It was time to lay it all on the table. The fate of two realities depended on it. He had hoped Commander Sirona was wrong in her suspicions, but he couldn’t deny it now. Another deviation in course and another tremor on the scopes. It was too much to be a coincidence.
Captain Knight sat at the head of the table, Commander Sirona at his left and Commander Castillo on his right. There were no smiles now, none of their usual warmth. The stakes had to be made clear, lest temptation gave way to an irreversible mistake.
The door hissed open. Sub-Commander Satrin stepped through, followed by Centurion Irulan, but there was a notable absence. The colonel was nowhere to be seen.
Captain Knight leaned forward. “Where’s Nethak?”
“Otherwise occupied,” Sub-Commander Satrin replied flatly as she took her seat.
Captain Knight’s posture hardened. “I did not request the grace of the colonel’s presence. I ordered it. At zero eight hundred, the command staff of both ships were to report.” He did not often lean on his authority, preferring a collaborative approach to leadership, but in this case, it was not negotiable. Especially when the colonel was the ultimate authority aboard the Decius, and when he was the one whose convictions the captain questioned most. “What we have to review is too important for any of us to treat casually.”
Sub-Commander Satrin replied without apology. “Perhaps the colonel has judged other matters more deserving of his attention.”
Something in the way she said it made Captain Knight pause. It was not insolence for its own sake. It was something colder, almost as if a warning. “Very well,” he said at last. “Then we shall just have to proceed without him.”
The sub-commander simply nodded.
“What we are about to share is not speculation, and it is not a philosophical exercise,” Captain Knight opened, a heaviness to his tone. “It is a fundamental threat to the fabric of reality, both here and at home, and we cannot afford to let it sit any longer.”
He looked over at Commander Sirona and nodded.
“There exist beings almost beyond our comprehension that move between realities as we move between stars,” Commander Sirona explained, her tone measured. “Creatures for whom the timelines we take for granted are not sacred progressions of past and future, but unstable structures vulnerable to forces we scarcely understand.”
Sub-Commander Satrin showed no visible reaction, but Centurion Irulan’s attention sharpened at once. The Decius‘ chief of science had a livelier curiosity than her superior, and she was less practiced at concealing it.
“What they call themselves, we do not know,” Commander Sirona continued. “But among those with the misfortune of having encountered them, they are known as the Loom, transdimensional beings drawn to contradictions within the fabric of the multiverse, to those moments when threads never meant to touch are made to touch.”
“A curious mythology,” Sub-Commander Satrin offered, not because she was particularly interested, but rather because, given Dravik’s return, she had more pressing concerns and simply sought to move this along. “But where, precisely, do we enter into it?”
“Because we are one of those threads made to touch,” Captain Knight said. “Our continued presence in this reality draws in the Loom.”
Centurion Irulan leaned forward, her curiosity sharpened now by something closer to unease. “And when such beings take notice, what follows?”
“In the simplest of cases, they erase the divergence from existence,” Commander Sirona answered. “A surgical correction, and then, with the contradiction gone, history closes around the wound and the way of things is restored.”
For a moment, there was silence, but then Commander Castillo picked up the thread before the implications could dissipate. “Unfortunately, our situation is not so simple. To erase us from this reality would produce a contradiction in our own reality.”
“If they are so concerned with restoring order, would they not simply return us to where we belong?” Centurion Irulan posed. It was the sort of solution that appealed to the scientist in her. It was elegant, corrective and clean. But yet, even as she gave it voice, she had a sense this was not where the conversation was headed. “That would reconcile both timelines.”
“To expect as much would imply a benevolence and an interest they have not,” Commander Sirona replied. “We are but ants in a giant’s playground.”
“If one grants your premise, which I am still uncertain that I do, then what you are saying would imply they have reached an impasse,” Sub-Commander Satrin raised an eyebrow.
“No, not at all,” Commander Sirona shook her head. “When they cannot close the wound, they simply kill the patient.” She paused for a moment, and then made it more clear. “In this case, reality itself, consuming everything within it. Both this one, and the one from whence we came.”
The idea drew a quiet chuckle from the sub-commander. Mythical monsters that consumed reality? It was all quite fantastical. “You speak of them as though they were gods.” And she was not a woman of faith.
“Not gods,” Commander Sirona shook her head. “Gods have motive and vanity, mercy and cruelty. The Loom are nothing so legible. They care not whether a reality deserves to continue. Only whether it may be permitted to.”
Sub-Commander Satrin stared at them incredulously. “Forgive me, but I cannot accept, on your word alone, that the fate of two universes now rests on the appetite of a mythical predator.”
“Then take not our word, sub-commander,” Commander Sirona said firmly as she gestured to the remnants of her implants, the parts the doctors could not remove. “Take it on the word of my former employer. Do you really think the Collective lacked the means to cross over? The Loom’s existence is, in part, what restrained the Collective from expanding into the broader multiverse, an anomaly for which they could neither account for, nor assimilate.”
That line of reasoning stopped the Romulan cold. To discount three humans and their ghost stories was not particularly hard, but to discount the collective experience of a trillion minds with capabilities beyond the Empire at its mightiest, that was a bit more challenging. “If this Loom does exist, would it not stand to reason we have not already brought doom upon both realities?”
“So far, we have made little to no impact here,” Commander Castillo noted. “The gap is not yet likely to have widened sufficiently to draw them in.”
Captain Knight locked eyes with the Romulan sub-commander. “However, should that change, then there is no promise either reality survives.”
The way in which he said it, Sub-Commander Satrin now understood. They knew, somehow, of Major Dravik’s soiree. How, she didn’t know, but clearly, he knew. “You direct your concerns not to those who require them.”
Captain Knight’s eyes narrowed. “Then perhaps you can help me correct that.”
For the first time, something shifted in Sub-Commander Satrin’s expression. Not surprise, but recognition they might not be so misaligned. “If a man were to look upon this place and see not ruin, but opportunity, your warning would sound less like caution than inconvenience.”
It was an admission to everything they had feared, and for a moment, Captain Knight just sat there, processing it. But at last, he spoke again. “What could be said to sway such a man?”
“Neither your words, nor mine, would sway such a man,” Sub-Commander Satrin replied. Words would not achieve what was required.
