Cerulean Stars - Chapter 144

Chapter 144 - Destiny - Part 3

Stardate 48546.4 - July 19, 2371 - 10:27:50

“So Miles just went up and directly asked Gilora if she was flirting with him.” Keiko finished with an over exaggerated shake of her head as if she couldn't quite believe it.

Setting her half finished cup of tea down on the replimat table, Raine offered the other woman a wry grin. “A bit blunt, but the normal Cardassian idea of flirting is a type of passive aggressive confrontational posturing that's hard for humans to distinguish from general disagreements about things.”

Which was a big part of why she had made sure to have every one review the sector guide for inter-species relations.

“That's what Miles said.” Keiko groused. “Right after he told me she said yes but then changed her mind once he explained that he was married.”

“Ah,” Raine muttered in understanding. “So she's probably on the search for a husband then.”

“What?” Keiko demanded, narrowing her eyes in a way that promised pain if Raine didn't explain.

“If she just wanted to have some fun she wouldn't have been turned off just by finding out he was married.” Raine grinned. “See, according to Natima, Cardassian marriages usually come with the general expectation that both parties will sleep around. There are some rules to it of course. Don't drag it into the public eye, you always come home to your husband slash wife, and never ever have kids with anyone other than your spouse.”

She wiggled her eye ridges at Keiko suggestively. “Though of course, the second two have an exception if the other spouse is in on it too.”

Keiko choked on her coffee, shooting a glare at Raine as she recovered her breath. “Oh, you’re horrible.”

“I blame Jadzia.” Raine shrugged innocently. “My sense of humor has taken an entirely dirty turn since I became friends with her.”

“Sure it has.” Keiko returned, skepticism all but dripping off her words. “So moving on from me, how have things been going with your guest?”

“D’Vana is very much a teenage girl.” Raine admitted with a sigh.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing?” Keiko put forward, eyeing her oddly.

Raine grimaced, refusing to meet the other woman’s gaze for several seconds before hanging her head in defeat. “I don’t know how to handle teenage girls.” She held up a hand to forestall the obvious retort. “And no, Saya doesn’t count.”

Because her daughter had started leaning distinctly away from what Raine had read about standard teenage girl psychology as puberty had gone on.

Keiko offered a consoling smile. “If it makes you feel better, Saya reminds me a lot of the kids on the Enterprise. So I think it’s just something about growing up on a Starfleet ship and not anything you did in particular.”

“Given how weird Starfleet kids can end up, that really doesn’t make me feel any better.” Raine groused, looking down into her tea and imagining just what sort of craziness Saya might be getting up to now if they were still on a starship.

“That's not really a thing, and you know it.” Keiko said, rolling her eyes in exasperation.

“It absolutely is!” Raine emphatically insisted. “Have I ever told you about the time shortly after I turned thirteen that my mom took me along while investigating a major Prime Directive violation by the command staff of the Excalibur?”

“You haven't.” Keiko shook her head. “AMD I don't think I've ever heard of that event either.”

“It didn't get a lot of press.” Raine admitted, knowing there had been several good reasons for that. “The short of it though, is that the Excalibur discovered a planet with what they thought was a pair of pre-warp species on the verge of wiping each other out after an nuclear holocaust.”

“What they thought was a pair of pre-warp species?" Keiko inquired, furrowing her brow in obvious confusion.

“It was actually a pair of trans-dimensional species pretending to be a pair of pre-warp species in the ruins of a third already extinct pre-warp civilization.” Raine explained, still not entirely understanding that particular bit of stupidity. “I think they were trying to settle an argument or something? I never really got it.”

“Anyways,” She continued. “The Excalibur's command crew, not knowing what was actually going on, used their transporters to sabotage the few remaining unlaunched nuclear weapons, and then turned themselves in for it.”

Which had been sneaky in a way that Raine could respect. Because sure it was a blatant violation of the Prime Directive. But as far as the locals would have been concerned, the weapons would have just failed. And it wasn't like Starfleet could order anyone to go back down and secretly fix the things.

“So the ship was ordered to hold position, and my mom sent out to conduct a full investigation and determine just how much trouble everybody involved was in.”

If memory served her, Gemma had been leaning towards a major reprimand on each of their records at the very least.

“Half way there, communication with the Excalibur goes down. And about five days later arrived in system to find the ship drifting in space since the trans-dimensional aliens had basically conscripted everybody in the ship above the age of fourteen to replace the projective force they destroyed when they sabotaged the missiles.”

“Oh no.” Keiko muttered.

“And we haven't even gotten to the crazy part yet.” Raine told her. “See, the ship was drifting because the main computer had gone into secure standby mode after a day had passed without any living being on board.”

That made Keiko frown. “Didn't you just say the aliens only kidnapped those over the age of fourteen?"

“Exactly.” Raine nodded. “See, the kids that had been left behind couldn't operate anything important on the ship. But a couple of them had gotten their parents to teach them how to fly shuttles.”

“Oh no…” Keiko repeated with sudden dread.

“One of those kids took a small group of others down to the planet to try and rescue their parents. When after a day they didn't return, the other took the rest and headed out in another shuttle to try and get back to Starfleet.”

An utterly eyerolling pair of choices in Raine’s opinion given it had barely been a day since the adults were taken and the kids had still had access to the ship's various amenities.

“Now, the first shuttle crashed on the heavily irradiated sub continent. Where the kids were taken in by the sole survivor of the planet's original civilization. A super psychic ten year old living in a bunker, only they didn’t know that because the ten year old had somehow saved the minds of the bunker's thousand or so original inhabitants and was projecting them as psychokinetic constructs.”

She shook her head and sighed. “Meanwhile, the other shuttle had gotten grabbed by a ship of Caitian smuggles, escaped from that while ‘kidnapping’ the captain's daughter, and then landed their stolen smuggler shuttle on New Axton with the idea of using some of their accidentally stolen smuggled goods to secure proper transport to a Federation planet.”

Coffee seeming forgotten, Keiko was just staring at Raine now with a look of supreme befuddlement on her face. “How does it keep getting worse?”

“That's exactly what my mom kept asking as the investigation was figuring everything out.” Raine told her with a grin. “And it took nearly a month for the handful of Starfleet ships that ended up called in to sort everything out.”

Several seconds of relative silence passed between them before Keiko scowled. “So what happened with everything?”

“About what you'd expect given the circumstances.” Raine shrugged. “The surviving members of the Excalibur's crew were returned once their command staff solved whatever argument the two groups were having. The group of kids that had gone down to the planet befriended the super psychic ten year old who, once he understood everyone else was actually dead, sacrificed himself to re-corporalize the original population of the bunker. And the second group of kids was eventually tracked down on–”

Raine’s combadge interrupted with a reminding chirp.

“–the Kzinti homeworld, Kzin.” She finished with a sigh before offering Keiko a look of apology. “Looks like the Commander wants to start prepping the Defiant to head out.”

“Same time tomorrow?” Keiko asked in understanding.

“Or whenever I get back.” Raine nodded as she rose to her feet.

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The wormhole once more disgorged the Defiant into the Gamma Quadrant, and Raine immediately began running through the standard scan patterns for any nearby ships.

“The Area’s clear.” She announced once as the results came up on her tactical station. “It looks like the Dominion’s still avoiding the wormhole.”

Even knowing what she did about potential futures that particular choice still gnawed at her, as it was one of the few moves that just didn’t make a lot of sense unless there was something about the wormhole or the area around it that made the Dominion cautious.

Sisko nodded, glancing over to the helm. “All right, Dax. Take us into position and stand by to deploy the communications relay.”

“Hold on.” Raine said as the secondary sweeps picked something up. “Proximity sensors just registered a large unpowered mass on approach at bearing two-one-five mark three.”

“Put it on screen.” Sisko ordered.

With a few taps of the LCAR Raine transferred the sensor readings to the viewscreen, and starscaped switched to the image of a phosphorescent comet whose large glowing tail was several times its own length.

“It’s beautiful.” Ulani muttered, the middle aged Cardassian scientist staring at the celestial object with the eyes of someone who very much wouldn’t mind delaying their mission to spend a couple hours studying the odd occurrence.

“The self illumination looks to be coming from its silithium core.” Raine offered.

Silithium was one of the somewhat odd minerals, similar to trellium, that tended to occur when certain types of subspace particles bonded to regular matter. Unlike the material that gave her her abilities however, silithium didn’t usually occur in high density concentrations. 

“The Sword of Stars.” Kira muttered.

Ulani turned to the Major’s station with a slightly surprised look in her eye. “A surprisingly poetic name.”

Kira flinched, her eyes flicking to Sisko for a moment before a wane smile came over her features. “Just a figure of speech."

Glancing across the data showing up on her monitoring station, Ulani gave a small nod before focusing back on them. “Well, your Sword of Stars is going to pass very near the wormhole, but not close enough to interfere with our plans.”

Those words caused a suspicion to form in Raine’s mind, and she set the computer to begin running flight path projections for the comet.

“We're in position, Benjamin.” Jadzia announced as the minute vibrations of the ship's impulse thrusters came to a stop.

Rising to her feet, Ulani glanced over at Sisko. “I should go help Dejar with final checks on the relay.”

“All right.” He gave the woman a permissive nod. “Contact the bridge when you’re ready for deployment.”

“Of course, Commander.” Ulani agreed as she walked out.

Waiting several seconds for Ulani to exit the bridge, Sisko spun his chair to shoot a somewhat disapproving stare at Kira. “The sword of stars?”

The bajoran woman gave an unapologetic shrug. “It certainly looked like one to me.”

Sisko’s glare intensified, and it was clear the man had become more than a little annoyed with the whole prophecy business. “That's open to debate. But what is not debatable is that this prophecy has no place on the Bridge of the Defiant, especially in front of the Cardassians.”

“Sir?” Raine interjected, frowning down at her display as the course projections she’d run started coming in.

“Go ahead, Command.” Sisko acknowledged as he switched his gaze to her.

“If these projects are accurate,” Raine began in a cautious tone, really hoping she hadn’t messed up her gravimetric calculations. “I’d give it about a seventy percent chance that the comet was a weapon aimed at the wormhole.”

It was the only thing that made sense given all the data, and could certainly explain why the Dominion was actually giving the location such a wide berth.

“Explain.” Sisko demanded as an angry look flashed across his face.

Nodding, Raine transferred the course projections she’d just run to the main viewscreen.

“As you can see,” She said as the red lined path of the comet traced backwards out of the solar system. “Projections show the comet entered this system a little over three months ago and will miss the wormholes aperture by a little over nine thousand kilometers.”

Which was about seven times the distance that Deep Space Nine was stationed at on their end.

“However, watch what happens when I factor in the gravitational surges from ships traveling into and out of the wormhole during that time period.”

With those words the red line path on the viewscreen shifted until it was perfectly intersecting the wormhole.

“As I’m sure everyone here knows, Silithium is relatively rare in high concentrations, and becomes highly reactive when it comes into contact with Verteron particles. Meaning for all intents and purposes that comet is the equivalent of a giant torpedo that should have struck the wormhole.”

Sisko stared at the view screen for several seconds before an angry look settled over his features. “Dax?”

“Double checking now.” She confirmed, nearly a minute passing before the Trill glanced over her shoulder with a slightly worried look. “Course projections confirmed, and given verteron concentrations in the wormhole if the comet actually made it inside we’d likely be looking at an destructive interaction great enough to collapse the whole structure.”

“Is that actually possible?” Raine asked as a question that had been nagging at her for a while resurfaced. “Technically speaking linear time doesn't exist inside the wormhole, we just think it does because the Prophets arranged things that way. So if something were to destroy the interior of the wormhole, wouldn’t the non-linear nature of said interior mean it never would have existed in the first place?”

Sisko glanced over his shoulder at her for a moment, before turning back to Jadzia with a questioning look in his eye. “Is that an actual risk?”

“Maybe?” The Trill admitted with an uncertain voice. “We don’t know nearly enough about the non-linear mechanics of the wormhole to say for sure one way or another.”

“Of course,” Raine mused as her mind ran through the paradox of it all. “Under that same logic the Prophets would have already known the comet was coming, and acted to direct it away from the wormhole in some manner.”

“Which is exactly what the normal gravitational fluctuations of the opening and closing wormhole did.” Jadzia muttered, clearly following the potential effect predating cause temporality of that the same way Raine had.

Leaning forward to massage his temples, Sisko studied the projection still on screen for a moment before straightening up. “Suggestions then?”

“Use the tractor beam to push the comet further away from the wormhole just in case our test triggers something.” Raine offered, knowing with absolute certainty that it would.

“Is it stable enough for that, Dax?” Sisko asked.

Jadzia began rapidly typing into her console before giving a nod. “As long as we keep the tractor beam below thirty percent and limit our speed it shouldn’t compromise the comet’s structural integrity.”

Sisko nodded. “Do it then.”

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Author’s Notes: That doesn’t mean Sisko agrees with Raine’s theory of the comet being a weapon, but the risk of it is real enough and the solution simple enough that there isn’t any real argument to make.