Chain 202: Star Trek TNG/DS9

Chain 202: Star Trek TNG/DS9

Location: Utopia Planitia Shipyards
Age: 26
Identity: Drop-In, Human
Drawbacks: [+0] Temporal Anomaly, TNG Era

[50/1000]   Cosmic Awareness
[150/1000]  Speedy Promotions
[450/1000]  Overpowering Authority
[600/1000]  Mental Alarm
[900/1400]  Q This
[1000/1000] Companion Import: Demona and the Conspiracy

Oh, how strange, I've reappeared after being missing in action for years without a trace and have been de-aged, it's almost as though weird things happened to everyone involved with the Enterprise only for Starfleet to take my reappearance in stride. Which amused the hell out of me, especially when I ran into Admiral McCoy. (And maybe might have hit him with a gradual bit of de-aging that he griped at me about, but I told him he'd thank me for it later.) Also, Ambassador Spock. (Yes, I hit him with a bit of de-aging too. He just rolled his eyes and made a reluctant comment about it being logical.) And I was pleased to find that omni-tools had not gone out of style, though of course this is Star Trek, so PADDs and consoles still saw equally widespread use.

After the initial meet-and-greeting and being caught up to date, however, it was time to get more involved. A nice little promotion to Vice Admiral was handy, considering I apparently can DO that... and Section 31 had actually done a far better job of keeping itself in line than I anticipated. I was proud of the men and women of the Bureau, and gave them a few pointers all the same, before I got myself involved in the plot as something of an eccentric renaissance man from Starfleet's past. Medical breakthroughs, sure - heck, they knew I brought in medi-gel for the away teams and that had saved countless lives over the years, so additional work in medicine and cybernetics was no surprise.

They didn't expect me to sit down and figure out how to exploit shield geometries to make them more effective. They didn't expect me to figure out ways to make panels stop exploding as frequently when they overload, or to come up with new alloys that were superior to what they had. And they definitely didn't expect me to drop by and visit Leah Brahms, make an offhand comment that gave her an epiphany (the seed of which may or may not have been deposited in her sleeping mind the previous night) and cause her to completely rework the Galaxy class warp drive from the ground up to be vastly superior to what it was.

Being attached to the Enterprise was apparently the admirality's revenge on me throwing a spanner in everything, but it was hilarious nonetheless. Sure, I didn't have a hand in any of its operations for the most part, but it was entertaining to say the very least, and I got to know many of its crew. Picard was particularly tickled when I pointed out that I may technically outrank him, but he is the captain of the vessel, and as such I happily acknowledged any shipboard operations would see his authority supersede mine... apparently that's not the view usually taken by many members of Starfleet. Which I told him was stupid; a ship at sea is its own world, and to be captain is to be the ruler of that world, with all the responsibilities that came with it. Frankly, he had it worse than I did; I was primarily a part of the diplomatic corp, as far as my tour on the Enterprise was concerned.

It also meant I got to see Q again, which mostly had me facepalming and saying 'not again', but... eh. At least I was part of the background, even if Q dropped by later to see me. I told him I promised not to tell the crew, as the captain would be plenty amusing to him as-is rather than picking on me, but of course he reminded me that as the local omnipotent entity he reserved the right to occasionally play mariachi music on the bridge.

In any event, I was largely window dressing for a while, and served as an excuse for the Enterprise to go to some locations periodically; I also served as an excuse for certain characters to drop in periodically, such as McCoy and Spock, but eventually I transferred off the Enterprise, promising Picard we'd meet again later.

I did not expect my next meeting with Picard to be while he was unwillingly in command of a Borg cube, however, but I was able to take control of the fleet instead of it going to Admiral Hanson. After all, I'd been back on Earth dealing with the intel division among other things, and so I had more knowledge about them than many might have, not to mention I was on the Enterprise and knew how Picard thought. The battle of Wolf 359, as such, flat-out did not happen. Instead... we sent a couple of ships to harry the cube along the route, causing it to drop out of warp to engage them, but didn't let it cause any casualties. The damaged ships met up with the fleet and we engaged near Jupiter.

Things went better than expected. By "better than expected", I mean we held the line until the Enterprise managed to come along, steal Picard off of the ship, and issue the command for the cube to sleep. By "better than expected", I mean instead of having the entire fleet wiped out, we only lost half of them. By "better than expected"... I mean we beamed hundreds of inactive drones off that ship before it self-destructed, and almost all of them survived the same surgeries that Picard did in order to be restored. And the vast majority of those were still sane after being disconnected from the Collective.

For valorous service, William Riker was promoted to captain, but it was noted by the admirality that we would prefer he remain first officer of the Enterprise until such time that he found a ship he wished to command himself, whether that was in five weeks or five years. And for going above and beyond even when under alien influence... Picard was promoted to a Commodore. And his flag would be the Enterprise. The flagship should have some sort of flag officer on it, should it not? Commodores count. Or at least they do in Starfleet considering the rank was dead until I pushed to get it revived. Five pips and a green uniform instead of four and red, but he made it look good. (Even Q complimented him on the change when next he showed up.)

After all of that happened... and once he'd recovered... I read Picard in on Section 31, in the presence of the other admirality who knew of it. (And Ambassador Spock - he was overdue an explanation, after all, and McCoy insisted. I relented.) We had, after all, made necessary admirals aware of their existence. Of what they had to do. Starfleet was pretty much an explorer corps, sure, but the galaxy was known not to be a peaceful place.

Picard ABSOLUTELY FLIPPED HIS SHIT. It went against everything Starfleet stood for, he said. The Federation having its own secret police, unaccountable to the people. No better than the Obsidian Order or the Tal Shiar, with black sites for off-the-books torture and mass surveillance. Drawing parallels to the Inquisition. Wondering if the secret police had its own secret trials and secret prisons, or even a secret fleet. Wondering if my whole purpose on the Enterprise early on was to coordinate the Bureau from on board.

When I pointed out that they were accounted for in the Federation charter, he continued to lose it on me, asking whether he'd be imprisoned for revealing it to the public if he chose, at which point I told him it held the same gravity as, say, the omega directive. But considering Section 31's intel had saved Picard's life, as well as probably half of the fleet... I figured he might give us the benefit of the doubt. After all, I told him, they were clandestine but they weren't above the law. They reported to the Admirality. Their discoveries benefited the Federation. It was, I told him, the equivalent of Section 9 in the pre-war Japanese Ministry.

"I had not read of Section 9's existence," he commented.

"That's because they did not exist, and you will never find their operatives' names in any archive. Unofficially, they stopped a great number of terrorists and murderers, and in their finest hour stopped Japan from getting hit by a nuclear weapon by a rogue nation in 2031," I told him. Sure, they didn't exist HERE, but that was beside the point. "The names of our operatives are, likewise, not going to be in any archive, nor the Bureau's very existence, nor the fact that we work hand in hand with Temporal Investigations to keep anyone from annihilating the galaxy's timeline with the power of science. We only read in those who have a need to know - and in your position, coming across the things you see, I can guarantee you'll have a need to know sooner or later. We're hardly going to recruit you. As far as Admiral McCoy... well, consider McCoy my conscience, in a sense, but even spies need doctors. Just... keep in mind, would you, that the Federation is an ideal. I don't want to believe that there are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy, but our job is to do what we can to avoid putting that to the test."

The discussion continued, but Picard left, slightly mollified in the end.

Spock... well, he was read into the whole thing about Section 31 to start with, before I told him and McCoy the broad strokes of who and what I really was over several bottles of Romulan ale. They understood why I took a light hand, all considered - it was the same as the prime directive, and they were the only other two still left from the crew. When Montgomery Scott was discovered, we brought him in and did much the same.

I made arrangements to be on the Enterprise later during the investigation into the attack on a particular space station. I even managed to convince Tolian Soran that, yes, I knew what he was doing, and I wanted in, but I knew how badly things would go if the Enterprise was involved in the investigation and I couldn't stop that - but I'd take what actions I could to slow them down.

Things went pretty much as canon, up to the point that Picard was beamed down to the planet; I was beamed down with him. The Enterprise exploded, the Nexus hit the planet, and then the three of us got sucked in.

"Huh," I told Picard, "I saw that going differently."

"Why are you here with me, exactly?" he asked. "Did you grow tired of toeing the line as a spy and turn traitor at last?"

"I am more loyal to Starfleet than you can fathom, Jean-Luc," I answered with a weary sigh. "But here... we are free of any outside observation. This isn't the material universe - hi, Guinan - and to tell you who I really am in the outside universe would disrupt so many things that it isn't even funny, the suspicions that some like the Tal Shiar have are bad enough. And Guinan... I suppose this explains the split I saw in your soul. I am so very, very sorry. I feel that you should probably know this as well."

And so I sat and I told them both everything. We had all the time in the universe, after all; Picard was always the curious sort, and Guinan... well, her race were known as Listeners for a reason. Everything, from start to finish. In fact, I don't think I'd ever told anyone everything before, not in full detail; it made me think about a lot of things differently.

"...but as I said, I've been the emperor of mankind more times than I wish to count, I'd not take power like that here when there are better alternatives," I told them. "And yes, I could have prevented it, however... that robs the ability to choose from everyone else. And even if the worst happened and I ended up here with you, I knew that coming here, I'd be able to accomplish a particular couple of things. One... I came here to find my captain. For which I have you to thank," I nodded to Guinan. "And two... you and I are going to save the galaxy, because the Nexus is a way to change the timeline WITHOUT causing damage. In here... you can go to a point where it isn't yet written, where what we do doesn't break the rules of time. And instead of trying to win a battle... I think we should go back to a point where we can avert the war."

...I made arrangements to be on the Enterprise later during the investigation into the attack on a particular space station. I even managed to convince Tolian Soran that, yes, I knew what he was doing, and I wanted in - and once he'd agreed, the door opened. He was highly displeased to see Captain Picard and Captain Kirk was standing shoulder to shoulder in the doorway when no life signs had been there moments before and no transports had occurred.

"Oh, and by the way, your plan just failed and you're under arrest," I pointed out to Soran.

In the end, the Enterprise-E was still commissioned, of course, and the D mothballed; rather than letting it be completely decommissioned, arrangements were made for it to be turned into a museum ship in Earth orbit. (With a quiet eye toward rapid recommissioning should it ever be needed in the future.)

Beyond that, oh, there were still many exciting things. Deep Space Nine was an interesting station that I dropped in on a few times - in addition to enlisting the help of a certain doctor and engineer in apprehending two rogue Bureau agents (and reading them in as they had a need to know), the Maquis formed rather a bit differently and was actually sponsored by Section 31, much as certain nations sponsored splinter factions in the cold war. Except... seeing as they had official support, they were quite a bit more successful than they otherwise would have been, and with them not being left to twist in the wind except on paper, the Cardassians' dirty laundry was aired out a lot more openly, and eventually their government toppled a lot faster than anyone would have expected, even if splinter groups fought over the pieces for a couple of years.

The Dominion war went... very differently. No, nobody virus-bombed the Founders despite temptation, but contingency plans were made in advance because we made sure that the Federation actually used their brains, and considering the Federation had been gearing up for the inevitable protracted war with the Borg... well. The nascent Cardassian Republic petitioned for Federation membership in order to be safe from the Dominion. And... well, the Klingons were more than happy to throw their lot in with the Federation in glorious battle and so on and so forth. (The Romulans basically went "this is a whole lot of 'not my problem', good luck." Not that this surprised anyone. Sucks to be them when the Borg comes knocking, though.)

I managed to share a drink with all four of the other living survivors of the original Enterprise on the last day before my departure. Five old men, reminiscing about the old days. It was kind of nice.