"These interfaces are incredible!" "Angelique Kerber" enthused. So they awaited the answers with a sense of dread. everyone else had searched the manned areas of the ship to find it empty. Two team members were racing through historical documentation holographically displayed above the table as fast as Macen and Rockford were scrolling through the data. Together they began to search for answers. "I think those are the answers to your question," Macen said ruefully.Īfter begging off answering questions, Macen convinced the Special Investigations Division team he led and the Obsidian's senior officer corps to get dressed and meet in the team's briefing room. Suddenly comm panels lit into life, comm badges began beeping, and the door chime was accompanied by loud pounding on the door. "That was three frinxing years ago!" Rockford yelped. "Computer, what is the stardate?" Macen asked and it answered. In fact, T'Kir had still been alive then. Macen and Rockford had merged her detective agencies with his security contracting Outbound Ventures well before they married. So they'd sacrificed themselves so Rockford could live on for them. It was the identity that all the suppressed personalities eventually wanted to be. When Annika Ryst left Angosia, one of her covert identities had been the private investigator, Celeste Rockford. "I wonder who else they tortured tonight," Rockford warily admitted. "Well, they can keep of my head from now on," Rockford grated, "Did they give you the same shuk about alternate universes needing you?" "Welcome to a visit with the Bajoran Prophets," Macen shrugged. The one-time Angosian Augment Infiltrator had been born Annika Ryst on her native planet but had been "erased" while Detective Rockford retained her memories if not her personality. "What the hell was that?" Rockford had been confronted by her former identities and personalities now purged from her. His wife, Celeste Rockford, had the same startled expression he wore. Suddenly, Macen's cabin aboard the Nova-class NDR-74315 SS Obsidian came back into view. "Open your eyes and behold," T'Kir instructed. "So, if those universes stacked like the known dimensions, and three of those, including the one I currently occupy, which alternate reality has need of me?" Macen asked. "Linear timelines are grouped in fours it seems," Nechayev seemed surprised. Her death had nearly broken him and her second death had been a relief as her clone was a mockery of T'Kir. Macen was pained to see her even as this incarnation. They do not require your service," T'Kir told him. The two great rivals now beat each other senseless. "Whereupon the reality where the Veridian star exploded has been conquered by the Borg and the Dominion. "The Terran universe is dimmed and shall remain so," Nechayev informed him, "It does not need you."
"Please tell me that the Terrans don't require my services," Macen pleaded. "Yet another desperately does," Ro spoke next. "This reality no longer requires your services," Nechayev spoke. "You are less, yet you must become more," T'Kir's image reminded him of his last conversation with the Prophets. They'd even dealt with the Q Continuum but such encounters were rarely pleasant for either side. Macen's own people, the El-Aurians, had dealt with the Prophets, the Organians, and the Metrons once upon a time before the Borg assimilated most of his culture. Those elusive, translinear aliens who dwelt in the stable wormhole linking Bajor with a system in the Gamma Quadrant, the Prophets were worshiped as Bajor's gods and the wormhole was their Celestial Temple. Macen knew he was being contacted by the Prophets. Another of Ro Laren and the third was portraying Starfleet Admiral Nechayev. The world around Brin Macen was nebulous at best. A new era for the team develops as a universe finds its needįor a Starfleet Special Investigation Division.