Captain’s Personal Log, Stardate 78011.8

 

It’s been quiet on the bridge since we returned from the Delta Quadrant.  I suppose I should have expected that.  In fact, I take full responsibility.  

 

Our mission to study blood dilithium across the Gradin Belt has been a costly one for the crew.  The telepaths among us experienced intense emotional dysregulation when exposed to the substance itself.  The remaining crew was spread too thinly between the separated hulls of the Sarek.  Most damaging, the psychic impact of blood dilithium caused me to have an emotional outburst.  On the bridge.  I made a fool of myself in front of the crew.  In front of Flavia.

 

Kellin and Elbon had to talk me down from resigning my commission after that one.

 

I have nominated every crew member for commendations, including our Romulan Free State scientists.  Despite every deterrent, the Sarek crew went on to remove blood dilithium from a dozen star systems, along with strengthening Starfleet’s relationship with the Kadi, if through adversity.

 

In command of the stardrive section, Commander Elbon even managed to drive off a Hirogen attack squadron that was hunting the USS Ulysses, returning a favour after Captain Tharia sh’Elas watched over me when I was stranded on Kunhri Three last year.  Tharia’s loss has… shaken me.

 

Upon our return to the Beta Quadrant, Task Force Seventeen has ordered the Sarek’s immediate return to its research in the Typhon Expanse.  Starfleet has recorded unusually high electromagnetic discharges from all of the expanse’s stellar anomalies ever since mass quantities of blood dilithium were shunted into subspace.  No causal link has been scientifically proven between the two events and so the Sarek crew will take this opportunity to study these stellar anomalies while they’re at their peak. 

 

My chief engineer, Lieutenant Leander Nune, has taken a leave of absence from the Sarek to seek treatment for the emotional trauma of his psychic connection with blood dilithium.  I have offered Lieutenant Sootrah Yuulik a similar opportunity, given the desperate measures she took to study blood dilithium, but she tells me the work is what nurtures her.  And our medical department assures me she is presently fit for duty.

Looking for a fault in the system, Captain Taes traced the pad of a fingertip across the bridge’s oversized master systems display.

The electroplasma distribution network aboard the USS Sarek often proved its greatest strength and weakness all at once.  The power grid demanded a sizeable engineering department –the largest one on board besides the science department– to utilize the warp power systems for the large-scale scientific equipment built into the Sutherland-class starship.  When the computer illustrated the EPS distribution over a cutout image of the Sarek, it appeared to be the starship’s nervous system.  The astrometrics department had reported a type-2 EPS tap was failing in the middle of constructing predictive models for emerging star systems.  In the absence of her chief engineer, that left Taes curious about the interconnections between those events.

But even a systems failure that was mystifying the diagnostic systems couldn’t hold Taes’ attention when Yuulik was on a personal mission.

Yuulik shot out of the aft turbolift like a photon torpedo: brightly, loudly and impossibly fast.  Too quickly, it proved, because Yuulik clipped her left shoulder against one of the doors that was sliding open.  The impact sent Yuulik careening onto the bridge indiscriminately and she only stopped when she collided with Ensign Dolan.  The brushed chrome tumbler in Yuulik’s hand went sideways, unleashing sticky brown liquid down the front of Dolan’s teal-shouldered uniform.

“Aw gross!” Dolan cried out.  He raised his palms and jumped back from Yuulik.  Dropping his chin to his chest, Dolan sniffed himself and then he asked, “Did you throw fish sauce on me?”

Yuulik blinked at Dolan.  She looked down at her own teal-shouldered uniform, which appeared to have avoided the same fate as Dolan’s.  Then she shrugged at Dolan.

“Close enough.  Hot Cardassian hevrit,” Yuulik said appeasingly.  She handed Dolan the tumbler.  With a confused expression crossing his face, he clasped his hands around the container.

“Here,” Yuulik saltily added, “you can have the rest since you enjoyed half of it already!”

Rushing past Dolan, Yuulik approached Taes and the master systems display.  Yuulik swept a hand out to indicate the field of stars through the transparent viewscreen.  There was a vibrancy behind Yuulik’s eyes that Taes only ever saw in her when they were wading through kiloquads of data without a clear hypothesis in sight.  Yuulik was grinning at Taes –positively beaming– in the way Yuulik usually looked when she gave science officers a scathing performance review in her role as Assistant Chief Science Officer.

“It’s a beautiful day out there,” Yuulik declared.  “Rife for exploration!”

She didn’t wait for any sort of response from Taes, not even a nod.  Yuulik was already hurrying to the nearest available console at the U-shaped science hub.  At half the pace, Taes followed in her footsteps.

Over Yuulik’s shoulder, Taes took notice of Ensign Cellar Door blinking one of his running lights at her.  Ahead of the science hub, the exocomp was hovering over the forward flight control console, in the sunken area of the bridge deck.  It was Cellar’s first day serving as one of Sarek‘s flight controllers and there was something hesitant in the way he rode the anti-grav currents in his boots.  He turned his snout down to examine the controls and then he looked back at Captain Taes.  He went through the entire production three times and then he turned to examine Taes when he reported something new.

“We’ve arrived at the coordinates of the gravimetric distortion,” Cellar said.

Elbon Jakkelb caught it first.

“I don’t feel anything,” Elbon said.  He leaned forward, perched on the edge of the first officer’s chair at the heart of the bridge.  His eyes cut to Science Chief Flavia in the science hub.  

“You reported level nine gravimetric distortions on long-range sensors, Flavia,” Elbon reminded her.  “Even with inertial dampeners, shouldn’t we be feeling some turbulence?”

“Commander, sensors are picking up…” Flavia started to respond, but she trailed off to check her instrumentation again.  Taes had observed Flavia always wanted to be sure of her facts before speaking.  Even after running a quick automated diagnostic on the sensor palette, Flavia’s voice lacked its typical boisterous melody.

“Picking up no gravimetric distortions at these coordinates,” Flavia said, her voice sounding brittle.  Taking on an accusatory tone, Flavia asked, “Have you flown us to the wrong sector perhaps?”

By that time, Taes had rounded the science hub and ascended the platform to the captain’s chair.  She double-checked her LCARS command monitors for herself.  In the data, she noticed something else that was unexpected.

“We’ve been here before,” Taes said, trying to sound even-tempered and hide the disquiet she felt at her core.  “About six months ago, aboard the USS Dvorak, we followed inaccurate sensor readings to these same coordinates.”

“My calculations were wrong last time,” Yuulik replied.  Taes would have expected Yuulik to sound defensive –to have taken Taes’ statement as a criticism– but Yuulik only sounded resigned.

Taes would have bet the Sarek itself that Flavia noticed the same thing.  Manipulating her LCARS interface, Flavia called up her earlier diagnostic request and she adjusted both the calibration and the parameters.  As soon as the computer presented the results, Flavia slapped her palm against the console’s housing and cried out an, “Ah ha!”

Flavia jerked an accusatory finger in Yuulik’s direction.

“Yuulik faked the sensor readings!” Flavia declared.

Oddly passively, Yuulik offered Flavia a shy smile.

“You taught me how,” Yuulik retorted.

Given many of Yuulik’s erratic decisions in the name of science, the disquiet in Taes’ core escalated into a pang of panic.  In the year Taes had worked with Yuulik, Yuulik’s poor life choices had run the gamut from stealing colleagues’ data for her own private research to injecting herself with an experimental epigenetic therapy to talk to haunted dilithium crystals.  Taes shared a concerned look with Elbon.  Given the furrow in his brow, he looked even more concerned than Taes felt.

“Yellow alert,” Taes ordered.  A computerised telltale chimed out across the bridge, as a yellow border glowed around every LCARS display and the viewscreen.  Taking some comfort in the increased readiness of her ship and crew, Taes put all of her attention on Yuulik.  She turned to look at Yuulik and Yuulik was already waiting for her.

“Yuulik, why are we here?” Taes asked in the consoling tone that made her Deltan accent thicken.

“My calculations were wrong last time,” Yuulik repeated.  “But not this time.”

“What have you done?” Taes asked, her voice cracking.

“I couldn’t risk asking for permission,” Yuulik said.  “I’ll beg for your forgiveness instead.”

“Captain!” Flavia interrupted.  She tapped at her console, projecting a holographic sensor overlay on the viewscreen.  Describing the sensor composite, Flavia said, “Sensors are detecting Adler-Lasky temporal radiation emissions.”

Taes ordered, “Shields up.  Red alert!  Ensign Door, fire reverse thrusters.”

The red alert klaxon had hardly sang out when Yuulik reached across the console table to tap on the edge of Flavia’s computer panel.  Yuulik’s eyes were on Flavia; she didn’t consult any of the sensor readings around her.

“You need to look for a helical space-time distortion,” Yuulik told Flavia.

Those words elicited a gasp from Elbon, sitting beside Taes.

“A temporal vortex,” Elbon said.

Flavia “tsk-tsk”ed in reply.  “No, commander,” she insisted, “There are no signs of chronometric particles or triolic waves present.  It can’t be a temporal vortex.”

Through the viewscreen, what looked like mist and dark matter began to swirl in the space the Sarek vacated from its reverse motion.  The swirl of mist twisted and spiralled on itself, forming a vortex that opened a fracture in the space-time continuum on one end and tapered off on the other.  

The underslung nacelles of a Walker-class starship emerged from the opening of the vortex.  The Starfleet starship moved in an unnatural fashion, clearly not powered by its own thrusters as it slid out of the gaping maw of the vortex until its saucer section was visible too.  The starship hung in space, not quite escaping the pull of the vortex, but still tilting on the precipice of the vortex’s opening.

Emblazoned across the saucer section of the starship was: USS Brigadoon NCC-1212.

From the tactical station behind Taes, Lieutenant Commander Kellin Rayco reported, “Records show the NCC-1212 registered as the USS Branchus, not the USS Brigadoon.  It was reported missing in action, over a hundred years ago, in the year 2257.  The Branchus was assumed to be destroyed during the Federation-Klingon War.”

Taking that in, Taes only had one question come to mind:

“Yuulik, what have you done??”

Yuulik couldn’t hear much of anything aside from the sound of her own breathing.  There were too many choices swirling around this one moment.  Trodding through the brutalist architecture of this Walker-class corridor, Yuulik took a wrong turning.  She was lost enough in her own thoughts, let alone the decks of an unfamiliar starship.  Yuulik attempted to mentally calculate the number of parallel quantum realities that would branch out from this one decision but the calculations eluded her.

She held out her tricorder, using it as a social shield to avoid eye contact with the passing crew members who couldn’t possibly recognize Yuulik’s twenty-fifth-century Starfleet uniform.  Yuulik waved the tricorder’s sensors at those crew members, and the raw duranium bulkheads of the USS Brigadoon itself, to gather measurements at a molecular level.  She couldn’t hear the musical warble of the tricorder at work, but the blinking graphics on its touchscreen assured Yuulik that it was still operating.  All she could hear was the guttural sound of her own heavy breathing.

Yuulik also couldn’t hear the voices of her other away team members from the USS Sarek. However, Yuulik assumed that was because she had ducked into a turbolift while they were speaking with the starship’s captain on the bridge.

When Yuulik stepped into the research laboratory, she felt a shiver circle the back of her neck.  Almost immediately, she missed the brutalist grandeur of the corridors.  The compartment was shaped like a hexagonal prism and it was over-crowded with all manner of scientific instruments and chairs and half-assembled experiments.  She may have felt a pang of claustrophobia if not for the single viewport on the opposite bulkhead.

In the reflection of the viewport, Yuulik saw a figure move.  She heard a feminine voice clear her throat.  Yuulik wasn’t alone.  Even when Yuulik caught sight of a blue Starfleet uniform in her peripheral vision, she maintained her forward gaze.  She didn’t look.  She simply tucked her tricorder into the holster on her hip.

“Would you show me around the arts and crafts in your quaint little research lab?” Yuulik asked.  “I need to understand what we’re working with here.”  To her surprise, her own intonation sounded an awful lot like Captain Taes’ Deltan accent when affecting her formal timbre.

“Ah, I see.  That’s how it is,” the other woman huffed.  “I’m Junior Lieutenant DeVoglaer; thanks for asking!”  Her vowels sounded as round as Jupiter and her consonants sounded clipped, but the sarcasm was the most distinguishable trait.

DeVoglaer strode to the nearest workstation and Yuulik carefully followed at the distance and pace necessary to keep DeVoglaer in her peripheral vision.  DeVoglaer flipped two switches on the control panel and swiped a finger over the neon-blue touchscreen interface.

“This is our nuclear electronics analysis system,” DeVoglaer explained.  A barb of sarcasm remained embedded in her remark.  “Our crafty shipbuilders designed the pulse height analyzers to rival anything the Vulcans are using today.  Er…”

Dismissively, Yuulik turned her back on DeVoglaer and the analysis system.  Her breathing had levelled out and the panic in her body had reduced to yellow alert.  She strode easily to the next workstation along.

Yuulik tutted and she said, “I didn’t study Starfleet antiques at the academy.”

Tentatively, DeVoglaer replied, “I can describe for you how the equipment works, but I don’t fully understand the whys.  I don’t work in science.  I’m an operations officer, remember?”

Distracted by another tall piece of scientific instrumentation, Yuulik moved towards it, hypnotized by her own curiosity.

“What ever happened to all your science officers?” Yuulik asked.  It came out sounding like a perfunctory question.

“There’s a war on,” DeVoglaer answered.  Yuulik could identify a frustrated, bristling energy in DeVoglaer voice.  “We were never crewed with a proper science department and then all our science officers were killed in their last experiment to free the ship maybe… fifty years ago?  I’ve lost track.”

Coming to stand at a freestanding computer console, Yuulik slapped her hands down on the edges.  She drank in the image of the cone-shaped scientific instrumentation propped up behind the console.  It looked green and prickly with candy-coloured jewel buttons sparkling throughout it.

“Now what does this equipment do?” Yuulik asked hungrily.

DeVoglaer’s voice went high as laughter bubbled out of her: “Yuulik, that’s a Christmas tree!”

“I don’t get it,” Yuulik remarked.

“Christmas eve was only two weeks ago.”  DeVoglaer sighed.  When she continued, her spiky inflection had deflated to something tentative and sad.  “We haven’t had the heart to take it down yet.  I suppose… for you… my last Christmas was two hundred years ago.  Oh god, do you even have Christmas in the future?”

Bluntly, Yuulik replied, “I don’t know what Christmas is, but it sounds like whimsical bullshit.  For the record, it wasn’t two hundred years ago.  Your crew went missing only one hundred and forty-three years ago.”

“Look at you,” DeVoglaer said.  A fire had returned to her voice and it sounded like a dangerous fusion of pointed and proud.  “On Constitution-class starships, only the sciences wear blue uniforms.”

Squeaking in excitement, DeVoglaer concluded, “You did it, Yuulik! You became Ship’s Science Officer!”

Yuulik turned around, her eyes locking on DeVoglaer for the first time in years.  She looked at DeVoglaer –really looked at her– more intently than she had done with the Christmas tree.  Standing there in her blue skant with its snatched copper panelling down the sides, DeVoglaer demonstrated the posture of someone who had never been self-conscious one day in her life.  Her generous bouffant was styled with parted bangs over her eyes and dark hair cascading over her shoulders.  And then there were the boots.  Of course, she was wearing thigh-high boots.

Stunned into silence, Yuulik crossed her right arm over her chest and took hold of her left elbow.  She tried to speak but her voice came out small and diffident.

Choosing her words carefully to avoid any explicit lies, Yuulik said, “I am.  I am the senior-most Starfleet science officer aboard the USS Sarek.”

Like a wave pulled to shore, DeVoglaer crashed into Yuulik with her arms open wide.  She wrapped Yuulik in a hug and told her how proud she was of her.  Yuulik’s breath caught in her throat because her arm was still crossed over her chest.  She remembered from her Starfleet Academy days that Humans thought it most polite to be hugged back when they hugged somebody.  Yuulik hypothesized there might even be a visceral thrill to laying her own hands on DeVoglaer’s lower back.  But her arm was stuck in between them because of how tightly DeVoglaer was hugging her.  Almost as soon as it happened, it was over.  DeVoglaer stepped back to look Yuulik up and down boldly.

“I like your hair like that,” DeVoglaer said.

Yuulik raised a hand to the side of her head.  That morning, she had styled her two stripes of brown hair like twin fin-shaped mohawks.

“I haven’t dyed it pink in a long time,” Yuulik said.  “You look exactly, exactly the same, Nova.”

“You do remember me!” DeVoglaer said with great relief.  The way her body moved, she looked about ready to hug Yuulik again, but then a figurative cloud passed over her eyes.  

DeVoglaer asked, “Wait, did you pilot that shuttle aboard alone?”

From the wide hatchway, an intruder said, “No, she was merely too rude to introduce me,” and she said it in a snide sing-song.  

Standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips was Science Chief Flavia.  Yuulik examined Flavia’s quilted Romulan jumpsuit in a brief moment of second-hand despair, but she couldn’t see anything that distinctly identified her science chief as being a citizen of the Romulan Free State.  Not that, Yuulik supposed, a Human from DeVoglaer’s time period would even know what a Romulan looked like.  But it would have been too much to explain.  Wandering around a Starfleet starship, Flavia’s pointed ears and relatively smooth brow would make her look like a Vulcan to the Brigadoon‘s crew.

Accordingly, DeVoglaer raised her palm in Flavia’s direction and spread her fingers in the traditional Vulcan salute.

“I’m Lieutenant Junior Grade Indira DeVoglaer, operations officer,” she said.  “But everyone calls me Nova because I’m so bright.  Peace and long life to you.”

Leaving her hands on her hips, Flavia sneered at DeVoglaer.  She shook her head as she marched into the laboratory.

“Live long and don’t do that, lieutenant,” Flavia remarked.  She raised her chin at DeVoglaer.  “Your captain is thick with inspirational speeches but light on evidence.  What did you do to your ship?”

DeVoglaer turned her head, staring at Yuulik through her thick curtain of bangs.  She lowered her gaze and then she cracked her knuckles.  She nodded twice before she answered Flavia’s question.

“War’s going badly.  We were forced to run.  Captain doesn’t like to talk about it,” DeVoglaer said softly.  “The USS Branchus found herself on the wrong side of a blockade ahead of us and too much Federation territory occupied by the Klingons behind us.  There was no path home, so we ran beyond Klingon and Federation borders.  When we discovered the temporal vortex, we thought it might be a worm–“

“But it didn’t displace you through space,” Yuulik said impatiently.  “The Branchus and her crew were displaced through time.”

DeVoglaer closed her eyes and briskly nodded once.  “Before we even finished our sensor analysis, the vortex tore us into a temporal inversion fold.”  She folded her hands over her abdomen.  “We fell out of sync with space and time inside.  The ship and our bodies discorporate, but we don’t cease to exist.  Without our corporeal forms, time passes more slowly–“

“But more quickly too,” Yuulik added.

“Yuh– yes,” DeVoglaer begrudgingly acknowledged.  “It’s hard to describe once we’re back in our own bodies again.  It’s not linear.  Every seven years, we emerge from the temporal inversion fold.  We become solid again for a week, a few days.  Every time we reappear, our time in the space-time continuum becomes shorter.  The vortex is able to build to its cascade effect more quickly and it temporally displaces us all over again.  We become non-corporeal for another seven years until the vortex spits us out another time.”

Flavia blinked at DeVoglaer, unimpressed.  

“Why don’t you flee when you’re solid?” Flavia asked.

Looking to Flavia, DeVoglaer shook her head.  She pouted in that way Yuulik had seen before, in those infrequent times DeVoglaer considered her words before thinking out loud.

“Our engines could never overpower the gravitational pull of the vortex,” DeVoglaer said.  “This far out from Klingon and Federation space, we could never find another ship on long-range sensors.  No one ever responded to our hails, except for–“

“They’re trapped,” Yuulik declared, “slightly out of phase with the spacetime continuum.  The ship and her crew are in a state of temporal flux.”

Flavia squinted at Yuulik.  “We thought it was interference from the vortex when the Sarek couldn’t lock its tractor beam on the Brigadoon–“

“It was temporal flux,” DeVoglaer started to say.

Excitedly, Yuulik interrupted, “It was temporal flux.  We couldn’t attain a transporter lock on any of the Brigadoon‘s crew either.”  Her words tumbled out of her as an interlinked chain of data; Yuulik hardly stopped to breathe.  

“I’ve scanned their bioelectric patterns,” Yuulik added.  “Their molecules are literally entangled with the vortex!  They’re trapped.  Until they and the vortex vanish into the inversion fold again.”

“Yuulik!  Stop!” DeVoglaer screamed.  

A rational part of Yuulik thought DeVoglaer’s reaction was a bit overdramatic and yet her face still went hot.  Yuulik’s body went tight; she didn’t move; she didn’t know what to say.

DeVoglaer didn’t stop: “Respectfully!  Stop interrupting me!”

Flavia wasn’t afflicted with the same abulia as Yuulik.

“Nova, I think I’m going to like you,” Flavia said, plainly pleased by the outburst.

“It’s possible,” DeVoglaer wryly admitted, “everyone really calls me Nova because of my temper.”

“Got it,” Flavia replied blandly.  She quickly moved on to say, “When I asked you what you had done to your ship, I was speaking about your saucer section.  It says USS Brigadoon, but this ship is the USS Branchus.”

“Oh, that,” DeVoglaer said sheepishly.  “It’s an inside joke based on an old movie about a Highlands village that would fade in and out of spacetime.  We re-christened the ship.  Something to amuse ourselves.”

“Like your ‘Brigadoon-type’ planets,” Flavia caught on.  “Got it.”

Smirking fondly, Yuulik added, “They programmed their DOTs to repaint the hull.”

Flavia shook her head at Yuulik incredulously.  “Yuulik, you know Nova already, don’t you?”

Yuulik looked at DeVoglaer and she saw DeVoglaer was already watching her.

“The last time the USS Brigadoon returned to normal space,” Yuulik said, “the USS Dvorak picked up her distress call.  That’s where I was serving my cadet cruise.  Because the captain refused to trust my brilliant solution, the Dvorak failed to save the Brigadoon from fading into the vortex that time.  Nova and I never met in person, but we spent days talking over subspace.  On each of our ships, we two were responsible for monitoring the exact measurements of the Brigadoon‘s temporal flux.”

Yuulik grinned at DeVoglaer until her face hurt.

“Nova is truly an officer of substance,” Yuulik promised.  “Not a button-pusher like some.  She’s impressive down to her sub-atomic particles.  And Flavia, I have a secret.  I devised a plan to rescue her.”

Lieutenant Yuulik’s Assistant Chief Science Officer’s Log, Supplemental.

 

Our crew discovered the USS Brigadoon in the Typhon Expanse, emerging from a temporal vortex in the earliest days of 2401.  I found them exactly where I calculated I would.  

 

According to our records, the Walker-class starship was lost in the Federation-Klingon War of 2257.  The Brigadoon fell into a temporal inversion fold and her crew were transmuted into non-corporeal beings for most of that time.  Every seven years, they return to normal space in the Typhon Expanse for less than a week at a time, but they remain molecularly bonded to the vortex that took them.  In those few days, the vortex builds to a cascade effect on a quantum level and then steals them into the temporal inversion fold again.

 

I’ve seen the USS Brigadoon once before when I was serving my cadet cruise aboard the USS Dvorak.  I wasn’t able to save them seven years ago.  

 

I won’t make the same mistake again.  

 

Even if it’s the last thing I ever do.

Huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, Yuulik and Nova crawled through one of the Jeffries tubes that was nearest to the outer hull of the USS Brigadoon‘s saucer section.  In the cramped access tunnel, Nova dropped to lay on her stomach while Yuulik reached forward to pull open the next maintenance hatch.  They had pulled aside grating plates and service panels to put their hands on the ship systems inside.

“–After calibrating the biospectral scanner for over an hour,” Yuulik was saying with no small amusement, “Ensign Dolan tells me that he’s done it.  He cheers for himself; he demonstrates a traditional Zaldan victory dance.  He announces he’s found the first empirical proof that the yellow clay on Tenope is sentient.  Dolan demands that the Federation name the sentient clay after him.  He wants them called Dolanians!”

Yuulik could hardly get that word out through her laughter.  She shook her head at Nova and rolled her eyes.

“I won’t lie to you, Nova,” Yuulik said.  “When he handed me that scanner, I wish my eyes were holo-cameras.  You should have seen his face when I told him he was only detecting the bioelectric patterns of our away team.”

“Oh no!” Nova chimed in.

Yuulik snorted in delight: “He was crushed!  He begged and cried for me to show him how to calibrate the scanner properly.  None of the junior scientists could suitably adjust the equipment for sentient clay and I, for one, wasn’t going to do their jobs for them.  Captain Taes taught me better than that.”

Sounding puzzled, Nova asked, “You didn’t offer them any guidance?”

“No!” Yuulik cried out in another peal of laughter.  “I had biospectral scanners beamed down for all of them.  I ordered them to find the right bandwidth to study the clay and they failed for eleven hours.  Only after dark did they finally discover the frequency of the sentient clay’s bioelectric patterns.”

“You realise,” Nova said, “failure after that significant an investment can cause emotional injury.  Those feelings of helplessness and shame are going to stay with your team.  It could haunt them for years, Sootrah.”

Yuulik had opened her toolkit halfway and she froze what she was doing.

“Are you…” Yuulik asked, “Are you saying I’m a bad leader?”

Nova laughed out a single, satisfying, “Hah!”  She tacked on, “Christ no.  I didn’t learn anything until my operations manager got killed!  Anything meaningful I’ve learned, I’ve had to teach myself!”

Rolling onto her side, Yuulik lay on her shoulder and cradled the side of her own head in her hand.  Despite her toolkit being open and the maintenance hatches pulled aside, Yuulik only had eyes for Nova.

“Serving through war,” Yuulik gently asked, “it really made you stronger?”  The curiosity behind Yuulik’s question was palpable.  She had come of age under the shadow of the Dominion War.  As much as Yuulik had heard the stories, those realities of Starfleet’s sacrifices were still little more than stories to her.  Nova had lived it and breathed it for herself.

“Not the war,” Nova said.  Her lips twisted into an evasive smirk.  Her eyes darted away and Yuulik couldn’t suss out the meaning behind Nova’s reaction.  

That brief moment passed and Nova was chipper again, when she said, “I was born in Abiboo, the smallest domed city on Mars.  We’re a hardy people we are.”

Yuulik rolled onto her back.  She tapped a control on the overhead and another maintenance panel slid open.

Evasively, Yuulik said, “There’s something I should tell you, but I don’t know how.”

“Just say it,” Nova insisted.  “You do everything else.  That’s one of my favourite things about you.”

Yuulik raised her tricorder and she activated the scanners.  She thought if she acted nonchalantly, it would soften the blow.  She could will it to be nothing more than small talk; meaningless mess hall chatter.

“Mars is burning,” Yuulik said.

“What?” Nova scoffed.  It came out like a shriek.  She grabbed onto Yuulik’s shoulder and shook Yuulik roughly.

“The whole planet?!?” Nova asked.

“The atmosphere is a flame,” Yuulik said matter-of-factly.  “Has been for years.”

Nova breathed out, “My parents…”

She barely got the words out when she rolled onto her back too.  She let her head sway back onto the grated deck of the Jeffries tube.  She took a breath.  She shook her head and Yuulik thought she saw tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

Darkly, Nova said, “Ugh, they were already dead anyway.  Everything keeps changing when I’m lost in the fold.  You’re all changing and growing while I’m trapped in stasis.  Without our science officer, the captain is relying on me–  Relying on me to save the crew, but I’m useless.  Your technology has outpaced me.  You have outpaced me, Sootrah.”

“Don’t say that,” Yuulik whispered.

“It’s true,” Nova said, resigned to their star-crossed fates.  “When I met you, I worried I was too old to catch your eye, but now I’m younger than you are.  No one else in the universe knows how awfully confusing that feels.  You’ve out-grown me.”

“Stop saying that,” Yuulik insisted.  “You’re going to save your crew.  You astound me, Nova.  You’re perfect; it’s your context that’s wrong.  As Captain Taes would say: we can’t expect the Edo to build a Heisenberg compensator, because they prefer to jog.  But they could build one if they were taught.”

Yuulik swiped through a couple of menu options on her tricorder and then she lay the device on her chest.  The tricorder projected a holographic schematic of a modified conformal transmission grid, built into a starship hull.

“Nova, you were the one,” Yuulik said, “who modified the Brigadoon’s deflector dish seven years ago to transmit a rudimentary subspace tensor matrix to disrupt the temporal vortex.  The Dvorak‘s Captain Sefton was foolish to think the Dvorak alone could project a sufficient subspace bubble to protect both ships.”

“It had to be generated by the Dvorak,” Nova shot back.  “Our deflector transmission grid couldn’t generate a subspace barrier to cut us off from our entanglement with the vortex.”

“Last Christmas, maybe,” Yuulik chimed in.  “This Christmas, I’ve designed modifications to your deflector shield systems that will trick your Walker-class systems into generating a type of subspace bubble we call a static warp shell.  It’s fortunate I had seven years.  It took some time for the Starfleet Corps of Engineers’ designs to catch up with my theories.  These schematics have been distributed to your engineering team.  The effects of the vortex won’t be able to touch you through this powerful a static warp shell.”

From her tool kit, Yuulik retrieved an ovoid-shaped subspace field distortion amplifier.  She presented it to Nova with a flourish of her hands.

Delighted, Nova asked, “You spent the past seven years designing all of that?  And here I didn’t get you anything for Christmas.”

Yuulik winked at Nova.

“You’re a time paradox,” Yuulik said wistfully. “That’s the only Christmas gift I need.”

“While you’re in a generous mood,” Nova said, “I’m going to need your help.  I’ve never installed a subspace field distortion amplifier into a graviton polarity source generator before.” –She waved a hand at the guts of the generator above them– “You’ve handed me a round peg to fit into a square hole.  Tell me, Yuulik, what would you use as an adaptor?”

“Whuh–” Yuulik breathed out and she glared at the fittings and housings of the generator above.  “I didn’t–” Yuulik started to say, and then she flailed, “I’m the big picture thinker.  There’s normally… ensigns around to worry about which isolinear chips fit into which slots…”

Awkwardly in the cramped tube, Nova pried open her own engineering kit and yanked out two adaptors, one in each hand.  She stuck her tongue out at Yuulik in a taunting expression and waved the two devices at her.

“I guess,” Nova said, “You better call me Lieutenant Ensign.”

Yuulik winced at Nova in discomfort, as she replayed their conversation in her head.  Even as she puzzled it out, Yuulik started to speak but fumbled with her words.

“You– you– you weren’t confused by the– by my schematics when I showed them to you in the research lab,” Yuulik realised it as she said it out loud.  “You didn’t really need me to explain it to you again.  You already saw the amplifiers weren’t going to fit?  Nova, why did you lie to me?”

Nova easily replied, “It feels good to give you a win.  I like the way it makes you smile.  You didn’t notice it when you were a cadet.”

Enraged, Yuulik growled, “Never do that again!” –She slapped her hand through the air, which snapped off the holographic projection– “Don’t you dare, Nova!  Don’t you dare patronize me!  Faking weakness is disgusting!”

“Okay, okay, Yuulik, I promise,” Nova insisted.  Her brown eyes glittered as she watched Yuulik intently.  She seemed to be waiting until Yuulik caught her breath and stopped frowning at her.

“What I can promise,” Nova equivocated, “is to never underestimate you again.”

The numerical data filled her field of vision –her entire consciousness– to the point the physical world had lost all meaning to her.  The numbers were merely vehicles, of course; it was the anticipation of real world consequences that gripped her attention most fiercely.

When Yuulik looked up from the computer console, it may have been after thirty seconds or after three hours of focus.  It was one or the other but she couldn’t recall which one it was.  The gradual approach of a rapping across the deck broke the data’s spell over her.  The sound led Yuulik’s eyes to rise for Nova’s entrance into the research lab.  To look at her, Nova’s gait appeared effortless and yet Yuulik could hear the determination in each footfall.

Slowing her pace, Nova nodded at Yuulik quizzically.  

“Sootrah?” Nova said in a questioning manner.  Although Nova’s words trailed off, Yuulik could intuit Nova’s meaning from the smirk and wandering gaze.

Diffidently, Yuulik asked, “Do you like it?”  She put a hand on the blue sleeve of her uniform.  Rather than her own uniform from 2401, Yuulik was clad in the skant of Nova’s era.  The only difference between their matching uniforms was the science silver piping across Yuulik’s skant.

“Crawling through all those Jeffries tubes yesterday,” Yuulik explained, “left my uniform a filthy mess.”  She fidgeted with the hem of the short skirt.  “I liked the way you made this one look.”

Nova offered Yuulik a couple of complimentary snaps.  “You fit right in.  It’s like you belong here.”

As much as it meant to Yuulik to hear that, there was an impatience in her that wouldn’t quit. Watching Nova’s approach, it wasn’t the thigh-high boots that caught Yuulik’s eyes.  Yuulik saw Nova as a puzzle with a piece missing from the heart of it.

“Where were you this morning?” Yuulik asked abruptly.

Nova blinked heavily.  Her lips plumped up as she fixed Yuulik with a winning smile.  She hooked a thumb back over her shoulder to indicate from where she had come.

“Life support systems in the shuttle bay were acting up,” Nova answered succinctly.  She joined Yuulik behind the computer console and waved a palm over the scrolling figures on the display.

With an impatience to rival Yuulik’s own, Nova asked, “What do you have here?”

“The Sarek sent me their subspatial transkinetic analysis of the vortex,” Yuulik said.  She tapped two of the sequences on the display with her index finger.  “The Sutherland-class’ sensor capabilities are proving even more precise than what we gathered from the Dvorak seven years ago.  Like all the super-charged anomalies across the Typhon Expanse these days, the vortex is generating far more temporal flux than it was the last time.  I have a theory we should generate our subspace bubble within the higher subspace bandwidths than what Dvorak attempted last time.”

“I started a simulation to test it–” Yuulik continued.  She stabbed an accusatory finger at another computer console.  She spun on her heel and took an urgent step in the direction she had been pointing.  Nova chased after her and planted herself in the path between Yuulik and her computer simulation.

“What are you–?” Yuulik tried to ask.

“I’m seeing something,” Nova answered.  She took a step closer to Yuulik and Yuulik took a step back.

“I suppose there’s no need to rush the simulation,” Yuulik said.  Nova took another step towards her and Yuulik took another step back.

“And why is that?” Nova asked.

Fluttering her eyelashes, Yuulik teasingly said, “Don’t tell your operations manager, but I’m accustomed to a main computer much faster than yours.  I’d bet my simulation isn’t even half-done.”

Nova took one more large step towards Yuulik and when Yuulik stepped back, she bumped into the bulkhead framing the hexagonal viewport.  Yuulik laughed in nervous frustration.  

“What are you doing?” Yuulik tittered.

Raising her chin, Nova asserted, “I’m looking at you.  Your skin positively glows in the starlight.”

“You say that,” Yuulik murmured.  She looked away, folding her arms over her abdomen.  “And you were the first.  You were the first person in Starfleet who could see me.  Everyone else hears me and then they beg me to speak more softly.  You really saw me.”

Nova nodded in affirmation.  “I do.”

Yuulik said, “The only time I cried as a cadet was when I saw you fading into the vortex over that comm screen…”

“Don’t cry,” Nova said softly.  She leaned in close.  “Look up.”

Tilting her head back, Yuulik saw a small mass of vegetation and ribbons hanging from the upper frame of the viewport.

Squinting at it, Yuulik asked, “Do you have a mould problem?”

A chuckle bubbled out of Nova before she recited, “Wasn’t it one of Shakespeare’s sonnets that said: mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it, but a kiss can be even deadlier–“

Although Yuulik was baffled by nearly every word Nova had said.  Kiss was a word she recognised.  Kiss was a consequence that had been on her mind.  And she took it as all the invitation she needed.  Grasping Nova by the shoulders, Yuulik kissed her.  The sensation of ecstatic warmth that permeated every cell of Yuulik’s body was all too fleeting.

From the doorway, Security Chief Kellin Rayco interjected, “Captain Taes reports the cascade effect is accelerating far faster than your projections.  She needs those recommendations you promised her for the static warp shell.”

For a couple of heartbeats, all Yuulik could hear was the urgency cutting through Kellin’s whining.  She had to replay his words in her head a couple of times to think about anything other than kissing Nova.  Kellin’s words only began to make sense to her when she recognised that Taes was denigrating her original work.

With Nova’s arms still wrapped around Yuulik’s waist, Yuulik said, “Airlock the simulations.  We have to test the static warp shells.  Now.  There’s no other time!”

Unceremoniously, Yuulik disentangled herself from Nova to run at the nearest freestanding console.  With one hand, Yuulik accessed the Brigadoon‘s sensor systems, looking for herself at the status of the vortex.  Simultaneously with her other hand, Yuulik transmitted her revised forcefield specifications to the Brigadoon‘s bridge and the USS Sarek.

Otherwise left in the lurch, Nova teased Yuulik, “Leaping without looking, huh?”

“You can say that again,” Kellin chimed in.

Nova had been halfway in her stride toward another computer console when Kellin spoke.  Nova spun on Kellin and she scoffed at him.

“What do you mean by that?” Nova snapped at Kellin.  Almost immediately, she talked over him to say, “Don’t you talk about Yuulik like that!”

Kellin snorted.  “Maybe you should ask Yuulik about blood dilithium.”

“This is different!” Yuulik insisted.  Tapping on the sensor readings, Yuulik explained, “The levels of temporal flux are rising; we won’t be able to beam back to the Sarek.  The gravitational pull of the vortex is too strong for our shuttle’s engines too.  If we don’t collapse the vortex now, we could be trapped here forever!”

While Nova logged into her console, she asked, “Yuulik, what’s he talking about?  What is blood dilithium?”

“Go on,” Kellin prodded, “Tell her.”

“A mistake!” Yuulik said through gritted teeth.  She kept her eyes on the sensor readings; if Kellin was going to mention Yuulik’s epigenetic self-experimentation, she couldn’t bear to watch the reaction on Nova’s face.  “I made a tiny mistake.  I cared too much about solving a mystery.  It got… scary.”

Kellin countered with, “All that care of yours could have destroyed your precious mind.”

Yuulik opened her mouth but she swallowed her riposte when gravimetric vibrations rumbled through the Brigadoon.  The deck shook beneath Yuulik’s feet and she grabbed hold of her console to steady herself.  She watched Kellin fall into the doorframe with his shoulder and Nova dropped herself onto a stool at a computer console.

“The Brigadoon and the Sarek have engaged their static warp shells,” Yuulik reported out what she saw on the sensor display.  “Pinned between the two subspace barriers, the vortex’s energy matrix is dispersing as subspace oscillations.”

As another wave of gravimetric vibration rocked the Brigadoon, the deck canted left and the lights flickered on and off.  For the moment, Yuulik observed, the computer consoles’ sub-processors appeared unaffected by the strain.

A master systems display on Nova’s console demonstrated system adjustments being made by other officers on the bridge and engineering.  Nova’s fingers swiped and struck over the controls, evidently re-routing power flows where necessary.

This became all the more clear when Nova advised, “Spikes of temporal flux are interfering with our EPS distribution.  We can’t risk losing power to the forcefield emitters.  Not yet.”

Yuulik shook her head at the measurements of temporal flux from the sensor instruments.  If anything, the intensity of temporal flux was increasing, when it should have been subsiding.

“We need to modify the static warp shells to an even higher subspace frequency,” Yuulik determined.  As she tapped at her controls, she told Nova, “Notifying the bridge and the Sarek.”

When gravimetric vibrations shook the Brigadoon again, they were stronger than Yuulik’s grip.  Yuulik tumbled to the floor.  An EPS tap in the overhead exploded, showering Yuulik in sparks.  She covered her head with her hands reflexively.  For all his bluster earlier, Kellin was by Yuulik’s side in an instant.  He was lifting her up before she even saw him and walked her back to the sensor console.

“Are you okay?” Nova asked Yuulik.

“Yeah,” Yuulik swiftly said.

Her attention returned to the ship’s operations, Nova reported, “Boosting field integrity to the warp nacelles!”

Yuulik regained her bearings in a moment that came together with singular clarity.  She planted her boots in an athletic posture.  Her body felt stronger just from listening to the timbre of Nova’s voice and the soundness of Nova’s interventions.  Yuulik took hold of the side of her console with one hand and used her other to scroll through the sensor data.  Both starships had changed the frequencies of their static warp shells and the measurements of the vortex’s temporal flux levels were plummeting.  The combination of sensor readings were more beautiful than any work of art Yuulik had ever seen.

“The static warp shells are converging!” Yuulik gleefully announced.  “It’s happening!  Nova, it’s really–“

Yuulik grinned over at Nova, but there was nobody sitting on the stool.  Urgent menu options flashed on Nova’s computer console, but there was nobody there to make selections.

“Nova?” Yuulik yelled, looking around.  “Nova?”

Because the deck stopped shaking and the superstructure stopped vibrating, Yuulik took her eyes off the sensor readings.  Desperately, Yuulik turned her head from side to side, searching the entire research laboratory with her eyes.  It was plain to see.  Yuulik was alone in the lab with Kellin; Nova was nowhere in sight.

“You did it, Yuulik!” Kellin cheered.  “We survived!”

Yuulik dropped her gaze to her sensor panel once more.  Absently, she remarked, “Sensors are picking up no sign of the vortex…”

Witlessly, Kellin’s jaw dropped, agape.  He charged at the viewport and he braced his palms against the transparent aluminum barrier.  Gasping in apparent panic, he banged his hands against the viewport.

“Yuulik, it’s not only the vortex!” Kellin cried.  “The Sarek is gone too!”

When Yuulik had first stepped out of the shuttlecraft the day before, Brigadoon Security Officer Collins had greeted her with a formal, “Ma’am.”  Later that night, when Collins had delivered a replacement hyperspanner to Yuulik in the Jeffries tubes, he had referred to her as, “Lieutenant.”  Collins had called her by her name when they had crossed paths in the mess hall that morning.  

But by the time Collins shoved Yuulik into the brig and energized the forcefield of her cell, he only called her, “Traitor.”

Yuulik said nothing in return.

The security guard’s accusations had stabbed into Yuulik like it was her thesis defence.  It felt like when Captain Taes would so often tear apart one of Yuulik’s theories in favour of one of her own.  Being questioned like that normally lit a fire in Yuulik.  Armed with a staggering self-assuredness, Yuulik was typically more than happy to unleash her fire of certainty, even if she burned down the universe in the process.

But these security guard’s accusations were different.  They said Yuulik had sabotaged and destroyed the USS Sarek or, at least, banished it to a temporal inversion fold.  They said Yuulik had murdered Nova DeVoglaer.  Nova was the only member of the USS Brigadoon crew who had vanished when the Sarek disappeared.  Yuulik had no defence to that.  Intellectually, she knew she could verbally skewer mere security goons, but that fire in her belly never came.

Even left alone with her thoughts in the brig, the words didn’t even come in hindsight.  She was at a loss.  In no universe should the Sarek, while enclosed in a static warp shell, have been enveloped by the vortex.  In no universe should Nova have been the only member of her crew to be stolen back into the temporal inversion fold, while the Brigadoon remained in normal space-time.  The physical laws of the universe were a sham, clearly, which meant everything Yuulik thought she knew was wrong.  

Without Nova, there was something wrong with Yuulik and there was something wrong with the universe.

Laying on her bunk in the brig, Yuulik only found her voice when Kellin Rayco broke the silence.  Despite the lumbering of his long legs, Yuulik hadn’t heard the Sarek‘s own security chief dragging a stool across the brig.  She hadn’t seen Kellin sitting himself down outside her cell.  Like the rest of the Sarek‘s away team –Commander Elbon, Science Chief Flavia, Doctor Nelli– Kellin was left stranded on the Brigadoon too.

“Yuulik, what did you do?” Kellin asked.  Tilting her head to look at him, Yuulik saw Kellin hunched forward with his elbows on his knees.  They had only begun a conversation, but Kellin sounded as tired as he usually sounded at the end of their interactions.

Yuulik responded by shouting brusquely at the overhead.  She proclaimed, “What do you think I did?  I devised a brilliant plan to save Nova and the Brigadoon!  The static warp shells were only half-successful.  Evidently.”

In a performance of patience or condescension, Kellin slowly asked, “So why did you direct a subspace tensor matrix at the USS Sarek?”

That got Yuulik’s attention.  She sat up on her bunk and she glared at Kellin.

“Kel, even you have more sense than a Kylerian goat!” Yuulik spat back.  “There was no subspace tensor required in my plan.  The Dvorak tried that seven years ago and they failed!”

Wincing at Yuulik as if she has stabbed him, Kellin asked, “Why are you lying to me?”

Yuulik scoffed at him.  Now, she had some small certainty.  Kellin’s tone wasn’t patient at all.  She could hear the self-satisfied moral superiority dripping off every syllable.

“I did no such thing!” Yuulik insisted.  “You saw me.  I was monitoring the Brigadoon‘s sensors.  I only ever submitted my recommendations to the captains.  This was me being reasonable.”

“The computer logs,” Kellin added more sternly, “tracked your biometrics engaging the deflector dish to generate the tensor matrix.  Your DNA was all over the deflector control room.”

“To generate static warp shells!” Yuulik screamed.  “What are you talking about?”

Kellin shook his head at Yuulik.  “I wish I was surprised, but I can’t be surprised you betrayed Captain Taes–“

Through a gasp, Yuulik cursed, “Grozit!”  Jumping to her feet, Yuulik didn’t know what else to say.  After the past year of serving with Kellin, she was gutted that he could think so little of her, let alone say so out loud.

“–When you conducted secret epigenetic experiments on yourself in the hopes of learning slightly more about blood dilithium,” Kellin continued, clearly heated, “you proved how little you value your own health.  But you fooled me.  You made me believe you sabotaged the Sarek‘s sensors and tricked us all into coming here so you could rescue Nova.”

The forcefield between them flared and crackled as if it was just as angry as Kellin.

Kellin concluded, “I thought you actually cared about her.  But I guess there’s no one you wouldn’t betray to prove you’re–“

Yuulik banged her fists against the forcefield, declaring, “I love her, you idiot!”

Unexpectedly, the forcefield collapsed under Yuulik’s assault.  It flashed right out.

“Nova is a woman of substance,” Yuulik entreated.  “Starfleet doesn’t produce officers like her anymore.  I love her down to the subatomic level!”

“Then why–” Kellin started to say, but Yuulik never heard the end of that question.  

The spiralling sparkles of an annular confinement beam blinded her.  The hum of a transporter beam drown out the sound of Kellin’s voice.  As Yuulik blinked away the flurry of the transporter effect, she recognized she had been beamed on the emergency transporter pad of the Sarek‘s shuttlecraft Castillo.

“Did you mean it?” Nova asked.  She was sitting on the edge of the flight controls with her legs crossed at the knee, waiting for Yuulik.  Nova asked again, “What you just said to Kellin, do you mean it?”

Yuulik, for her part, began to hyperventilate.  Her eyes welled up with tears at a speed that alarmed her.  Like she was watching Nova through a fog, Yuulik couldn’t find her bearings.  She didn’t know where she was, didn’t know what to be true.

“Nova?” was all Yuulik could say, fighting back those tears.  “You’re alive?  They said I murdered you…?”

Nova launched herself across the cockpit and threw her arms around Yuulik.  As much as Yuulik wanted to give into her own body, to melt into Nova, Yuulik’s posture remained awkwardly stiff.  Her conscious mind couldn’t comprehend this particular reversal and what she saw beyond Nova made it even worse.

“Is it snowing?” Yuulik asked incredulously, “in the shuttlebay?”  

Fat, fluffy flakes of snow were gently falling onto the shuttlecraft’s forward viewport, right there in front of her eyes.  Between the cozy atmosphere of the shuttlecraft and the open bay doors, the Brigadoon‘s main shuttlebay was turning into a winter wonderland.

In a chummy sing-song, Nova replied, “I told you.  The life support systems in the shuttlebay were malfunctioning.”  She looked at Yuulik, looked right at her.

“I think I made a mistake,” Nova said, “when I created this blind spot in the internal sensor grid, right here.”

“You?” Yuulik tentatively asked.  “You did… this…?”

“I promise you, Sootrah,” Nova pleaded, “I never knew what would happen to the Sarek.  I’m not– I’m not a science officer.  I’m doing the best I can.  These past seven years as a non-corporeal being felt like seven hundred.  It left me time to think.”

Yuulik felt her extremities going numb and her knees going weak.  She stepped back from Nova, but she nodded at her words attentively.  Yuulik dropped herself into the pilot’s chair and she never took her eyes off Nova.

“The vortex has a finite source of subspace energy to hold onto the Brigadoon,” Nova said, “or we would have been lost in the temporal inversion fold forever.  I modified the subspace tensor matrix so that I could tether the vortex to asteroid Typhon-518.  Re-directing the pull of the vortex should have been like tugging the tail on a subspace slip knot.  Within the safety of the static warp shell, the Brigadoon would be released while the knot tightened around the asteroid.”

“But something happened in the last seven years,” Nova continued.  “The asteroid was eaten by a subspace tear.  The Typhon Expanse is unrecognizable since we returned.  So I directed the subspace tensor matrix at the starship Sarek instead.  I thought your modern systems would protect the ship at the same time the Brigadoon was released from the vortex.  I’m so sorry, Sootrah.”

Yuulik pressed her palm to her forehead.  “I need to– Nova, I need to process what this–“

Shaking her head, Nova threw herself into the co-pilot’s chair.  She reached across the space between them, taking Yuulik’s hands in her own.

“I’m sorry, Sootrah, we have to go now,” Nova insisted.  She set her jaw and her brow furrowed at Yuulik.  “Your shuttle has never been molecularly entangled with the vortex and its forcefield generators can create a static warp shell.  We need to escape before the vortex returns!  You’ve been accused of destroying the Sarek and I’m probably guilty.  We need to set course for Risa, or beyond the Typhon Frontier, and we need to run!”

Her throat tight, Yuulik asked, “Did you falsify the computer logs?  Did you make me look guilty?”

“I won’t lie to you,” Nova replied, her eye’s looking heavily half-lidded.  “Yes, I did it.  Your arrest caused the commotion I expected it would.  It proved a distraction while I prepared the shuttle and your jailbreak.”

“Nova, wait…” Yuulik said, her voice strangled by emotion, “Wait, we can’t go.  We need to rescue the Sarek crew.”

“The Brigadoon can handle that,” Nova firmly countered.  “I left all my logs unlocked in the research lab.  Sootrah, I can’t wait another day.  If we wait another day, it’s going to be another seven years, another fourteen years, another hundred years.  My god, Sootrah, Mars is on fire!  There may not be a Federation left standing by the  time both the Brigadoon and the Sarek escape the vortex for good.”

Nova squeezed Yuulik’s hands.

“Come with me,” Nova whispered.

Yuulik recoiled her hands from Nova’s grasp.

“Come with me,” Nova begged.

Yuulik moved her hands even farther from Nova, so she could tap the activation sequence on the LCARS panel in front of her.  Orienting herself with the flight control panel, Yuulik shared a private thrilled look with Nova, when she said, “Activating RCS thrusters!”

Nova spun her chair to face her LCARS console as well.  “Powering up the warp core.”

Swiping her fingertips over the controls, Yuulik had hardly lifted the shuttlecraft off the deck when the shuttlecraft rocked from side to side.

“Ahhh!” Yuulik cried out.

Her gaze on her panel, Nova explained, “They’ve got us in a tractor beam!”

“So much for that sensor blindspot,” Yuulik muttered.

Yuulik’s combadge chirped loudly.

“Yuulik, where do you think you’re going?” Kellin’s voice asked over the communication channel.  “The Sarek is gone! There’s nothing out there but the Typhon Expanse.“

Desperately, Yuulik revved up the thrusters, testing their strength against the tractor beam’s grip on the shuttle.

“Yuulik, you’re needed!“

Yuulik stabbed at a purple bar on the LCARS controls.

Sootrah Yuulik’s Personal Log, Supplemental:

 

Do you ever look at yourself in the mirror and don’t recognize the eyes looking back at you?  I don’t know what’s come over me.  Those eyes don’t look like mine.

 

I can’t decide if the mistake was agreeing to run away with Nova or if the mistake was powering down the shuttlecraft.  Nova’s fingers tapped through the manual sequence controls in a familiar pattern.  She intended us to break us free of the tractor beam with a warp burst.  The damage that could have been done… I couldn’t risk it.

 

I promised her.  I promised Nova I would get her out of here if she would tell Captain Yanee everything.  And she did.  Nova explained how the shuttlecraft was still projecting a subspace tensor matrix to hold the Sarek and the vortex in the outermost layer of the inversion fold.  I made a promise, which means I have to follow through.  There’s no other choice.

“Do it,” Captain Yahnee ordered.  Perched on the edge of the angular captain’s chair, she sliced her hand through the air to set the Brigadoon‘s bridge crew in motion.  “Yellow alert!”

As the author of the rescue plan, Lieutenant Yuulik was rightly standing at the freestanding science console, positioned to the captain’s left.  Nova was seated at the blocky operations console.  Captain Yahnee had said she wanted to keep Nova within sights this time around.  Of Yuulik’s colleagues: Elbon and Flavia were lurking by the entrance to the ready room, Doctor Nelli was examining the communications console, and Kellin looked to be gossiping with the tactical officer, off to the side of the bridge.

When Nova looked back over her shoulder, she caught Yuulik’s gaze for a moment.  That look in her eye was a mystery to Yuulik, which took Yuulik’s breath away.  The moment quickly passed when Nova locked eyes with Captain Yahnee.

“Disengaging the subspace tensor matrix, captain,” Nova reported.

As soon as she had done so, Yuulik intensified the short-range sensor scans of the coordinates where the vortex had been hanging in space.

“Powering up deflectors,” Nova went on.  “Engaging the static warp shell.”

Yahnee anxiously said, “CONN, I want full reverse on thrusters.”

As the USS Brigadoon heaved into reverse, the starscape through the transparent viewscreen began to shift very gradually and then it shifted very suddenly.  Out of the void, space-time warped and then it ripped apart.  That rend in reality made way for the temporal vortex to come howling out of the inversion fold.  

As soon as it materialized, Yuulik watched the USS Sarek launched tumbling end-over-end from the maw of the vortex.  The violence of the vortex erupting back into this dimension had thrown the Sarek out of its grasp.  Instead, it appeared the vortex was hungrier for the Brigadoon, after their decades of molecular entanglement.  The vortex began to loom larger and larger through the viewscreen.  The deck began to rumble from the strain of the engines fighting the vortex’s pull.

“Increase to full impulse!” Yahnee ordered.

After confirming the readings on her console, Yuulik advised, “The Sarek‘s static warp shell is fully engaged, captain.  They’ve powered it to the equivalent of warp nine point five!  It’s– it’s working.  Temporal flux readings from the vortex are reducing.”

Yuulik looked up from her console to see the vortex growing even larger on the viewscreen.  She knew it was no computerised magnification.  Given the vibrations coming through the starship’s superstructure, and the gravimetric shear readings on her console, the gravitational pull of the vortex was drawing the Brigadoon nearer.

“I said full impulse!” Yahnee repeated.

Begrudgingly, Yuulik said, “Captain, it’s no use.  The spatial turbulence from the vortex has reached level eight.”

“We can’t escape the gravitational pull of the vortex without warp drive,” Nova chimed in.  “But it’s taking everything from the warp core’s power conduits to maintain the static warp shell.”

In victory, Yuulik announced, “Temporal flux levels are plummeting.  We’re being buffeted by subspace oscillations but… according to internal sensors, the subspace barriers have loosened the connections between the Brigadoon and the vortex’s energy matrix.”

“We can escape?” Nova asked intently.  “Perhaps the crew at least?”

Pondering the options, Yuulik thought aloud, “If both ships merged their static warp shells, the temporal flux levels are low enough we could beam the crew inside the shell from the Brigadoon to the Sarek.  The shields are generating too much spatial distortion for site-to-site transporting from ship to ship.  We’ll have to evacuate the entire crew via the transporter rooms.” 

It hadn’t taken much more persuasion until Captain Yahnee hit the communication button on her captain’s chair to sound the boatswain whistle.  A recording of the captain’s order for all crew to abandon ship was still playing over the communications array when Nova pushed the sequence initiator sliders across the transporter controls.  Hedging close to Nova at the transporter room’s operator station, Yuulik watched six more Brigadoon crew members dematerialise in a whirl of light.

The deck rocked beneath Yuulik’s feet, as the ship was struck by another wave of spatial distortion, and then there was another flash of light.  Two of the lateral vector transporter pads on the bulkheads exploded.  Dodging sparks and shrapnel, Yuulik threw an arm over Nova’s shoulder and she ducked them beneath the control panel.

Huddled together beneath the control panel, Nova asked Yuulik in a hushed tone, “How much farther have we fallen into the vortex?”

Yuulik yanked the tricorder from Nova’s hip holster and she tapped at the controls to access the Brigadoon’s exterior sensor system.  Based on what she saw in the sensor readings, Yuulik decided to only tell her, “Keep beaming.”

Upon Nova’s directions to the few others in the transporter room, the Sarek‘s away team were up next, with only four transporter pads left operational.  Flavia, Nelli, Kellin and Elbon lined up at each of the transporter pads.  Elbon gave Kellin a kiss for luck.

As soon as Commander Elbon gave the order, “Energize,” Nova pushed the initiation sliders again.  The glow of demateralisation took slightly longer than Yuulik expected and she tapped into tricorder’s comm system with some urgency.  Another two lateral vector transporter pads exploded.  Yuulik’s tapping on the tricorder’s controls turned into alarmed stabbing until she received a comm signal in return.

“The Sarek received them safety,” Yuulik reported through a sigh.  She proffered the tricorder back to Nova, but Nova’s attentions were drawn to another communications status display on the control panel.  Yuulik tucked the tricorder back into Nova’s holster.

Finally looking up, Nova said, “I’ve notified Captain Yahnee to divert all crew to the other transporter rooms and cargo bays.” –She poked Yuulik in the chest–  “It’s your turn now, Sootrah.  There’s no time left.  Let me deliver you home safely.”

As much as Yuulik could think of procedural reasons Nova didn’t have to be the only one to beam Yuulik back to the Sarek, Yuulik couldn’t find the energy to fight Nova.  Nova was an expert transporter operator.  Given the massive levels of spatial distortion between the Brigadoon and the Sarek, she was Yuulik’s best hope of safety.  The spatial distortions required manual adjustments the computer AI couldn’t manage.

Moreover, Yuulik’s precise calculations of the static warp shell were working; the Brigadoon crew were escaping the vortex, even if the starship wasn’t faring as well.  Yuulik had already proved the impossible was possible and so Nova’s tone of voice hit Yuulik differently.  

Hearing the care and desperation in Nova’s voice, Yuulik nodded in agreement and Nova kissed her.  That buoyed Yuulik’s spirit enough for her to bound onto the transporter platform with security officer Collins by her side.  Yuulik and Collins were the only ones remaining, aside from Nova at the controls.  In her eye contact with Nova, Yuulik felt a creeping dread in the pit of her stomach.

“Energise,” Yuulik said.

As the annular confinement beam began to whirl around Collins, Yuulik jumped off the transporter platform.

“Forget it,” Yuulik said, striding behind the operator console.  “I can’t leave you!  Even if I have to spend another hundred years trying to free us from the vortex, I’m not going anywhere unless we leave together.”

“Yuulik,” Nova said, as she wrapped an arm around Yuulik’s waist, “hasn’t anyone ever told you?” –and she tapped a command sequence into her tricorder– “Faking weakness is disgusting?”

Before Yuulik could say anything, the emergency transport on the Sarek‘s shuttle Castillo had snatched up Nova and Yuulik.  Nova threw herself at the piloting controls and launched the shuttle out of the bay as the last of the Brigadoon was devoured by the vortex.  The Sarek took hold of the shuttle in a tractor beam before the vortex too was devoured by the temporal inversion fold.

There was a different tenor to the silence.

Somehow, the silence sounded different.

Despite the warm light of the USS Sarek‘s Grayson Lounge, the silence between Nova and Yuulik sounded cold.  Nova reached for her glass for another sip of water, but she found the glass was empty.  Yuulik was still tabbing through the menu PADD.  By Nova’s reckoning, Yuulik had been scrolling through the menu for going on eighteen minutes.

“I didn’t want to tell you until I had spoken with Captain Taes,” Nova said tentatively.  “But she’s open to the suggestion that I transfer to the Sarek’s crew.  I’ll need to spend a spell in Starfleet Training Command, and counselling, before I can be an active duty officer again.  But once the official logs say I’m not missing in action anymore, I think I can move here.”

Yuulik looked up from her PADD to blink at Nova twice.

“Why would you do that?” Yuulik asked and she sounded truly oblivious.

Nova smirked at her, rising to the challenge of Yuulik’s obstructive manner.

“We have the start of something here,” Nova musically said.

Yuulik blinked again.  “The start of what?  You dream of mediating between squabbling science officers, fighting over sensor pallets?”

“I thought I’d start,” Nova said, sweeping a hand over the table between them, “with taking you out for dinner.”

“This?” Yuulik asked, her voice going high.  “You think this is a date?”

“Why not?” Nova said.  She couldn’t hide the quiver in the elongated vowel.  “You kissed me.  You said you love me.”

Yuulik grimaced at her.  “I don’t find you physically attractive.”

Nova breathed out a soft gasp at the sting of those words.

“You said I’m a woman of substance,” Nova said.  “I thought that meant you loved me for my mind.”

“No,” Yuulik said, shaking her head.  “I meant every word when I said it.  I loved you for your substance.  It’s not every day you meet a woman whose molecules are substantially entangled with a temporal vortex.  I felt the desire to rescue you.  I was romantically infatuated with the mystery.”

“Aren’t I still a mystery?” Nova asked, not caring how shameless it might sound.  “I’m a woman out of time.”

In a matter-of-fact timbre, Yuulik replied, “It’s more common than you’d think in Starfleet these days.  There’s a monthly support group on Deep Space Seventeen for people just like you.  They’ll serve you well.”

Yuulik shook her head and returned her eyes to the menu PADD.

“People,” Yuulik said, “they don’t excite me.  I solved the mystery of you.  It’s over now.”  Yuulik shrugged.  “I’m needed elsewhere.”

Nova insisted, “Sootrah, I spent an eternity in subspace, dreaming of the day you would rescue me so we could be together.  I love you!”

Yuulik said, “I’m comforted to know you had pleasant dreams while you were sleeping.  But you have your real life again.  Go.  Live it.”