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.”