Cerulean Stars - Chapter 145

Chapter 145 - Destiny - Part 4

Stardate 48547.1 - July 19, 2371 - 16:35:45

Moving the comet thankfully hadn’t delayed them any given the setup time needed for the relay, so with that done and the relay now in position, the Defiant was currently shooting a series of soliton carrier waves out of its deflector at the wormhole.

“I'm not receiving anything.” Jadzia said after a moment passed with no acknowledgement signal from the station.

“Then we have to assume it didn't work.” Ulani returned, entering a few quick data points into her science station before continuing. “Let’s try theta band frequency.”

The beam cut out, resuming a few seconds later in a slightly darker shade of yellow and Raine winced as a wave of something she couldn't quite describe washed over her. “I think something's happening.”

“Sensors are picking up a neutrino surge from the wormhole!” Jadzia announced in alarm as the mouth of the wormhole surged open on the viewscreen.

“Report!” Sisko snapped.

“It looks like the carrier wave caused the wormhole to open.” Jadzia answered after a moment.

Another wave passed over them, this time causing a slight vibration to run through the ship.

“The wormhole is emitting a series of increasing gravitational waves.” Raine reported as the sensors managed to isolate the feeling to an actual datapoint. “We're currently at three times normal levels and rising.”

“Terminate the carrier wave and maintain our position.” Sisko ordered

Ulani quickly began entering a string of commands into her station, and the beam shooting from the Defiant’s deflector to the wormhole winked out. 

“Gravimetic readings are returning to normal.” Raine reported.

Spinning around in his chair to the science station, Sisko shot a questioning look at the two Cardassians. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure.” Ulani admitted after studying the data on her station's display for a moment. “The carrier wave shouldn’t have affected the wormhole like that.”

Sisko turned to the station Dejar was at. “Was there any damage to the relay?”

Several seconds passed before Dejar shook her head. “None. I'm still receiving the test signal.”

Glancing over at the small area of the LCAR she had sectioned off to keep track of the comet, Raine blinked, and then quickly cycled the sensors to make sure the image of the comet breaking apart wasn’t some sort of error. 

“Sir?” She interjected when the video remained the same. “The comet’s breaking up.”

“What?” Sisko demanded, sounding almost as confused as she felt. “How?”

“I don’t know.” Raine admitted honestly.

They had moved the comet a good five hundred thousand kilometers away from the wormhole, which should have put it far enough that the gravitational waves from the wormhole acting up should have been less of a disruption to its structure than their own tractor beam.

Several seconds passed before Sisko spoke again. “Put it on screen.” 

Following his orders, Raine transferred the sensor feed she had been using to the central viewscreen.

It was suggestive from the way the comet was breaking up into three distinctive chunks that there had been some preexisting fault lines within the comet. However they had scanned for anything like that when moving it, and it had been about as sturdy as an ice and silithium comet could get.

Sisko leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his beard in silent contemplation. “Dax, did its course change any?”

“Yes.” Jadzia confirmed as her hands flew across the controls. “It looks like it's on an orbital path to intercept the wormhole in… Roughly twenty years now.”

Silence filled the bridge as those who were around for Raine's earlier theorizing exchanged disturbed looks.

“Can you run a projection of what its course would be now if we hadn't moved it?” Sisko inquired.

“I should be able to.” Jadzia nodded as she once again began typing. “Just give me a minute.”

“All right,” She continued in an odd tone after about thirty seconds. “It looks like the comet fragments would have been on a direct course to intersect the wormhole within the next day.”

Raine could all but hear Sisko’s frown as he processed that. “I’m starting to feel a bit like we’re caught in someone else’s mouse trap.” Several seconds passed before he nodded to himself as he seemed to come to some decision. “We’ll continue with the experiment. Brooks, I want you to try and figure out just how that comet got into the system, and if possible, who is responsible for it.”

“Let’s just hope it’s not Q again.” He muttered under his breath. 

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Discovering that the comet had likely been targeted at the wormhole had triggered the same itch to find any answer in Raine that had once led to her spending several days researching the ecological balance of the tribble homeworld.

Unfortunately this particular puzzle didn't have decades of other people asking similar questions for her to fall back on.

“That's a face I know from the mirror.” Jadzia put forward as she set her dinner tray down on the table and settled into the mess hall chair across from Raine's own. “So what problem has you stuck?”

Flipping around the padd she was using, Raine showed the Trill its contents “That stupid comet. At first I thought it might have been the Dominion trying to shut down the wormhole.”

“Makes sense.” Jadzia nodded in agreement before spearing a small tomato with her fork and popping it into her mouth.

“Except there's nothing there.” Raine groused, dropping the padd onto the table with a clatter to grab her spoon and angrily stab her half cooled soup. “No warp or impulse trails, no residual spatial distortions, as far as scans can tell the comet literally just appeared out of thin air at the edge of the solar system.”

It was getting to the point the only remaining possibilities she could think of were godlike aliens or time travel. And neither of those were very likely given that both godlike aliens and time travelers should have been able to compensate for the wormhole's gravitational surges.

Well, unless she had been right earlier when she had theorized about the possibility of the gravitational surges not previously existing. But if that was the case, she would have expected whoever sent the comet to have reacted to the Prophet's reaction by now.

“I really hope this isn't a temporal war thing.” She muttered as her mind began to run itself in circles of, potentially unrecognizable to them, cause and effect.

Jadzia gave her an odd look. “A temporal war thing?”

Raine grimaced, having forgotten for a moment that most people didn't know about that. “Do you know anything about the great Florida canyon?"

“Emony visited it once.” Jadzia confirmed with a small smile. “There was a very attractive gymnast who had a thing for her spots.”

“But I'm guessing you don't know its history?” Raine guessed, completely unsurprised at the reasoning given everything she'd heard about Emory over the years.

Jadzia shook her head as her smile turned slightly impish. “She was a bit too busy studying his flexibility to bother looking up the history of the place.”

“Fair enough.” Raine nodded in understanding, having been similarly engrossed with hookups on more than one occasion herself. “But the canyon was formed in twenty-one fifty-three when the Xindi were tricked into attacking Earth with a superweapon by a group of extra-dimensional time-traveling aliens as part of an ongoing temporal war that will span across a few hundred years of our future.”

Several seconds passed as Jadzia processed her words before she narrowed her eyes at Raine in clear suspicion. “Are you putting me on? Because I feel like I would have heard about something that big happening.”

“Starfleet Academy only really covers it in their fourth year temporal mechanics classes.” Raine admitted. “They likely would have preferred to bury it entirely. But at the time they needed to make it clear for future reasons that the Xindi weren't really responsible.”

“Future reasons?” Jadzia pressed, her salad temporarily forgotten.

Raine gave a helpless shrug. “That's what the class material said. If you want to know more you'd probably have to put in a records request with the DTI.”

An odd look flashed across Jadzia's features. “Do they ever actually answer those?”

“No clue.” Raine shrugged again. “Probably depends on who's asking and what they want to know.”

“Still can't believe you made it through all four years of temporal mechanics classes.” Jadzia muttered in bemusement as she resumed eating her dinner.

“Eh,” Raine offered in between spoonfuls of soup. “The last two years were mostly just coming to understand linear non-linearity and the various ways temporal flows will actively try and keep history on track.”

“Speaking of scientific puzzles though," Raine continued with a smirk. “How are things going with the communications relay?”

“Badly.” Jadzia sighed. “As much as the Cardassians should have included the full risks in their data. They were right about the models where the inversion occurred being so far outside of how scientific study shows the wormhole normally working that it shouldn't have happened.”

“Are you sure it did?” Raine asked as her mind flashed back to one of her earlier musings. “We didn't try that theta band frequency again. So for all we actually know the Wormhole Aliens could have just chosen that exact moment to initiate the inversion themselves. And that's not even getting into the possibility of things like a cloaked ship from the future or Obsidian Order agent Dejar sabotaging the test in some way my people weren't able to catch.”

Jadzia's fork full of lettuce paused in its trek halfway to her mouth, and she stared at Raine with a look that was halfway between shocked and confused. “Dejar’s Obsidian Order?”

“Yes?” Raine confirmed with a slow nod. “I sent out a report about it to all members of the senior staff last night.”

“No, you didn't.” Jadzia shook her head.

“Sure I did.” Raine countered with a frown. “Before heading back to my quarters last night I stopped by at Dejar’s to warn her not to pull anything. Then right away when I got back I wrote up the report. Then had to wrangle Saya and D'Vana into bed after they got a sugar high from binging on ice cream. Which was followed by re-locked up the melee weapons they had pulled out of one of my locked storage units. After that I finished going over the report Odo wrote up about his encounter with that Changeling in the badlands, spent an hour talking to Morn after he stopped by for a surprise visit to thank me for some dating advice, went over the security arrangements for the Grand Nagus’s secret visit, then passed out on the couch while going over next week's duty assignments.”

“So you forgot to send out the report.” Jadzia said, biting her lip in a way Raine knew meant the Trill was holding back laughter.

“No? I sent it out after…” Raine trailed off as she mentally went over the series of events again, only to hang her head when the realization hit. “I forgot to send out the report…”

“You forgot to send out the report.” Jadzia repeated with a giggle.

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“And you’re sure she’s Obsidian Order?” Sisko said, staring intently at Raine from the other side of his ready room's small desk.

“My source hasn’t been wrong about this sort of thing yet.” Raine confirmed, strategically leaving out that her source was memories of a television show from another universe.

Sisko nodded. “Well, have your people continue to keep watch on her. Given what happened with Legat Ghemor, she might just be here to keep tabs on the other two.”

“Or sabotage the mission as a way to embarrass Central Command.” Raine floated, vaguely recalling something about.

“If that’s the case, then she’s already failed.” Sisko put forward, leaning back in his chair with a look of smugness she was well used to by now.

“You solved the carrier wave problem?” Raine guessed.

Sisko nodded, clasping his hands together as a grin settled onto his face. “I was going over Ulani’s data in my head when it hit me. What if we used a small bit of the silithium from the comet to create a subspace pathway for signals to travel through the wormhole?”

Raine twitched, a sudden suspicion settling over her that the Prophets may have for once decided to actually throw them a bone. “And that will work?”

“I have Jadzia and Ulani double checking my simulations now.” Sisko confessed, reminding Raine once again that the man was very much the quintessential starfleet polymath. “But so far the data looks good.”

The temptation hit Raine to point out how Sisko’s idea would basically be fulfilling the words of the prophecy. However she tempered the urge with the knowledge that it would likely just sour the man’s good mood.

“In regards to the comet, I wasn’t able to find any traces of how it got to this system. So my suggestion is going to be to take some samples and take it together with our sensor readings for a proper research team to go over.”

“I was afraid of that.” Sisko muttered, staring intently at Raine as he seemed to weigh something. “Is there any chance it was Q?”

Raine considered the question for a moment before holding up a hand and wiggling it a little. “I want to say no since he’s not here taunting us about the situation. But I can’t entirely rule it out either given Q’s true motivations are about as oblique as they get.”

“That’s about what I figured,” Sisko said with a tired sigh. “Dismissed.”

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Author’s Notes: Sometimes the mystery remains a mystery. Though hey, at least they got the communications uplink working.