Sorting Out The Mental Puzzle, Part 1

Posted on Fri Sep 1st, 2023 @ 8:51am by Captain Tristan Faust & Commander Lucy Heartfilia & Lieutenant Commander Marc Kitchner M.D. & Lieutenant T'kara & Lieutenant Commander Darrod Hanous & Lieutenant Azrel Vox & Lieutenant Shinobu Miyake & Lieutenant JG Marcel Knowles & Chief Petty Officer Meredith Corden
Edited on on Fri Sep 1st, 2023 @ 8:54am

1,363 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Mission 4: Through a Glass, Darkly
Location: Briefing Room
Timeline: M4 MD03 (2268.07.12) 0930

The doors of the briefing room opened and Captain Faust quickly shuffled in with Yeoman Corden in tow. Most of the senior staff were already assembled around the walnut veneered table. He sat down at the head of the table as Meredith placed the stack of reports down in front of him.

"Good morning everyone," Tristan began, "Before I begin, this briefing is classified. As senior officers all of you have the required clearance and the need to know for all of the material in this briefing. Security will be standing outside by the door. With that being said, it is painfully obvious to everyone aboard ship that something is greatly wrong out there."

Marc shifted in his chair at the opposite end of the table. Uncomfortable wasn't the word to adequately describe how he was feeling. His patients were slowly recovering, and he impressed upon them simple house rules, ... the guards will play nice provided they play nice ..., but both were bearly conscious when he left Sickbay.

Darrod had absolutely known something was wrong out there. The engines were throwing off particles with different frequency variations, and he’d been having a devil of a time with tachyon pulses through the ship. Initially, he’d written it off to one of the devices he didn’t know about yet, or some remaining (mostly harmless) result of the sabotage attempts, but it had to be related to the interphase. He kept his mouth shut, though, and waited for more information.

Lucy sat there quietly. She knew something was wrong ever since she picked up the readings from the NX class starship. She had the computer working at still on the analysis of the space around them.

Meredith handed out copies of the report to each of the senior staff before moving to stand behind the captain, hands clasped at the small of her back and feet shoulder-width apart. She simply listened for now. Her expression sombre. It was not a pleasant report.

Aze picked up the report and began to try to digest it. The atmosphere in the room was tense and you can really feel it. It was the first, real-time, that the Captain was clearly worried and in a way you could just see on his face. They had been through a few tough spots already, so Aze had some confidence that they could see this through. What bothered her though, was her confidence at this moment, was not its usual high.

Lieutenant Miyake was oddly silent herself, though it was clear with how much she was fidgeting in her chair that she was just as eager to get some answers as everyone else here was. And in all honesty, who could blame her? They were now in some mysterious alternate reality where the Enterprise had been destroyed by... something. But what that something was, however, was painfully unclear. Was it possible it had come into possession of the Defiant, and was now using it to wreak havoc on a technologically-inferior Starfleet, temporal repercussions be damned? The fact that they knew so little at the moment was agonizing.

T’kara looked at the report in front of her and let out a deep breath. She picked up the report and began reading it. It confirmed her suspicion that something was going on that only Senior Staff would know about. T’kara paused for a moment and glanced around the room, soaking in the expressions on everyone’s faces. There was worry, doubt, incredulity, and even a tinge of anger from the faces gathered in the briefing room. She did her best to mask her own feelings, but she doubted that she covered them completely. T’kara dipped her eyes back to the report, fascinated to find out how little she and the other junior officers just didn’t know.

TAG Marcel

Tristan turned to face the viewer which came on, "As theorized by the Enterprise's report, the Interphase is indeed a doorway into another... a parallel universe," he said, "Not only another universe, but another time... We are approximately 100 years in the past." He paused for a moment, then continued, "We picked up two survivors from the wreckage of the NX class we found. The insignia on their uniforms line up to a parallel universe encountered by the Enterprise a year ago. During a transporter malfunction caused by an ion storm caused Captain Kirk and several of his officers to switch with their counterparts from this parallel universe...." He turned to face the senior staff, "We are in incredibly dangerous waters," he said, "The Federation as we know it does not exist here, instead a military dictatorship known as the Terran Empire rules..."

Marc slowly read the file he was given. Mr Spock's analysis of the situation was quite detailed and terrifying. The inversion of personality would make dealing with anyone from the opposite dimension would be complicated at the very least. "Bloody hell." Marc said softly as he turned the page over. McCoy's report was even more damming in his opinion.

"So you're telling us that we've crossed over into an alternate timeline where everything we know is morally ass-backwards?" Shinobu commented.

"In a nut shell," Tristan responded with a sigh.

Darrod looked over the information, trying to parse it all. The Enterprise, the lost Defiant,and now the Midway were perhaps the most powerful ships out here. But his focus was on the report from Scott - like all of the man's publications, it was a bit flowery but walked through the ingenuity clearly enough. He looked up at the Captain, thinking. "Captain, since we were able to get here and maintain a warp field, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to get home. But I get the feeling we're not here just to leave. Is our mission to take Defiant, or to sink her, sir?"

As she sat listening to the conversations and reading through the briefing document, it occurred to her that in this time period, there would be an alternate Vox and would probably be joined to Torbin and if they are, then he might be quite different since this was an alternate reality.

"To make matters worse someone over here must have the Defiant," Tristan responded, "And as of right now we don't know who that is or where it is... All we have are the reports from the Enterprise, our sensor data and our own speculation. The two survivors may be able to shed some light on the situation, but I'm not sure how cooperative they will be."

"So what do we now about them, then?" Shinobu inquired. "I mean, other than the fact that they dress like something out of a sleazy 2150s adult film?"

Marc grunted as he shifted his weight in the chair. "Lieutenant, there is but one line in the Hippocratic oath that one to whom is not a medical man remembers above all else ... Do no harm ...
With respect ... I plan to do just that.

When I left Sickbay, they were both hardly unconcious. They both desperately need fluids, a decent meal, and rest. An so long as they behave themselves as decent people should in a hospital, they won't get any grief from me." Marc didn't mean to sound as costic as he sounded just now; because by an large in the past 6 months he'd come to like every member of the crew that he'd come to know even a little bit. "No disrespect meant Captain. I just try to see people as people that's all. Good or bad, decent or dangerous just don't factor into. Not now anyways."

The Captain nodded.

As far as my mind goes our next move is simple, we take care of our guests, and we learn what we can from them and their ship. Past that we keep a weather eye out for anything that pops up on long range sensors." He said apologizing and laying his cards on the table at the same time.

To Be Continued...

 

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