Course Correction Studio

Category: Edge of Heaven

  • Edge of Heaven – Chapter 3. The Man and the Plan

    When Dani came to, she was in the dark.  Total darkness.  There wasn’t anything to immediately indicate where, or when, she was.  No engines hummed or vibrated beneath her.  She could be on a ship, but there was no way to know for sure without exploring.

    She sat up, then froze.  Her entire body ached, particularly her chest.  She looked down to investigate, out of pure instinct, before remembering the darkness, which had rendered her eyes temporarily useless.  She brought her hand up and ran her fingers over her uniformed torso.  When she felt the small, jagged hole in her uniform, the memory of her mission came back to her.  She, Will, and Captain Sisko had been cornered in the Suliban facility, and Sisko had ordered her into the temporal chamber.  She didn’t remember much after that, but from the condition of her uniform and her physical condition, she surmised that she’d been shot with a phaser.  Exactly who had shot her was still a mystery and would likely remain one until she was able to ask Will and Sisko what had happened.

    Dani sat still for a few moments, willing the pain away.  Finally, it subsided enough for her to get to her knees.  She began to focus less on the aches throughout her body and more on her mission.  She felt for the pouch she’d been wearing before being sent here.  Relieved, she found it right where it had been before she’d awakened, and the five samples she’d taken from the lab were still tucked safely inside.  It was a relief that she still had them, but she didn’t immediately know what her next course of action should be.  She knew that she had to get the samples to Starfleet, so the question now was how to do that.  The first step to answering that question was figuring out where in the universe she’d ended up.

    Lighting would be a good start.  She also needed a computer or something that would offer a hint for where she was currently located.

    Dani carefully stood, aware that in the darkness, she had no way of knowing how big her surroundings were.  She gained a little more confidence when she was able to stand to her full height without any problems.

    “Computer – lights,” she commanded.  Nothing happened in response, but it had been worth a try.  She stretched out her arms in front of her and slowly began to walk forward, like a blind person.  She didn’t have very far to walk.  Within a few steps, she reached a flat, smooth, vertically oriented surface.  She began walking again, sliding her hands along what she assumed was a wall until she reached something that felt like a control panel.  She was wondering how she was going to see the panel to know what she was doing, but then she decided to just take a chance.  She started pressing buttons randomly, and the lights in the room suddenly lit up.

    Dani looked around the room.  It was small, seemingly only a slightly larger than a walk-in closet.  Somehow, a set of bunked beds, a sink, and two desks were crammed in there.  She heard the nearly silent hum of engines and felt the vibrations beneath her feet and concluded that she must be on a ship.

    But what ship?  And when?

    A garment hanging from the corner of the top bunk caught her attention.  It looked like a uniform but not one that she recognized.  She took a step closer to get a better look at it.

    A gasp escaped her lips as she read the badge on the garment’s shoulder.

    “Enterprise, NX-01?” she read aloud.

    Xxx

    After Dani had disappeared from the temporal chamber, Chakotay had been able to beam Sisko and Will to the Rio Grande in time to prevent them from being taken prisoner by the Suliban.  Now, the three of them sat in the observation lounge on the Enterprise-E with the rest of the senior staff, Janeway, and Tuvok.

    “When we found the lab and the biomatter, we ran into a problem,” Will said.  “According to our intel, the storage equipment we had was supposed to accommodate all the samples of the disease.  Well, that wasn’t possible.”

    “There was much more biomatter than we anticipated,” Sisko said.

    “How much more?” Janeway asked.

    “Enough to fill a large freezer,” Will said.  “In response to this new information, we decided that if we couldn’t get the entire amount, we should at least get some samples back to Starfleet so that we can study it.  So, Dani took five samples with her.”

    “Where did she go?” Picard asked.

    “That’s a problem, also, sir,” Will answered.  “We don’t know.”

    “We weren’t able to read the display panels on the temporal chamber,” Sisko said.  “For some reason, the tricorder was unable to translate it.”

    “We’ve got to figure out a way to bring her back,” Will said.  He felt horrible.  It had been Sisko’s order that had knowingly sent Dani to some unknown time, but Will hadn’t objected.  He was just as responsible for Dani’s situation as Sisko.

    “I’m afraid there may not be much we can do about the situation,” Janeway said.  “As of now, Starfleet hasn’t developed the ability to willfully and purposefully travel through time.”

    “I had a feeling you might say that,” Will said, “and I’ve taken that into consideration.  Have you ever heard of the Guardian of Forever?”

    “I have,” Janeway responded.  “I believe Starfleet’s first encounter with it was during one of Kirk’s missions.”

    “That’s right,” Will said.  “He and Spock traveled back in time to Earth in the year 1930 to rescue Dr. McCoy.  McCoy had been suffering from paranoid delusions after receiving an overdose of cordrazine, and he beamed down to the planet and leaped through the Guardian’s portal.  Kirk and Spock were able to locate him and bring him back to the 23rd Century.”

    “You’re suggesting that we go to the Guardian and try to do the same for Dani,” Janeway said.

    “I am,” Will replied.

    Janeway looked at Chakotay, silently seeking his input.  Reading the unspoken request displayed in his wife’s features, he promptly complied.  “Unless you or anyone else has another plan, it’s better than sitting back and waiting for the temporal police to come riding to the rescue,” he said.

    Kathryn nodded.  In nearly any other situation, she might have made a quip about how often she’d encountered the temporal police in the Delta Quadrant.  But now wasn’t the time.  This was her daughter’s life they were talking about.  Now was not the time for light-hearted banter.

    “Do it,” she said.

    Xxx

    The Enterprise NCC-1701 E had been in orbit around the Guardian planet for nearly six hours.  Janeway, Chakotay, Picard, and Riker had gathered in transporter room 2 and were prepared to beam down.  Before they could even set foot on the transporter platform, someone unexpectedly began to shimmer into existence in the room.  Whoever it was didn’t need the transporter system, as they were materializing on the floor next to the transporter pad.  Janeway’s head whipped around to the transporter tech at the controls.  The technician shook her head, just as confused as the rest of the group was.  Janeway turned back to the figure solidifying before them and realized that it was multiple figures rather than a single person.

    When the sequence was complete, Janeway immediately recognized who they represented, even though the two agents now standing before her weren’t the two she’d dealt with before.

    “The Temporal Police,” Janeway greeted. “I was wondering how long it would take you to show up.”

    “Admiral Janeway,” one agent began.  “Though we’ve never met in person, your reputation precedes you.”

    “I assume that your presence here means that our plans for a rescue mission have changed,” Janeway said.

    “Not necessarily,” the agent said.  “We think your plan is sound, and we’d like to help you.”

    Xxx

    “I’d like you to meet the man who extracted your daughter from Cardassia Prime,” one of the agents said to Janeway.  The away team had reassembled around the table in the Enterprise’s observation lounge, along with the two visitors from the future.

    “I think it’d be a good idea if we got to know both of you,” Janeway said.  “You could start with your names.”

    “Fair enough,” the man said. “My name is Daniels.”

    “Just Daniels?” Riker asked. “You don’t have a first name?”

    “Just Daniels – for now,” he said. “I do have a first name, but I don’t find it relevant to the situation at hand.”  Daniels turned his attention back to Janeway.  “The gentleman sitting next to me is Lt. Kyle Hicks.”

    Riker’s head snapped to the handsome sandy-haired man beside Daniels.  He knew that name.  That name had been one of the reasons he and Dani had broken up around the time of her graduation from the Academy.  Will had thought that she’d seemed a little too close to Hicks at the time.

    Daniels continued. “Mr. Hicks was part of the extraction team sent to Cardassia to bring Commander Janeway home,” he said. “In fact, he personally escorted Dani to the transport that brought her back to the Enterprise.  Just before his graduation from the Academy, he was recruited into Starfleet special forces, where he has since served with distinction.  He’s among the best at what he does, which is why I recruited him for this mission.  As I said before, I think your idea to use the Guardian to go back in time is a good one, and I think Lt. Hicks should be the one to go back.”

    “I have extensive experience carrying out directives of a covert nature,” Hicks said.

    “And how many of those have been of a temporal nature?” Janeway asked.

    “I’d rather not elaborate on that, Admiral,” Hicks replied. “My missions have been classified, and, no offense, you don’t have high enough clearance to order me to divulge the details of my previous missions.”

    “Fair enough,” Janeway said.  But she had part of her answer.  The boy had obviously been involved in some serious missions, some of which likely involved time travel.

    She turned her attention back to the man who seemed to be the leader of the two.  “You said you think our plan to utilize the Guardian of Forever is sound,” she said. “But I’d be surprised if you didn’t already have a plan of your own in mind.”

    “You’re right, of course,” Daniels replied.  “You’re on the right track with the idea to travel back in time, but instead of one of you blindly hopping in and out of history using the Guardian portal, we’ll use technology from my time to send Mr. Hicks back in time to the exact period where Dani is located.”

    “You know where she is?” Chakotay asked.

    “It’s my job to know,” Daniels replied.  “She’s on the Enterprise.  Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise, to be precise.”

    There was silence as the 24th-Century Starfleet officers absorbed the information Daniels had given them.

    “The Suliban may have already had their temporal chamber programmed to that period because they’re planning to strike humanity in the 22nd Century,” Chakotay said.  “Perhaps as a way to go back and end things before they get out of hand.”

    “That does make sense,” Riker said.  “First contact with the Suliban was during Archer’s first mission.  It would be a logical place to try to change the balance of power in their favor.”

    “That’s precisely what our observers from your future have hypothesized,” Daniels chimed.

    Janeway, surprised, looked at Daniels with raised eyebrows.  “You mean you don’t know for certain?”

    “Under normal circumstances, we would be able to identify, to 99.9% certainty, what occurred,” Daniels replied. “But it seems the Suliban had to be aware of that fact because they’ve done something to disrupt our abilities to monitor the timeline.  Some things we’re still able to see, but other parts of the timeline have gone dark.”

    “Since you say you can send Mr. Hicks back to where Dani is, I assume that you can still ‘see’ that portion of the timeline,” Janeway said.

    “Correct,” Daniels said.

    “There’s just one more question,” Janeway said. “What do you get out of this endeavor?    Not to sound ungrateful for your intervention in this matter, but I’ve dealt with people from your department enough times to know that there’s something more at stake than just the welfare of my daughter.”

    “You’re right, Captain, you have had several encounters with Temporal Investigations, so I don’t have to tell you that I can’t reveal everything to you,” Daniels said.  “I will say that you’re right to imply that there’s a bigger issue here than just your daughter.  It involves those vials of biomatter that your away team recovered from the Suliban facility.  That’s about all I can say at the moment.  Regardless of what else is at stake, you should realize that we both benefit by bringing your daughter – and the biomatter – back to the 24th Century.”

    Janeway nodded.  “What are we waiting for, then?  Let’s get started.”

  • Edge of Heaven – Chapter 2. The Fire

    In preparation for the mission that had been assigned to her earlier in the day, Dani sat in her quarters, on her sofa, thinking about what she would be facing in only a few days.  She’d started preparing for it almost from the moment her mother had briefed her and rest of the team.  The mission instructions had assigned each team member a specific role in the mission:  Chakotay would be the mission pilot; Dr. Bashir would be there to essentially begin studying samples of the virus and to oversee the destruction of the remaining virus samples;  both would remain on the runabout for the duration of the mission.  Sisko, Dani, and Will would comprise the team on the ground.  Tuvok, who had been the strategic force behind the mission, would not join the team on the actual away mission.

    Dani had been devouring everything she could find concerning the Suliban.  Her readings led her to the first mission of the U.S.S Enterprise NX-01.  That mission had initially been just a transport to Kronos but had evolved into something much more complicated.  During this mission, Captain Jonathan Archer, Enterprise’s CO, made the first documented contact with the Suliban race in what could easily be termed a hostile encounter.  Using their amazing stealth abilities, Suliban agents had sneaked onboard Archer’s ship to retrieve a Klingon the Enterprise was transporting to Kronos.

    Dani was about to start reading about the outcome of that mission when her door chimed.  “Come in,” she called, reluctantly looking up from the PADD in her hands.  The door slid open, and Will Riker entered.  “Hi,” Dani greeted.

    “Hey,” Will said, approaching the coffee table.  He would’ve sat down beside Dani on the sofa, but the space was currently being occupied by about a dozen PADDs.  Instead, he opted for the chair next to the sofa.  “I just came to see how you were feeling,” he said.

    “Oh, I’m fine,” Dani said.  “I’m just doing a little research on our friends, the Suliban.”  She handed Will one of the PADDs that had been occupying what would have been his seat.

    He skimmed it briefly and then studied Dani.  “Are you nervous?” he asked.

    “Yes, but this has to be done,” Dani replied.  “Our whole existence probably depends on it.  And for reasons I still don’t fully understand, Admiral Nechayev feels that I am the best candidate for this mission.”

    “You won’t be alone, you know.”

    “I know.  Do you think I’d be sane right now if I didn’t know you were coming with me?”

    “Everything’s going to work out for the best,” Will said. “You’ll see.”

    Dani wanted to believe Will, but in her mind, she didn’t exactly have the best track record when it came to missions of this nature.  There were so many things that could go wrong, but that was true of all missions.  The difference this time was the gravity of the consequences if they failed.

    Will sensed that his words of encouragement made little difference for her, and he understood why, considering her history.  “I know that going on another mission like this is one of the last things in the universe that you want to do, but this is a completely different situation than last time.  It’s a whole new mission.  You’ve got to keep that in mind.”

    “I know,” Dani said.  “It’s kind of silly that I’m still not completely over that.  It’s been over a year.”

    “There’s no time limit on how long it takes people to get over something like that,” Will said. “It was a traumatic experience for you.  If you think this new mission will be too much for you, I don’t think anyone would object if you decided you want to sit this one out.”

    “That’s taking the easy way out,” Dani said. “I won’t do that.  I’ve got to prove that I can do this.”

    “Dani, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”

    “Yes, I do.  To myself, if not to anyone else.”

    “I think you may be putting a little too much pressure on yourself.”

    “It’s possible, but I don’t want people to treat me with kid gloves for the rest of my career.  That’s not why I went to the Academy.  Can you understand that?”

    Will nodded.  “Yeah,” he said. “I can.”  He understood why she felt the way that she did, but he still didn’t think it was the best attitude for her to have, especially at this stage in her life, coming off of an exceedingly difficult experience.  True, it had been a year since Dani had returned from Cardassia, but Will wasn’t convinced that she’d completely recovered from it, not enough to embark on another difficult covert mission.

    xxx

    The team was a day into its mission and still a day away from its destination.  Thus far, Dani had been successful at keeping her nerves calm.  She didn’t know if she would still feel that way in 24 hours.  Sitting alone at the table in the runabout’s living quarters, she’d tried to do it by keeping her mind occupied with the mission logs of the Enterprise NX-01.  But her mind kept wandering. Despite having had one file open for at least an hour, Dani hadn’t scrolled past the first two paragraphs.  She was preoccupied not with the catastrophic what-ifs of her current mission but with the memories of one night and two lifetimes:  the night that Q2 had surprised her by showing up in her bedroom at her parents’ house in Indiana.

    Will ventured to the runabout’s living quarters and found Dani alone, staring blankly at the table.  “Dani?” he said.

    “Hey, Will,” Dani said, looking up at him from the spot on the table.

    “I just came to check on you, see how you’re doing,” he said.  “You’ve been back here by yourself for nearly the entire trip.”

    “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

    “About the mission?”

    “Some,” Dani said.  “But I’ve mostly been thinking about something that happened after I came back from Cardassia.”

    Will joined Dani at the table, taking the seat to her right.  “Was it something serious?”

    “Yes,” Dani said.  A small nervous laugh escaped her lips.  “Um, Q showed up at my parents’ house in Indiana while I was staying there.”  When Dani saw Will roll his eyes, she quickly added, “It was Q’s son, and it wasn’t what you think.  He didn’t cause any trouble while he was there.  He actually helped me out – a lot.”

    “Q?” Will asked skeptically.

    “Yeah.  I haven’t told this to anyone, except Counselor Troi, but after Cardassia, I was considering leaving Starfleet.”

    “You’re serious?”

    “It seemed like my career was getting off to an unusually bumpy start, and I was doubting whether this whole thing was for me.  I thought that maybe some of the decisions I’d made were wrong, that I was supposed to go right instead of left at some points.  Q showed me how wrong I was.”

    “You’re talking about us?”

    “Partially,” Dani said with a shrug.

    “You said he showed you.  How?”

    “He gave me a chance to experience what life would have been like for me if things had been different for us, if we’d stayed together.”

    “What was the result?”

    “Not good.  Painful, actually, on several levels.”

    “I get the feeling it’s not something I want to hear about.”

    “Trust me, it isn’t.  Just believe me when I say that I don’t think it was meant to be between us.”

    Will nodded.  Then, a thought occurred to him.  “How do you know Q was showing you the truth, and not just some warped version of reality?  He could have been showing you what you he wanted you to see.”

    “I thought about that possibility, but I can’t figure out a good explanation for why he would want to do that.  What would be the point?  I like to think that he was sincere in what he was showing me…He also showed me what my life would have been like if Dukat had lived.”

    “Was it any better than what happened with us?”

    Dani shook her head. “No.”

    “So, he allows you to experience two different scenarios, both devastating.  How does that convince you to remain in Starfleet?”

    “By showing me that even though things don’t always work out like we want, they happen because they’re supposed to, and any other way wouldn’t be right.  That doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything wrong, necessarily.  It’s just the way things are supposed to be.  He also told me that I can’t leave yet because I’m going to be part of something important that will have a bearing on the survival of the Federation.  Of course, he couldn’t tell me what that something was, but the prospect was intriguing.  And the way he said it – there was something about it that I can’t explain.  He was dead serious, and I knew I couldn’t leave, that I had to stay.”

    Dani sighed.  “I’m tired of talking about me, though,” she said. “How’s the wedding planning coming along?”

    “Well, I have to say this is one time I’m glad that Lwaxana is the kind of person who loves to take charge of things,” Will said.  “It’s been a lot less stressful than when you and I were planning our wedding.  I think she’s practicing for her next wedding.”

    xxx

    Traveling at warp 4, it had taken the team a total of two days to reach Tandar Prime.  Landing on the surface would be too risky, so the runabout was to remain in orbit, hidden behind one of the planet’s two satellite moons.

    “I know I don’t have to tell you to be careful down there,” Chakotay said, “but I will anyway.  And watch your back.”

    “You know I will,” Dani said.

    Chakotay turned to Will and said, “Good luck.”  There was more behind those words than what had been spoken.  Of course the surface meaning was genuine, but Will knew that he had just been charged with ensuring that Chakotay’s daughter made it back from this mission.

    Will responded with a quick nod before turning and stepping onto the transporter pad.  Dani and her father shared a final look before she turned and joined Will.  Sisko stepped onto the pad with them, rounding out the group.

    “Energize,” Sisko said.  The trio dematerialized on the Rio Grande’s transporter pad and rematerialized inside the basement of the Suliban facility, just as planned.  They’d beamed in prepared for an immediate fight, so they were surprised to find that there was no one else in sight.

    The room was dim.  Each of the away team members had done their homework on the Suliban.  They were well aware of the race’s advanced stealth abilities and were wary that the Suliban might have been expecting a visit from Starfleet and were waiting in the shadows for the team.  They didn’t have time to dwell too much on it, though.  There was a mission to complete.  The three of them took out their modified tricorders and started scanning.  The clock had begun.

    Almost immediately, Will’s tricorder began beeping wildly.  “I think I’ve found it,” he said.

    “Where?” Sisko asked.

    “It’s directly above us,” Will said.

    “Above?” Dani asked. “I thought it was supposed to be in the basement?”

    “Either our intel was wrong, or they’ve moved it,” Will said. “Either way, up is where we need to go.”

    The three of them drew their phasers, as they prepared to leave the facility’s basement via a narrow staircase.  Everyone’s head was turning, and their phasers were drawn, as they emerged from the staircase and stepped into a corridor on the main floor of the building.  Dani, leading the way, was constantly scanning for Suliban biosignatures.  Of course, if they were cloaked, scanning would do no good.  This part of the mission was starting off on the wrong note, in her opinion.  Maybe the incorrect location really was a simple case of bad intel.  But what if it was more than that?  It could be that the Suliban knew of the plan to infiltrate the facility, and the away team was walking right into a trap.

    Once they cleared the top stair in the flight and approached the first of many intersections in the corridor, Dani’s tricorder indicated that they would need to turn right at the second intersection to get to the lab where the samples were housed.

    “It’s this way,” Dani said, her eyes on the schematic displayed on her tricorder.  “To the right.”

    Dani stopped short of rounding the corner.  “What is it?” Will asked.

    “Two Suliban,” Dani whispered.  “About 20 meters down this corridor.”

    “Where are we in relation to the samples?” Sisko asked.

    “According to this, it’s at the end of this corridor, in a room just past our two Suliban friends here,” Dani replied.

    “I’m willing to bet they have all kinds of sensors in this place.  We risk alerting everyone else here to our presence the moment we fire our first shot,” Will said.

    “They’re going to know we’re here anyway the moment we try to leave with those samples,” Sisko countered.  He crouched and peered around the corner, then took careful aim at one of the Suliban on the other end of the corridor.

    “Hold on,” Dani said quickly.  Sisko held his fire but didn’t take his eyes off his targets.  “There’s another way in,” she said.

    xxx

    Crawling through a ventilation conduit hadn’t been part of the plans, but when an opportunity presented itself as a solution to an immediate problem, you had to be prepared to take advantage. A scan had revealed that there was no one in the lab.  This fact, coupled with being able to access the room via an underground ventilation system, meant that they were extraordinarily lucky.  Or they were walking into a trap.  There was no way to tell which applied to their situation, and they didn’t have any option but to take the opportunities as they came, but that didn’t mean that Dani felt any more at ease with all of it.

    Will pushed up against a vent in the floor of the lab and poked his head through, quickly looking around the room.  Just as the tricorders had indicated, the lab was seemingly devoid of humanoid life.  He quickly pulled himself out of the environmental conduit he and the others had used to gain access to the laboratory.  Kneeling, he helped Dani pull herself out next.  Finally, Sisko emerged.

    Immediately, Dani started scanning for the samples.  She fought to focus, constantly blocking out thoughts of whether they were being watched by surveillance cameras, or whether they’d tripped a silent alarm, or whether there were cloaked Suliban in the room with them right now.

    “Here it is,” she said, eyes on her tricorder.  A flashing indicator on the device represented its proximity to the samples.  That indicator was no longer blinking but was now a continuous light, which meant the tricorder was within ten feet of the samples.  Dani looked up from her tricorder. “It’s in this cabinet.”

    That cabinet was a freezer, and when Will walked over and tried to open it, he quickly found that it was locked.  He took a few steps back, leveled his phaser at the door of the freezer, and fired a quick burst.  The door flew open.

    Sisko, Will, and Dani stared at the open freezer and their mouths hung open.

    “I thought there were only supposed to be a few vials?” Will asked.

    “The intel must have been wrong, again,” Sisko said, scowling.

    In front of the away team was a freezer full of vials, each containing an identical amount of the same blue liquid.

    “There must be hundreds of vials in there,” Dani said.  She stepped up to the open freezer and passed her tricorder back and forth past the vials.  The signal never wavered.  According to the tricorder, all the vials contained a sample of the disease.  They wouldn’t be able to take all of them.  They hadn’t come prepared to take this many.  Even if they took as many as they could, the Suliban would still have plenty of samples that could be used to synthesize more of the disease.  Dani reached out and took one vial from each row in the freezer.  She wasn’t going to walk away from this mission empty-handed.  They might not be able to destroy the disease, but they could at least get some samples back to Starfleet so that they could analyze it.

    A phaser blast landed on the wall immediately beside Riker’s head.  Riker whipped around and returned fire, while Sisko and Dani ran across the room and took cover behind a counter.  Will took refuge behind a counter on the opposite side of the room.

    “Away team to Rio Grande!” Sisko shouted.  “We’re under fire!  Get us out of here!”

    Dani unholstered her phaser and began to shoot at the two Suliban who’d attacked.  Now that she was in a position of relative safety, she recognized them as the two Suliban they’d seen outside the lab earlier.

    “Standby, away team,” Chakotay said through the comm. “I’m bringing you up now.”

    The next thing Dani should have felt was the tingling sensation of the transporter.  Instead, she felt the heat of a phaser blast as it zipped past her head.

    “Rio Grande, what’s going on up there?” Sisko asked, understandably impatient.

    “There’s shielding around the room you’re in,” Chakotay responded.  “If you can’t disable the field, you’ll need to get clear before I can bring you up.”

    Sisko fired across the room at the Suliban before answering.  “Understood,” he said. “Riker, did you hear that?”

    “Loud and clear,” Will said, holding his own in the firefight with the Suliban.

    The Suliban guards were blocking the only two exits that the away team was already aware of, the door and the floor vent.  Dani sunk down behind the counter and pulled out her tricorder.  She pulled up the schematic of the facility, hoping to find another way out of the room.  According to the map she was looking at there should be a corridor behind the wall on the right side of her and Sisko.  She looked at it but didn’t see any sign of a door.  She set her phaser to the maximum setting, pointed it at the section of the wall where the tricorder indicated a door should be, and fired.  The wall shimmered before dissolving upon contact with the phaser beam.  The holographic wall had completely dematerialized, revealing the previously concealed access point.

    “Janeway to Riker,” Dani said.

    “Riker here.”

    “Did you see that?” Dani asked.

    “I sure did,” Riker said.  “Looks like we’ve found our way out.”

    “We’ll cover you,” Sisko told him.

    Sisko and Dani looked across the room at Will, who nodded his assent.  Dani and Sisko concentrated their fire on the guards, drawing their attention from Will.  Will sprinted across the room and slipped through the doors as they slid open for him.  The doors closed behind him momentarily before sliding open again.  Will stuck his hand out and started firing his phaser at the Suliban.  This gave Dani her opportunity to join Will in the corridor they’d just discovered.  Once she was outside, both she and Will continued firing at the Suliban as Sisko made it over to the door and temporary safety.  Sisko fired a few final shots at the Suliban before retreating with Dani and Will into the darkness of the corridor.  The door slid shut behind Sisko, and he promptly fired his phaser at the control panel, hopefully disabling it, even if only temporarily.

    Sisko tapped his comm badge.  “Sisko to Rio Grande.”

    The door that Sisko had just closed slid open following the muffled sound of a small explosion.  Three Suliban ran into the corridor, sending the away team on the run again.  Where they were running to, they had no idea.  For the moment, they only knew that they needed to get away from the Suliban chasing them.  They ran straight ahead, through a set of double doors and into a new room.  As soon as they’d entered, they’d expected to find the Suliban right on their heels.

    But they weren’t.  And there weren’t any waiting for them inside the room, either.

    xxx

    The Suliban stopped short of following the intruders into the room.  Only those with the highest level of clearance were allowed to enter that particular room.  It was off-limits to everyone else.  That it had even been unlocked in the first place came as a shock to them.  The three looked at each other, knowing that they should go after the intruders.  They also knew that if one valued his life, he didn’t dare enter without clearance.

    xxx

    Sisko refused to believe that the away team had escaped the Suliban that easily.

    “It couldn’t have been that easy,” Will said aloud, putting into words what everyone was feeling. “The door wasn’t even locked.”

    Sisko moved his hand to tap his comm badge.  “Sisko to Rio Grande,” he said.  When there was no response, he tried to raise them again.  “Sisko to Rio Grande,” he said. “Rio Grande come in.”

    Still, there was no response.  “There must be a field around this room, too,” Dani said. “Why didn’t they come in after us?”

    “I don’t know,” Will said. “But I’m sure as hell not complaining.  Right now, we’ve got to find a way to get you and that biomatter out of here.”  He looked around the room.  There were no windows or doors other than the one they’d used to get in.  There weren’t even any vents.

    The only thing in the room was some kind of giant archway in the center of the floor.  Dani opened her tricorder and began to scan the device, slowly circling it.  As she stepped closer to it, the indicators and panels on it lit up.  Dani froze, looking up from her tricorder at the device.

    “What happened?” Sisko asked.

    Dani referred to her tricorder.  “Whatever this is just powered up,” she responded.

    “Must be motion activated,” Will surmised.

    Cautiously, Dani stepped closer to the device to get a closer look at the control panels.  Will and Sisko, equally cautious, followed suit.

    “I can’t make out the language on any of these panels,” Will said.

    Dani studied her tricorder, attempting to analyze the language.  Under the circumstances, she surmised that it was a Suliban language, but it appeared to be a variety that the tricorder couldn’t translate.  “The tricorder can’t make heads or tails of it, either,” she said.  “But I am picking up strong temporal signals from the device.”

    “Temporal,” Will repeated.  He and the others knew that the Suliban Cabal had been using time-travel for at least a century.  The fact that the Suliban had the ability to travel through time wasn’t a surprise, but actually finding the device they used to accomplish it certainly was.  He looked at Sisko and Dani, and he knew that they’d each reached the same conclusion he had.

    “This is how they travel through time,” Sisko said.

    *Thump, thump, thump, thump*  Someone was running down the hall towards the room to join their Suliban comrades out in the corridor.

    Sisko looked at Dani.  “Get in,” he said.

    Dani looked at Sisko as if he were crazy.  “Sir?”

    “That’s an order, Commander,” Sisko said.

    Dani looked to Will, but he didn’t appear to disagree with the order that Sisko had given.

    “You have to get away with those samples,” Will said.  “If you don’t, this mission was a wasted cause.  If you get away with the samples, we can get them to back to Starfleet so that they can analyze them.  Getting in and going somewhere else is the only option right now.”

    “How will I get back?  We don’t even know where – or when – it’s set to.”

    A low-yield phaser blast hit Dani squarely in the chest, and she collapsed to the ground.  Will whipped around to see Sisko pointing a hand phaser directly at Dani.  “In a matter of seconds, who knows how many Suliban are going to come through that door, Commander,” he explained.  “We don’t have time for arguments.  Now, help me get her inside.”

    Will and Sisko picked up Dani and gently placed her on the floor of the chamber.  Will looked at the controls and, using what little he knew about Suliban control panel layouts, took his best guess.  He pressed a short sequence of buttons on the panel and watched Dani shimmer out of existence in a red haze.  As soon as the haze had completely disappeared, Sisko raised his rifle and aimed at the time travel device.

    “What the hell are you doing?” Will asked.

    Sisko didn’t bother providing an answer.  He trained the rifle at the control panel on the time portal and fired.  The instrument panel sparked and smoked until it exploded into bits just as a team of Suliban stormed into the room, weapons drawn.

  • Edge of Heaven is Back!

    I’m FINALLY continuing with Edge of Heaven. After six years, I don’t even know if any of my original readers are still even interested at this point, but I hope a few of you have stuck around. Right now, there are two chapters posted, and I’ll be posting a new chapter every Saturday.

  • Edge of Heaven – Chapter 1. The Frying Pan

    Story #8 in the “More Than a Lifetime” series

    Author’s Note: This story is the eighth in a series of stories that do not follow canon and should not be taken as such. The previous stories, in order, are: 1) Delta Wild, 2) Homecoming, 3) Graduation, 4) A Love Less Ordinary, 5) Return to Normal, 6) Sweetest Sin, and 7) Deliberation. The events in these stories occur in an alternate universe in which Chakotay’s stint with the Maquis happened much earlier in his life. He is married to Kathryn Janeway, and they have a daughter. In this universe, Voyager did not combine with a crew from a Maquis ship, but instead reached the Delta Quadrant with a small loss of life and most of her crew in tact. The events of “First Contact” and “Insurrection” have already occurred in this timeline, but “Nemesis” has not. The Dominion War occurred, but with vastly different results. Many of the events of the final season of Deep Space Nine didn’t occur, which means the characters who died during the season are not dead in my stories. Please overlook any other inconsistencies or errors pertaining to the original Star Trek universe as the author’s ignorance.

    This story contains mature themes, language, and sexual situations.

    Disclaimer: All the characters, except Dani and other original characters who do not appear on screen or in print elsewhere, belong to Paramount. I do not own them or claim to. This story was produced and is presented purely for the enjoyment of the readers. I don’t make any money from this, and this story may not be used for any such purpose. If you wish to use my story for purposes other than monetary gain, please do so, as long as my name and this disclaimer remain attached to it.

    1. THE FRYING PAN

    Lt. Commander Danielle Janeway gazed through the tall windows in the Enterprise E’s observation lounge. Deep Space Nine provided the view. The Enterprise had been docked there for the last two days on a scheduled maintenance stop. Dani hadn’t set foot on the station, yet, though she was eager to catch up with some old friends over there. At the moment, she sat in the Enterprise’s observation lounge, trying to figure out why on Earth she was there. She’d been summoned by Captain Picard, but he was no where in sight as of yet. Commander William Riker’s entrance made little difference. He was almost always present at Enterprise staff meetings regardless of the topic. He sat down in his usual chair, near the head of the table where Picard’s chair was parked.

    Dani swiveled to face Will. “I didn’t think we had a meeting today. Do you know what this is about?”

    Will shook his head. “No clue. I thought you might know.”

    “You would know better than I would, First Officer. Why would I know?”

    The doors to the room swished open, and Captain Chakotay and Commander Tuvok entered.

    Her father had been the last person in the galaxy Dani had expected to walk into the room. “What are you doing here?”

    Chakotay grinned at his daughter’s shocked expression. “It’s good to see you, too.”

    Dani watched Chakotay take his seat beside her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just wasn’t expecting you.”

    She didn’t expect the next two people who walked in, either. Dr. Julian Bashir and Captain Benjamin Sisko entered next.

    Will watched Sisko and Bashir take seats across from himself, Dani and Chakotay. He was just as confused as everyone else in the room. “So, do any of you know why we’re here?”

    “I was hoping one of you might have the answer to that,” Julian said.

    “I have the answer to that.”

    All heads turned to the door. Admiral Kathryn Janeway strode into the conference room with a young assistant at her heels.

    Dani and Chakotay exchanged puzzled looks. This meeting had apparently turned into an impromptu family reunion.

    Kathryn took Captain Picard’s usual seat. Her assistant stood next to her, ready to answer to any request or order that she might give. Kathryn turned to the officers around the table. “Good afternoon. Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice.”

    “What’s going on?” Chakotay asked.

    “A situation has developed on Tandar Prime,” Kathryn began. “The Suliban Cabal has presented a threat to the Federation.”

    Sisko’s brows furrowed. “The Suliban Cabal? They haven’t been active in two centuries.”

    “I know,” Kathryn said. “But we have intelligence reports that indicate recent activity, activity that suggests they are planning an imminent attack in the very near future.”

    “What kind of attack?” Will asked.

    “Biological,” Kathryn replied. “They’ve created a disease of some sort to be deployed somewhere within the Alpha Quadrant. We don’t know the details about the characteristics of the disease, only that it’s fatal to all the major Alpha Quadrant races. It’s fortunate that our people at Starfleet Intelligence were able to pick up on this when they did. Had we not known, the outcome could have been catastrophic.”

    “Why would they want to do something like this?” Dani asked. “The Suliban have been a generally peaceful species for so long. They didn’t even get involved during the Dominion War.”

    “Actually, they were involved in the Dominion War,” Kathryn said. “We just didn’t know it. The Cabal worked for the Dominion during the war. Their chameleon abilities made them perfect candidates for espionage activities. They gathered information, mostly, but in some cases they were responsible for sabotage.”

    “I’ll be damned,” Sisko said.

    “We believe that the Cabal may be engaging in this type of behavior again, with war in the Alpha Quadrant being their goal,” Kathryn said.

    “But there aren’t enough Suliban to take on the entire quadrant,” Julian said. “Are they trying to ally with someone?”

    “No. They don’t want to take on the quadrant; they want the quadrant to take on itself. They want the Alpha Quadrant races to turn on each other and create all-out war with one another.”

    “By resorting to old tried-and-true tactics,” Will said. “Make an aggressive move, then pin the blame on someone else.”

    Kathryn nodded. Will was right on the money with his assessment. “We think this attack may be the first such move. But there are a few unknown variables: We don’t know who the target is, and we don’t know who the Cabal is planning to frame for the attack.”

    “So, how do we stop this from happening?” Dani asked. “There has to be a plan, or you wouldn’t be telling us this.”

    “That’s where all of you come in,” Kathryn said. “You are my extraction team. Your assignment is to go in, retrieve the disease, and neutralize it. None of you are wet-behind-the-ears ensigns fresh out of the Academy, and you all have experience carrying out covert missions. Each of you was chosen because you’re among the best at what you do. Consequently, I expect nothing less.”

    She nodded to her assistant, a wet-behind-the-ears ensign fresh out of the Academy. The young man promptly produced a short stack of PADDs, which he handed to the admiral. She handed the stack to Riker, and he took one off the top, passing it on to Dani.

    Dani couldn’t understand it. Once again she found herself being briefed on a secret mission that she was going to be part of. How was she in this situation again, especially after what had happened the last time?

    Of course, Dani rationalized, only a few people knew the truth behind her mission to Cardassia the previous year. Officially, the mission was an unbelievable success.Officially, Dani had ensured the release of Federation ambassador Hea Starr from the Cardassian labor camp by offering herself as a replacement. She was rescued months later. She was determined to have developed Stockholm syndrome and underwent counseling under the care of Deanna Troi.

    The unofficial truth of the situation would be enough to get Dani booted out of Starfleet for treason and dereliction of duty. The real reason she’d remained on Cardassia was the lure of another chance to have a life with Marac Dukat. That had been the one and only reason she’d remained on Cardassia. But Starr had told a different story when he was debriefed. His version of the story became the official version.

    “These are the details of your mission,” Kathryn said, referring to the PADDs.

    Dani’s eyes eagerly skipped across the PADD as soon as she received it. The Defiant would transport them to Tandar Prime. Once there, the away team was supposed to take a runabout to the surface. From there, three members of the team would begin the retrieval portion of the mission. The biomatter was located in a secret facility run by the Suliban. The team was supposed to gain access to the facility and locate the biomatter, which was on the facility’s lowest level.

    Kathryn turned to her assistant, who promptly handed her what looked like a typical tricorder. She opened it and displayed it for everyone at the table. “The Daestrom Institute has provided us with this modified tricorder, which has been calibrated to scan specifically for the diseases components,” she said. She handed it to Bashir, who took it and began to study it.

    “There’s one more objective to this mission,” Kathryn said. “Before you leave the facility, you need to damage the Cabal’s computer database to prevent them, or at the very least delay them, from synthesizing a replacement batch of the disease. You’ll do this by uploading a virus to their computer. Our people believe that this will also deactivate the forcefields around the facility and disarm any alarms. The runabout will be standing by to beam you back once you signal. Are there any questions?”

    “This sounds like a good plan,” Chakotay began, “but what’s to stop the Cabal from synthesizing the disease again at some point down the line? How do we move beyond a temporary solution and get at the heart of the problem?”

    “We don’t,” Kathryn replied. “We can’t, not without killing every Suliban in the galaxy. That’s the only way to ensure that the Cabal don’t reemerge and try this again later.”

    She rose from her seat and walked over to the large windows. “When fighting terrorism, there are no guarantees. We have to take it one day at a time. Yes, this is only a temporary solution.” She turned to face the officers again. “But it’s the only solution we’ve got right now. This mission isn’t supposed to end everything. It might; we don’t know. We don’t know if this attack was supposed to be the only one or he first of many. We have to fight based on what we know, and what we know is that this particular attack was eminent.”

    She returned to her seat but remained standing behind it. “Are there any more questions?” No one said anything or made a move. “This is a serious mission, but I have the utmost faith in each and every one of you. The Defiant leaves for Tandar Prime one week from today. You’re all dismissed.”

    Everyone rose and began to file out of the observation lounge. “Dani,” Kathryn said.

    Dani stopped just short of the door. She turned and walked over Kathryn.

    “I didn’t want to drop in like this and surprise you,” Kathryn said, “but I didn’t have much of a choice. This mission is classified to the highest levels, and I didn’t have the luxury of telling anyone, even your father.”

    “I understand that,” Dani said. “What I can’t understand is why I’ve been tapped for this mission. After what happened on my last special mission, I can’t imagine that Starfleet Intelligence would want me on another mission for them.”

    “That’s where you’re wrong,” Kathryn said. “The head of Starfleet Intelligence is very impressed with your work. She specifically requested you for this mission.”

    “Admiral Nechayev?” Dani said. “She requested me?”

    Kathryn nodded. “Dani, we both know what really happened on Cardassia, but the entire Federation was privy to a different version because of Ambassador Starr. Dani, you’re a remarkable officer, regardless of what really happened with Dukat. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your mother. That’s my professional opinion, and I would say it even if we weren’t related. In a way, Starr’s return legitimated your Starfleet career for everyone else. You have to remember that it’s his version of the story that they’re reacting to.”

    “First they hate me, then they love me,” Dani said. “I wish they would just make up their minds.”

    Kathryn chuckled at her daughter’s exasperated demeanor. “Well, you do have to admit: having people love you is a lot better than having them hate you.”