STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II

by Dean Wesley Smith (Editor)

  “Vulcan?” Lucsly asked as he ceased his squirming.

  Dulmer answered, “Tuvok. He’s a Vulcan, and a Starfleet officer. The last I heard, he and the rest of his crew were lost with the Voyager near the Badlands, two years ago.”

  “So what are they doing here in 1996?”

  Dulmer asked himself the same question. From what he remembered about the Voyager, it had mysteriously disappeared two years previously in the unstable region of space near Bajor known as the Badlands while pursuing a Maquis vessel. Starfleet ships had scoured the area for weeks before finally calling off the search. Several months later, the Voyager had been officially declared “missing and presumed lost” with all hands.

  But now, somehow, these two members of her crew had ended up in 1996 Los Angeles, but for what reason? Were they somehow propelled through an unknown stellar phenomenon to end up at this point in time? Were they desperately seeking some clue to returning to the twenty-fourth century?

  [328] Dulmer returned his attention to the conversation taking place in the office. The first man, who they now knew to be named Tom Paris, was presently trying to engage the young woman, Rain Robinson, in small talk. Dulmer sighed. He recognized the calm, confident tones of a man who was accustomed to using what he considered to be charm in order to converse with a female, for whatever reason. Dulmer decided the man wasn’t as good at it as he might think himself to be. At the moment, Paris was trying to account for his impressive command of spatial mechanics and related science, which was undoubtedly superior to that of the twentieth-century woman who had found them.

  “I majored in astrophysics,” Paris said. Dulmer could hear the jovial lilt in the man’s voice through the closet door.

  “Where?” Rain Robinson asked. Apparently, she wasn’t any more impressed with Paris’s charms than Dulmer was.

  “Starfleet Academy.”

  Lucsly nearly convulsed at the mention of the Federation’s training facility for Starfleet officers. “Is he crazy?” he said, almost forgetting to keep his voice a whisper.

  “She won’t know anything about it,” Dulmer said. “Now keep quiet before they hear us.”

  “Pardon me, Tom,” Tuvok was saying. “We should be going. Our ... friends ... are waiting for us.”

  Good, Dulmer thought. Then maybe I can get Lucsly off my foot. He guessed that the “friends” Tuvok had mentioned would be their fellow crew members on their ship.

  There were some perfunctory good-byes, and the agents could hear the two men leave the office. The next several [329] seconds were filled only with the muted sound of something clicking repeatedly.

  “Computer keyboard,” Dulmer guessed.

  The near silence of the room went on for a few more seconds until it was suddenly broken with, “What the hell?” As the agents listened from inside the closet, there was more frantic clicking, followed by, “Those bastards!”

  Something fell heavily to the floor. Dulmer and Lucsly could then hear hurried footfalls as the woman ran from the office.

  After waiting a few extra seconds, Dulmer cautiously opened the closet door and peered out. The office was empty.

  “Dulmer,” Lucsly said as he scanned the computer with his tricorder once more, stepping around an upended chair which was probably the source of the heavy thud they’d heard a moment before. “Those two destroyed the secondary data storage unit in this device. All of the data pertaining to the orbital scans is gone.”

  Dulmer nodded. “Have to give them some credit for at least trying to cover their tracks. But the girl’s on to them, at least partially. Come on, let’s go.”

  As he moved for the door, Lucsly grabbed his arm. “What can we do?”

  It was a valid question. The image from the tricorder played out once more in Dulmer’s mind. He saw the different outcomes, one right after the other, over and over once more.

  What was the key? What would make the difference?

  Instinctively, Dulmer already knew the answer. They—he and his partner—were the difference. They were here, [330] now, where they weren’t supposed to be. It had been preordained, whether by the Guardian or some other force that Dulmer would never understand, for them to take action here, whatever that action might be.

  With a distant look in his eyes, Dulmer finally replied, “Hopefully, we’ll know when we get there.”

  Running down the corridor from the office, the pair of agents plunged through a door and suddenly found themselves outside the observatory. As they emerged onto the sidewalk, they were just in time to look to their left and see a man in a dark suit nearing the far corner of the building, heading away from them.

  “Look,” Dulmer said as he pointed to the very much out-of-place object in the man’s right hand. “Who the hell is that? That looks like some kind of phaser in his hand!”

  “This is getting weirder by the second,” Lucsly warned. “Do you suppose he’s some kind of temporal agent?”

  The possibility was one that gave Dulmer pause. It wasn’t all that far-fetched that another agent, perhaps from another time period than he and Lucsly, could be operating here in this time, trying to affect the resolution to a problem that was still unknown to them.

  Dulmer said, “I remember reading about a time-traveling human in the report on one of Kirk’s few DTI-approved missions. I wonder if that could be him?”

  “Well, whoever he is,” Lucsly replied as he pulled on his partner’s arm to follow him, “he’s getting away. Come on.”

  “Who are you people, and what is that thing in your pants?” the woman demanded.

  “I beg your pardon?” Tuvok asked.

  [331] “That little gadget you put in your pocket,” Robinson pressed. “What is it? A demagnetizer?”

  Suddenly Paris pointed toward the observatory, where a man had appeared and was brandishing what looked like a phaser. “Get down!”

  Raw power sang out as a harsh energy discharge erupted from the strange man’s weapon. In scarcely the blink of an eye, the blue automobile the two wayward time travelers and the woman had been standing near abruptly disappeared in a firestorm of orange violence.

  Lucsly, his own phaser already out and in his hand, said, “That phaser beam is more powerful than ours.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think he’s a good guy,” Dulmer muttered. Immediately, instinctively, Dulmer rose to his feet, his every muscle tensing as he moved to intervene.

  Always his opposite in manner and method, Lucsly coolly stopped him with no more than a hand placed gently on Dulmer’s arm.

  “Wait,” he said in his characteristically calm voice. “We can’t just interfere. What if he is some kind of temporal agent that we don’t know about? We could undermine everything he’s doing here.”

  Meanwhile, the Vulcan named Tuvok had produced a weapon of his own, which Dulmer could see was a Starfleet phaser. He and the unidentified man were now exchanging fire. The headpiece that Tuvok had been wearing had fallen off in the fray, revealing his otherworldly features.

  “No agent would take this kind of blatant risk,” Dulmer insisted. “Whoever he is, he’s not one of us. We can’t just let him gun those people down. As far as we know, that woman’s a civilian. We can’t let anything happen to her.”

  [332] “We don’t know what’s supposed to happen here!” Lucsly argued, the first signs of true strain finally beginning to encroach on him. “For all we know, he’s supposed to kill her. If we interfere, we could cause irreparable damage!”

  The mysterious man had now lost his weapon, thanks to a well-aimed shot by Tuvok. Having been granted a few precious seconds, the trio had used them to make their way to another vehicle.

  It was the blue one, from the tricorder.

  This is it, Dulmer thought, and once more the scenes played out in his head.

  The blue automobile speeds away. The orange phaser strikes. The vehicle dissolves in a hellstorm of energy.

  The blue automobile speeds away. The orange phaser strikes. The vehicle skirt
s away, unharmed.

  Ahead of them, the automobile was beginning to accelerate away from the scene, its occupants almost safely out of sight.

  Almost.

  The other man, the man in the twentieth-century business suit, had recovered his most definitely un-twentieth-century energy weapon and was once again sighting in.

  What the hell are we supposed to do? Dulmer’s mind raged as doubt once more crowded him. They didn’t have time to consult the tricorder and the priceless storehouse of knowledge it contained. The events they had seen earlier were unfolding.

  Right here. Right now.

  The vehicle containing two Starfleet officers from the future and one most-likely innocent civilian woman from the present was moving too slowly to be out of the line of fire in time.

  [333] Ultimately, that decided it for him. Damning all consequences, Dulmer reached out and in one quick motion snatched the phaser from his partner’s grasp, raised the weapon, and fired.

  The man, his target, fell unconscious to the grass.

  “Oh my god,” Lucsly said as he ran to where the stunned man had fallen. His eyes quickly focused on the unfamiliar weapon laying in the grass nearby.

  “I’ve never seen a phaser like that before,” Dulmer said. He reached to retrieve the phaser, if indeed that’s what it was. Once more, he was stopped by his partner.

  “Leave it.”

  “Whatever that thing is,” Dulmer said, “it doesn’t belong here. It’s obviously more advanced than anything that’s supposed to be on this planet today. It’s even more powerful than our own weapons. We can’t risk someone else finding it.”

  Lucsly shook his head, then pointed in the direction the other time travelers and their unwitting companion had fled. “Those two men, the Starfleet officers, weren’t just here to meddle with history. I have to believe they were here for a valid reason, maybe even to correct something they found to be wrong in this time. It’s a safe bet they know a lot more about the situation than we do.” He indicated the still-unconscious man lying on the ground at their feet. “For all we know, we may have interfered too much already. Our best plan is to leave everything as is and go back to the Guardian. The longer we stay here, the better the chance we will do something catastrophic.”

  Years of memorized temporal theory classes washed across Dulmer’s mind. The inherent risk of time travel, practically beaten into their skulls by a host of instructors at the [334] DTI, came to the forefront once more. The slightest alterations of established events could cascade into massive changes in the timeline, affecting the very existence of billions of innocent people, both living and as yet unborn. The most innocuous of actions could be devastating. The Temporal Prime Directive, which Dulmer had just shattered with his actions, prohibited interference in established historical events. Every second they remained in this time geometrically increased the chances of their presence having detrimental effects on the timeline as they knew it.

  The two Starfleet officers, saved from obliteration by Dulmer, were already hopelessly out of the agents’ reach, their destination unknown. Their actions, as well as Dulmer’s, would literally be left to the judgment of history.

  Several days later, Dulmer sat at the functional, yet entirely too small, portable field desk in the temporary dwelling he and Lucsly lived in while on the Guardian’s planet. The small building was spartan by the standards he’d grown accustomed to on Earth, but it served its purpose well enough. He took comfort in knowing their stay here was nearly at an end. His trip to Risa was tantalizingly near.

  He was going cross-eyed from the stack of padds he was working his way through when Lucsly entered the room.

  “I found it,” he said, holding up yet another padd.

  Straightening in his chair, Dulmer reached for the unit and asked, “Found what?”

  “Those men from the Voyager,” Lucsly replied. “I was able to sift through the information I downloaded from the Guardian. It turns out you were right.”

  Dulmer quickly scanned the abbreviated data entry on the [335] padd, finally sighing with relief. His actions, rash and instinctive, had nevertheless been correct. Dulmer and Lucsly’s presence in 1996 had apparently been crucial, no matter how limited their actual contributions might have been. The captain and crew of the Voyager would, in that time period, eventually complete their task and return to the twenty-fourth century.

  “I’ve already spoken with TIC via subspace on this,” Lucsly said, referring to the Temporal Investigations Commander. “Due to the sensitive nature of the Voyager’s involvement, we can’t make this file public knowledge, even within the rest of DTI.”

  This confused Dulmer. “Why?”

  “Because the ship’s still listed as missing, presumed lost. TIC feels that making it known the Voyager wasn’t destroyed, at least not immediately after it was lost, would be a risk. They could be involved in other temporal violations while trying to find their way back.”

  “But their families have the right to know they might still be alive out there, somewhere,” Dulmer pressed. Then he realized what his partner was not saying. “Wait a minute. You scanned the data for future events, didn’t you? You know what happens to them, don’t you?”

  Lucsly nodded, reluctantly. “Yes. However, TIC has forbidden me to talk about it, even with you.” He shrugged meekly. “Sorry.”

  Dulmer was momentarily disappointed, but he knew secrets were a big part of what Temporal Investigations was about. He’d known it since his first days in training. Still, the idea that the Voyager might have survived supposed destruction in the Badlands and was lost somewhere in deep space, [336] valiantly attempting to reach home, both saddened and excited him.

  Interrupting his thoughts, Lucsly said, “Well, there’s no sense agonizing over it. Let’s just get busy and get the reports filed so we can go home.”

  Dulmer smiled suddenly. “Almost, but not quite.” He picked up one of the several padds littering his desk and tossed it lightly to Lucsly. “I’ve been doing some checking up on my own.”

  Lucsly looked down at the image on the padd’s screen. The picture depicted was the same photograph of the astronaut they had seen in Rain Robinson’s office in Los Angeles. There was a computer-tabbed entry next to the picture that read: ALAN B. SHEPARD, JR.—APOLLO 14—FRA MAURO HIGHLANDS—FEBRUARY 5TH 1971.

  As Lucsly looked up from the padd with a pained expression on his face, Dulmer was already standing before him with a stack of additional padds. “Okay, we have Picard’s mission, the research from the Kirk mission, and the rest of my notes on the Voyager fiasco.” Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and retrieved yet another padd from the desk. “Also, TIC wanted additional background information on the course for the academy, so I took the liberty of tagging a bunch of computer files I thought might be helpful.” With an evil grin, Dulmer regarded his partner, and then finally added, “By the way, she’d like the full report on our visit to 1996 by tomorrow morning.”

  Lucsly’s expression turned to one of near-menace as he asked, “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Hey,” Dulmer said. “What are friends for?”

  The Healing Arts

  E. Cristy Ruteshouser and Lynda Martinez Foley

  Captain Kathryn Janeway could not breathe. Instinctively, she tried to speak, to communicate her distress, but without breath she found herself struck dumb. She struggled to master the panic that threatened to overwhelm her, then reached out to snatch at Harry Kim’s shoulder. Her fingers dug into the smooth fabric of his uniform, and he turned his head.

  His dark eyes widened. “Captain! What is it, are you—somebody help her!”

  Janeway slumped, rolling off the cushion on which she’d been sitting, a roaring in her ears. Her mouth filled with the taste of salt, and she realized she’d bitten her tongue. Her visual field narrowed—she seemed to gaze down a shaft, like a Jefferies tube with blurred gray walls. Only the pale blue ceiling of the Vashnar banquet room showed at the end of
that shaft, and she stared helplessly. Blue. Only blue. Only—wait. Blue eyes. A woman’s blue eyes. Is she touching me? What—?

  The contraction of the gray shaft slowed, paused, reversed. The roaring eased, and the captain suddenly felt her chest inflate with a huge, ragged influx of air. She [338] gasped, and panted, every sign of her sudden affliction fading as rapidly as they had appeared. Her vision cleared, and she found herself the focus of every eye in the room.

  “Captain!” Tuvok touched her arm, gently helped her to a sitting position. “Are you all right?”

  “I think—”

  Kim, from her other side, broke in urgently. “Look! What’s happening? Is it contagious?”

  Janeway, still breathing hard, followed his gaze. A young woman slumped to the floor next to her, stiffening, her eyes bulging. Blue eyes. Those same blue eyes.

  “Have no concern for her,” soothed First Counselor Aken, their host among the reptilian Vashnar. “She will recover. She is a strong healer.”

  “But she’s—” Harry began to argue, then paused. The rigidity had begun to ebb from the limbs of the stricken woman, and her eyes closed. After another moment, she seemed to relax, and then her eyes opened once again.

  “Well done,” praised Aken. “Very well done.” She beckoned to one of the humanoids serving at the banquet. “Take the healer to the Sanctuary. She is to rest for two cycles.” Aken gestured with two claws. “She did well.”

  Janeway reached out and gently touched the healer’s arm. “Thank you.”

  The healer smiled tiredly as she was drawn to her feet and escorted out. The captain watched her leave, noting that the blue of the healer’s eyes was matched by the color of her garment, “The healer,” she repeated. “Your doctor is of the Anjurwan?”

  Aken made a soft trilling sound, the Vashnar version of laughter. Her slender tongue darted in and out. “Of course [339] not! As I have told you, our beloved Anjurwan are like children. She is a healer only. But a very adept one, is she not? How do you feel, Captain? Are you well? Is this a chronic condition of yours?”