting they work or interact with Klingons.”
“I saw the scans you’re referring to,” Carol said. “That’s not Klingon DNA. At least, that’s not the Klingon’s we’re familiar with.”
“Maybe they evolved on one of their colony worlds,” the tech said. “Maybe they are engineered like the bald one. Maybe they’re the offspring of Klingon human mating. Maybe they’re still making Klingon human hybrids to infiltrate our society in the past. That would explain why Fleet sent us back in time.” “This ship is way too paranoid,” Carol said.
“You have seen the evidence that Klingons have been working on manipulating the human genome for their own purposes,” Alexander said.
“You mean the Discovery evidence?” Carol asked. “This is not that. Unless you can bring me a body of this new species of Klingon, then we have insufficient information to draw any conclusion except that there is a genetic deviation from what we know.”
“The bald one is awake,” the tech said, pointing to the screen.
♫♪►
Garcia woke up first. He came to, rubbing the back of his head, then touching his belly pack to make certain the twins were okay, and then suddenly, full alert, standing, trying to work out a leg cramp. “Every bloody time.”
“How often do we end up here?” Seven asked, recovering quieter. He was in the cell to Garcia’s right, and though he could see McCoy recovering in the opposing cell, he couldn’t see Garcia.
“Enough,” Garcia answered. “Father, you okay?”
“I am,” McCoy said. He knew enough not to touch the force field, but he still accidentally touched it as he drew closer to the edge, trying to take everything in. He spied a time stamp on a screen saver. “23rd century. How can this ship be 23rd century?”
“The time line has changed,” Garcia said. “I need you to both help me think. Who would have abducted your agents?”
“No one but Isis and I knew they were here,” Seven said.
“Someone knew they were here. Come on, think,” Garcia said.
“You assume it was purposeful,” McCoy said. “What if it were random.”
“There was hint of ion signature on your scanner. There are only two races I know of in the Milky Way using quantum transporters,” Seven said.
“The Gamesters of Triskelion,” Garcia said. “They would have tracked your original transport beam, sending your agents to earth, abducted them, and sent back meat bags to obfuscate the trail.”
“That’s highly speculative. They’re good guys,” McCoy said.
“No, they’re bad guys until Kirk makes them good guys, and this is before their Kirk incident, and they may not even ever get a kirk incident, because the whole time line has changed!” Garcia said. “They kidnap people from all over the galaxy for their games.”
“If they kidnapped temporal agents, they could theoretically learn how to kidnap anyone from all of time,” McCoy said.
“They won’t gain that sort of technological advantage from 201 or 347,” Seven assured them.
McCoy seemed doubtful and was likely going to ask how he could be so certain, except Admiral Alexander Marcus entered and before he could introduce himself, Garcia introduced him. “Admiral Alexander Marcus, this is Gary Seven to my right, and…” “Lt. McCoy. I know you,” Marcus interrupted.
“We’ve met. At your daughter’s wedding,” McCoy said.
“I don’t remember my daughter getting married,” Marcus said.
“Not this timeline,” Garcia reminded him.
Marcus came front and center to Garcia. “I didn’t realize you had a son old enough to be in Star Fleet. And in my life, I would have never guessed you would have mated with a Vulcan…”
“I…” McCoy stopped himself from arguing. “Why would you guess that?”
“Your Star Fleet profile suggest you prefer humans, and still grieving your past relationship. Oh, wait, did infidelity cause the divorce” Alexander said.
“I would never…” McCoy said.
“So if you didn’t willingly, does that mean the Vulcans are doing experiments on our genome?” Alexander asked. He looked to Garcia. “What’s your name, Son?” “Admiral Tammas Parkin Arblaster Garcia,” said.
Marcus laughed. Even Seven mouthed the word ‘Admiral’ in shared disbelief.
“Pretty young to be an admiral, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, well, you know, my time line is all screwed up and they’re scraping the barrels. I still haven’t learned how your ship became the Vengeance. We’re still the good guys, right? Jedi don’t seek revenge and all that?” Garcia said.
“You clearly come from the wrong universe,” Marcus said. “Your tech was disabled when we stunned you. Would you be so kind as to unlock it?”
“So, you can have access to 24th century tech?” McCoy asked. “Isn’t that…”
“Against the Prime Directive? Are you kidding? Star Fleet exist because of technological scraps we have been recovering from aliens since well before the mid-evil period,” Marcus said. “Yes, believe it or not, aliens built the great pyramids. Section 31 exist just to sort this sort nonsense out and give us the advantage over those who would enslave us.”
“I will help you with tech and tell you whatever you would like to know if you let my friends go,” Garcia said.
“Tam!” McCoy protested.
“McCoy is right,” Seven said. “Just because you’re cycling doesn’t mean this won’t have happened, or that something meaningful doesn’t result in a new divergent time line.”
“Maybe we need new divergence,” Garcia said. “Please, let them return to Earth. I will be cooperative.”
Marcus seemed to consider. “Or, I keep them and you still give me what I want,” he said. “You have a neural implant. I suspect we can download your personality and unlock memory artifacts whether you’re cooperative or not. What do you want to bet?”
Two armed security men came to retrieve him. Garcia recognized the one who had stunned them. He asked his name and got no response. They didn’t ask him to come quietly. They lowered the shields and stunned him, then carried him to where they wanted him.
“There’s time limit to re-stunning someone,” McCoy said. “And he’s pregnant.
Kill