With the Solstice now 100 minutes from New P’Jem, Mel settles in and waits as patiently as she can, refusing to allow her anxiety bubble up and be noticed by the junior officers. Jessa sits quietly as well, trying not to freak out; she makes bets with herself on which of her patients will seek her out first. Fal refines the sensors to penetrate Romulan cloaking devices and asks Captain Kras for help. Down in main engineering, Ssleestak calls up all information available on ultritium explosives and Romulan molecular decay detonators and starts formulating plans to beam the bombs into space. He swiftly learns Romulan explosives have transporter inhibitors built in; any attempt to beam them away causes the bomb to explode instead. However, he determines mating the Romulan detonators with Cardassian explosives leaves a few milliseconds delay in that procedure, so he enlists his staff to try to capitalize on that.
After several minutes of work, Captain Kras and Fal manage to realign the sensors, but they’ll need to drop out of warp and drop the cloak for the sensors to be of any use. Captain Kras turns to Mel and says, “Admiral… Captain… motherfucker. I have an idea. The Bajorans used low-EM spectrum channels for communication between resistance cells during the Occupation. We may be able to do the same thing, just on a bigger scale, and still avoid Romulan detection.” Mel agrees, so Captain Kras heads to operations and works with K'tral. They open the channel and send a ping.
A few moments later, Ota Basric’s voice crackles through the static, “Uh… hello?” Fal pipes up, “Basric, this is Marik.” Ota replies, “Uh… hi?” Fal explains, “There’s a situation on the colony and we’re heading back, but we need help. I’m turning you over to the captain.” Obviously confused, Ota asks, “Captain Deline?” as Jessa listens – and then starts tapping into the memories of her previous hosts. She then combines that knowledge with her skill at psychology – especially Romulan psychology – and starts working on the likely placement of the explosives.
Mel says, “Ota, we have a problem, and I need you to warn Vedek Kasta. There are ultritium explosives in each of the four houses of worship, scheduled to detonate in a few hours.” Ota curses, “The spoonheads?” but Mel replies forcefully, “No. That’s what you’re supposed to think.” Saval leans in and whispers, “They’ll need Romulan help.” Jessa suddenly interjects, “The bomb will most likely be in the Hall of Heroes in the Klingon monastery, the central meditation chamber in the Vulcan temple, and either under the pulpit or the baptismal font in the Baptist church. For the Bajoran temple, I bet it’s under the pulpit as well.”
Saval and Mel eye the junior counselor, but Ota replies, “I’ve used ultritium explosives before on Bajor. What sort of detonator are they using?” Mel reluctantly reveals the Romulan molecular decay detonators, and quickly clarifies the Romulans in the colony are targets, not the perpetrators. Ota mutters, “So, if we visibly evacuate the temples, these other Romulans will detonate them. I don’t have a clue how those detonators work. Huh. Alright, I have a stupid plan.” Mel replies, “That’s better than no plan,” as Ota yells to someone else, “Linnik, you ogled that Romulan yesterday, right? And she threatened to shoot you?” Mel hears the Bajoran teenager she met a few weeks ago reply, “Yeah, why?”
Ota says, “We gotta stage a fight to get to those Romulans to get their help without getting noticed by the other Romulans. I did say this was a stupid plan.” Mel concedes the plan may actually work, while Fal muses, “You are the perfect man to complete this plan.” Ota replies, “Thanks… hey!” as he realizes Fal is mocking him, but Linnik interjects, “He’s right.” Ota grumbles but tells Mel, “Prophets walk with you.” He then calls to Linnik, “What was that Romulan’s name? Hana?” as he terminates the channel; Jessa chortles.
Power starts to hiccup throughout the ship and Ssleestak and his team work to keep the engines running. Captain Kras taps her combadge and says, “Kras to Ssleestak. I need you to go to the primary plasma conduit on the warp core. Find the spot exactly 2.3 centimeters above the valve control, and then Melva the shit out of it.” Ssleestak replies, “Uh, ok?” and Captain Kras clarifies, “Smack it as hard as you can. Percussive maintenance.” Down in engineering, Ssleestak lumbers over to the junction and smacks the exact spot with a socket wrench. Power flutters – and then goes back to normal. Back on the bridge, Shan’taar jibes, “Of all the departments where your name is a verb, engineering is the last I’d expect.” Mel shrugs but Captain Kras mutters, “Has been since The Incident.” Mel asks, “The incident? What happened?” Captain Kras smiles coldly and retorts, “No idea. I was off the ship at the time. My senior officers conspired to get me to take some accumulated leave, with a certain someone declaring, ‘You must think of your marriage as predator and prey, and you must stalk your mate as prey and demand sexual gratification.’”
Mel immediately realizes she’s referring to Swims, and Captain Kras continues, “So, I’m gone for two weeks on the weirdest vacation, first on Capella, then Risa. When I come back, I expect to find my ship ready after a maintenance layover. Instead, I find that parts of deck six, seven, and eight are just deck six now, the warp core has to be totally replaced, and whatever happened classified to holy hell. And for months afterwards, whenever we engage the warp engines, the ship stinks of burnt flesh and hair. So I’m pretty sure you just straight up murdered a bunch of people by releasing the warp plasma in engineering.”
Fal mutters, “That would do it,” but Mel retorts, “Not my fault you lack imagination.” Captain Kras ignores the dig and heads to tactical. She eyes the shield grid and mutters, “Jace. Right,” before she starts fiddling. Before Mel can ask, K’tral receives a low-EM transmission from New P’Jem. She patches it through and they hear Ambassador Jannek snarl, “What did you do?” Mel greets the ambassador and briefly outlines the situation; Ambassador Jannek growls, “A scarred Bajoran led a group of workers in a fight against us, and the colony leaders quickly intervened, and then this Bajoran reaches me and tells me of the bombs. Oh, please inform your junior counselor that her predictions on the placement of the explosives was accurate.”
Mel admits Ota Basric came up with the plan after speaking with them and the ambassador grunts. He asks coldly, “How long until you return?” Mel eyes flight control and replies, “About forty-five minutes.” The ambassador snaps, “What? They can see that overpowered ship of yours returning!” Mel says confidently, “No, they can’t. We’re going to get there undetected.” The ambassador squawks but Mel assures him, “Don’t worry about it.” Ambassador Jannek goes silent for a second before asking, “Do you know who’s behind this?” Mel admits, “Chevranek’s sister, Senator T’rell.” Ambassador Jannek curses and mutters, “I didn’t even know they were sisters.” He then asks, “Are you sure you’re not Romulan?” Mel retorts, “Not many Romulans in Chicago.”
Ota Basric comes over the channel and reports, “Stupid plan worked. People have drifted back to their houses of worship and found the bombs. And I thought the Obsidian Order was a pain in the ass.” Mel jokes, “No smoking craters so far is a victory.” She checks the time and adds, “The bombs are programmed to go off in over two hours, so if we can ambush the Romulans in orbit and stop them, there’s plenty of time to disarm the explosives.” Ota sighs but says seriously, “Walk with the Prophets, captain.” He terminates the channel and Mel mutters, “That’s the problem, actually.”
Shan’taar eyes Captain Kras and demands, “What are you doing to our shield grid?” Captain Kras replies, “Insurance for later.” Not satisfied with that answer, he retorts, “And you’re sure about these coordinates?” Kras shrugs and replies airily, “Yeah. You calculated them.” Shan’taar mutters, “Damnit,” as he quickly rechecks the coordinates. Captain Kras then walks over to the command well and crouches next to Mel. She says quietly, “My sense of time is messed up, but if I remember right, you haven’t encountered the Tokari yet, correct?”
Mel shakes her head but eyes Saval and Armina; both women also indicate they’ve never heard of the Tokari. Captain Kras says softly, “They’re another Orion fragment, deep in the Beta Quadrant. They discovered Iconian technology millennia ago, and they’ve temporally shielded their space against changes to the timeline. That weird energy matrix in the Ra’vin’ka system is their work, and I just installed temporal shields to protect you. The Tokari are fanatic about maintaining the timeline free of interference, but they include any time travelers in that, like me. Also, because their space is shielded, their history is way different. In the original timeline, if I hadn’t been sucked into the 24th century, the Solstice would have been thrown hundreds of light years into the Beta Quadrant.”
She continues, “In that timeline, Alberic was still captain and he tried to steal Tokari technology to get the ship home faster. His gambit failed and the Tokari destroyed the Solstice. Now, that didn’t happen in our history, but because of the temporal shielding, it happened for the Tokari, and they consider the Federation a hostile power. If they find this ship, they’ll considerate a temporal aberration and attack. Hence the temporal shields. The object stuck in the energy matrix is a probe from that Solstice. You need to retrieve it and download the contents.”
Mel nods and Captain Kras hands her a padd. She says, “When the timeline returns to normal, give this to me.” Mel retorts, “More messages that will screw her up for days?” Captain Kras shrugs and says, “Somewhat. It’s more like instructions. Specifically, to avoid Phillip’s deaths.” Phillip perks up at that, and Mel demands an explanation. Captain Kras sighs and replies, “Multiple timelines collapsed through him. Haran likened it to Phillip being the peanut butter and jelly, and the timelines were the bread – just multiple pieces fired through a mass driver. He became Jack Harkness.” Mel looks lost and Captain Kras explains, “Doctor Who reference. A character that couldn’t die.” She turns to Saval and adds, “Trelium-D poisoning.” Saval freezes and Mel looks confused, so Captain Kras explains that the Orta-Founder poisoned Admiral T’konra.
She stands up and murmurs, “This is a senatorial vessel we’re facing.” Mel orders Captain Kras, “Go to sickbay. The last time this happened, you screwed her up for days.” Captain Kras shakes her head and replies sadly, “No. This has eaten at me for fifteen years. I have to see this through.” Mel hesitates and then concedes, “I understand.” Armina stands up and heads to Science II, freeing her chair for Captain Kras, who settles in. At this point, they have fifteen minutes before dropping out of warp, so Mel settles in to wait. Jessa straps Raj into the crash webbing of his bed next to her bench. Fal triple-checks his sensor refinements while Ssleestak walks the ship, checking on a few key areas – and he sees Chilp lovingly polish a photon torpedo before loading it into the launcher. He heads to the bridge and informs Mel of his transporter subroutine and he’s about 75% confident it will work. He returns to main engineering.
Captain Kras accesses the ship’s functions from her board and then asks Mel, “Do you want me to fiddle with Jace’s crap so you can shut it off?” Mel enthusiastically agrees, so Captain Kras gets to work. Mel leans in and whispers, “Keep the shower phasers.” Captain Kras grimaces but replies, “I just found the code block for them. I’ll move it.” She then enters several commands to access Jace Fortis’s modifications before suddenly identifying herself as Jace – and mimicking his voice perfectly! She rattles off Jace’s identity code – Alpha-Tango-4-7-7-9-Banana – and accesses the Jace interface he patterned after himself.
The Jace-interface seems sulky, especially when Captain Kras commands, “Grant disable access to Commander Melva Deline, Lieutenant Commander Saval, Lieutenant Commander Fal Marik, and Lieutenant Shan’taar th’Vorish.” Jace’s synthesized voice demands “Retinal scan required.” Captain Kras leans in and submits to the retina scan – which somehow registers as Jace!1) The interface remains uncooperative and demands verbal confirmation from all four officers. Shan’taar immediately calls out, “Yes, goddamnit.” Mel replies with an even, “Yes,” as does Fal, but Saval utters, “Yes, goddamnit.” The interface reluctantly grants the four officers disable access and then shuts off. Captain Kras mutters, “That reminds me…” and she keeps fiddling with the root commands.
At three minutes out, Mel orders red alert. As the klaxon wails, she also orders a tight-beam transmission compiled and ready for the instant they drop out of warp; the transmission will go to the starbase and include a basic explanation and the trelium-D poisoning. Phillip remains on course and smoothly drops from maximum warp to full stop just kissing New P’Jem’s atmosphere. K’tral disengages the cloaking device and then Shan’taar immediately opens fire! A massive amount of energy fires out of the main phaser banks, and strikes a cloaked ship! A massive D’deridex-class Romulan warbird decloaks violently as her port nacelle explodes! This vessel spurns the standard green coloration; her hull is a pale marble and the wing markings a striking bloody red. K’tral sends the tight beam transmission as the warbird jockeys for space and fires blindly at the Solstice. Luckily, Phillip evades the barrage and Shan’taar raises the shields.
Fal scans the warbird and discovers unusual readings from their artificial quantum singularity, which the Romulans use as a power source. With Armina’s assistance at Science II, Fal determines the unusual readings are temporal in nature! As the warbird continues falling back and firing blindly, Fal yells his report to Mel and then Ssleestak calls up from main engineering, “The cloaking device just vanished! We reset the timeline!” A temporal rupture appears inside the negative space of the crippled warbird, and then a starship bursts through! Fal hoarsely reports, “That’s… that’s the USS Solstice, NCC-72409. That’s… us?” The second Solstice opens fire with multiple pulse-phaser cannons, which Mel immediately covets. Captain Kras winces and says, “Ow,” as the Romulan shield grid collapses.2)
Mel calls out, “Go for the other nacelle!” Phillip flies the Solstice over the warbird and Shan’taar conducts a ruthless strafing run, blowing even more pieces off the stricken ship! More pulse phaser fire rocks the warbird as the USS Vanguard leaps into the fight; Lieutenant Brian Gibbons hails Mel and says, “Captain, permission to join… whatever this is?” Mel immediately agrees but warns him to keep an eye out to make sure no sabotage lurks; Gibbons smirks and replies, “Never argue with your chief engineer.” He ends the hail and the Vanguard provides covering fire as the Solstice arcs over the warbird – and the second Solstice hammers away at the warbird’s unprotected inner core. The warbird opens fire but misses, as her targeting scanners are offline.
Mel orders, “Open a channel to the warbird.” K’tral complies, and a split-second later they see an aristocratic Romulan woman in senatorial robes sitting regally on the bridge of the warbird, seemingly calm despite the fires raging behind her. Mel identifies herself, and Senator T’rell inclines her head and says, “Very well done, captain. Jolan Tru.” She terminates the channel, but Jessa realizes the praise is genuine, not sarcastic. She tells Mel, and Fal adds, “The warbird has suffered twenty percent casualties.” Mel asks, “How many people are they carrying?” Shan’taar interjects, “One thousand five hundred plus.” K’tral reports, “The warbird is attempting to trigger the detonators, but the civilians have successfully blocked the signals.”
Mel leans in and asks Saval softly, “She won’t stop, will she?” Saval replies quietly, “I don’t know her, but no, she probably won’t. This is about her honor now, as we’ve humiliated her sister.” Mel hails Starbase 212 and asks Captain Shras’aan, “We’ll explain later. Do you have a place to safely store over a thousand Romulans?” Shras’aan replies, “Cargo bay 3.” Mel thanks her and signs off. She then hails transporter room one and orders Edgly, “Start beaming the Romulans off, but the bridge is the last priority.” Startled, Edgly asks for confirmation of those orders, and Mel repeats them. Edgly is confused, but starts working right away. He triggers some of the modifications for a mass beam-out, and activates the transporter. Fal watches in horror as three hundred Romulans beam away – and then the annular confinement beam collapses, dispersing their atoms across space!3)
Edgly re-calibrates the transporters to compensate for the interference from weapons fire and the artificial quantum singularity, and then successfully beams out three hundred Romulans, followed by a second and a third batch, each containing another three hundred individuals. Six hundred lives have been lost, but nine hundred lives are safely aboard Starbase 212. Only six life signs remain on the bridge. Mel hails the warbird and offers Senator T’rell and her officers a chance to surrender; the senator indicates her officers are free to choose. Three immediately surrender, and Edgly snatches them away in transporter beams.
Fal warns Mel that the warbird is disintegrating in New P’Jem’s atmosphere, and Starfleet must vaporize the ship or debris will rain down on Sarek City. Mel offers Senator T’rell one last chance to surrender, secretly hoping she’ll activate the warbird’s self-destruct mechanisms, but the senator cuts the channel and deliberately increases the radiation on the bridge to make transport next to impossible.4) The other Solstice fades away silently as the warbird begins to break up, and Mel orders the Vanguard to fall back. Both vessels withdraw as Edgly offers to get the last three survivors; Mel replies, “I don’t think that’s possible. I’m not questioning your abilities, this is on them. You can certainly try, but with the radiation, I don’t think it’s possible.”
Clearly taking that as a challenge, Edgly boosts the confinement beams and successfully cuts through the radiation and beams all three Romulans safely off the warbird – and directly to the radiation treatment ward on the starbase! Mel crows, “Good job Edgly!” as Saval concedes, “Wow.” Mel turns to Shan’taar and asks if they need photon torpedoes or quantum torpedoes to destroy the warbird; Shan’taar replies, “Either will work, but quantum torpedoes will vaporize the ship.” Mel orders the Vanguard to open fire, and Shan’taar adds a full brace of photon torpedoes as well! Six torpedoes hit the stricken warbird, vaporizing the ship and neutering any threat to the surface of New P’Jem!
Subcommander Jannek hails the Solstice on the low-EM channel and reports, “All four bombs have been safely deactivated.” Mel thanks him and then Captain Shras’aan hails them. The Andorian drawls, “I can’t wait to hear the details.” Mel alludes to the temporal issues and Shras’aan retorts, “Are you TPD-ing me? You used a damned illegal cloaking device!” Mel says firmly, “We do not have a cloaking device onboard the Solstice.” Shras’aan demands to know about the second Solstice with a lot more guns and the trelium-D poisoning, Mel replies, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”5) She cuts the channel and orders Phillip to set course for Starbase 212.
Phillip complies and the Solstice gently rotates and heads for the starbase, using only thrusters. Mel settles in, but Shan’taar remarks, “Well, that’s new.” Mel turns to him and Shan’taar reports wryly, “We’re returning to the starbase without any damage. Shields are down to ninety percent from absorbing the explosion, but that’s it.” Fal smirks and confirms Shan’taar’s report.
Using a low-EM transmission from the days of the Bajoran Resistance, the crew communicates with Ota Basric, who deliberately starts a fight with Ambassador Jannek’s people to secure their assistance. Captain Kras upgrades their shields and warns them of the Tokari. She also accesses Jace’s modifications to grant disable access to Mel, Saval, Fal, and Shan’taar. They successfully drop out of warp, decloak, and open fire on the coordinates, revealing a Romulan D’deridex-class warbird! Their first strike cripples the warbird, and then a second Solstice emerges from a temporal anomaly in the negative space between the Romulan hulls. The Vanguard also joins the fight, and Mel orders the ship evacuated Edgly loses the first three hundred Romulans but beams nine hundred safely to the starbase. Edgly manages to beam off Senator T’rell and her bridge crew despite interference as the second Solstice vanishes – as does the cloaking device. The Solstice and the Vanguard safely destroy the warbird.