Incarnations

Posted on Wed Dec 4th, 2024 @ 12:45am by The Commander & Doc & Commander Alex Flynn & Lieutenant Rune Thul & Doctor Intharia T'Zor & Lieutenant Commander Atna & Ensign Abra Akzhouri & Ensign P'Lar & SubLieutenant Attania Viren
Edited on on Thu Dec 5th, 2024 @ 8:07am

1,709 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: DownTime [1]
Location: Sickbay, USS Excalibur
Timeline: 1450 - MD02 (After 'Until it's over')

“Akzhouri, you have the bridge. P’Lar, I want you to get the Cupid ready for launch or beamout at a moment’s notice. Everyone else with me." Flynn said, standing from the unexpectedly comfortable Captain’s chair of the Excalibur. It looked like just like the one on the New Jersey that she’d seen in the fleet museum. She hated that she now associated it with the horrors they'd just seen. Things were about as serious as they got. They were all that was left of DS13’s crew.

Together, they moved silently to sickbay, where the holographic doctor was conducting further scans on the ship’s commander in stasis.

“Wake him up.” Flynn told the hologram.

“You know that means he –“ Doc started.

“Now, Doctor. I know what it means.” Alex responded in a tone that let the hologram know she had no time for anything but business.

The stasis field lowered, and the Commander once again realised his own pain as he stirred. “You’re back. Ready to put me out of my misery?” He asked with the languid tone of one who had just woken up, managing to conceal his discomfort as his cells decayed.

“That thing in the shuttlebay got loose. It just destroyed our station and killed everyone aboard. More than a thousand people. Now it’s off to god knows where. Tell me what it is and how to destroy it. Now.” Alex imperiously told the reclining commander.

“It’s called a Dalek. Normally they don’t have names, but this one belonged to a research cult. It’s name is Dalek Muul. Last of the Cult of Skaro. I used every weapon in this ship’s arsenal to kill it, save one. They cling to life as furiously as they take it from others. Your weapons have no effect, I take it?” The Commander asked.

“Everything we fire seems to dissipate before it reaches the target. A larger weapon managed to displace it, but it didn’t seem to do any harm.” Alex responded. She noticed that his vitals on the biobed were starting to spike. Doc looked like he wanted to do something, but there was nothing he could do.

“Hmm. It’s no time to die, but I’m afraid it’s too late for anything else. I’m going to try something that may not be possible. If I don’t return, I’m sorry, but you’re on your own.” The Commander’s strength seemed to briefly return to him, and he almost seemed to glow from within. With Doc’s help he made it to his feet. He looked nervous, and smiled to all assembled. “I’m sorry for this. Truly. If I can I will help you undo it.” He took a few deep breaths. It wasn’t just a trick of the light, he was definitely glowing.

The Commander threw his arms out as far as they could go, and from within him, a surging orange energy exploded outwards from his limbs, a geyser of sparks and smoke and pure light that seemed to drain into the walls and floor around them. It surged for longer than anyone was expecting, but then suddenly it was gone, and so too was the Commander. It was like he’d broken down into the light and disappeared into it.

"Well. Shite. Suggestions?" Alex asked the assembled crew, after the silence went on a moment longer than she was expecting.

Before anyone could respond, an image of the Commander appeared in the spot where he had been standing. From the slight errors that appeared as it moved and the opacity of it, it was obviously a two-dimensional projection, the sort the Constitution-class was capable of even once the extensive holographics it was manufactured with were removed across the fleet.

"Well I'll be. It worked. Fancy that." The Commander said with a laugh, looking at his own hand, then his other limbs. He felt himself to make sure he was real, even though he was obviously a projection. He stuck his hands through his own chest, to his own amusement. "You probably have thousands of questions, and now that I'm no longer dying, I will give them to you. But time is a factor, and I must get several essential processes started. Follow me." The Commander told them, and the projection of him walked towards the door.

As the door opened, inexplicably it lead to the bridge, as though he'd just gone through from the turbolift. He gestured to all of them, and they followed.

Within the bridge, the Commander walked through the command chair and consoles like a ghost, moving to a point right in front of the viewscreen. "Some of you may have discovered this already, but this ship is not quite what it seems."

As The Commander said it, the wall that held the viewscreen split in the middle and separated apart. Instead of the empty sea of the frozen moon held back by forcefields, they instead saw another room. It was larger than the bridge, larger perhaps than any single room outside of main engineering. It was an oddly elaborate but strangely anachronistic combination of designs and styles, all surrounding a central console that connected to a pillar that went up into the roof.

The Commander moved to the central console and began to interact with it. Even though he was obviously only made of light, it responded to his touch. Levers were pulled, buttons pressed and toggles toggled. Within the central pillar, something began to glow, then to rise and fall. It wasn't clear what was happening, but clearly it was something. "Alright, now. Questions?" The Commander asked.

"Yes. Who, what, how and why the fuck is any of this?" Alex asked, knowing they should be outside the ship in their current positions.

"The ship you came aboard is not what it appears. It has a flawless camouflage system that allows it to aesthetically and functionally disguise itself as something ubiquitous to its surrounds. For all intents and purposes, it is the USS Excalibur, however as is the style of my people's technology, it's bigger on the inside than the outside." The Commander explained.

"The Dalek called you Time Lord, I think. Is that who you really are?" Alex queried, recalling something the Dalek had said earlier.

"The Time Lords are my people. Or, were. They were wiped out alongside the rest of the Daleks. I prefer the far less ostentatious 'Gallifreyan', personally. We have the ability to regenerate our bodies into new forms if they're killed. I however already used up my apportionment of resurrections trying to destroy Dalek Muul, this body was my last. I'd heard that it might be possible to integrate one's mind into the ship itself with a final surge of latent regeneration energy, seems that was right. Not the way I planned to spend my retirement, but it's better than the alternative." The Commander said, checking another display on another side of the round console, and inputting something accordingly.

Alex gestured to the others, in case anything pressing remained unsaid.

Viren looked like she might sneeze, but then didn't. Her expression suggested it took willpower. She looked rather bored by the whole experience, but in truth she was deep in thought about how it all worked.

The Commander finished what he was doing, and moved back to the front, giving the assembled team his full attention.

Atna folded her arms and looked at the image of the Commander unamused. "Everything we've seen has gone from the unlikely to the fantastical. What you are describing is no different. How does any of this help us? Or are you just as humans say, 'flexing'?"

The Commander chuckled slightly at Atna's question, and use of human parlance. "I may be a stranger in a strange land, but I know better than to expect a Vulcan to take anything on faith, Lieutenant. The oldest species in your Federation has been spacefaring for what, five to ten thousand years? In that time you have achieved marvels that the people of the early days would dismiss as sorcery. My people's history as masters of time and space spans a billion. With a B. I do not intend to boast, merely to set the context by which these impossible things take place. And I promise, now that all is in readiness, I will fix this. You will all set foot on an unharmed Deep Space 13, and see your colleagues and loved ones again." He spoke the last part to each of them.

Atna didn't look satisfied by the answer, but she remained silent.

Intharia spoke after a silent moment. "Are you at all familiar with my people? Do you know how I might get back to my universe?"

"I'm afraid you are as mysterious as you are delightful, my dear Doctor T'Zor. This is the only universe I've been in other than my own, and I'm afraid we don't have Asari anywhere I've been. Our loss, I assure you." The Commander told Intharia with a slightly forlorn smile he hoped was comforting.

Rune wasn't quite present, even though he physically was with the group that was conversing with the Commander. He had hours ago been through a harrowing emotional trial about facing his parents' deaths and now his family had just died in an explosion. He felt numb all over. Furthermore, he wasn't even sure he wanted to hear hope spoken of and then deal with the possibility that it was merely fantasy.

He just stood there with the others, withdrawn. He was experiencing heartache, anger and powerlessness all in one maelstrom. Rune had the urge to chase the Dalek, but knew it was far superior to their technology that it was irrational to charge after it without any plan. He looked around at the group, finally settling on the Time Lord, just listening. He didn't have anything to contribute so remained slient.

The Commander looked across them and realised no more questions were forthcoming. "I'll need you all to get into whatever position you're best suited to in order to fix this. As a friend of mine was quite fond of saying, allons-y."

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