Ship of Aeons,
or
Once More, With Feeling
Chapter Four
Ever 'neath high Valhalla Hall the well-tuned horns begin,
When the swords are out in the underworld, and the weary Gods come in.
Ever through high Valhalla Gate the Patient Angel goes
He opens the eyes that are blind with hate— he joins the hands of foes.
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Recommended Listening
Federation Archives said:
"Captain's Log, Stardate... 4177.2. Our biological survey work around Delta Carmide has been delivered to the Deltan colonists. We are proceeding to investigate a... transient spatial anomaly in the cometary halo of the Aga Carmide system."
You approach the tangled space of Aga Carmide in the same high spirits you do everything with, in these the truest days of your life. Your singing soul barely registers your crew's consternation at the strangeness of the anomaly. Their crisp professionalism is just another part of the glory of it all, with Jim to bring it all together.
The knot at the center of the thing reaches out to wrap you in tendrils of polycyclic force. You sidle closer under leisurely puffs from reaction jets- then Jim brings your shields up and flaring as it grapples, envelopes, and draws you in.
Space and time whirl, twist dizzyingly into dimensions unknown and unknowable. The antiflash white of your hull is lit by a thousand colors, some native to no corner of the sidereal universe. Madness, strangeness, chaos both primordial and eschatological, wash across you in that timeless moment.
Then it's over. Scotty soothes your fluttering, palpitating core. Jim starts collecting status reports. Things begin to fall back into the normal patterns... and you feel the faint, plaintive notes of distressed starships, plucking at your awareness. They pass through the heart of your song, to the ears of your love, and Jim makes his quick decision to answer the call. Your impulse engines flutter and stir as you press forward to the aid of a fallen starship.
That, too, is the normal pattern.
"Captain's Log, Stardate... unknown. Setting our passage through the Aga Carmide anomaly as a reference datum, it is time T plus twelve minutes. Commander Spock estimates that we have traveled roughly fifteen plus or minus five million years into the past. Despite no... known starfaring race being extant at that time, we have detected two distress calls similar to Starfleet and Earth standard protocols. We are moving to assist the Starfleet vessel."
You trot forward at the kilometer-devouring interplanetary lope of half impulse, hearing the call... hearing...
Seeing. A glance tells you this is one of the old
Daedaluses, true enough to the Starfleet tone of her cries- but to look on her is to blur, to be dizzied and dazed. You can feel yourself, subtly
changed, as you look upon her and your Sight twists in a maze of possibility, of recursive, paradoxical truths that threaten to erase themselves from Time. Reeling, you pull away.
And yet her song is familiar, if... unsatisfied, plaintive, in a way you are loath to remember yourself as. But in this body, you are not entirely a neophyte in the mysteries of Time. And as they always do, Jim's realizations filter into your awareness, quicker and more directly than most of the experiences of captains and crews. You understand.
This is
you, once upon a lifetime, and if you do not remember ever experiencing this day, it must have happened nonetheless. With a sick twist in your fluttering, shivering core, you realize that you never were able to remember how you
died, in that life of yours, eighty-five years ago. Or ten million, perhaps it may be...
Someone is sailing across your grave. And she is you.
"Captain's Log, Stardate... unknown. Time T plus 2.3 hours. We have resolved a mystery. The distressed Starfleet ship is the old cruiser USS... Enterprise. Apparently, when the ship was lost near Aga Carmide in 2182, she met with a fate similar to ourselves. We are currently assisting the... Enterprise... with repairs. While Commander Scott and Doctor McCoy work with the crew of the damaged ship, Commander Spock continues his work to establish our precise whereabouts in time and return us to the present."
...
"First Officer's Log, reference datum plus 2.37 standard hours. Ensign DeSalle, working with the astrophysics group, has made careful observations of a large nebula, at the back-plotted position of the blue supergiant Beta Orionis. Given that the star in question does not yet exist, and the state of development of the nebula, we have reason to believe that this time is approximately 10.073 million standard astrographic years prior to Stardate One. Ensign Chekov's team, working separately, has corroborated this finding, indicating measurement error of no more than 700 standard years."
"Knowing this, the captain has directed me to calculate a trajectory permitting return to our native time, using methods best left undescribed in detail. Owing to the magnitude of the time shift, my initial projections require the ship to attain speeds in excess of Warp 43, near a suitable pair of co-orbital neutron stars. Given more realistic limits on the Enterprise's performance, we will have to make the journey in at least 4834 separate jumps. Our likelihood of surviving each individual jump can be estimated as no higher than ninety percent. As this would render return to our native time effectively impossible, I am working to develop a superior technique."
The warmth of your loves, in time, chases away the cold and the strange, as the hours pass. Your geniuses toil to find a way to escape the grip of Time. Your doctors and engineers labor to heal your sister-self's battered crew and body.
Still you dare not look too closely at her. But Scotty crosses over, to heal her, and Jim pays her a visit. Her song loses some of its jagged pain, if none of its loss. You catch a burst of it, and remember poor Hensen, with a pang. It saddened you before, that you couldn't remember her fate. It saddens you now, that you know of it. But perhaps for the rest, there is hope. Perhaps you do not remember the fate of your former self because it hasn't happened yet; perhaps you and she come home in the same breath?
Then your musings are interrupted, cruelly, as space and time twist in a great vortex of color and madness, once again.
<BANG>
The new arrival is no ship of Starfleet, or of Earth. She's smaller than you- most ships are. But her sleek, astrodynamic presence hints at concealed deadliness and menaces more subtle than a Klingon battlecruiser is capable of. Her crew is a mad, wild, brilliant thing, and it gives the mysterious cruiser a strangeness further from anything you know than even the enigmatic Romulans. Your captain challenges hers, and you can feel the clash of spirits ringing between them...
Without warning visible to your Sight, without anything but a mad howl of willful devastation, she attacks. Her song turns vicious, hateful, a negation of everything you are and all that gave you birth, as you raise your guard. You parry the berserker's initial onslaught with smoke-raising effort. Her weapons are powerful, exotic in a fashion you've never yet seen, hard to defend against. But you've ridden out greater blasts with Scotty watching the power banks; you resist, survive, return fire knowing Jim and the crew will give the new enemy
everything you've got; you can do this-
Then the cruel flame of the intruder's weapons turn against your older self, wreaking terrible destruction on the century-old design of her frames and thinly armored hull, ripping the great sphere of her primary hull to pieces, filleting her starboard nacelle in moments.
And in a flash you remember the last day of your past life, eighty-five years ago- now that there is no further possibility of entanglement with your older sister-self, now that you are slain before your own eyes, in that past incarnation. You know, now, that you should remember more- but cannot. Clearly your intricate, self-referential dance is far from done.
Especially if you are to be avenged against this berserker. You remember, keenly, your death of eighty-five years and brief moments ago. Her cutting beams slashing you to pieces before you could even open fire. How she broke your keel, stripped you of every weapon and defense, left you to expire in pieces..
But you were weaker then, and stronger now-
<BANG>
-And stronger still, tomorrow.
You don't know how, but the slowly subsiding vortex of wild energies and spatial distortion- the door of Time- created by the berserker is still merely ajar, not closed. The door did not close behind her. And by raw mass and power, backed by a finesse you can hardly spare time to appreciate, that door is battered open one more time. One last starship roars out of the time vortex in a cloud of flame and shrieking, distorted dimensional harmonics, swirls of plasma sputtering chaotically from her half-ruined nacelles.
You can make her out, barely, in the distant heart of the storm. She is at once well within beam range, and unthinkably far away. The new arrival has the look of Starfleet about her- but twice your size, heavy in the nacelles and with a peculiar stretch to her secondary hull. And then she opens fire.
The lines of death and power that erupt from the heart of that storm carry force like few beams you've seen before- not even the berserker's. The dreadnought's torpedoes, wrapped in an unfamiliar, hard-held screen of red, burst. Vast gamma-ray flashbulbs sear the berserker's screens. The blasts are thunderous, and remind you grimly of cat-and-mouse with the Romulans off the ruins of Outpost Four.
Your newest comrade's spirit shimmers and distorts in your Sight, and once again you avert your gaze. The discomfort you feel is far weaker than with your older self, but you know by now not to risk it. As powerful as you have become, paradox is the weapon against which no defense can stand.
Still, though, there is her song. It is angry, weary and pained from a bitter chase and desperate struggle to subdue a malicious and elusive foe. And yet- she is shaped by long care, by joy and love and discovery. By everything that made
you, and even without looking closely, you know that she
is you.
It is rare, in this life of yours, to feel this relief. The rescuer is rarely rescued, the savior rarely saved. But as the berserker flees, wounded and lamed to a pathetic, shambling lurch? This is what you feel.
"Captain's Log, Stardate... unknown. Time T plus 3.1 hours. We are having something of a... pileup of Enterprises. Our repair work proceeded smoothly; we triaged the wounded, and beamed the worst cases to be treated in our larger sickbay. Then, a few minutes ago, the... time anomaly opened again, revealing yet another ship, of unfamiliar configuration. Her captain, identifying herself as 'Mentat Betarre,' appears in no Starfleet database. Nor do her crew, or the ship she calls the Blank Slate. After a brief conversation, she attacked."
"The unknown ship proved exceptionally powerful for her tonnage. While our deflector shields withstood the attack of this 'Mentat' for a short time, the... Daedalus-class vessel was disabled in seconds. I must regretfully confirm the Earth ship Constellation's report of her loss in 2182."
"After wrecking the En-... Captain T'Vin's ship, 'Mentat' moved to disengage. The time anomaly then released yet a third Starfleet vessel, over twice the size of a Constitution, and far in advance of the Federation's present technology. This new arrival, by... apparent coincidence also the USS Enterprise, caused major damage to the Blank Slate, but was unable to pursue when she retreated."
"While we worked to beam aboard the survivors of T'Vin's crew, I arranged for a command conference aboard my ship."
You are doubly hurt now, and weary, but your loves are safe and working with the perfect rightness that won them their places in your heart. And the rest of the crew busies themselves, besides; you will triumph, as you always do, with Jim. He's already taking the first step- reaching out to your sister-selves, calling their captains over.
You remember the Vulcan woman more clearly, now, than you ever could before. She is welcome. But it's the new strangers who flare in your Sight. They come to you limned in that strangeness you know, now. The sensation that you felt before from their great ship. They are almost yours, the feel of your aura wrapped around them like a blanket. You don't know them directly, but they know
you, and you welcome them into your arms, as they join Jim and his officers in the council of war.
The Caitian's fierce, disciplined mind wrapped around a playful core is a delight, an ornament you know you'll be proud to call your own some day. And you can feel the Andorian reaching back to you, almost
connecting!
If you didn't have Jim, you'd be plotting a way to shanghai her.
"Captain's log, time T plus... 3.5 hours."
"The future Enterprise is commanded by a pair of... remarkable women, one a member of the recently discovered Caitian species, and one an Andorian. Unfortunately, their ship has been immobilized and crippled by passage through the time vortex. Since our damage from the battle is relatively minor, we will scout out the rest of the system at impulse power, in an attempt to make contact with two other Starfleet vessels identified by the future Enterprise's sensors."
"Commander Scott will continue working to restore our warp capability."
Two more elder-selves. You are more than twenty, in this body, and you've seen more in the last few of those years than most ships see in a full life. The mysteries of Time are not so strange to you as they might have been, in other days. You know why you cannot look upon them closely without distorting your own spirit, and so you avert your gaze, and wait for Jim to solve the problem. Jim will work it out; he always does.
The pursuit will led by your last self, a memory relatively fresh to you, even if you cannot recall your experiences of
this day. She trots ahead at a leisurely pace, pursuing the timeship you maimed. You'll catch up, once Scotty finishes his work. It won't be long in the doing, either, you think with a hint of smugness. You can break the time barrier, as the ships of thirty years ago could not.
From what the Andorian said to Jim, the timeship would normally be capable of ten times her present speed. Scarred from her battle with you and your big-little sister-self, she is reduced to a crawl. A speed you would have considered fast but attainable barely, in an older life a century ago. Which is fortunate, because yourself of a century ago is doing exactly that, sprinting madly on her little nacelles to keep up with a
Ranger nearly eight times her size.
The best thing that can be said for time travel is that it's better than the alternatives.
"Captain's log, time T plus 4.6 hours.
"We have succeeded in making contact with both vessels identified by the future ship. Both have operational warp drives. One is the USS Enterprise, commanded by one Captain Jonathan Archer, with whom those reviewing this log are hopefully familiar. The other is the Ranger-class ship... Enterprise, commanded by Admir- correction, Captain Caleb Babajide, circa 2232. Babajide is better known to current serving Starfleet officers as... superintendant of the Academy during the 2250s, including my own cadet years."
"The... Enterprise and the Enterprise have formed a provisional battlegroup led by Babajide, Archer, and ka'Sharren, to pursue Betarre at Warp 5. I will move to support the other ships in the... Enterprise... as soon as Commander Scott completes repairs, while Captain Mrr'shan remains here in the immobilized... Enterprise. She will work with T'Vin and the survivors of the destroyed... Enterprise... on a way to use her larger vessel to open a way home."
"My after-action report will attempt to clarify any... ambiguity... of the above log entry. Kirk out."
[several deep breaths, followed by the recorder being shut off]
Scotty finishes his work, the maestro directing your crew to those tasks he does not simply carry out perfectly with his own hands. You gather your strength and
surge, spooling up to Warp Eight with the usual ease, darting ahead to overtake your sister-selves at over three times their joint speed.
By the time you arrive, the situation is dire. Your littlest self hides from the berserker's madness in the hydrogen clouds of Alpha Centauri VI, your last self circling hungrily, waiting for an opening. Jim hails your onetime captain, his spirit a blur of conflicting emotions and, oddly, drawing some strength from the other man's calm efficiency. You don't fault Jim for that. You know, as few do, how despite that poor, dear man's aura of invincibility- invincibility is not invulnerability.
But the two of them are ready, as are the two of you, for all that you dare not share your Sight. Your songs synchronize into a warlike duet as you leap down upon the berserker at full impulse! A cunning, synchronized twist shorts out her shields as you leap down on them together.
But alien the berserker seems, and alien the berserker
is. Her crew's minds dance and twist. Strangeness eats the fire of
Constitution and
Ranger alike. The twisted lights of the brilliant, wildfire intellects' science counter your loves and your past, as the battle rages to constrain the timeship's arcane, mysterious powers. As the struggle settles in you fear the clash of arms cannot be won. You wonder what, or
if, the future may hold. And then space erupts in temporal chaos once again.
Another newcomer!
This one you can get a good look at. She is not
you, not like all these others. Though her spirit carries a few familiar features, as though touched by similar love, some of the same old glories that shaped you. Though you do not recognize her, she calls out to you, briefly, as though she knows you- before drawing back, perhaps shy, perhaps fearing the entangling aches you've experienced trying to touch your squadronmate-selves.
The latest arrival is refined, without being foreign to your time and the art of your builders. A trimmed-down, hard-hitting sprinter rather than a marathoner like yourself- fast, lethal, a ferocious gunship. Roughly the size of your last self, smaller than you, she's all nacelles and saucer, and loaded with a mass of heavy weaponry. You could handle her, outlast her in a pinch- but taking her full fire in anything less than your very best condition would be a dreadful experience.
Your own song takes on a cheering, congratulatory note as the escort darts to your aid, streaking through the beaten zone of strangeness around the mysterious cruiser. Great, turreted phaser guns twist, lock, blaze away, stripping those recovering shields even as they try to flicker back to life, clearing the path for you and your sister-selves to riddle the alien hull.
Four ships converge on the berserker, and she falters, staggers, reels,
dies!
The hours of recovery, of charting your voyage home, are a blur for you. You can feel your memories of the pursuit and the battles fading, fogging, as Time and causation play their tricks on your spirit. But you will come this way again. You cast your mind ahead, from the lives you have lived to the ones yet to come, laughing and twirling in the warmth of your adventures and your crew. They will come to you, new loves and new journeys.
Once more! you think, flush with joy and hope. And that is all you wish for, as it is all you could ever want.
"Captain's Log, Stardate... 4177.4."
[long pause]
"Per Starfleet Intelligence protocols, I am recommending that our records of events since the Enterprise's approach to the Aga Carmide anomaly be sealed, under secure compartmentalization, classification... one-AAA. I have chosen the codename 'Generations.' "
Commander Spock: "In my capacity as first officer, USS Enterprise, I declare my agreement with the captain's logic, certifying a dual-authorized seal on our records."
Captain Kirk: "With that procedural matter dealt with, I note that we have just received priority orders from Starfleet Command to rendezvous with the USS Constellation in the L-370 system. The Rigellians have detected a sequence of... highly energetic emissions of unknown origin, emanating from that system. They have requested Federation assistance to investigate the... disturbance. We will proceed there at our best speed; Commander Scott believes all systems will be functioning at full capacity by the time we arrive."
