“If a body meet a body comin’ through the rye.”

J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye. (1905)

Samantha Hyland awoke and, for a moment, didn’t know who she was or where she was.

The light had an unfamiliar quality, and it hurt her eyes as she struggled to open them.

Her memories were indistinct. She had a vague recollection of being in danger, but it was hard to bring these thoughts into focus.

She tried to move her head and everything hurt.

She became aware of the presence of others, and she tried to focus on the present.

“Easy now Captain.” Came a warm and sonorous voice. Familiar. “You’ve had quite the ordeal.

Sam blinked some of the miasma from her vision and was able to recognize the face of the handsome Dr Jahanshir Langah.

She was so overjoyed that tears sprang, unbidden from her eyes.

“Doctor?” she managed.

“You’re safe aboard the USS Valley Forge Captain.” The avuncular Peshwari physician smiled reassuringly. “We treated your wounds, which were extensive, and I decided that it’d be best to let you recuperate and rest in the privacy of your own quarters. The Sickbay is still filled to capacity with casualties from the battle.”

“Battle?” Sam tried to whet her cracked lips with a sluggish tongue and strove to recall the events that had brought her here.

“It appears that you had a battle all of your own.” Dr Langah nodded. “The most serious being the stab – wound, which is on the mend nicely. The facial abrasions ranged from serious to superficial and should all heal without scarring – given time. The concussion was a little more concerning.”

Samatha blinked and winced.

“My head hurts…. the light….”

Dr Langah nodded and adjusted the lights in Sam’s quarters to a more muted setting.

“You sustained fractures to the Orbis and Parietal bones of your skull. I have treated these with ultrasonic orthopedic treatments, but the headaches will continue for a short period of time. It’s not uncommon to suffer periodic visual migraines from this type of injury. If the symptoms worsen, please let me know – but with time and rest, I expect you to make a full recovery.”

Sam experimented with frowning but quickly decided against that – as that hurt too.

Flashes of conflict. Her own bloodied face staring back at her with murderous intent. A ship coming apart. Light.

“But how….” she mumbled, trying to push herself upright in bed, the Doctor reaching forward instinctively to support and assist her, as he propped the pillows behind her to support her back and head.

“How do you come to be here in the land of the living?” Dr Langah laughed lightly and smiled, “Maybe you’d better ask the person that saved you?”

Sam became aware of another in the darkened room and painfully turned her head to focus on them.

“Commander?” She ventured uncertainly at first, as the XO – Commander Daniel Talland stepped forward into her field of view and grasped her slim hand with his own.

“It’s good to see you Sam.” Talland’s smooth, bearded face creased into a wide smile that lit up his warm brown eyes. “You seem to have left your Starship lying around unattended, so I thought that I’d keep it safe for you!”

A laugh escaped Sam’s throat as she felt a tremendous wash of relief overcome her. Dr Langah took this as his queue to leave and gathered his things and diplomatically departed the Captain’s quarters, leaving the pair alone together.

She was alive!

Seeing that his Captain and friend was overcome with emotion and evidently coming to terms with her current situation, Daniel reassured her.

“You’re safe. We’re all safe. The Valley Forge made the transition through the anomaly, and we are safely back in our own “Prime” Universe. It was a close – run thing, the anomaly was collapsing fast behind us. I’m thinking of recommending Ellis for a promotion, you chose well when you selected him for our Helm – officer. That kid can fly through the teeth of the devil himself. In fact – I think he did!”

Sam’s eyes widened at this news and her mind raced.

“The other me…. what happened to the ‘other’ Captain Hyland?” There was a note of concern tinged in her voice.

Commander Talland frowned, this subject obviously eliciting a range of emotions within the man.

“Well,” he began carefully, “we were able to acquire your transporter signal and get a successful lock as we passed over the ‘USS Artemis’, we were only able to lock on to one signal – so we must assume that the other Hyland perished along with the ship, when the warp – core was detonated – closing the rift.”

He looked intently at Samantha, as if searching for something.

“It’s difficult to say this Captain, but I’m afraid that I have to ask you something?”

Samantha prepared herself and nodded,” Well, go on then….”

“When we had dinner together, before all this happened, can you tell me what we were discussing and how that conversation ended?”

She noticed for the first time that the Commander had a phase – pistol holstered at his hip.

For the longest moment the pair looked at each other, time seemed to draw out as her cool, blue eyes met his brown own, each betraying nothing.

At length Sam spoke.

“We spoke about the possibility of alternate universes and whether Hull-3185 might have travelled to one when she was lost. You were passionately for the idea; I basically told you that you were an idiot – in slightly more polite terms.” Samantha recounted and raised her eyebrow sardonically.

Commander Talland held her gaze for a moment longer and then it seemed like a great weight was released within him as the uncertainty and tension flooded out of him, he visibly relaxed.

“Sorry Sam, I had to be sure that we rescued the right Captain.”

Samantha smiled indulgently and nodded her assent.

“I totally understand, I would have done the same in your place.”

Daniel blew his cheeks out in relief and patted her hand.

“I’m glad that you are alive Captain and that you’re our Captain, Sam!”

He let go of her hand and rested it back on her chest and rose to leave.

“I’m also looking forward to giving your ship back to you as soon as Dr Langah clears you fit for duty. No word of a lie, but I do NOT want to be in the Captain’s Chair when it comes time to trying to write the official report on all of this.”

“We have been recalled to Starbase 72 and something is definitely up, because the TFCO has placed a communications blackout on the ship – we are to communicate nothing about what has transpired over the last few days or where we have been to anyone whatsoever, before Captain Williams has had a chance to fully debrief the crew”.

Samantha frowned dubiously to herself.

“Sound like a cover-up in the making. I wonder if Starfleet Command has been aware of the existence of the Mirror Universe, all along, and is purposely keeping people in the dark about it?”

Daniel stopped at the door and frowned at that possibility.

“That’s a disturbing thought.” The Executive Officer pondered, “If that is true, I wonder why they would do such a thing?”

Sam grimaced as she shifted her weight in the bed, to better look at him.

“Because power lacks moral or principles. It only has interests”. She spoke softly.

Talland looked disconcerted for a moment, then he rallied.

“Anyway, when you’re back on your feet it’s my turn to cook you dinner.” The XO smiled from the doorway. “I promise to make you my famous ‘Coq au Vin’, if you promise to bring a bottle of that excellent Glenmorangie?”

A pause as Sam narrowed her eyes and then she smiled guardedly.

“It was Glenlivet. We drank Glenlivet, you know that, Daniel.” She challenged coyly, “Are you testing me again, Commander?”

Commander Talland grinned wanly.

“Guilty as charged.” He shrugged disarmingly. “Like I said, I just had to be sure.”

Sam nodded with an indulgent smile and laid back on the pillows and closed her eyes.

“That shit’s going to get old real quick. Goodnight Daniel.”

“Goodnight Sam and welcome home.”

And then she was alone.

For the longest time she lay in bed, marveling at her good fortune as she enjoyed the experience of the bright starfield, elongated as it streamed by the viewport as the USS Valley Forge made its way back home at the best Warp – factor her battered engines could make.

Eventually, she rose painfully from the bed and made her way to the small replicator unit that sat in its alcove and commanded.

“Computer? Make me a pair of polarized contact lenses and then permanently delete all record of this transaction from all logs.”

~ Complying ~

When the replicator had completed the task, she took up the newly manufactured lenses and padded to the small, private bathroom the quarters afforded and carefully inserted one onto one eye and then the other.

Greatly relieved that the pervading, invasive glare of this Universe was thus abated, she blinked at her reflection in the mirror, as her eyes got used to the lenses.

Her familiar face was an unfamiliar patchwork of fading, colorful bruises and healing lacerations, but it was unmistakably the face of a victor.

A thin smile creased her lips.

The Terran Empire could never touch her here – she was as Prometheus reborn from the flames.

Here she was as a tornado. A destructive force hidden in plain sight behind the commonplace and familiar – ready to unleash her fury when she deemed it would have most impact.

Content to wait for the perfect conditions.

Captain Samantha Freydis Hyland, former Captain of the ISS Albion, smiled at her reflection, then took up the other woman’s toothbrush and bared her sharp – toothed smile.

The ‘other’ Samantha had (eventually) told her much under torture, that she intended to use to her distinct advantage here in this strange, new world.

“I think I’m going to like it here.” She thought breezily, as she began to carefully brush.

Stardate: 2401.12.29 / 11:06hrs
Location: Mirror Universe / Antaari Nebula / Damaged Hive Collective Tetrahedron

Samantha Hyland awoke and, for a moment, didn’t know who she was or where she was.

The light had an unfamiliar quality, and it hurt her eyes as she struggled to open them.

Her memories were indistinct. She had a vague recollection of being in danger, but it was hard to bring these thoughts into focus.

She tried to move her head and, with a growing sense of alarm, found she couldn’t move.

She became aware of the presence of others, and she tried to focus on the present.

All around her the dank, amber light seemed to have a sluggish quality – like the air itself was soupy and thick. It was uncomfortably hot and claustrophobic, and Sam came to realize that there was a foul-smelling surface only inches from her face that seemed strangely organic and exuded by one turn and purposely manufactured at the same time.

Blind panic ensued as she tried to struggle but found that she was powerless to move even a muscle.

Trying to remember her Starfleet – training, Sam tried to control and steady her breathing and tried to recall the events that had brought here to be, wherever this was.

Flashes of conflict. Her own bloodied face staring back at her with murderous intent. A ship coming apart. Light.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a whirring sound and with a moist squelch, the platform that she was lying upon began to move towards the hexagonal aperture at the head of the confining cylinder that she was in and with a disturbingly organic action like that of an aorta, the aperture irised open and Samantha slid outwards.

Her mind railed against the sheer alienness of the awful vista that yawed around her.

Her hexagonal ‘womb’ was only one of a legion of others, identical and extending onwards, upwards – spiraling away in every direction as far as her feverish gaze could discern.

She was in the beating heart of a teeming single – minded metropolis, at the impersonal and terrifyingly inhuman core of the Hive Collective’s Tet.

Frantic images of her desperate fight with a mirror of herself. Of two pinpricks of nascent bright light forming, whilst Hull – 3185 came apart around them. Growing quickly in intensity to envelop her and the person who both was and wasn’t She.

One Amber. One Blue.

Sam’s panicked eyes widened in horror and recognition as a leaden voice that sounded somewhere between the chittering of a thousand cicadas and the rustling of dry leaves in an autumn breeze, persisted irresistibly, right beside her ear.

“WE ARE THE HIVE. WE WILL ADD YOUR TECHNOLOGICAL UNIQUENESS TO OURSELVES AND OUR BIOLOGICAL UNIQUENESS TO OUR OWN. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.”

She felt the sharp proboscis intrude her skin, flooding her with the powerful mutagenic agent that would inevitably rob her of her humanity and inexorably – link her to the Hive Mind.

And with that one last awful sensation, Captain Samantha Elise Hyland, former Captain of the USS Valley Forge, ceased to be and became one with the Hive Collective.

END?