Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock

by Christopher L. Bennet

  “Can we deal with that later?” Dulmur asked. “If we’re all here, who’s shooting back at them?”

  “Tricorder,” Choudhury said to Worf. He handed his over. She interfaced it with hers, then tossed it carefully over the storage cabinet. It landed almost perfectly, its visual sensors sending an image of the battle to Choudhury’s tricorder.

  Lucsly saw the Romulan Augments in the distance, led by Ronarek. Or perhaps “led” was not the word. The gray-haired physicist/spy was speaking to a blurry humanoid figure projected in miniature above a handheld holocommunicator. The echoing words the figure spoke were unclear from this distance, but it was clear that Ronarek was following his orders. Lucsly stared intently, realizing who the humanoid figure must be. This was the twenty-eighth-century Sponsor of both the Suliban Cabal and the Romulan Augments. The being who had exploited innocent species, fomented wars, and destroyed entire colonies in the past in pursuit of his nebulous goals.

  This was the being who had violated the DTI by wiping one of its own from existence. And he was almost within reach. If only there were a way to get to that communicator. Lucsly had some questions he was determined to ask.

  But the battle was raging too fiercely for that. The Romulans were using all their augmentations in the fight, climbing on the walls and ceiling as they dodged blue energy beams, camouflaging themselves in an attempt to elude detection. Some were hit nonetheless, becoming visible again, but Lucsly saw their wounds healing as he watched. The beams were fired by three orange-skinned humanoids with heads like terra cotta pots, dressed in dark, layered clothing. “Vorgons!” he cried.

  “Any idea why they’re protecting you?” Dulmur asked Vard.

  “Obviously they recognize my, er, our importance to the future!”

  “But this isn’t their fight,” Lucsly said. “All they care about is their war with the Shirna.”

  “Are these the same aliens that tried to steal the Tox Uthat from Captain Picard?” Worf asked.

  “Same species,” Dulmur said, studying the tricorder feed. “Not the same individuals.”

  Worf frowned. “How would you know that?”

  “Long story.”

  Three tricorders beeped: the agents’ and Elfiki’s. “New anomaly behind us,” the young science officer said. They turned to see a corridor that looked little different from the one they were in, though their readings showed, as Elfiki reported, “It’s about two days ago.”

  But this corridor wasn’t empty. A pair of helmeted Shirna crouched with their backs to them, firing on someone who was sheltering behind the next corner down. As their opponent ducked out briefly to return fire, Lucsly’s eyes widened in recognition. “Noi!”

  At his improvident outburst, the two Shirna turned, startled. They exchanged a look, and one turned to fire on the (to him) new arrivals while the other held Noi pinned down. But Choudhury’s phaser made quick work of the first one, and the second broke and ran down a side passage.

  “I had him,” Worf said.

  “Not your job anymore, sir,” the elegant security chief replied. Dulmur glanced back and forth between them and chuckled, discerning something Lucsly hadn’t.

  “Lucsly? Dulmur?” Jena Noi jogged down the corridor to meet them, then looked around. “Oh. You’re uptime. Look, you need to know, Ronarek is—”

  “Fallen,” Korath announced. “The Vorgons felled him as he tried to slither above them. Excellent weapons they have. I must study them.”

  “Okay,” Noi said, “now we have to get away from the Vorgons.”

  “What?” Naadri asked. “But they saved us!”

  “They want you alive for interrogation. We can’t let that happen.” She met Lucsly’s eyes. “Lucsly, if ever I needed you to trust me . . .”

  He decided quickly. “All right. But we need some explanations.”

  “As much as I can,” she promised. “Now come on!”

  They fled down the corridor, turned a corner, then found themselves back in the same corridor where they’d started, watching themselves retreat to the end and turn a corner. Behind them, the Vorgons were closer; a blue beam struck Nart, and Worf deftly flung the stunned Ferengi over his shoulder, barely breaking stride. “You bring honor to your house,” Korath told his fellow Klingon, evidently their version of a thank-you.

  Worf looked back at him. “The two of you are close?”

  Korath scoffed. “He owes me money.”

  “What’s going on, Noi?” Lucsly asked as they ran. “What’s causing this . . . this . . .”

  “Manheim manifold,” Naadri supplied. “A topologically complex knot in all three dimensions of time. Time within our local frame has become not just a line, but a volume, and our worldlines are following an erratic, recurving path through it!” She sounded like a giddy schoolgirl. She was living out her wildest theories.

  “Only in here, so far,” Noi added. “Though the effect could spread much farther if I don’t get back to my local time frame.”

  As they passed a darkened lab, Lucsly glimpsed the holographically disguised Elfiki working on something within. Catching Lucsly’s eye, she placed a finger to “Metta’s” blue lips and pulled back into shadow. Throwing a glance at the younger, uniformed Elfiki ahead of him, Lucsly realized that (assuming a consistent worldline, which perhaps was no longer a safe bet) the older Elfiki must already know where she had been and was consciously avoiding herself, while getting ready for . . . something. Lucsly found himself wishing he could ask the older Elfiki for insight on what lay ahead, but he cursed himself for his weakness. Her actions were totally proper under regulations, and he could only admire her discipline.

  “Why back there?” Dulmur was asking. “You still haven’t told us what’s causing this.”

  A door opened, and beyond it was a hellish vista of smoking, red-hot wreckage. A gust of air almost blew Noi and Dulmur through the door, but Worf caught Noi, who caught Dulmur in turn. There must have been an atmosphere leak on the other side, though thankfully not a total vacuum or they would’ve all been blown through instantly. The pressure was already equalizing, making Lucsly’s ears pop, but substantial heat was radiating through the door. The party fell back and the door slid shut again.

  “That was part of it,” Noi said once she’d caught her breath. “You just saw what the Na’kuhl intended to do to this conference. I guess that’s a time track where they succeeded.”

  “The Na’kuhl?” Dulmur asked. “Holy crap, how many of you people are here?”

  “That’s an interesting question,” came another, familiar voice. Lucsly turned to see Commander Juel Ducane approaching from down the corridor—his usual dapper self in his blue-and-black twenty-ninth-century uniform, but more sheepish than usual. Behind him came the even more dapper figure of Rodal Eight, the Cardassian Aegis supervisor, with his Simperian civet Meneth trotting alongside . . . and behind him came another Juel Ducane, this one looking more ragged and clutching a wounded right arm.

  At the sight of the two Ducanes, Noi rolled her eyes. “Oh, no. I should’ve known.”

  “Well, we couldn’t wait around for you to get in on this,” Ducane-1, the healthy one, said. The two time agents glowered at each other.

  Choudhury came forward to tend to Ducane-2’s wounds. “Let me help you with that. What kind of weapon was it?”

  “Modulating plasma pulse,” he said.

  “Na’kuhl technology,” Noi said. She cocked her head toward the door. “Were you trying to stop that?”

  “Actually, I was on my way to save these scientists from a band of Romulan Augments sent by our friend from the twenty-eighth century. The Na’kuhl came out of nowhere to attack me, I don’t know why.”

  “I guess that was my fault,” Ducane-1 said. “I’m from a time track where I did confront the Augments. They ambushed me, and the TIC beamed me away just before they killed me. Apparently the Augments had been tipped off when an even earlier version of me went back to two days ago to stop the Na’kuhl from planting a
bomb.”

  “Which he succeeded in doing with our help,” Rodal said, leaning over to stroke Meneth’s elongated, green-furred head. “But not until the Na’kuhl had warned their agents in the past, alerting them to lie in wait for Mister Ducane.” The lean Cardassian turned to the injured Ducane-2. “You are the result of that.”

  Noi shook her head. “You arrogant TIC fools, thinking you can keep micromanaging a single segment of time until you get it right. You’ve just compounded the problem!”

  “Hey, we didn’t start this!” Ducane-1 shouted back. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a feeding frenzy in here. We’re just one of the temporal technologies interfering with each other—including yours,” he finished pointedly.

  His wounded counterpart spoke up. “And this chroniton field pervading the place doesn’t help any.”

  Naadri straightened. “I was trying to prevent exactly this from occurring!”

  “Well, it sure worked out, didn’t it?”

  “Gentlebeings!” Rodal’s tone was civil yet firm. “We have greater concerns right now. In this chaos, with timelines overlapping and being rewritten like mad, our respective futures are in jeopardy.” Meneth made a caterwauling noise. “Meneth is right. We have to put a quantum lock around this facility immediately!”

  “That’s taken care of,” came Ducane’s voice—but it was not one of the two already present. The group turned to see a third Ducane, unwounded but stained with ash and blood.

  Noi rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. Your even earlier version, I presume.”

  Ducane-3 started at the sound of her voice, then gazed at her earnestly. “Please, you have to come with me,” he said. “She’s dying.”

  Noi froze, reading his face. Then she ran toward him, the others following. “Where?”

  “When,” Ducane-3 replied. “Earlier time zone, fifty-three hours ago.” He held up his tricorder. “Everyone gather close.”

  Lucsly hated the idea of voluntary time travel, but it was better than chancing the random, shifting fluctuations of local spacetime. Besides, it was no further back than they’d already been. A quick shimmer and they were then. Ducane-3 looked around, cursing, and checked his tricorder, leading them down the hall.

  “What’s a quantum lock?” Lucsly asked Rodal as they ran.

  “Come, Lucsly, you should be able to deduce that. A given state of a quantum superposition wins out over its rivals as it entangles with the broader universe, its influence resonating outward.”

  Lucsly understood. “But so long as a system remains isolated, the superposition can last indefinitely.”

  “As long as the lock is in place, the rest of the galaxy, present and future, is safe from the timeline duplications and alterations occurring within.”

  “That’s good,” Dulmur said. Meneth gave a wary hiss, and the look on Rodal’s face echoed his familiar demon’s reaction. “Isn’t it?”

  “That depends on which reality has finally won out at the end of this mess, when the lock comes down and we re-entangle with the rest of the universe,” Rodal said. “If we do not save the physicists, and all the rest who should not die here and now, the futures known to Noi, Ducane, and perhaps all the Accordist powers are in jeopardy.”

  Up ahead was a dainty, bleeding figure in the striated black of a Federation Temporal Agent. Jena Noi gasped as she recognized herself in such dire straits.

  Ducane-1 smirked. “So we’re not the only ones looping back on ourselves.”

  “Shut up, Ducane!” Noi ran to her own side. “What happened? Can you speak?”

  The second Noi gasped, but nothing coherent came out. Ducane-3 knelt by her. “She saved me,” he said. “When the Na’kuhl attacked. She helped me escape . . . we put up the quantum lock together, but then they found us . . . shot her . . .” He trailed off.

  Choudhury knelt by the wounded Noi and scanned her. She looked up sadly at the healthy Noi, shaking her head. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “That’s okay,” the healthy Noi said. She clasped her other self’s hand. “It’ll be okay in a moment.”

  Her fingers worked against the seams of her uniform around her waist. There were no visible controls in the shimmering fabric, but after a moment, both Nois were engulfed in a transporter-like glow . . . and when it faded, there was only one Jena Noi there.

  All three Ducanes gaped. “You have auto-integration?” Ducane-1 said.

  Dulmur laughed. “So how does it feel to be kept in the dark by the folks uptime?” He was glared at in triplicate.

  Noi was blinking, looking disoriented, but soon took a deep breath and relaxed. “Okay, I’m up to speed now. I—she—the me who almost died fought the Shirna too, but didn’t intersect with the future. Instead I crossed over into a parallel track where I found Ducane here,” she said, pointing to the bloodied one, Ducane-3.

  “Enough!” Worf cried. “Every time someone here explains something, it only confuses the situation further! You,” he said to Noi. “Can you merge Commander Ducane as well?”

  She shook her head. “Until we can get him home, we’re stuck with three of him.”

  “And we can’t risk returning me home,” Ducane-2 said, “until we’re sure the future’s safe.”

  “You!” came a new, multitonal voice. Now what? Lucsly thought. A Vorgon stood at the end of the corridor, unarmed, her mittlike hands spread wide.

  “Temporal agents! We need your assistance!”

  “Excuse me?” Ducane-1 asked.

  “Our assistance?” Ducane-3 added.

  “We all wish to get out of here alive. The Na’kuhl and the Shirna are working together—they have a temporal disruptor and they’re willing to use it.”

  The uptime agents stared at each other in shock. “Show us,” Noi said.

  “What’s a temporal disruptor do?” Dulmur asked her as they headed off after the Vorgon.

  “It fragments spacetime,” Noi replied. “Tears apart everything within its field of effect.”

  Dulmur harrumphed. “Why not just use a bomb?”

  “Some things can survive bombs. But attack the underlying fabric of spacetime and even neutronium’s vulnerable. Besides,” she added grimly, “to the victims, it feels like it takes an age to die. It’s a particularly vicious terrorist weapon, banned by every temporal convention. Even the anti-Accordists tend to avoid them.”

  “But the Na’kuhl are vicious enough?” Lucsly asked.

  “They are,” Ducane-1 said. “But they just used a conventional bomb here. And I thought we’d long since managed to eliminate the Shirna factions extreme enough to use teedees.”

  Noi glared at him. “I guess you missed a time track.”

  “Or perhaps,” Rodal suggested, “these Na’kuhl are a later iteration, escalating after the failure of their bomb.”

  “Does it matter?” Worf demanded. “We must stop them!”

  The Vorgon had rejoined her two colleagues, both male. “Will they help us?” the taller one said.

  “Yes,” the female replied, then turned to the group. “Come, we will surround them. The scientists must remain here.”

  “The others, perhaps,” Korath boomed. “But I am a warrior first!”

  “That’s why the others need you to protect them,” Choudhury told him. “Under these circumstances, nowhere is safe.”

  Korath brightened at those words. “Very well. I will lie in wait for whatever comes.”

  “All right,” Ducane-1 said, striding forward. “But this had better not be another trap.”

  A rift in reality opened up in front of him and he fell through it. Beyond was a dark mass of yellowish clouds, and the whiff of sulfur came through as Ducane-1 fell out of sight, his scream choking off.

  The others jerked back from the rift, but it closed on its own. Elfiki stared at her tricorder, dazed, holding it like a lifeline. “That was . . . a Class-N atmosphere. There’s no planet like that in this system.”

  Ducane-3 studied his own tricorder. “It’s a
subspace fracture. An after-effect of the temporal disruptor.”

  “You mean a before-effect,” Noi said. “Retrocausal echoes of an event that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Like the ones that drew us here in the first place,” Elfiki said.

  “And tipped off everyone in the future about this ‘secret’ conference,” Noi added.

  Worf frowned. “But are they not the ones whose intervention caused the distortions?”

  “They were,” Rodal said. “They just didn’t know it yet.”

  “The disruptor will interact with the other temporal fields,” Ducane-3 went on, “warping spacetime severely enough to create rifts bracketing the detonation time. Don’t know why the quantum lock isn’t stopping them . . . we must have shifted back to before it was activated.”

  “Please,” the Vorgon leader said, ruffling her respiratory folds in distress. “We must stop the disruptor before the effects get any worse.”

  “But if we’re already seeing its consequences,” Choudhury asked, “does that mean we fail to stop it?”

  “In these conditions,” Noi told her, “we can both fail and succeed. What matters is that we succeed last.”

  The Vorgons, Rodal, and Meneth went one way while the other time agents and the Starfleet team went another. As they stealthily moved into position around the target area, Lucsly moved up to Noi and Ducane-2. “This is what it’s all been about, hasn’t it? All the recent attacks, everything the Cabal’s Sponsor did in the twenty-one forties and fifties. It was all done to try to prevent this conference, either by targeting the participants directly or disrupting history enough to ensure it never happened.”

  “That’s why we have to stay focused on keeping these scientists alive,” Noi replied.

  “But what are they going to do that’s so important to the future?”

  “You know we can’t tell you that, Lucsly,” Ducane-2 said.

  “Even now?”

  “Especially now. Some things have to remain unknown.”

  “I don’t know, Juel,” Noi said. “If this is the event we all suspect it is, maybe the secret’s already blown.”

  “Under the circumstances, you’d better damn well hope it isn’t.”