Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations - 01 - Watching the Clock

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “I appreciate being notified of the incident,” Andos said. She turned to Ducane. “Commander, recruiting contemporary individuals to rescue themselves is a rare tactic for you, apparently one only used in exceptional circumstances. I’m curious why you found it necessary to recruit and temporally duplicate the President herself.”

  The TIC officer fidgeted. “President Bacco was the only one with the necessary security clearances to get where I needed her to go.”

  “Bull,” said Uptime Bacco. “With your time transporters, you can get wherever you want without setting off security.”

  “And don’t think I’m not going to talk to the Director about that later on,” added Downtime Bacco. But Andos’s attention was on the Shirna captive. Something wasn’t quite right about his body language, yet without more familiarity with his species, it was difficult to determine specifics.

  “All right,” Ducane admitted with a faint blush. “I admit, the opportunity to work alongside one of history’s great Federation presidents was irresistible.”

  “Oh, please,” both Baccos said in harmony.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Madam President. You’ve already helped shape my history by your actions in defense of the Federation. Organizing the unprecedented alliance against the Borg invasion . . .” Andos moved closer. The Shirna was growing increasingly smug, as if pleased to have fooled Ducane into complacency.

  “Which accomplished absolutely nothing against the Borg,” the downtime incarnation of the President said, “and only led to the formation of the Typhon Pact. Yeah, that went real well.” Yet there was an air of tension to the assassin as well, as if readying himself . . .

  “Don’t underestimate the value of your accomplishment, ma’am.”

  “Everyone out,” Andos cried. “He has a bomb!” She was only guessing about the mechanism of his suicide attack, but it seemed the safest assumption.

  The director moved to interpose herself before the presidents and hurry them out of the room. But Ducane calmly pointed a small device at the captive and activated it. Andos felt a split second of heat, saw the room brighten . . . but then it faded. She turned to see the assassin’s body completing its reconstitution and then freezing in place.

  “Don’t worry, he’s in stasis,” Ducane said. “And we want him alive for questioning. Good catch, Director. But as you can see, there was no cause for panic.” Andos declined to dignify his condescension with a response.

  “Damn,” Uptime Bacco said, gathering herself. “He wouldn’t go to those lengths for something I already did.”

  “Good point,” her hours-younger self added. “Is there something else important I’m supposed to be doing soon?”

  “I’ve already revealed too much,” Ducane said. “I’d rather not have to resequence your memory engrams, Madam President, before I reintegrate the two of you.”

  “Reintegrate?” Downtime Bacco asked.

  “It’s a way of combining two temporal copies of an individual back into one,” Ducane explained with casual condescension. “It’s not a technique you’d understand in your time.”

  “Simple enough,” Andos said. “Two temporal copies of an individual are a coherent, noncontiguous superposition: the same particles in two different quantum position states. One uses a transporter beam, which is a quantum-level process, to beam one copy onto the same coordinates as the other, allowing them to collapse back into a single quantum state, a single individual.” At Ducane’s shocked stare, Andos explained, “The procedure was pioneered by Spock of Vulcan during the Black Star slingshot incident of 2267 and 1969. Since the events were classified and there were vanishingly few opportunities to employ the technique further, I’m not surprised you were unaware of its earliest use, Commander.”

  After a moment, Ducane nodded, poorly concealing his annoyance at being shown up by a member of the DTI—even one who’d just saved his life. “Thank you, Director. We’ll have to update our historical records accordingly. But we really should be getting on with the reintegration so I can leave you in peace.”

  “Don’t think you can conceal your intentions from me, Commander,” Andos told him. “As soon as you leave here, you will beam yourself back in time and prevent the sequence of events which led to this conversation ever occurring. I wouldn’t recommend you attempt it,” she added, drawing her padd from her pocket. “Our every word since I entered here has been recorded and uploaded to the DTI’s phase-shielded servers. Erase these events and we will find out and investigate.”

  “Why are you resisting this?” Ducane demanded. “You should understand the importance of eliminating all timeline discrepancies as much as I do.”

  “I also understand the danger of micromanaging the timeline. Repeatedly jumping back and forth over the same swath of history, creating alternate after alternate in the hope that they will ultimately cancel one another out . . . creating such a complex temporal manifold runs the risk of damaging subspace.”

  Ducane’s jaw worked angrily. “We know what we’re doing far better than the . . . the primitives of your century.”

  Downtime Bacco fixed him with her pale gaze. “Do you know why Wang Chunxi was able to score three homers against Faith Martinez in the ’81 Series?”

  Everyone stared blankly except her older self, who sighed and said, “Because sometimes experience leads to overconfidence. You get complacent, lose sight of the basics that a rookie remembers to pay attention to.” She threw a glance at the time-suspended Shirna, underlining her point. “Experience doesn’t always make you smarter. Sometimes it just makes you think you know everything.”

  Ducane clearly wanted to protest, but was too cowed by the prospect of arguing with one of his historical idols, in duplicate, no less. “Very well. I’ll leave you all—both—with your memories of this event. If any two people in this time can be trusted with keeping secrets, it’s the two of you.”

  “What will you do to the assassin?” Andos asked him.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll neutralize the bomb before we release him. He’ll live to get a fair trial.”

  “Before or after he commits the crime?”

  Ducane turned to glare at her. “You’re exceptionally well-versed in our procedures. I should’ve known Captain Janeway couldn’t be trusted to obey the Temporal Prime Directive.”

  “After what they witnessed during their sojourn aboard the timeship Relativity, both Kathryn Janeway and Seven of Nine deemed it prudent to warn the highest echelons of Starfleet Command and the DTI of what they had witnessed.”

  Both Baccos stared at her, then at Ducane. “Warn?” Downtime Bacco asked. “I know I’ve been briefed on this, but it’s the middle of the night and I could use a reminder.”

  “I’d advise against that, Madam President,” Ducane said.

  “I understand why you would,” Andos told him. “Madam President, the first time the U.S.S. Voyager encountered a member of the TIC, Captain Braxton, he had come back to preemptively destroy them in the belief that they would cause a temporal explosion that would destroy Earth in his century. It was ultimately determined that Voyager was blameless and Braxton’s own actions had precipitated the sequence of events that caused the explosion.

  “Two years, six months later, Voyager time, Seven of Nine was recruited by Braxton and Mister Ducane, then a lieutenant, to capture a saboteur from uptime who attempted to destroy Voyager in the past and then-present. It turned out to be an older incarnation of Braxton who had fallen prey to temporal psychosis, a neurological disorder caused by excessive use of quantum-tunneling–based time travel within a short period of subjective time.”

  Uptime Bacco stared at him. “You didn’t tell me this before you took me gallivanting all over the timeline?”

  “Let her finish,” Downtime Bacco said.

  “According to Seven’s account—corroborated by Janeway, who was later recruited to complete the mission—Mister Ducane then arrested the younger version of Braxton for the crime that he had not yet c
ommitted—and indeed was ultimately prevented from committing in the first place. Yet Ducane made it clear that there would be a trial nonetheless.”

  Downtime Bacco stared at Ducane in horror. “You prosecuted a man for a crime that never actually happened?”

  “It had happened in one branch of the timestream,” Ducane countered. “It could have happened again if we hadn’t dealt with Braxton.”

  “Could have?” echoed Uptime Bacco. “So basically you TIC guys see nothing wrong with punishing people for things you kinda sorta guess they might do in the future. Even executing an entire starship crew with extreme prejudice—”

  “—without even confirming their guilt first!” her other self finished. “And you have the gall to wear that uniform? To call yourself a defender of the Federation? What has happened to the union in your time?”

  “Please, Madam President, you have to understand,” Ducane argued, still more condescending than pleading. “As this morning’s events must drive home, there are many factions and individuals out there who are actively trying to subvert the integrity of history. We’re fighting a war literally without end, without even a beginning. If we must sometimes go to extremes to protect reality itself against such an existential threat, then so be it. There’s no point trying to defend the principles of a simpler, more innocent time if you fail to defend your very existence in the process.”

  Downtime Bacco shook her head. “Do you have any idea how many times people have told me I had to treat the Federation’s values as optional in order to protect it? That’s what my predecessor believed, and it led to a culture of moral compromise that almost brought down the Federation.”

  “It wasn’t betraying our values that saved us,” her counterpart went on, “but sticking by them. If you’re so hell-bent on protecting your existence, maybe you oughta try giving everyone else less reason to be afraid of letting you exist. That’s worked pretty well for us ‘primitives’ who founded your civilization in the first place.”

  Ducane stared at the Baccos for a long moment, his expression showing grudging respect. “I won’t argue with you further, ma’am, because I’m not allowed to explain my reasons in detail. I’ll just say I understand why history remembers you the way it does.” He glanced back at the time-suspended assassin in the ’fresher. “Who knows? He may actually have been right about you. If anyone could persuade so many . . .”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got to stop running my mouth off. Madams President, if you’ll both stand together, I’ll have you reintegrated. With both sets of memories intact.” Andos was impressed, though she wouldn’t give Ducane the satisfaction of seeing it on her face. Spock’s makeshift version of the technique had, to all indications, left only the earlier set of memories. Clearly the TIC had greatly refined the procedure in the ensuing centuries.

  “Damn,” the younger Bacco said, moving alongside her suited counterpart. “With two of me, maybe I’d finally have enough time to get some real work done.”

  “You kidding?” her double replied. “Now that I see me from the outside, I understand why Esperanza gets so sick of my yammering. We’d drive each other crazy.”

  “Good point. I’d be positively beside myself.”

  The uptime Bacco winced and turned to Ducane. “I’ve changed my mind. Can we let him kill her after all?”

  DTI Headquarters, Greenwich

  11:03 UTC

  “With this latest incident,” Director Andos said to the assembled DTI agents in HQ’s situation room, “it has become clear that the present is under attack.”

  Agent Shelan looked around her, gauging the reactions of the other assembled agents. Every field agent currently in Sol System had been assembled for this meeting: Lucsly, Dulmur, Stijen Yol, Stewart Peart, Ranjea, even the novice Garcia, whose provisional pairing with Ranjea for the Axis of Time mission three months back seemed to have stuck. Assistant Director Sonaj of the San Francisco office was in attendance as well, along with Doctor T’Viss, Head of Research Virum Kalnota, and Senior Historian Loom Aleek-Om, an elderly Aurelian who had seen nearly two hundred of his species’ annual mating flights. All were somber in the wake of the news about the attack on President Bacco, but some, like Shelan herself, were already catching on that it may have only been a harbinger of things to come.

  Andos went on. “September: an attempt on the life of Professor Vard or one of his graduate students, committed by unknown future individuals, deterred by a Federation Temporal Agent. At the same time, a possible attack on Doctor Naadri, perhaps connected with the Vard attack, perhaps instigated by the twenty-eighth-century Sponsor of the Suliban Cabal. October: a sabotage attempt within the Typhon Pact, apparently intended to spark a war with the Federation, possibly instigated by the same Sponsor. Now, just over six weeks later, an assassination attempt against our own president by a future member of the Shirna race—briefly successful but corrected by an officer of the Temporal Integrity Commission. Additionally, there’s the impending incident which will send Lieutenant Dina Elfiki back in time to early October, an incident which remains known only to the lieutenant but does not seem to be pleasant.

  “The pattern is clear. At least two uptime factions engaging in acts of violence against the present, directly or by proxy. At least two signatory agencies of the Temporal Accords countering their efforts. And all of it concentrating upon a brief span of linear time. Gentlebeings, we must conclude that we are witnessing the opening of a new front in the Temporal Cold War.”

  A chill went through Shelan, as much of excitement as dread. She knew, better than most here, what the cost of the Temporal Cold War could be on the eras where it concentrated. And yet, if the Cabal’s Sponsor was directing a new offensive against the present, it meant that Shelan might have an opportunity to confront him at last, far earlier in her career than she ever anticipated. If she were careful enough, if she were good enough, maybe she could even find a way to bring him to account for his crimes.

  Once the murmuring died down, AD Sonaj said, “Perhaps we should review what we know of the factions in the Temporal Cold War, their methods, and their objectives.”

  “Agreed,” Andos said. “Unfortunately, there is little we do know for certain.”

  They began with the Shirna, the most recent threat. Little was known beyond the fact that, three centuries hence, they would be in an ongoing temporal war with the Vorgons, one in which both sides were apparently willing to engage in extreme measures to alter one another’s pasts. Clearly neither species abided by the Temporal Accords, so it stood to reason they were in conflict with the Accordist nations of the future as well. Studying the Shirna of the present day could reveal nothing, for that species had never yet encountered the Vorgons (at least, not contemporary Vorgons) and as yet had no advanced temporal technologies.

  And yet there was no known involvement of the Shirna or Vorgons in the primary known front of the Cold War, the period from 2144 to 2154. “Many assume,” Aleek-Om said in a slow voice as thin and reedy as his unclothed, gold-feathered body, “that the motive of any temporal interventionists operating in that era . . . particularly given their frequent entanglements with Jonathan Archer and the first Starship Enterprise . . . must have been to undermine the formation of the Federation. But that notion does not hold up under scrutiny. The Suliban Cabal spent a decade at war with Tandar Prime . . . attempted to foment a civil war in the Klingon Empire . . . and clashed with the Tholians from time to time . . . but rarely targeted Enterprise directly and never targeted a founding world of the Federation. More than once, the Cabal actually aided Captain Archer. In September 2151, they averted sabotage that would have destroyed Enterprise . . . and in March 2153, the Cabal’s Sponsor personally communicated with Archer to warn him of the temporal intervention behind the Xindi attack on Earth. If anything, it appears the Sponsor was concerned with preserving the events leading to the formation of the Federation.”

  “But what about their attack on Paraagan II in February 2152?” Shelan
interposed. “That was done specifically to discredit humanity and bring Archer’s mission to a premature end.”

  “Yes,” Aleek-Om said, “the Cabal did attempt to frame Enterprise for the destruction of that colony. But they did not destroy Enterprise . . . even though they easily could have. And when Temporal Agent Daniels prevented Archer from being taken aboard a Cabal vessel, the effect on future history was devastating . . . suggesting that Archer—and the future Federation, cher-wit!—would have survived had he indeed fallen into Cabal hands. So it seems the attempt to discredit Enterprise was in response to Archer’s previous interference in the Cabal’s activities. They only acted against him to remove an obstacle to whatever their actual goals were . . . and otherwise took care to cause no major disruption to the Federation’s seminal history.”

  “But wouldn’t discrediting Archer have prevented the birth of the Federation?” Garcia asked, showing no hesitation about speaking up in a room full of far more experienced agents. Shelan smiled. I knew she had potential.

  “Not necessarily,” Lucsly replied. “Archer’s importance to history could’ve been exaggerated.”

  “Or perhaps he would have filled the same eventual role through other means,” offered Kalnota, a round-faced Zakdorn with gray-brown hair and understated jowls. “The Xindi attack and the Earth-Romulan War would likely have brought him back onto the interstellar stage, where his role in building alliances among the founders could’ve been similar. So the Sponsor may have deemed the risk to history to be minimal.”

  “But worth taking,” Shelan replied, “to get Archer to stop meddling in his real goals. Which means whatever he was after must’ve been important.”

  “Do, er, do we have any idea what those goals were?” asked Stewart Peart, a lanky, tousle-haired Englishman who’d been an agent for five years and still seemed like a perpetually flustered rookie—yet was one of the few human agents to last even that long in the job.

  “No,” Andos said. “We know they targeted the Tandarans, the Klingons, and to a lesser extent the Tholians, but the common thread is unknown.”