"Time Storm"

[Atoz 77]

TIME STORM >>>>>

Captain's log, Stardate 53920.2: The Odysseus has just begun a survey of 954-IV, a marginally class M planet in the Sagitta Delta sector. The scout vessel Raven had reported finding ruins there, but so far we haven't turned up anything of that nature. Science Officer Weir has taken a shuttlecraft out in a quick circumnavigation of the planet to see if she can spot them from the air.

The shuttlecraft Calypso streaked through the clear, blue sky like an aerodynamically shaped stone skimming over a pond. At least that's the way pilot Lt. Luke Caeli pictured it. They were flying five miles above the surface, where the atmosphere was just thick enough to support the occasional wispy cloud formation which they tore through like fog. But mostly the sky was empty except for them. Caeli could imagine someone down there on the surface watching the ten meter long ship dart past, moving almost too fast to see, and perhaps leaving a thin contrail behind it.

But in all probability, there wasn't anyone down there to see them. Caeli had been keeping one eye on the visual display, situated in the cockpit between his seat and Ensign Neil De Jager's, watching mile after mile of barren rock and mountain slip past underneath them, relieved every now and then by a green patch of evergreen forest or prairie. Even from this high up, he should have seen cities or cultivation if they had been there.

De Jager kept snapping his head back and forth from the visual display to the sensor display so much it was a wonder he didn't have a crink in his neck. The fingers of his left hand tapped instructions into the computer while his free hand just tapped irritably on the console. Earlier in the mission he had been more talkative, making comments on surface readings -- air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure. As they passed the halfway point in their circuit of the planet, he would only sigh heavily.

"What's the matter, ensign?" Caeli asked casually.

"Nothing, sir," De Jager said quickly. Then he laughed shortly. "It's just... I was hoping my first away mission would be more exciting."

"The day is still young, ensign."

"Wait; is that something?" De Jager said suddenly, perking up as the shuttle passed the shoreline and started over ocean. "Commander? Did that look like a structure to you?"

"Could be," said Lieutenant Commander Diane Weir, at the main sensor station in the rear of the cabin. Her tone of voice was flat and expressionless. "But it could just as easily be a natural formation." A second or two ticked past as she weighed the chances in her mind. "Lieutenant, would you mind making another pass over that area?"

"My pleasure, commander," Caeli said eagerly. With a grin, the helmsman pulled back the throttle, putting the craft into a tight one eighty turn to port, at the same time dropping his altitude by about a mile. The G-forces involved in the sudden maneuver briefly slammed them all into their seat cushions. De Jager shot him an aggravated look, but Weir merely braced her arms against her station console and relaxed in the inertia-absorbing field of her seat.

Completing the turn, Caeli was startled to see a massive black storm cloud directly behind them. "Whoa! Where did that come from?" he said to nobody in particular. Privately he was thinking that's what he got for watching the scenery instead of his navigational sensors. But the storm was building in intensity fast, sending out forks of lightning even as he watched. Air turbulence was already battering the small craft.

"I don't like the looks of that," Weir said nervously, looking out the forward port along with them. "You'll be able to outrun it, won't you?"

"No problem, sir," Caeli said, wrestling with the controls as another gust of wind shook the shuttlecraft. "I'll try to climb over it. You two had better strap though, just in case."

***

Captain Atoz was just leaving his quarters, data padd in hand, reading over the text of a research paper he was working on, when the yellow alert sounded. At the same time, First Officer Charles Fawkes' voice came over the intercom system announcing, "Secure stations for imminent ion storm! Secure all stations! This is not a drill!"

Atoz frowned. There had been no reports of any storm activity at this morning's briefing. He walked toward the nearest turbolift at a faster pace, tapping his comm badge. "Captain to Bridge. Charles, what's going on?"

"Wish I could tell you, Captain," the First Officer's grim voice replied. "An ion storm just blew up from out of nowhere. Force 2.2 already, high radiation front. I've taken the ship out of orbit to give us a little more room to run if we have to."

Atoz got into the turbolift and said, "Bridge." As the lift started upward, he struggled to think. "How long do we have until the storm hits?" he asked Fawkes.

"About forty seconds now."

Atoz was shocked. "Forty--?" The turbolift doors opened with a hiss. Atoz stepped out onto the bridge, his eyes automatically going to the main view screen, where he could see the storm front bearing down on them like a boiling hot cloud of gas. He moved forward to the command module railing, from where he could see the radiation indicator along the lower edge of the screen, counting the first high energy ions as they pinged against the tritanium hull of the ship. The yellow alert lights were still silently flashing on and off, adding their note of tension.

"Force three intensity and still rising, Captain," Lt. Rosh reported from the Tactical station. "High density radiation, field variances and turbulence. It has characteristics of a nova shell."

"But long range sensors still show this system's star as a placid G5," Fawkes added, from his seat in the command chair. Standing beside the chair was Arachne, the holographic avatar of the ship's computer, in the form of a lovely Greek goddess.

"What about our survey teams on the surface?" Atoz said.

"I already recalled them," Fawkes said. "Arachne says the atmosphere would probably protect them, but the ions would brew up a monster of a thunderstorm. I figure why take chances?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Fawkes," interrupted Ensign Amelia Penner at Communications. "Transporter room reports the last away team has beamed up."

"Good," the First Officer said. "Raise shields, Mr. Rosh."

"Shields raised."

"The Calypso," Atoz said, remembering the shuttlecraft. "Are you in contact with them, Amelia?"

"I tried earlier, Captain," the comm officer said, "but there was electrical interference."

"The shuttle's hull is shielded," Atoz said uneasily. "They might be able to ride it out, or just land someplace sheltered. I trust Caeli's judgment."

Penner adjusted her earpod. "Calypso? Odysseus calling Calypso. Luke, can you hear me?"

"Here it comes," warned Fawkes, bracing himself in the command chair. Atoz grabbed the railing with both hands and held on tight as the main wave of the storm hit the ship like a physical force. The lights on the bridge flickered and dimmed, the starship rocking violently forward and backward as the gravity variance passed over, making the deck tremble under his feet.

[Atoz 77]

As soon as Caeli realized that he was still alive and unhurt -- his pulse was banging like a tambourine, his skin felt sweaty and his body shaky all over from the adrenalin rush, but the young New Roman thanked Jupiter that he still breathing at all -- his eyes automatically swept over the instrument panel in front of him. The ship was alive, too, just barely. Calypso had taken some structural damage and her main engines were out, but she still had auxiliary power.

She had come to a dead stop. Caeli looked out through the forward port, but some kind of rubble was blocking his view. Well, like they say in pilot training, any crash landing you can walk away from is good.

He remembered the crash vividly. The turbulence from the thunderstorm had proved to be worse than he had counted on. He had tried to climb over it and get into space, but the nav sensors had picked up the ion storm bearing down on the planet. The only alternative in that case was to land someplace until it blew over. The last words he remembered saying were: "Hold on, everybody. I think I can set the shuttle down on the lee side of that hill."

But then the thrusters had unexpectedly cut out for no reason at all. Suddenly he was gliding her in under no power at all. Even so, he still might have accomplished it had not that multi-story glass and steel building suddenly loomed up ahead of them, right in their path. He had done the best he could to slow the ship and reduce their impact. He remembered the ship crashing through the outer skin of the building, then through interior wall after wall, finally touching down and skidding over about fifteen meters of corridor until she had finally come to a stop. A dead stop.

"Is everyone all right?" Weir asked.

Caeli glanced back at her. The Science Officer looked a little bedraggled, with a bleeding cut on her temple, but otherwise unhurt. The pilot felt around the console and turned on the cabin lights. "I'm okay, sir," he said, turning toward the seat beside him. "De Jager?"

De Jager was lying slumped over, half out of his seat. Caeli unstrapped himself and climbed over his inert form, checking him over gently for injuries. Weir soon joined him, and the two of them were able to unbuckle the unconscious ensign and carry him to the hatch. Caeli hit the OPEN switch with his elbow. The hatch slid back into its slot easily, allowing them to carry their burden outside the shuttlecraft and lay him on the floor.

Yes, floor. The shuttle had come to rest in what appeared to be a lobby, carpeted and decorated in muted pastel colors with a few tall potted plants. Directly in front of them was a long faux wooden reception desk, currently unattended. To their left was an unoccupied waiting area with several comfortable chairs and sofas. Together they carried De Jager to one of those. The outer wall of the waiting room consisted of floor to ceiling windows giving a panoramic view of outside where the thunderstorm was raging, blasting wind and rain against the glass.

Once the ensign was taken care of, Weir stood up and took a curious look around. "We really did crash into a building," she said incredulously. Then she made a sort of half shrug. "In a way, I'm relieved. I was afraid for a moment that I had a concussion and I had imagined that."

"It's not as if I was actually aiming for it, commander," Caeli complained, a little defensively. "The engines cut out. It wasn't a lightning strike or anything. They just cut out."

"Yes, I remember that, too," the Science Officer said, frowning. "They shouldn't have done that. It felt almost like some kind of subspace dampening field were in operation."

"And where did a whole building come from on this barren planet anyway?"

"It simply wasn't here before. I was scanning the area, and trust me -- there was nothing here before we crashed into it."

Caeli tapped his comm badge. "Calypso to Odysseus! Come in, Odysseus!" But there was no carrier wave at all. He shook his head.

Weir studied the waiting area. "The chairs and doorways look as though they were designed for humanoids of approximately our size," she said, strolling toward the vacant reception desk. "And the furnishings--"

A hologram suddenly flicked to life behind the desk. "Welcome to Hotel Oceana, where every day is a vacuum sealant protects four ways!" it said. "If you'd like to give me your chain pockets, we can get you processed right in!"

The speaker was humanoid, thin, apparently male, dressed in a metallic blue suit and tie. He was more reptilian than mammal, his skin covered with fine, silvery green scales. At the same time, he had a patch of wispy hair flowing along the crown of his head.

Weir approached the desk. "Hello. I'm Lieutenant Commander Diane Weir, and this is Lieutenant Luke Caeli. We're from the United Federation Starship Odysseus."

The hologram flickered. "Tsk, tsk! We don't seem to have any reservations under those names. Could it be under a pale and cloudless sky?"

"I'm afraid you don't understand," Weir began. The hologram flickered again, briefly becoming a female reptilian wearing a green and yellow sarong before changing back into himself. Weir decided that it must be malfunctioning. "Look, can we talk to the manager?" she said. "Or a supervisor maybe?"

"I would like to help you, but the Hotel is booked solid," the hologram said, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. "You could try the Hotel Mirage, down the boulevard just past the Antares Maelstrom. Please come again." Then he simply switched off.

Caeli and Weir, standing in the empty lobby, looked at one another quizzically. "There's got to a computer access," Caeli said, starting to walk around the desk. But just then they heard a groan from De Jager as he began to wake up, and both of them quickly rushed back to check on him.

***

Captain's log, supplemental: The ion storm which appeared so suddenly and inexplicably shows no sign of blowing over soon. After reaching a peak of force 5.1, it seems to have leveled off at 3.9, which Sciences projects could last for weeks. We still have no clue where the storm originated. Meanwhile, subspace interference prevents us from either contacting or locating our missing shuttlecraft.

Atoz paused, tempted to add, "We can only hope that the crew is safe," but he dismissed the idea and shut off the log. The deck was quivering and pitching slightly from one side to the other, but for the time being the starship was steady enough for Fawkes to surrender the command chair and join Rosh beside the Tactical station, anchoring himself to the railing.

The comm whistle sounded. "Engineering to Bridge," said a female voice. "I'm showing 51% on the stabilizers, Captain. That's all I can give you and still keep the shields up. I lost one of my dilithium crystals in the surge, and the power converter itself took damage. That was went your lights dimmed a little while ago. It'll take about an hour to repair before I can replace the crystal."

"Understood, Mr. Vespis. Do what you can. Any chance of warp power to the sensors, to help us cut through this interference?"

"Not the way things look now, Captain. Maybe when the new crystal is in place."

"Do your best," Atoz said. He turned toward the holographic Greek goddess, floating patiently beside his chair. "Arachne, project backward along the path of this storm front. How many stars along that path are within ten parsecs, and show core instability rating of point one or higher?"

"Working," the avatar responded. "One, captain. SD-932, six parsecs distant. It is a black hole binary with a 20% chance of going nova within the next one hundred years."

Atoz turned toward the Tactical station where Fawkes and Rosh were standing. "So that leaves us with the question of how did the storm appear in this system so suddenly without us detecting it far in advance? Any theories on that?"

Rosh stood to attention. "I swear on my honor, Captain," the Eminian said. "The long range scan I made this morning should have seen it."

"I saw that scan, too, Captain," Fawkes added. "There was no indication of any kind."

"I'm not trying to fix blame," Atoz said. "I'm just trying to figure this out. There has to be some explanation."

"With all respect, Captain," Fawkes said, "we can worry about that when our people are safe. Let me send out the runabouts. They're shielded enough to take the radiation, and tough enough to weather the storm in the atmosphere. Rosh and I could do it."

As he finished saying this, the Odysseus canted hard to starboard, obliging them all to hold onto something until the ship righted herself again.

"I'm worried about them, too, Charles," Atoz said, hanging onto his chair. "But I don't want to risk more lives in an attempt to rescue them. Keep working at the sensors. If you can locate them or establish contact, then we'll decide what to do. They could be in a safe haven now for all we know."

"Aye-aye, Captain."

"Ensign Penner, any luck contacting the shuttlecraft?"

"No, sir," the comm officer replied. "There's too much interference."

"Then I'd appreciate it if you found Iara, and let her know what has happened."

Penner made a silent "eek" face. "She probably already knows, sir."

Atoz nodded glumly. The young Cardassian girl whom Science Officer Weir had adopted possessed empathic abilities which were unpredictable that way. "I want you to tell her from me personally that I will do whatever it takes to get Diane and the others back safely."

"Yes, Captain," Penner said, shutting down her station and scrambling toward the turbolift.

"And Amelia... You can stay with her if you feel she needs you."

"Thank you, Captain."


***

"Lie still for a moment, ensign," Weir said soothingly, kneeling beside De Jager as she unfolded her tricorder. "I'm not a doctor, but I should be able to tell if you have any serious injuries." The ensign nodded and lay back on the sofa as she lightly punched commands into the instrument and swept it up and down along his body.

Caeli came jogging over from the shuttlecraft, carrying an emergency medical kit and a duffel bag, and wearing a small, type I phaser on his hip. "Emergency rations for three days each," he said, setting both the kit and the bag within easy reach of Weir. "There's also three sleeping bags. Shelter doesn't look like it's going to be a problem." He paused to look around with a sardonic grin at the lobby. "I have to tell you, commander -- my survival training didn't cover what to do if you crash land in the lobby of a resort hotel."

"An apparently deserted resort hotel," Weir corrected, concentrating on her tricorder. "Have you seen anyone, guest or a staff member, pass through the lobby yet?"

The grin froze on the pilot's face and slid away into a frown.

"You have some bruises and minor contusions, ensign," Weir decided, "but your pulse rate is regular. I don't think you're bleeding internally." The Science Officer stood up, sweeping her tricorder in a half circle. "No life signs apart from our own within fifty meters. Beyond that, I get confused traces in all directions, but nothing definite."

"Humanoids?" Caeli asked uneasily, "or reptiloids, like that clerk we met earlier?"

"I can't tell," Weir said, her fingers typing in new commands. "Beyond five hundred meters..." She paused and frowned as if she had seen something that dismayed or surprised her. "...there's some kind of interference." Briskly she closed the tricorder and slipped the device into its sheath at her waist. "Lieutenant, how long would you say this storm is likely to last?"

All three of them turned to gaze out the windows at the wind and rain, still lashing with undiminished intensity against the glass. "Well, sir," Caeli said judiciously, "the atmospheric disturbance is being fed by an ion storm out in space, and ion storms have been known to last for weeks..."

"But an ion storm only directly affects one hemisphere, sir," De Jager said. "The rotation of the planet will carry us out from its direct influence in a few hours, won't it?"

Weir shrugged. "The bottom line," she said, "is that it could be hours before the ion storm clears enough for the Odysseus' sensors to locate us. I'm open to suggestions."

As a Command officer, Caeli was technically captain of the shuttlecraft. But he didn't resent the way Weir had just implicitly asserted her higher rank. There was no point in arguing over who was in charge. "We might as well make ourselves comfortable," he said diplomatically. "I would start by exploring some of the nearby rooms, to see if there's anything we can use, like food and water."

"That's a good idea," Weir said. "Why don't you two do that? I'm going to see if I can access the computer behind the reception desk."

"Aye-aye, commander," Caeli said, handing her a type I hand phaser. He gave another to De Jager and the two of them set off.

[Atoz 77]

Caeli and De Jager started walking along the broad hallway. The first door they came to puzzled them for a moment. Normally a hotel door simply had a sensor plate with the room number on it. When you checked in, you were given a coded passkey in the form of a small bracelet, and the door would slide open automatically for you. These doors had a plate with a glowing red square. You cupped your hand over the square, it changed to blue, and the door opened. Once the officers figured this out, they opened each door as they came to it and took a quick look inside.

The rooms were empty. That is, they each contained a bed, a desk, and two chairs. Nothing recognizable as luggage and no sign of occupancy.

Caeli hadn't intended to wander far from where Lt. Cmdr. Weir was working on getting into the computer. He planned to go no more than fifty meters, then return and try another corridor. But at fifty meters, the corridor ended with a T intersection, both branches dark.

The Roman's curiosity was piqued. He stepped into the branch to the left, carefully running his hand along the wall, feeling for a light switch or something of that nature. His probing fingers found a small hemisphere of plastic jutting from the wall. As he touched it, the lights in that hallway came on, flickering dimly. The hallway seemed to stretch out ahead as far as he could see.

"Lieutenant?" said De Jager, nervously looking behind him down the dark hallway. For a moment he thought he heard something moving down there. "Lieutenant, shouldn't we get back to Commander Weir?"

"I thought you wanted adventure," Caeli said, walking a few meters down this new corridor. Something was odd. In this hallway, there were rooms only on the right-hand side. The left hand side was an exterior wall, with broad windows looking out at the raging storm. The color scheme down this section was also different. The door plates had a slot instead of that red glowing square. When he passed his hand over the slot, the door swung open instead of sliding into the wall as the others had. He glanced inside; it was the same typical room, as empty as all the others.

But why should the design be different?

Cautiously he followed the hallway, with De Jager lagging a little behind him. His boots squelched into the wet and soggy carpet, and the reason was not long in coming. Two or three windows up ahead had shattered and were letting in the wind and rain. Why had no one repaired this?

Opposite the break in the windows, a side corridor led to an open archway. There was a sign over the arch, but it was in an alien language, completely indecipherable. The universal translator in his ear was good only for verbal communication. Caeli strode through the archway and found a huge dining room with a high ceiling supported by a double line of narrow columns. But unlike the waiting room, which had been in perfect condition, the dining room looked as if a minor tornado had swept through it. A wide path had been cleared from left to right, tables and chairs thrown haphazardly out of the way, many of them broken into pieces.

"What happened in here?" said De Jager, coming up behind him. "Polka night?"

"I don't know," Caeli said, "but where there's a dining room, there's a kitchen. Where there's a kitchen, there's food." He started walking toward the rear of the room, but he hadn't gone ten steps before another hologram appeared directly in front of him.

"Welcome to the Blue Room, sir," said the waiter wearing a white jacket and dark trousers. "Party of two is it? Our specialty tonight is braised beef with green stuff and shredded orange knobs. It's excellent!" He was apparently of the same reptiloid species as the desk clerk, with a similar crest of hair along his head. "But all our tables are engaged just now. I'm sure it won't be more than a ten minute wait. If you will step this way..." He gestured politely back toward the arch.

"Are your sensors working?" De Jager said. "Run a level one diagnostic. There's nobody here but us two."

"Sir is pleased to joke," the waiter said, laughing softly. "But as I said, I'm sure it won't be more than a twenty minute wait. An hour at the very most."

Without any warning something whished in the air, passed right through the face of the waiter and thudded into a column directly behind him. It was a short, black arrow! The hologram waiter flickered and vanished.

Caeli grabbed the shoulder of De Jager's uniform and pushed him ahead, overturning another big table and diving behind it as half a dozen more arrows fell all around them.

"What's going on?" De Jager quavered, curling into a ball behind the table.

"You know as much as I do, ensign," Caeli said, crouching. He risked a peek above the edge of the table, and another arrow immediately thudded into it, making him duck again.

In that instant, he had seen all there was to see. A cluster of people had entered through the far entrance of the dining room. They seemed to be humanoids, not reptiloids, nine or ten of them at a quick count. They were dressed in light clothing -- shorts, shirts and sandals. Some of the males were bare-chested. At least one female in the group seemed to be wearing only a two-piece swimsuit. But all of them were armed, not only with crossbows but with hand weapons attached to them by belts or by lanyards.

"Why don't we shoot back?" De Jager whispered, awkwardly sitting up and clutching his phaser in his hand.

"We only fire phasers as a last resort," the Roman said firmly. After that initial volley, their attackers weren't firing any more arrows. Caeli peeked above the edge again.

"HO!" called the biggest male of the group, standing in plain sight with his crossbow pointed at the ceiling, a sword hanging from his belt. The others had crouched in a rough semi-circle. "Are you Scalers, or what?" he called. "Come out so we can see you!"

Caeli stood up in plain sight, holding his arms out wide to either side, showing his hands empty but at the same time not surrendering. "We're not scalers," he said. "We're Humans."

"Ha!" the woman in the swimsuit said, dropping her crossbow. "I told you they weren't Scalers, Jo-Jom! They're just scavengers." The others relaxed, nevertheless keeping their bows ready.

"This is the territory of the Blue Room Tribe," the big man said. "Everybody knows that. Where are you from? What happened to your weapons?"

Caeli gestured to De Jager that it was all right to stand up. "Sorry if we trespassed," he said. "We're new around here. We didn't know that we needed weapons."

"Didn't know you needed weapons?" Jo-Jom scoffed. He seemed impressed by Caeli's red and black Starfleet uniform. "Somebody's going to kill you if you go around dressed in clothes like a Scaler. The Promenade Tribe certainly would have gutted you on sight."

"Either that or the Crawlers will get you," the woman in the swimsuit said.

"You'd better come with us," the man decided. "We could use a couple of drudge slaves, couldn't we, Moara?" The woman in the swimsuit looked Caeli over, grinning lecherously.

Caeli raised an eyebrow at all that was implied by "drudge slaves", but he grinned back. "As nice as that sounds," he said sarcastically, "I'm afraid we can't take you up on that offer."

"We need to get back to the Lobby," De Jager added.

Up came the crossbows again! Every member of the tribe tensed, their eyes wide as saucers. One young girl screamed and put her hands over her ears. Jo-Jom's face turned red with anger. Dropping his crossbow, he drew his sword.

"The Lobby!" he howled. "Demons from the Lobby!" He charged at the two Starfleet officers in a murderous fury.

Caeli ducked the sword by the skin of his teeth, moving quickly to his left into an open space and scooping up a broken table leg, while De Jager cut the other way. The tribesman came after Caeli, but still the young Roman didn't go for his phaser. The sword flashed towards him; Caeli parried with the table leg, trying to circle. The sword came around again and hacked off the end of Caeli's crude weapon. He dropped it and charged, caught the big man's waist and threw him backward. The sword fell from his hand and skidded across the floor.

The two men wrestled. Jo-Jom had at least 30 kilos on Caeli, but after some back and forth the Roman managed to catch him in an armlock and flip him across the pile of tables. Immediately the rest of the tribe opened fire with their crossbows. Caeli and De Jager beat feet across the dining room, arrows narrowly missing them. Caeli yanked out his phaser, flicked the wheel up to about setting seven, and aimed a shot into a cluster of tables. They went up with an impressive bang and the tribe ducked for cover.

Caeli and De Jager ran down the corridor to where it joined up with the original hallway. There De Jager slowed to a halt. "The windows..." he gasped, catching his breath. Someone or something had evidently repaired them while they had been in the dining room, because they were now in perfect condition. "No broken glass. The carpet isn't even wet!"

"Look out!" Caeli grabbed the ensign's shoulder and hauled him out of the line of fire as four or five arrows smacked into the window one after the other, cracking it. "So that's how they got broken," De Jager said, nonsensically, as they took off running down the hallway.

***

Behind the reception desk, Weir found that there was no manual interface with the computer after all. The Science Officer found the computer itself in the base of the desk, but it seemed to be sealed against intrusion or tampering. She opened her tricorder, scanning for some sort of broadband interface. Eventually Weir was able to access the operating system, but as was to be expected from an alien computer, the system configuration didn't look like anything she had ever seen before.

"Welcome to Hotel Oceana," the hologram desk clerk said as he activated, "where every day is a vacation! If you'd like to give me your charge card, we can get your processed right away."

"Sorry, I've been through this dance before," Weir said, tapping more commands into her tricorder. The hologram changed to a female reptiloid wearing a yellow and green sarong.

"Welcome to Oceana Casino and Resorts," she said, smiling. "Do you have a reservation?"

Weir paused. "What happened to Hotel Oceana?"

"My but you're a history buff, aren't you?" the hologram said. "It hasn't been called that in two hundred years. I don't seem to have a reservation for you. Could I see some identification?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't have any," Weir said, still trying to sort through the system code.

"No problem," the hologram said. "I can fix you up with a temporary identicard. There. That was painless, wasn't it?" Her image flickered. For a second, she was the original male reptiloid, then herself again but wearing a more conservative suit. She flickered again and became a hologram of the building itself, rising some seventeen or eighteen stories. That image flickered and disappeared, and the receptionist was once again wearing the yellow and green sarong, but she was a humanoid. Her scales and other reptilian features had disappeared.

"Welcome to the Oceana Project," she said primly. "May I see your security clearance pass?"

Weir stared. "What is the Oceana Project?"

The hologram receptionist remained where she was, but a separate image of the building itself appeared on the reception desk. It looked completely different, a sprawling structure more than twenty stories high and spreading out over twice the breadth of the earlier building.

"After the Andaris Disaster brought about the end of the Tettala reign and the subsequence collapse of the economy, the Oceana Project was built on the remains of what was previously the Oceana Resort and Casino, its purpose being to--"

"Computer, stop!" shouted a male voice, and the image abruptly froze up.

Weir spun around. Two reptiloids, a male and a female, dressed in form-fitting blue and silver suits had just emerged from the side corridor behind the reception desk. Weir started to make a grab for the phaser which she had left lying on the desk, but the pair were both armed with big, dangerous-looking pistols and were holding them pointed at her in a way which indicated that they were not at all averse to using them.

[Atoz 77]

"Get away from that console, Skinner," the male reptiloid snapped, as he rushed forward and shoved Weir back from the desk. "How did you get in here? What do you think you're doing, messing with something your puny mammal brain couldn't possibly understand? I ought to shoot you down where you stand."

"Be careful, Yodesh," the female said. "Look at the way she's dressed. She may be from further up the line."

"Nonsense. We've explored so many lines, Malen. Have we met even one where the Skinners were as advanced as we are? They're nothing but primitive throwbacks."

"I don't understand what you're talking about," the Science Officer said. "My name is Diane Weir. I'm here by mistake. My spaceship crash-landed--"

"Spaceship!" the male reptiloid scoffed, taking a quick glance at her tricorder and disdainfully handing it back to her. "I suppose next you'll be telling me you came here from another planet."

"That's right," Weir said patiently. "We're explorers. We don't want to cause any difficulty. We'll be on our way as soon as the storm lets up."

"As soon as the storm lets up?" the male echoed, grinning. "Oh I see. Now you're going for insanity. Well it won't work, Skinner."

"I don't know what you mean," Weir said. "I'm only--"

"The storm is an integral feature of this planet's atmosphere," her captor said. "It's been going on for as long as any of us can remember, for centuries in fact, as if you didn't know. If you think pretending to be stupid will help you, forget it. We're going to march you straight to the slave pens with the rest of your kind."

"Yodesh! What is THAT?" the female suddenly said in an alarmed tone of voice, walking around the reception desk to where she could get a clearer look at the Calypso. The male rounded the desk along with her, careful to keep Weir covered with his gun.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," the Science Officer said. "I came here in that spaceship. I have two more crewmen who are out scouting."

Both of the reptiloids seemed to be outright astonished by the sight of the shuttlecraft, so much so that Weir was able to quietly pick up her phaser and slip it into its place at the waist of her uniform as she walked around the reception desk to join them. Malen, the female, moved close enough to touch the shuttle's outer hull, perhaps to convince herself that it was real.

"How does it... how does it go?" she asked. "I mean, what kind of power source does it have?"

"It's powered by antimatter soft fusion cells," Weir said, with a thought to the Prime Directive. Until she knew more about their technological capabilities, it was best to say as little as possible. "I could tell you tell how much energy they produce, but I'm sure that your units of measurement would not be the same as ours."

"Does it produce chronitons?" Yodesh demanded, becoming excited.

"Chronitons?" Weir repeated, puzzled. "Those are theoretical particles. I'm not sure anyone knows how to produce those."

"Does it warp space/time?" Malen asked.

"Yes, I suppose it does," Weir admitted. "I'm not an engineer, so there's not much I can tell you about how it--"

"This could be what we need, Yodesh," Malen said excitedly, standing inside the shuttle's hatchway and looking inside. "We need to bring a team of engineers down here, take it apart, and find out what makes it work."

Weir didn't like the sound of that. She couldn't allow these aliens to examine the shuttlecraft. Quite apart from needing it to get herself and the others home, it would be a violation of the non-interference directive to give them technology they might not be ready for. "Don't I get a say in that?" she asked, edging closer.

"No, you don't," the male snapped, pointing his gun on her absently. "But Malen, if she really is from up the line--"

"It means that Project Oceana wasn't a dead end after all!" Malen said with a grin, looking back over her shoulder at her male companion. "It means that it's possible that some of our sidewise ancestors advanced in technology! We've got to tell the others..."

Weir had heard enough. She had to make some kind of move. "Computer!" she said firmly, speaking loudly enough so that the verbal command pick-ups inside the shuttlecraft could hear her voice. "This is Lieutenant Commander Weir. Security level two immediately! Security two!"

The unemotional feminine voice of the shuttlecraft's computer system replied: "Security Two acknowledged, Commander Weir." Malen, still standing inside the hatchway, felt it start to close on her and stepped back out of its way by pure reflex. The hatch closed tight with a thump.

The two reptiloids turned angrily on Weir, but she was already running, darting back around the reception desk. The Science Officer heard their guns discharge, firing some sort of laser beams which hit the edge of the desk behind her -- Zap! Zap! -- but she didn't slow down. Turning a corner, she came upon a set of lifts. A door slid open for her and Weir ducked inside, with the reptiloids right behind her. Weir pushed a button at random and saw the door snap shut just as her pursuers fired again. And then the lift was moving upward at a fast pace.

Weir leaned her back against the wall of the lift, catching her breath as she tapped her comm badge. "Caeli? De Jager? Can you hear me?"

Immediately her badge chirped and Caeli's voice replied, "I read you, Commander. I'm sorry we were delayed, but this building is like a maze -- walk too far and you get lost."

"Where are you?" she asked.

"We're--" Just then the lift car lurched suddenly and came to a stop. A red emergency light was blinking on the panel. Weir's heart was thudding in her chest like a hammer as she backed away, aiming her phaser at the doorway as it slid open.

Caeli and De Jager were standing here in the hallway, aiming their phasers at her! "I'm glad to see you two," the Science Officer sighed, untensing.

***

On the bridge of the Odysseus, the turbolift doors hissed open. The deck of the starship was still rolling restlessly underfoot in the turbulence caused by the ion storm, but it remained fairly steady as two science officers in blue and black uniforms made their way across to the railing around the command module.

"Captain," said the woman, Lt. Milla Rhyzkov, "Lieutenant Kellerman has an idea about where the ion storm originated. I can't say that I fully grasp it myself."

"What's the answer, Mr. Kellerman?" Atoz asked.

Kellerman seemed suddenly shy at being stared at by the Captain, First Officer, and Chief of Security all at once. To compensate, he grinned broadly. "Maybe not the answer, sir, but I might have a theory. I've been studying the pathways of the ions as they strike the hull of the ship, and they're coming in waves 2.4 to the tenth Planck units apart. They also have an anticlockwise spin which is consistent with them coming through the secondary subspace barrier of five dimensions, or possibly more. From the magnitude of that curve, my estimate is that the storm is arriving here from approximately fifty years in the past."

The bridge was silent for a few seconds. "From the past?" Atoz said, looking from one officer to the other. "You mean a time anomaly?"

"Don't look at me, Captain," said Rhyzkov. "I'm an exobiologist. But Lt. Zima agrees with him, and Arachne says that it's plausible."

"Plausible but not yet confirmed, Captain," the computer's holographic avatar said. "Having reviewed the data, my judgment is that Lieutenant Commander Weir would agree, if she were present."

"The focal point of the effect appears to be the planet itself, sir," Kellerman continued. "I've detected what might be described as an unstable rift in space/time down on the surface. I can't pinpoint its exact location, but it is in the general area that the shuttlecraft disappeared."

"So what's our move?" Atoz said. "Can we stabilize the rift and rescue our people?"

The two science officers looked at one another. Kellerman licked his lips. "This is theoretical, Captain. I'm not sure there is anything we can do. Our best bet might be to take the ship out of the focal area as quickly as possible until such time as the rift stabilizes on its own."

"And leave our people behind?" Atoz said. "I know you're not suggesting that."

"Well, sir, I--"

Just then the ship was hit by a particularly rough wave of gravimetric turbulence, which she reacted to by rocking violently backward and then forward again. The bridge lights flickered off momentarily, and it seemed to take the ship longer to rise to an even keel.

The comm system whistled. "Engineering to Bridge," said Vespis. "We just lost one of our stabilizer units. EPS conduits 9 J and K have ruptured. If the storm continues like this, we're going to be taking structural damage, Captain. Is there any sign of it letting up?"

Kellerman was shaking his head. "It's locked in a temporal cycle, Captain, like a repeating time loop. Remember when the storm reached a peak of 5.1? According to my calculations, that same peak is going to hit us again in less than twenty minutes."

Atoz sat back in his chair. "Then you have less than twenty minutes to find a way to either stabilize the rift or send a runabout into it long enough to rescue our people. I'm not leaving them behind."

***

As Weir joined Caeli and De Jager in the hallway, she realized that the ensign's right arm was in a crude sling and was bandaged with part of the sleeve of his uniform. "You're hurt!" she said. "How did that happen?"

"We ran into a big, ugly, lobster-like thing, sir," De Jager said, grimacing slightly at the wound. "It's looks worse than it is."

"Take my advice, Commander," Caeli added. "Steer clear of any blacked-out corridors you may come across."

"This building is also populated by intelligent life forms," Weir said, looking warily in both directions down the corridor. "We need to get back downstairs to the shuttlecraft."

"That may be easier said than done," Caeli said. "The layout of the building changes at random. We've been trying to find our way back to you for almost three hours."

"That's impossible," the Science Officer said. "You only left me... well, it couldn't have been twenty minutes ago."

"It was three hours to us."

Weir led the way along the hallway, mainly to have something to do while she was thinking. By her estimate, she had taken the lift up for eight or nine floors. She was looking for a stairwell now, hoping that it would be safer than using the lift. The two men followed her. They turned a corner and found themselves in another lobby.

It was the SAME lobby. Weir was certain of that. However possible it might be for a building this size to have two or more identically laid out rooms on separate floors, right down to the arrangement of the furniture and the potted plants, she could not shake the belief that it WAS the same lobby nevertheless, as illogical as it was. The only thing missing was the shuttlecraft or any sign of its passage.

"Hey! How did we get back here?" said De Jager, proving that Weir was not the only one who thought so. The three officers wandered past the reception desk in a state of bemused concentration.

The Science Officer reached for her tricorder, and as she did so a piercing BOOM echoed through the building, seeming to shake the very floors. It didn't sound like thunder; they had been hearing thunder and lightning ever since they arrived. It sounded more like--

Weir's and Caeli's eyes met as they both made the mental leap simultaneously. Turning in unison, they grabbed Ensign De Jager and hustled him out of the way into the waiting room just as the far wall exploded into fragments. Something incredibly huge burst through the interior walls, ripping up fifteen meters of corridor and coming to a tortured stop just where the three of them had been standing a moment ago.

"What the drel is going on?" De Jager said, slumping to his knees in near panic.

"We have to get out of here, quickly!" Weir gasped, grabbing his arm and frantically trying to pull him to his feet.

"I don't understand..."

"Understand later," Caeli advised him, jerking on his other arm, the wounded one. "Right now, MOVE!" Between himself and Weir, they manhandled the ensign to his feet.

"But I don't--" The words froze in De Jager's throat as his eyes focused on the thing that had crashed through the wall and lay there now, smoking and half buried in debris. He recognized the streamlined shape, the slender engine pods, the flush hatchway, and just behind it the name of the vessel in red script -- "Calypso".

"Any second now," Weir explained breathlessly, "we're going to be coming out that hatch, and we can't allow ourselves to see us face to face. The time paradox would be disastrous."

De Jager went semi-limp and allowed them to steer him away around the reception desk.

[Atoz 77]

On the bridge of the Odysseus, Lt. Kellerman and Chief Engineer Vespis both appeared on the main viewscreen, reporting from Engineering.

"Captain, we're making the assumption," Kellerman explained, "that the temporal rift is not a natural phenomenon. A distortion of space/time would also mean a severe distortion of gravity. But if there were a black hole down there on the planet, we'd know about it. It would make itself known in several different ways. So we're assuming that someone down there, for whatever reason, has constructed a device, probably one or more artificial singularities held in place within a series of rapidly rotating magnetic fields."

"I'm following you so far, Mr. Kellerman," Captain Atoz said.

"So what we're doing is modifying a torpedo to release a burst of magnetic monopoles."

Atoz shifted in his seat. "That sounds dangerous, Mr. Kellerman."

Vespis took over. "That's because it is, Captain. If the device we're theorizing about works like our warp cores do, by folding hyperspace, no problem. The monopoles will strengthen the field and stabilize the rift. If it doesn't work that way, the monopoles could totally destabilize their magnetic fields instead."

"In other words," Atoz said, "either it will work or it will blow up in our faces. Nothing in between."

"That's about it. But it's the best plan we could come up with on short notice."

Atoz looked over toward Fawkes and Rosh at the Tactical station. "Carry on, Mr. Vespis," he said. "Load the torpedo into the launch bay when it's ready."

***

"What are we going to do?" De Jager breathlessly. "The shuttlecraft--"

"Follow me," said Weir, striding purposefully down the corridors. "Keep your phasers handy. We have to get to the core of the--"

A heavy security door suddenly closed right in front of them, blocking their path. Caeli and Weir searched frantically for some kind of control panel to open it.

"You cannot escape," said a female voice. "Your destiny belongs with us." Behind them the receptionist had appeared, dressed in her yellow and green sarong.

De Jager instantly raising his phaser, but Caeli gently took hold of his arm and lowered it. "Don't bother," the pilot said. "It's only a hologram."

"I am the Master Computer," the hologram said, as her image rapidly flicked from male to female, dressed in a variety of different suits, but all the same person. "Many centuries ago I was built in a time of disaster, ruin, and despair. The Chasmians built this complex so that with it there we be no more disorder. With it, they would be the masters of time."

"Time travel?" said Weir. "But our best scientists have concluded that time travel is not a viable technology. It opens up too many paradoxes."

"Incorrect," the hologram said smugly. "Our agents of change traveled into the past, correcting the disasters of earlier generations. With each change, they met with resistance, and so had to journey to other time lines. Each change created hundreds of divergent copies of our agents themselves, who in turn wrought changes of their own. Soon there was a war for supremacy which swept the entire planet. It was marvelous."

"Then why is the planet outside a barren waste?" said Caeli. "We flew over it today. There's nothing left of your civilization. Nothing at all."

"The dead weight was cleared away," the hologram insisted, "all those who added nothing to our progress, who only complained and protested our new world order. Those have been eliminated. What remains is the cadre of Project Oceana, hundreds of them and their divergents from various time lines, now occupying this complex." A separate hologram appeared depicting the building itself. It looked even larger than the last time Weir had seen it. The entire central core of the building consisted entirely of an insanely complex arrangement of power conduits and coolant pipes, all servicing the great artificial singularity at its very heart.

"I hate to break the news to you," said Caeli, "but the last we saw of your agents of change, they had regressed to tribalism, fighting over the territories they had stated out."

"That's because the building is cut off from the regular time stream," Weir said. "I saw it earlier on my tricorder, but I didn't understand what I was seeing until now. The entire complex is a mass of paradox, trapped inside an unstable rift in time, and yet still sending out waves of displacement and affecting the planet outside. Don't you see, Master Computer? You must shut down the machine! Every second it remains in operation, you're only making things worse!"

"Incorrect," the hologram said. "Eventually there will be order. The theory is sound. It must be sound."

"Because that's the way you were programmed?" ventured De Jager. "I can't believe we're going to die because you're stuck in a logic loop."

"You will not die," the hologram said smugly. "You are now part of us. The hyperdrive engines of your shuttlecraft is the missing piece of technology we needed. You were quite clever in initiating a security protocol to keep it from us, Commander Weir, but it was a futile gesture. Our agents will travel line after line until they find one in which they seize the shuttlecraft before you can stop them. Then we will win. And there is nothing you can do to stop us."

***

The hull of the Odysseus trembled with the renewed strength of the ion storm outside. "The time loop is resetting, Captain," reported Rosh at Tactical. "The peak of the storm will hit is in four minutes. Optimal time for launching the torpedo is now."

Fawkes left the Tactical station and moved over to the command chair. "A first officer's job is supposed to be to come up with alternatives," he said grimly. "I can't seem to come up with one right now."

"But you don't think this is a good idea?" Atoz said.

"A fifty-fifty chance that the whole thing explodes?" Fawkes said. "I know the odds are longer of a runabout surviving in that storm out there, but somehow it seems..."

"More personal," Atoz said. He had been thinking the same thing. At least battling a storm would allow the opportunity for the influence of skill, determination, and sometimes even pure luck. Were cold odds something he wanted to risk Diane's life on? What would she want him to do?

"Captain...?" Rosh prompted again.

"Stand by, Mr. Rosh," Atoz said, coming to a sudden decision. "Prepare the Scylla for launch. All right, Charles. Go."

***

Weir suddenly turned and ran right past the hologram, back the way they had come. Caeli and De Jager followed hard on her heels as she found a stairwell and took it upward.

"Do you have an idea, commander?" the pilot asked as they arrived at the next level.

"You saw the hologram of the complex," the Science Officer said, pausing briefly to catch her breath. "Didn't that give you an idea?"

"It's obvious," De Jager said. "If we could only reach the core, our phasers could sever the power conduits and pipes that feed the machine. Any interruption in the power flow to the magnetic fields would allow the singularity to run wild, and probably would blow the whole machine to pieces." He turned down one of the central corridors and found only a security door, cutting him off. "We just have to get past these security doors."

"Actually, I've got a better idea than that," Weir said, turning the other way, toward the outer skin of the building. It wasn't long before they came to the lobby again -- a lobby as it existed before the shuttlecraft had arrived.

"Good," Weir said. "The time loop is about to start over again. De Jager, you stand right here. Caeli, a little to his left. I'll stand--"

"But commander," Caeli reminded her, "we have to move. The shuttlecraft is going to come crashing through that wall any second. Unless..." Their eyes met. Was this her plan, to stand here and let themselves be killed? It seemed to Caeli a pretty drastic way to stop the time loop from starting over. His sense of duty asserted itself. Ever since the Academy, it had been drummed into him that an officer was responsible for the lives under his command. As long as you survive, as long as you manage to stay alive, there would be other opportunities. This was clearly the time for him to take charge as the only available Command officer. "Commander, I don't think--"

"Mr. Caeli, I don't have time to explain. Do you trust me?"

Three seconds ticked past, seconds which couldn't be spared if they wanted to get clear in time. "Yes, ma'am," Caeli decided.

He hadn't said "sir" as Starfleet protocol dictated. If he had said "sir", it would have meant that he was obeying her because she was his ranking officer. By saying "ma'am", he was telling her that he was obeying her because he genuinely respected her judgment.

The three of them stood in a line, a little over a meter between them. De Jager felt his heart pounding like a snare drum inside his chest, his blood singing with adrenalin. His knees felt weak, but at the same time he wanted to run, to get clear. But he stayed because Caeli was staying.

Even Weir had momentary doubts about her logic. But then there was no time to change her mind as they all heard the thunderous roar of the shuttlecraft hitting the outer wall of the building. "Get ready..." Weir said. "NOW!"

Calypso burst through the wall at the end of the corridor and dropped toward the floor. Weir began waving her hands in a warding off gesture, and the other two officers followed her example. None of them could see inside the cockpit through the reflective black forward port, but whoever was in the pilot seat must have seen them in his path, because instead of hitting the floor and skidding straight through them all, turning their bodies to bloody pulp in her passing, Calypso bounced once and took off again, careening painfully over their heads so close that Weir had to drop to her hands and knees to avoid being decapitated. The craft veered to their left and smashed through the wall, disappearing into the depths of the building.

Into the core of the building, Caeli realized, as a series of explosions followed the path of the shuttlecraft, knifing like a missile through the network of power conduits and coolant pipes. The floor beneath them buckled as the shock wave of destruction ran outward through the building. Soon enough it would reach the artificial singularity at the heart of the machine, and then they would all be dead.

"MOVE IT!" Caeli shouted, more from instinct than from any rational thought. Shoving De Jager toward the stairwell, he reached down and grabbed Weir's arm to help her get started. "Come on, commander!"

Together they stumbled after the ensign on a floor that trembled like a harp string. Caeli's thought was that if they could make it downstairs, there was a very slim chance that they might still escape in the Calypso -- provided the building didn't collapse around them first. Then something landed on him very hard and he lost consciousness.

***

As soon as Caeli realized that he was still alive and unhurt, his eyes automatically swept over the instrument panel in front of him. The ship was alive, too, just barely. Calypso had taken some structural damage from sliding into the beach and slamming nose first into a huge sand dune. Her main engines were out naturally, but she still had auxiliary power.

He remembered the crash vividly. He remembered saying, "Hold on, everybody. I think I can set the shuttle down on the lee side of that hill." Then he remembered the multi-story building looming up in front of him. Suddenly he jerked around in his seat to make sure the others were there and it hadn't all been a dream.

"What happened?" De Jager said dazedly in the seat next to him. "I mean... you killed us, commander! Didn't you?"

"Don't be silly, ensign," Weir replied, unbuckling herself from her seat in the rear of the cabin. "If we were dead, how could we be here talking to one another?"

"But... but we were inside the shuttlecraft. I mean the OTHER shuttlecraft, and it crashed into the building! Didn't it?"

"Whoever was inside the other shuttlecraft," she explained, swinging her chair around to face them, "arrived at the upswing of their time loop. We were already in the downswing of OUR loop. So they arrived before we did. The explosion of their shuttlecraft destroyed the machine and punctured the temporal rift before we had the chance to be trapped inside it. Mathematically, it's really very simple."

"But... how could they have crashed before we got there when WE were the ones who caused the crash?"

"It's a time paradox, ensign," said Caeli, getting out of his seat. "Don't try to figure it out. Just thank Jupiter that you're in one piece." He pushed the OPEN button and the hatch slid quietly back into its slot. The young pilot gingerly stepped out onto the beach, looking up at the glowering sky where the thunderstorm was already moving off to sea, its fury spent.

His comm badge chirped. "Scylla to Calypso!" said a voice. "Scylla calling Calypso! Do you read me, Calypso?"

Caeli tapped his badge. "Calypso here, Scylla. It's nice to hear your voice, Commander Fawkes. Can you give us a lift?"

"Stand by. We'll be over your position in fifteen seconds."

Caeli watched the storm rumbling over the sea far away. "Take your time, Commander," he said. "We're all okay."

the end>>>>>