#stormscream

Her door chimed, and she looked up.  “Come in,” she called, and the doors parted to allow her first officer and science officer into the room.  Both wore concerned expressions on their faces, but Sano, her trill science officer, looked the most concerned.  “Dossu, Nizeri…what’s going on?”

Obruz Dossu looked to the other woman and nodded, the bajoran deferring to the science officer.  Nizeri Sano cleared her throat.  “Commander, there might have been a problem…”

“A problem?”

She nodded.  “We based all of our calculations on the assumption that the women were using our reality as one anchor, and that they were tethered to their own realities.  Every reality has a unique quantum signature; anything that originates there bears that same signature, and anything that comes from outside will have a conflicting signature.  The other Jessica and Anafenza had different quantum signatures, which we identified and based our calculations on.”

Jessica nodded.  “Ok, right.  Makes sense.  So what’s the problem?”

“We didn’t know about you!”

Jessica blinked, taken aback.  “Excuse me?”

Obruz cleared his throat. “We discovered an anomaly in your quantum signature.  And when we researched it more we…began to realize why the Andromeda mission – the one you and Wirstowx originated from – is classified at such high levels.”

“My signature is different…because I was born in the Andromeda Galaxy?”  Jessica shook her head.  “That doesn’t make sense…”

“It wouldn’t, no. Because, it shouldn’t make a difference. There would be some variance owing to location within the universe itself, but it would be similar enough.  No, yours is completely different.”  Sano shook her head.  “Yours has a known match, too.  You’re from the ‘Mirror Universe’.”

Jessica went wide-eyed at this, then turned to Obruz.  The bajoran first officer nodded.  “We checked with Admiral Scott; he confirmed it to us, after we pressed the importance of understanding why this went wrong.  The Andromeda mission didn’t just go to a different galaxy; it crossed the universal barrier as well.”

“He couldn’t give us access to the reports from that time, but he did explain a certain…’quantum inversion’ that occurred as ships passed through the gateway Starfleet used to get to Andromeda.  It wasn’t until the Aventine tried to meet the expedition using its conventional slipstream drive that the inversion was even discovered and studied.  But by the time we began to understand it, the expedition ended.  The ships returned home, and all of the data was classified.”

Jessica shook her head, her thoughts racing with implications.  Still, they hadn’t explained the problem to her.  “Alright…but how is this a problem?  What happened to the other two women?  What happened to Jessica and Anafenza?”

Sano shook her head and sighed.  “The calculations we used to anchor them here relied on our quantum signature.  Before we realized you were acting as the tether to them.  If we had been able to modify to match your quantum signature, it would have worked. We believe, when we inserted you into the equation, the navigational sensors used your unique quantum signature and anchored the women in the mirror universe.”

“Meaning?”

“We discovered a similar inversion during the transport process.”  Sano looked apologetically at Jessica.  “And before you ask; no, we can’t lock back on and rescue them.  We’re too far out of sync now.  They are where they are now.  I’m sorry.”

Jessica stared down at the picture of the three of them, then back up to her officers.  “So…where did we send them?”

“Near as we can tell,” the science officer replied, “some form of a parallel universe similar to their own reality.”  She bit her lip and frowned sadly.  “I’m…really sorry Jess.  If we’d known…”

Jessica shook her head, picking up the PADD again.  Her cheeks felt hot, and she feel tears forming.  “Please…get out.”

Once the door shut behind them, Jessica tossed the PADD to the side and, burying her face in her hands, began to sob.

 Meanwhile, elsewhere in time and space…

The transporter effect subsided, and Jessica St. Peter blinked, looking around at the city buildings surrounding her.  She expected to be deposited back in her home on Cap Au Diable, but perhaps the convergence and the transport technobabble she’d been subjected to didn’t have quite as accurate aim.  She stepped out from between the buildings, looking around.  That’s when it hit her.

All the banners.  The gold stars.  The images of an emperor standing victorious and benevolent, not towering over his minions with outstretched claws.  She wasn’t in the Rogue Isle.  She wasn’t even in Paragon City…

“Oh shit…” she said, with terrifying realization.  She immediately took to the skies with a whirlwind around her, making it harder to see her. She passed a banner and saw in large writing her fear’s confirmed.

Praetoria.

“I’m on Praetorian Earth,” she said, cursing again.  “I can’t be caught here, not if he is still alive here.  I need to get back, how to get back…”

She scanned the streets for the tell-tale ramshackle armor of the Resistance.  If anyone knows how to get back, she thought, they would know.  Just gotta bust a few heads…

 Elsewhere in time and space, further still…

The twinkling of chimes subsided, but the blinding light still filled Anafenza’s vision.  She squinted, looking around in confusion.

She was on a small hill, covered in bright pink and purple flowers.  Small roofs poked up out of the ground, the huts seemingly built built into the hills.  In the distance, on a small lake, rose a large castle with beautiful filigree wings spread behind it.  But the sky…the sky was nothing but blinding light.  No clouds, no sun – not even warmth, she noted, as she shivered in the breeze.

Small giggles echoed around her, and whispered, child-like voices from unseen speakers surrounded her.  “What’s this?  A mortal!”  “She just came from a pillar of light!”  “It’s a mortal!  Here!” “Is she a sin-eater?”

Anafenza spun around in confusion.  “Who’s there? Where am I?”

“Doesn’t know where she is? Poor thing…”  “I want to play!”  “No, it’s my turn!”

A cacophony of “my turns” smothered Ana, and she dropped to the ground in a panic.  The dark aether began to seep from her side as she slammed her eyes shut, the voices ringing in her horns.

Then, there was silence, and a small finger poked her in the nose.  Ana opened her eyes a smidge.

The small faerie-like being grinned at her, dark eyes regarding her playfully.  “Well you’re definitely not a sin eater,” it said with a happy giggle. “I’m Eo Aenc.  We’re going to have fun but first,” they looked up, then with a flutter moved forward to tug on Ana’s horns.  “We need to get moving!  I don’t want to turn my new friend into a leafman right now; mortals are so few in our realm.  Come, get up! They’re coming!”

“What…who…who is coming?” Ana scrambled to her feet and took a few staggering steps forward, turning to look behind her.

Large, grotesque creatures bounded towards her, their hides porcelain white, eyes dark and devoid of life.  The auras around them brightened the air, making it difficult to even look upon them.

Inside, a low din of activity greeted them as many of the Commander’s officers worked to finalize the calculations that would send them home.  “It’s funny,” the Commander remarked, watching them before turning to Anafenza.  “How strange this must seem to you.  All this technology, science, generations ahead of your world.”

Anafenza nodded.  “We have technology – the Garleans make full use of it – but this…is almost…”

“Indistinguishable from magic?” Stormy smirked, winking at the Commander.

Anafenza shrugged and nodded.  “That would…be a good way to describe it, yes.  But I’ve seen magic,” she continued with a wink.  “If you can call down a meteor from the heavens, then I’ll believe it.”

Stormy chuckled, but the Commander winced for a moment, her eyes going distant to some memory she didn’t want to think of.  She shook her head to clear it, before smiling again.

The “Trill” woman, Sano, cleared her throat behind the Commander, and all three turned to look at her. She nodded, almost sadly, clearly not wanting to break up their group.  “Ma’am, it’s time.  If we want a shot at getting them home before the window closes…” She trailed off, leaving the implications hanging in the air.

The three woman took in a deep breath, turning back to one another.  They smiled, before moving in to embrace one another together.

“This was…quite an experience,” the Commander remarked.

“It will certainly be a story to tell,” Anafenza continued on with a small nod.

“No one will believe us,” Stormy countered with a small laugh, and all three laughed together.  They hugged again, Stormy turning her head to plant a kiss on first the Commander’s cheek, then turning to Anafenza to do the same. Then, Stormy and Anafenza stepped up onto the illuminated pad.  Ana gave the blue woman’s hand a quick squeeze, before they parted, standing on opposite sides of the device.

Commander St. Peter smiled at them both.  “Good luck, and whatever gods you believe in protect you.  I am so blessed to know you both.”  She winked at Stormy playfully, but gave Anafenza a genuine smile.  “You’re going to do great things, Anafenza of the Ejinn.”

There was a long pause, as the three just stared at one another for another moment.  Then, the Commander turned her head to her crew.  “Energize!”

The light on the pad began to brighten, and a chiming filled the air as swirling motes of light enveloped the two women.  Anafenza giggled a little, feeling ticklish.

There was an alert on the panel, and Sano began shouting to her team.  “Engage the chronometric navigational sensors!”

“They can’t get a positive lock!  Something is throwing the entire equation out of sorts, and the transport can’t engage.”

“It’s not that ‘aether,’ is it?”

“No, we have a positive fix on that.  But there is a quantum imbalance in her signal and the other St. Peter’s.  The buffer is having a hard time maintaining their patterns, like another variable is missing…”

The lights died down, and the chiming subsided.  Stormy and Ana looked at each other, then at the crew working.

The Commander frowned, shaking her head.  “Something is missing…but the numbers all check?  We have good locks in both time and space?”  Her crew was nodding and agreeing as she rattled off things Anafenza could not comprehend.

Stormy snapped her fingers, looking at Anafenza.  “Something isn’t missing.  Someone is…”

The Commander paused, blinking, then smacked her forehead.  “Of course…the computer can’t make a firm lock on either of you…”

“Unless you can serve as an anchor,” Anafenza finished.  “And a beacon.”

“Just like in the pocket dimension.”

The Commander hopped onto the pad and took the center spot.  “Alright Nizeri, try now.”  She nodded. “Energize!”

Sano turned to the controls as the officer there worked the panel, and the lights and chimes began anew. She smiled, continuing to direct the officers.  “Positive lock engaged, they can make it to the pattern buffer!  Engage the scanners!”

The light overtook Ana’s vision, and the chiming deafened her.

She shifted, trying to move, and groaned a little as her sore muscles screamed in protest.

The rest of the space was sterile white walls and a plain grey carpet.  More of the beds were lined along the wall next to her bed, and over the head of each one on the wall was a dark glass window.  Most were off, but the one over her bed blinked and flashed with white characters and squares of varying shades of blue.  As she pushed herself up to rest on an elbow, one of the blue boxes flashed and turned red with a triangle symbol inside; she looked at it curiously, before turning to look around more.

There was some shuffling, and then a soft voice called out from around a corner.  “Oh!  You’re awake!”  A petite woman stepped around the corner, wearing an outfit similar to the Commander’s except that it was mostly white.  She had the same badge on her chest as Jessica, too.  Her light brown eyes smiled along with her wide lips.  “How do you feel, Ana?”

Anafenza coughed and shook her head, sitting up all the way.  “I know I’ve felt better.  Where am I? How do you know me?”

She smiled again.  “I’m Doctor Dubois; you’re onboard the Rafale.  You came with Jes- Commander St. Peter.”  Her cheeks went a little pink at her near misspeak, but Ana didn’t try to understand the reason for the embarrassment.  “When you materialized on board you collapsed on the transport pad; we brought you here to the sickbay.  It’s sort of a…hospital.”

Anafenza nodded.  “How long…have I been sleeping?”

“You were out for most of the day,” came a familiar voice, and Ana turned her head to see both Jessicas step through a double door that had separated with a whoosh.  Stormy looked like she was still excited beyond belief to be living in this fantasy.  The Commander moved near Dubois, and the two shared a silent look and a smile.  “Thanks, JD.”

The Doctor nodded and stepped back around the corner, leaving Ana and the Jessicas.  The Commander cleared her throat.  “We’re not sure if it had to do with the ‘aether’ in the cavern, or if it is unique to your race, but the scar grew while we were being rescued.”

Anafenza pulled up her top to check underneath, not minding when the two woman glanced away for a moment as she flashed them.  Sure enough, the snaking, ivy-like mass of scales reached up beyond her collarbone now, just resting at the base of her neck.  It wound down further past her waist; a quick check of her legs rewarded her with more of the scales down nearly to her left knee now.  She sighed and shook her head.  “I do not know; it’s nothing to do with my race, I know that. The curse expanded?”

“I don’t know about curse, but it certainly helped,” Stormy chimed in, hopping over and settling down at the foot of the bed.  She put a comforting hand on Ana’s leg and gave her a small squeeze.  “The Commander’s crew says that their transport system was able to find us easier and rescue us because of the beacon you became.  It was like you said; you guided them to us.”

Anafenza smiled.  “I’m…glad it helped.  I don’t know what happened, but I’m glad it helped?”  The three of them laughed a little.

“Now to get you two home,” the Commander remarked, and the other two nodded.  “We have a theory for how, but we’re still finishing the final simulations.  Until then, you’re guests on the Rafale, and I’d like to show you both around.”

Stormy smiled wide and nodded, before suddenly pausing and shaking her head.  “Wait…when do you wipe our memories?  Don’t you have some kind of ‘temporal prime directive?’”

The Commander shrugged. “We’re willing to make an exception to the policy.  Too much has happened, and if I want to remember it, I’m sure both of you would like to as well.  I don’t want to take that away.”

“It’s tied to a system on Earth in your time with a full reading of your vitals!”  The Commander smiled wide and nodded.  “That’s great!  Let me pair it to my tricorder.”  She began tapping buttons on the device, then paused and looked up.  “Um…do you have a ‘blue tooth?’”

Stormy snickered, tapping the device’s screen before handing it over.  “Bluetooth is enabled; you can pair it to your tricorder?”

The Commander shrugged. “It should be sending the correct signal?  Oh! There we go.  Yes.”  She took the phone and began tapping on the screen, then set the two aside with her badge.  “That takes care of those.  Now how do we fit the linkpearl in?”

“I could…”  Anafenza began, thinking aloud.  “What if I activated it, and then we meld it to your badge, like a materia?”

The other two women looked at her with an expression that told Ana they had no idea what she just said. The auri sighed.  “We attach it to the badge after I activate it.”

Stormy raised her hand, starting to ask “what is a materia-“ when the Commander elbowed her to shut up, then nodded.  “Alright, let’s try that.”

The women gathered around, as the Commander looked at the pearl in one hand, and her comm badge in the other.  The badge was gold and silver, with a thin wire bent around in the shape of an arrow, and two gold strips behind it.  She shrugged, then shoved the pearl between the two gold strips in the center of the badge.

Anafenza and Stormy chuckled a little, and the Commander just looked up and nodded, satisfied with her work.  Her tricorder beeped then, and she picked it up to read off the screen.  “It’s Rafale; they think they have a solution and said to contact when we’re ready to try it.”

The three women all looked at one another.  Stormy spoke first.  “Well…if it doesn’t work…”

The Commander shook her head.  “It has to work.”

“If it doesn’t, alright?” Stormy shook her head.  “I do feel a little bad we didn’t…really get to learn more about each other.  But this was neat.  A very…interesting experience.”

Anafenza nodded in agreement.  “I..am sorry Jessika could not be here to share this with you.  I think she would have enjoyed meeting you both.  I certainly have.”

The Commander sighed and nodded.  “Would love to be able to share this with the scientific community if we make it out of here. Not just proof of parallel universes but even parallels across time as well.  This was incredible.  I just wish the circumstances were better.”  She smiled. “Are we all ready?”

After they all nodded, the Commander took a deep breath.  “Jess, activate your medicom; Ana, your linkpearl.  Then, Jess, take the badge, and charge up.”

Stormy tapped her phone, while Ana took the badge and pressed the pearl in the center.  She felt the small tug of aether as she activated it, connecting it to the lifestream, before handing it to Stormy. The blue woman held it tight, powering up her electricity again, then pressed the badge.  It chirped.

“Rafale, St. Peter. We’re ready!  Go with the plan!”

“We have you Commander. M’Ral tied the navigational chronometric sensors to the transporter system; we were able to trace the link to the tricorder, now we’re switching to the comm channel…”  The woman on the other end gasped.  “Whatever you’re doing over there, I can pick out all three distinct signals for you.  Keep it up: M’Ral, prepare to initiate transport!”

Stormy screamed.  “Whatever it is, hurry up!”

Anafenza looked around; the creeping Nothing was closing in faster.  Even the tree in the center was starting to disappear.  She grit her teeth, her scar suddenly burning.

A gravelly voice came across now.  “Positive lock through the aether interference, initiating quantum transport in five…four…three…”

Anafenza shrieked, the burning was far greater.  She could see the dark aether begin to roll off of her body now, in the same way it was rolling off the tree before.  Her vision blurred, and she felt like she was reaching out in the lifestream, her aether chasing something unseen, searching…

“Two…one…energize!”

Stormy shrugged.  “I suppose it is.  Sorry if that’s confusing.”

The Commander groaned in frustration.  “There’s too much interference here, and we can’t get far enough away from the tree to cut through.”

The other two women turned to look.  Sure enough, as the Commander had implied, the cavern was smaller now, an odd gray nothingness taking the place of the stone walls around them.

Stormy snapped her fingers, then beckoned for the badge.  “Gimme.”  The Commander and Anafenza hesitated, not understanding what she meant.  Stormy huffed, beckoning for the device again.  “It’s simple, right?  How do you cut through interference if you can’t build a better transmitter?”

The Commander squinted, her thoughts racing.  “Change the frequency?”  When the other woman simply nodded, as if coaxing her to keep trying, the Commander shrugged and shook her head.  “Um, more power? I don’t –“

Stormy snapped her fingers again and grinned, interrupting.  “More power!” She held the device in her hand, and Anafenza saw threads of electricity start to wrap around her arm, snapping and crackling as the woman manipulated the environment around them.  As she watched, a thick fog began to form above them.

Stormy looked up to the Commander.  “Ready?” When the other woman nodded, Stormy grinned.  “Here we go!” She concentrated a burst of electricity right into the device, then tapped it, eliciting the chirp again.

The Commander practically leapt forward, enthralled by the woman’s powers and forgetting for a moment to speak once the device was activated.  “St. Peter to Rafale!  How do you hear us now?”

There was a curse on the other end of the transmission.  “Prophets! LOUD and clear, Commander, how do you read?”

“Same, Rafale! I’m trapped in a collapsing pocket dimension with two other people, are you able to locate us with the signal from my commbadge and my tricorder?”

“Standby…”  There were more voices in the background now, as more people began to talk over one another.  Anafenza struggled to hear them all, until finally the first man came back onto the channel.  “We’re locked onto the tricorder now, but there is still a large amount of interference. Whatever you labeled it when you scanned it – ‘aether?’ – it’s masking your signal.  Sensors are picking up three faint life signs but they’re all registering as you.”

The Commander shook her head.  “Yeah, it’s a long story, but you’re picking the three of us up just fine.  You can’t transport through the interference?”

“We’re having trouble getting a positive lock…”

Anafenza shrieked then, pointing.  “Jess, look!”

Both women looked up, then to where the auri was pointing.  The Commander gasped.  “Rafale, we have a problem!  The dimension is collapsing faster than before!”

A female voice broke through then.  “I just picked up a massive disturbance in your tricorder readings, Commander!  The link we created here is punching a hole through your dimension and causing it to destabilize at an exponentially faster rate.”

“You can’t get a lock, Nizeri?”

“Negative; M’Ral is coming up with a plan but we can’t make it happen in the next ten seconds. Cut power; use your tricorder to send data bursts.  We’ll send you a message when we have a good idea what to do on our end.  I’m sorry, ma’am!”

The Commander looked at Stormy, then swatted the communicator badge out of her sparking hand.

The grey Nothingness slowed its progress consuming the cavern, and the women all let out the collective breath they’d been holding.  Stormy shook her head.  “Now what?”

Anafenza spoke up instead, certain of the answer.  “We come up with a way to get out of here.”

The Commander nodded. “Boosting the signal definitely helped, but we need a quick solution.  While they work on a way to lock onto us, it would help to make it easier for them.”

“A beacon of some sort,” Stormy said, and the Commander nodded.

Anafenza looked at the other women.  “If the aether is causing the interference, what if we gave your ship a way to better navigate the flow of it to find us?”

“Not just a beacon, but a map?”  The Commander tapped her chin and nodded.  “How would we do that?”

“My linkpearl.” Anafenza brought her hand up to her horn, feeling for the small jewel embedded there.  “It uses the flow of aether to communicate; your ship could use the flow the linkpearl uses to break through the conflicting aether here and find us easier.”