Story:Bait and Switch/Reality Is Fluid, Part II

A flash in my mind and I’m back on my real bridge. “What’s our status?” I shout at Tess.

Biri answers instead, “Response team says an EPS conduit exploded and sent a power surge into the Butterfly modifications, and before anyone still awake could stop it the dish sent a theta-verteron beam into the wormhole! Gravity field strength spiked and pulled us in before we could compensate!”

“Casualties?”

“Six dead, eight wounded! Commander Reshek is—”

Gaarra. I’m out of the chair before she can finish the sentence and running for the turbolift. “Deflector Control!”

“Captain!” Tess yells. “Computer, hold turbolift!”

“What?” Tess walks up to me and grabs the front of my shirt through the doorway. “Let go of me, Tess.”

“No,” she angrily tells me, antennae twitching, storm-gray eyes flashing, “and get your head back in the game, Eleya. I warned you that I wasn’t going to let your feelings for Reshek affect the well-being of this crew. Right now we don’t know what the frak is going on and I need you here, on this bridge, in your chair, getting this sorted out. Otherwise I’m declaring you emotionally compromised and removing you from command in accordance with Starfleet Regulation Six-One-Nine. Do I make myself clear, Captain?” She lets go of my shirt.

“Sorry,” I say.

She seems a little mollified by that. “Apologize to me later. Save this ship now.”

I straighten my jacket and follow her back onto the bridge, forcing myself to focus. “Biri, where the hell are we?”

“Still in the wormhole, El! We just passed the halfway point. Structural integrity field holding steady!”

“Sensor readings are going crazy, Captain!” Professor Dukat shouts to me. “I’ve isolated signatures from thirty-four, no, thirty-five alternate timelines just from passive sensors!”

“Which timeline are we headed to?” I yell over the noise as the Bajor screams around us, battling the tidal forces threatening to pull her apart.

“We’re still in our own, near as I can tell!”

“Conn, keep us centered in the normal flight path!”

Park announces, “Aye, ma’am! Should be exiting into the Idran system in five, four, three, two, one, now!”

The Bajor erupts from the wormhole and shudders to a halt. The silence is sudden and deafening, broken only by the familiar, constant hum of the life-support system. “Report!” Tess orders. “Where are we?”

Biri taps at her keys. “Not the Idran system, that’s for damn sure. I don’t even know where to begin; I’m having trouble making sense of these readings. Master Chief, give me a cold restart of the primary sensor array if it’s still working.”

“No need,” Wiggin says in a worried tone. “I know where we are. Optical sensors coming up now.” The viewscreen turns from static to pale green. No stars, poor visibility, and some yellowish mass blurred off the starboard quarter. “We’re in fluidic space, sir.”

“Prophets forgive us,” a Bajoran petty officer to my right mutters fearfully. “Forgive your wayward children’s insult. Forgive their arrogance.”

What she’d give to know what I know. I hit the intercom key on my chair arm. “All hands, all hands, this is the captain. Yellow alert. Lieutenant Korekh, please report to the bridge.” I let go of the key. “Wiggin, can we get back into the wormhole?”

“No, it’s like the aperture was never there in the first place. Just some leftover ripples.”

“All right, getting any readings of Undine activity? Or any good hiding places nearby?”

“No Undine activity that I can pick up. And if I remember the information from Admiral Tuvok’s expedition late last year, that yellow mass eighteen kilometers off the starboard bow is something like a coral reef, the local equivalent of a planetoid.”

“Biri, any thoughts?”

“According to this there’s a fairly large hollow cavern where we can hide the ship.”

“Conn, get us there.”

The turbolift slides open and the two-meter bulk of my security chief steps out. “Captain.”

“My office, Dul’krah. You too, Tess.” The three of us go inside. “Computer, privacy mode four.”

“Eleya, what’s going on?”

“Dul’krah, I want you to investigate the explosion in the deflector control room as an act of sabotage.”

The big Pe’khdar’s slit pupils narrow. “My team as yet has no evidence that the EPS explosion was anything other than an accident.”

“The Emissary of the Prophets disagrees.” Tess stares at me. “I had a vision when we were in the wormhole, Tess. I met the Emissary. He said we didn’t do any permanent damage and that we have a saboteur aboard.”

Dul’krah gives me a hard look. “Permission to speak freely, Captain?”

“Go ahead.”

“It is … strange how much direct action your gods take with your people. Chul’teth and Vo’tak have never appeared to anyone in visions in living memory. No disrespect intended, but I am afraid I cannot accept an unverifiable vision as evidence in an investigation. I also cannot jump to conclusions in an investigation.”

“You do what you have to do, but I reserve the right to tell you ‘I told you so.’ Get to work, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, Captain.” He strides out.

Tess looks at me. “That’s not all Captain Sisko said, is it?”

I shake my head. “No. Apparently we’re part of some plan the Prophets have. You familiar with any of the prophecies?”

“Not really, ma’am.”

“Well, the one in question is Emer’s Second. ‘The sky turns to water. The daughter of the valley travels in the sky. Enemies become allies to stem the coming tide.’”

“Admirably vague,” she comments snidely.

“Yeah, but think about it for a minute. ‘The sky turns to water.’ Fluidic space, anyone?”

“Yes, and you’re from Priyat in the Kendra Valley, I know. But that’s far from the only interpretation.”

“That’s more or less what I said, Tess. Don’t worry, I’m taking this a little skeptically, just maybe not as skeptically as you would.” The intercom chirps and I press the “accept call” key. “Kanril.”

“Park here. We’re in position and powered down.”

“Thanks for the update. Keep passive scans running continuously, and call down to the commissary to get some food up here. We’re probably going to be stuck in fluidic space for a while until the geek squad figures out how to make us a hole back to realspace without the deflector.” I let go of the key and look to Tess. “Is it okay if I go check on my ops officer now, Number One?”

“I don’t see why not; we’re out of danger for the moment. I have the bridge.”

I head down to sickbay. Corpsman Watkins meets me at the door and snaps to attention. “Captain.”

“At ease, Chief. How is everyone?”

She walks inside and I follow. “Petty Officers Vilhjalmsson and Bellevue and Dr. Afyt from the Science Center have minor plasma burns. Master Chief Boepo, Lieutenant Semak, and Datel Mayal from the Cardie Ministry have worse burns and shrapnel injuries.”

“What about Ga—Commander Reshek?”

Watkins leads me into the observation deck of one of the surgery rooms and gestures at the window. Six red-gowned surgeons are laboring over Gaarra, his body anesthetic-masked and motionless, tubes running into and out of his chest. “Dr. Wirrpanda just started on him. Reshek has third-degree plasma and electrical burns over 45% of his body, enough shrapnel embedded in him to set off a weapons detector, and he’s lost a lot of blood.” An orderly enters the surgical theatre with a Biohazard One-marked package. “That’d be the new lungs from the replicator.”

“Is he going to make it?”

“He’ll make it,” she says in a voice that brooks no argument. “Lieutenant Wirrpanda is the finest trauma surgeon I’ve ever served with. He’s saved people with injuries a lot worse than Reshek’s. And Dr. Onas from the Center swears up and down Reshek saved her life. He tackled her out of the way as that conduit blew and took the whole blast on his back.” She touches my shoulder. “You love him, don’t you?” It’s not a question. I turn my head to look at her and the blonde corpsman shrugs. “Part-Betazoid, remember? But even if I wasn’t, it’s all over your face.”

“It’s … complicated.”

“Love always is. I remember my own husband, Kendrick, nearly got scared off when he found out my mother could tell what he was thinking.”

I laugh at that. “Betazoids must make the scariest in-laws in history.” I sober up. “I’m his direct superior officer. I’m not allowed to be in a relationship with him. He knows that.”

“I know, and you’ve been trying to keep your attraction on the down-low so that neither of you gets reassigned. But do you really want to always be wondering if you could have something?”

I open my mouth without really knowing what I’m going to say but my combadge chirps and saves me the trouble. “Kanril.”

“Captain, this is Korekh. Please come to Deflector Control immediately.”

“Copy that; I’m on my way.”

I arrive in the ruins of the control room. Shrapnel and six colors of blood spatter the starboard walls and there’s a gaping, blackened hole in the wall on the port side of the room. Dul’krah tosses me an evidence bag as I walk in. I catch it in the air and look inside. It’s got some sort of tiny burned and twisted gadget in it. “What’s this?”

“Treachery,” Dul’krah snarls. “Sabotage. What you are holding is the remains of a detonator that was attached to one-point-three grams of nitrilin explosive.”

“That’s not enough nitrilin to cause this kind of damage.”

Lieutenant McMillan, holding a tricorder over one of the spatter patterns, answers, “It is when the bomb is mounted inside the primary power regulator.”

“So, bomb goes off, damages the regulator, EPS conduit overloads and blows, and that causes the deflector to emit a theta-verteron beam?”

Master Chief Systems Engineer Kinlo, an old white-haired Klingon from Bynam’s department, shakes her head. “No, that took the extra step of uploading a virus into the control systems to make the dish absorb and emit the extra power.”

Biri steps inside from the corridor. “Whoever did this was proficient in engineering but needs a refresher course in subspace physics. Theta-verterons are completely the wrong particle to cause any damage to the wormhole.”

“Nitrilin is a Breen compound, Dul’krah,” I point out.

“And they sell it to most of the powers in this region,” he counters. “The detonator is Cardassian.”

“Weak,” somebody says, quietly.

“What was that?”

“He said the detonator is Cardassian,” the voice of Professor Dukat says.

I spin and grab her by the shirt and push her back out into the corridor, lifting her clear off the floor and slamming her into the wall. “You. Damned. Phekk’ta. Spoonhead,” I grind out.

“Let go of me!”

“I can’t believe I actually entertained the possibility that you were telling the truth, that you really wanted peace.”

“Captain, unhand the professor, now!” Dul’krah bellows at me. “I have already cleared Dukat’s entire team!”

“Based on what?”

“Based on the computer virus being Bajoran!”

I’m so surprised I just drop Dukat and spin in place. “What?”

“As I said earlier, one cannot jump to conclusions in a criminal investigation. Where you see Cardassian treachery, I see a woman who has handpicked her own team and is smart enough to cover her tracks better than this. I consulted with Master Chief Kinlo, the ranking cyberwarfare specialist aboard the Bajor, and she confirmed that the computer virus carries none of the common fingerprints of Cardassian computer science. And because I know that our crew, even our considerable Bajoran contingent, would not knowingly endanger this vessel, the only remaining suspects are the representatives of the Center for Science. I have already taken the liberty of confining the uninjured members to quarters and will be interrogating each one in turn.”

“Intruders. Weak,” somebody says again.

“What?”

“Captain, what are you hearing?” Biri asks.

“Somebody said we’re weak. Oh, no.” I slap my combadge. “Kanril to bridge. Anything on sensors?”

“I’m having trouble reading through this coral stuff with just passives,” Wiggin answers.

“Tell Park to warm up the engines and get ready to run. I’ll be there shortly.” I start to leave, but then I stop, reach down and offer the professor a hand up. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t have—”

“I forgive you. Go worry about your ship.”

I get to the bridge and Tess barks, “Captain on deck!”

“Carry on. What’s our status?”

“We’re powered up, ready to move on your say-so,” Park responds.

“Take us out to the cavern entrance. I want to get a clearer look at the area.”

“Conn, aye. Coming about.” The view on the screen slowly wheels to the right.

“Captain,” Wiggin suddenly says, “I’m picking up an anomalous energy signature directly above us!”

“Battle stations! Shields up!” The “sky” turns to fire and the planetoid vanishes around us. “Report!”

“Shields holding, 82 percent,” Tess announces. “Switching viewscreen to tactical plot. Oh, frak.”

“Wiggin,” I ask, “just how many Undine ships is that?”

“I count two Tethys-class, six Vila-class, eighteen Dromias-class, over eighty Nicor-class, and two sets of Dactylus-class planet-busters.” He pauses. “We’re boned,” he adds.

Prophets, I’m sorry. I failed.

Or not. Flaming Death seems to have a scheduling conflict. “Why aren’t they attacking?” Tess asks to my right. “They’ve got us dead to rights: we’re well within firing range and we’ve got a cinder’s chance in the Northern Wastes of taking them all out.”

“Captain,” Ensign Esplin says from the comms station, “I don’t think they’re the Undine we’re used to.”

“What are you talking about, Ensign?” Biri asks.

“Well, they look different.”

“No, they don’t,” I say.

“Yes, ma’am, they do. The colors are different.”

“No, they’re plain yellow, just like they always are.”

“Ma’am, I don’t know how else to describe it. The striations in the skin of that Vila are ssaurritetla and point forward. They ought to be colored ssuettanet and pointing aft.”

The universal translator’s apparently having problems with those words. “Biri, do you know what she’s saying?”

The Trill nods, slowly smiling. “Reptilian eyes. Captain, Esplin’s a Saurian! She’s seeing them partly in ultraviolet! Computer, I want a screenshot of that Vila-class under ultraviolet light, side-by-side with the same of one of the Vila-class ships encountered in the Jenolan Dyson sphere.”

Chirp. “Processing.”

Biri’s screen flicks to a new image and she throws it up on the main viewscreen. “I’ll see to it you get a commendation for this, Ensign.” The core design of the ship is identical, give or take a few minor variations in tentacle shape (understandable with biotech), but the coloration is very different.

“Esplin,” I ask, “is that true of all of them?”

Esplin nods. Biri suggests, “Captain, we may be dealing with a different tribe or clan, or something to that effect. We know from the Terradome incident that the Undine are at least a little factionalized. We may have an opportunity here.”

“‘Enemies become allies against the coming tide,’” I recall. I stand and straighten the hem of my jacket. “Esplin, open a hailing channel, all frequencies.”

“Channel open.”

“This is Captain Kanril Eleya of the United Federation of Planets. We mean you no harm, but we will defend ourselves if necessary. I would like to speak to whomever is in charge.”

There’s silence for a moment, and then I’m knocked to the floor by a deafening voice in my head. ''INTRUDER! WEAK!''

Tess dashes over to me as I roll on the floor, clutching my head against the pain, screaming. The bridge vanishes into black nothingness around me and I’m faced with an Undine, over three meters tall and as ugly as they come. WHO ARE YOU?

“Kanril Eleya, Captain, USS Bajor, Federation Starfleet, serial number November-Whiskey-2403-4233-2015-4114.”

The Undine’s hand snaps out and grabs me by the neck, lifting me off the ground. Its head, as big as my entire torso, sits in my face. WEAK, its mind-voice bellows as I struggle with the hand.

“We’re stronger … than you think. Kanril Eleya, Captain, USS Bajor, Federation Starfleet—AARGH!”

''YOU ARE WEAK. YOU ARE COWARDLY. YOU ATTACK IN THE DARK. YOU KILL HATCHLINGS.''

“What … are you talking about?”

The Undine’s head draws back, the patterns in its eyes shifting. The pressure on my throat loosens. ''UNCOMPREHENDING. CONFUSED. WE WILL SHOW YOU.''

Images flash through my mind. An Intrepid-class starship, firing at Undine vessels. A Gorn Tuatara-class cruiser, bombarding a pool on one of those reefs. Tiny creatures that look like small Undine, fleeing the pool and burning under the guns of a Negh’Var-class battlecruiser.

“When did this begin?”

''LONG AGO. WE WERE NOT YET BORN.''

“Could you be more specific?”

LONG AGO.

“Try. Here, read my mind. I’m thinking about how my people measure time. Try to work it out. GHAAA!”

''STRONGER THAN ANTICIPATED. STILL WEAK. IT BEGAN THIRTY-ONE OF YOUR ‘YEARS’ AGO. WE DESTROYED ALL. THEY PERSISTED. SO WE KILL.''

“So why didn’t you destroy us?”

''YOU ARRIVED. YOU DID NOT ATTACK. YOU HID. WEAK. AFRAID.''

“Some among my people say admitting fear is a sign of courage.”

''YOU ARE DEFIANT. A STRONG WILL. YOU ARE STILL WEAK.''

“Whatever. Here’s the truth. We did not attack you. We never attacked you. Thirty-one years ago we were barely aware of this realm, of fluidic space.”

LIES!

“You can read my mind. You know I’m telling the truth.”

YOU BELIEVE YOUR LIES TO BE TRUTH?

“They’re not lies. You’re being misled. And where do you get off accusing us of attacking in the dark? Pot, kettle.”

''WE DID NOT. WE FOUGHT TO PROTECT. WE DEFENDED.'' Now images of Undine ships attacking the attackers, blowing them away with gusto, rush through my head.

“You tried to destroy us from the inside.”

SHOW US.

I focus on my memories of the Undine playing Ambassador Sokketh. Briefings showing the extent of Undine infiltration in the Federation. The attack on Earth, when Commander E’genn revealed himself and I burned him down.

''WE DID NOT DO THIS. THEY ARE WEAK! COWARDLY! SHAMEFUL! BENEATH CONTEMPT!''

“I suspected as much,” I say, smiling despite his grip on my neck. “You Undine are no more united than we are. I can tell you who is responsible for the attacks on your hatchlings.”

TELL!

“I want something in exchange. I want you to get your house in order and deal with your ‘weak, shameful’ kin. And I want something else. I want your help defeating them when the time comes.”

TELL! The Undine’s pressure on my throat increases.

“They call themselves … the Iconians,” I gasp out. “They want us … fighting each other. We are strong, you are strong. But divided and fighting each other, we’re both weak.”

''WEAK! COWARDLY! SHAMEFUL! KILLERS OF HATCHLINGS! WEAK! BENEATH CONTEMPT! THE WEAK WILL PERISH!''

The Undine lets go of me and I fall into the blackness below its feet, and I’m back on the bridge with Doctor Maela standing over me with a tricorder. “She’s waking up. Vital signs returning to normal.”

I sit up and spit blood out of my mouth. “Phekk, I bit my tongue.”

Wiggin announces, “In case anyone’s interested, the Undine ships are moving out. They’re leaving.”

“Good, maybe—AARGH!”

''WE WILL COME. WE WILL FIGHT.''

I fall back down again. “Tess, permission to pass out again?”

I wake up. Unfamiliar ceiling. It’s a sickbay, but not the one on the Bajor. A female Paradan in a Starfleet uniform walks over to me. “Captain, you are awake.”

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“I am Dr. Capadan, chief medical officer of Deep Space 9. You are in the starbase hospital. You have been asleep for two days. Minor neurological damage.”

I turn to my left. Gaarra is in the bed next to mine. He’s got an IV in his arm and bandages underneath his hospital gown. But he’s alive, and he’s awake. “Hey,” he says, smiling at me.

“Hey, yourself.” I reach out and take his hand.

“Ow.”

“You okay?”

“Back’s still a little tender. And … I’m not breathing so good. New lungs.”

Tess, Captain Kurland, and Professor Dukat walk in and we quickly let go of each other’s hands. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Kanril,” Kurland says.

“How did we get back?”

“Bynam’s people got the deflector fixed and opened us a hole back to realspace. We came out in the Idran system and just came home through the wormhole.”

“Did you ever find out who set that bomb?”

“It was Ameno Idras, one of the engineers from the Bajoran Center for Science,” Kurland answers.

“The guy who dropped that phase coupler before we started the tests?” Gaarra asks.

Tess shrugs. “I guess; I wasn’t there. Anyway, Dul’krah pretty much just glared at him for ten seconds or so and he couldn’t confess fast enough. It was beautiful, you could’ve sold tickets. Militia raided his house when we got back and apparently he’s a Pah-Wraith cultist. And it doesn’t hurt that his mother was raped and murdered by a Cardassian dalin during the Occupation.”

“Trying to frame the professor?” I infer.

The Cardassian woman nods sadly. “Does it ever end? This cycle of violence? We kill you, you kill us, and nobody wins.”

“You have no idea how appropriate that remark is,” I say, and look to Kurland. “Captain, any word on Undine activity?”

He gives me a confused look. “All quiet, last I heard. Latest flash from the DJC says the Undine haven’t made any moves at all in the last couple of days. Analysts think they’re trying to regroup for another push.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I managed to do some good when we were in fluidic space.”

“What are you talking about, Captain?” Gaarra asks.

I start laughing. “I yelled at them and they went away.”

“The Undine?” Kurland asks. “Captain, I think you just signed yourself up for an appointment with the station counselor.”

“Respectfully, sir,” Tess says, “I think you mean Starfleet Intelligence. I don’t think she’s joking.”

Kurland snorts. “Hell, with my luck, she is telling the truth.” Gaarra laughs at this, then starts coughing.

“All right,” Dr. Capadan says, “I must insist, the captain and Commander Reshek need to rest, and I still have a few tests to run.”

“Always do as the doctor orders,” Dukat remarks. “Come on, I’m buying.” The three of them file out and Capadan fiddles with a few settings on the console on Gaarra’s headboard, then leaves.

I look over at him. Most of his beard is stubble, either burned off in the explosion or shaved when they were working on him. It’ll take weeks to grow back. But he’s smiling. “Captain, I—”

“Gaarra, when I heard you were injured, I nearly got myself removed from command trying to come see you.”

“Well, you’re seeing me now.”

“Yes. Yes, I am.” I take his hand again, running my thumb over the calluses. “And I didn’t care. Tess would’ve had me thrown out of the service, and I didn’t care. I had to force myself to care. And now, I don’t have to care anymore. We’re out of danger, and we’re alone and—and I love you, is what I’m trying to say.”

He shifts in the bed and rolls up on his side. “I know. I love you, too.” He brings my hand up to his mouth and kisses it. “All I can do for now. We’ll worry about Tess after my back heals and I can breathe again.”

“Sounds good to me.” THE END

Author's Notes
Part of the genesis of this chapter came out of something my buddy worffan101 said one of the times the "Kathryn Janeway's a traitor" argument came up on the STO forums, coupled with my annoyance with the brain-hurtingly stupid actions of the Undine in the official storyline. Worffan noted on the Terradome thing that the mere fact that the Undine have factions makes them more human than the Borg. That got me thinking about how these factions might be distinguishable visually. They're not humanoid, so why would they see in the normal humanoid visual spectrum? And I'd already established that the usual communications officer on the Bajor was a Saurian, which are reptiles, which means they can see part of the ultraviolet spectrum (I checked).

And then we get to where this other group of Undine might prefer a straight fight instead of all this sneaking around. Sneaking is for weaklings, and we know the Undine hate the weak, et voila.

On a completely different topic, Eleya's "unfamiliar ceiling" comment was meant as an  reference. I've also been trying to write Dul'krah a little bit like Teal'c from Stargate SG-1 ever since I created him, and that plus this storyline meant I got an opportunity to use Teal'c's "interrogation by death glare" technique.