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Twixt Scylla and Charybdis III: The Future In Motion

Posted on Wed Nov 13th, 2019 @ 10:26am by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Commander Rita Paris

Mission: Family Detention
Location: Earth, Scotland, MacGregor Manse guest house
Timeline: 2396

The tears had continued to flow as the old woman spoke, and it was clear that she was pressing through it to make her point. Those violet eyes, still leaking tears, sought out those of the young helmsman. "Is that what your rinam is like? Those humans and their lofty expectations of you to somehow fulfill their larger than life image of you as an heroic figure?"

As Char talked, Mnhei'sahe got up quietly and brought the elder Rihannsu some tissues that she spied on the corner of the counter as that hankey she saw looked like it might need backup. Thought with the content of the story, the young pilot grabbed one for her own damp eyes before she sat back down.

"Rita…" Dox smirked, wiping her own cheek. "Something like that. She's… sometimes a little larger than life. She's the hero, not me. But for whatever reason, she thinks I can be that. She's pushed me to be better at every turn. To be more than I was the day before. But she sets that standard. If there's something that can't be done, she does it and makes it look easy. Though, she lets me see the reality. She's shown me how hard it is to be that for someone else, and she has to be that for the entire crew."

Running a hand over her ear, the red-headed young Lieutenant looked back at Char's old blue uniform and chuckled. "She's… she sets the standard. She is everything Starfleet has ever purported itself to be. And she's always been there for me, both as a Commander and as a friend. She bolsters me when my confidence is failing and holds me together when I think I can't. She's the one that encouraged me to embrace my heritage, once I found out about what was hidden. She helped me reconcile with my mother. She was the first person I told my real name to."

"Be better... heh." The old retired veteran shifted her weight in the chair with a wince, waving off the concerned look it brought forth from her guest. "That was the core of Siivas' philosophy. That was what he challenged me to be... every day, be better. Make a better decision, learn from that mistake, and not to always succeed- but to always try. I don't know if it is the Deltan philosophy, or just that of his clan, which was apparently quite extensive and influential in their culture. But it was simple... and effective.”
“All of them...” the old woman’s eyes took on a faraway look as she recalled friends long gone, “Siivas, Andurean, Qurka Qurg, Fiona, Selune, T'vyn, even Carlow... they made me a better person, and I became what they thought of me. Belief will do that. I'm glad that you have friends who believe in you. Listen to them- their perspective of you is far clearer in your darker moments than that of yourself. At least, it was in my experience."

"I try. Sometimes I do better than not. Sometimes that voice that tries to convince me I don't deserve them is… louder than it should be. But without them, I wouldn't be here right now. They believed in me enough to risk their careers and lives to save me. If not for them believing in me, I'd still be there on ch’Rihan, and…" Mnhei'sahe paused a moment, glancing down with a thoughtful expression and a cryptically worded reply. "I don't like knowing what would have happened."

Then she brought her eyes back up and nodded. "But, yes. ‘Be better’ is Rita's mantra, too. And they all inspire that in me. With everything they've all done for me, I can't let them down. I can't dishonor them that way."

"Don't see it as a responsibility to them. See it as a responsibility to yourself, that you owe it to yourself to be that better person. Don't change for other people... it doesn't work well, in my experience. But I am not you, either, so follow your heart and it will likely lead you on an honorable path. So... there were inquiries., Charybdis pressed on.

“I crossed swords with a Vulcan scientist named Suval on more than one occasion, who continued trying to undermine me within command. There was a high-profile battle at Starbase 23 where we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, but it was all buried under inquiries and political denials and maneuvering,” the old officer snarled at the memory, then her tone became more resigned. “That was also where I became formally branded a traitor. I opened fire and destroyed two Birds of Prey as they were decloaking to surround us in the aftermath of the battle. There was never any coming back from that... my honor was stained, even though the maneuver was craven and they expected an easy capture."

"You see, over time I grew to realize that quite a few of we wild talents of the Star Empire were still active. The pack of experiments that had survived and been seeded amongst their enemies in the Federation. While I had infiltrated Starfleet against orders, other operatives had worked their way into the command structure, taking lovers, seducing, blackmailing, and puppeteering their way to political power. The Tal'Shiar way," Charybdis snarled, then shook her head.

"The reputation of our people is one of sniveling, backstabbing cowards with no honor, and it's all because of the kreldanni Tal'Shiar. I fought them for damn near a hundred years, and I was never able to rout them out. Stymie them, set them back, cripple operations in the field... but I could never find a way to bring our people to throw off their yoke."

"Likely a lot to do with me being a traitor to ch'Rihan, I suppose," the old woman chuckled mirthlessly. "Hoof, I should get a proper cup of tea in me, with some caffeine." Levering herself up with an exhalation of effort, the chubby old woman bustled about the organized kitchen, clearly knowing where everything was, and beginning the tea preparation as a ritual she knew well. "So I should likely get past all these stories of loss and people you've never heard of an likely won't find many records of, and explain that upon learning that Starfleet Command was compromised, I knew I had to act. These were my people, literally- there were only so many of us who survived, and we were all quite exceptional. But more than Rihannsu, they were my people. Genetically augmented, possessed of superior intellect, and pawns in a game they were never meant to see won. Disposable assets."

"The honor of our people and avoiding an intergalactic holocaust as the Tal'Shiar took over the Federation was on my mind, of course. But I knew I had an obligation to that dysfunctional family of exceptional individuals out there to try to stop them, and bring them to see that the Federation was right. The great experiment of coming together in peace worked." Char set a plate covered with small cookies on the table as she tended to the whistling teapot. "I believed in the Federation, and I'd made my choice and cast my lot- I was Starfleet, and I would oppose any efforts to destroy it with all the means at my disposal. Which were... not inconsequential."

Dropping in a teabag and refilling the mug that had held the Vulcan spiced tea with a steaming hot replacement, that was decidedly stronger and more pungent. Charybdis MacGregor set the kettle back on the stovetop, then shuffled back to the kitchen table to ease herself slowly into her chair, her stoicism overpowered by the clear sign that it hurt the old woman to move about. Yet she clearly insisted on doing just that, demonstrating her determined nature. "In 2268, then Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crossed the neutral zone- an act of war. During the course of the mission, which had been ordered by Starfleet Intelligence, Spock seduced the ship's commander, while Kirk stole the cloaking device from the engine room. Imagine that- a Starship captain disconnecting a delicate and technologically advanced device, disguised as a ‘Romulan’."



Leaning in, Mnhei’sahe raised her eyebrow slightly. The story was intersecting with the history she was much more aware of, but she didn’t interrupt as Charybdis was right in the middle of her retelling.

"Kirk's engineer, the great Montgomery Scott, managed to make it work, to his credit, but of course he destroyed the reticulating coils in the process, and overloaded the gridmapping computer by attempting to wavemap the Enterprise's hull, while the settings were still obviously set for a T'liss class Bird of Prey. That ship was the Feathers of Al'thindor, whose commander miscalculated the skill of the Enterprise's transporter technician, and managed to get captured along with her cloaking device. That woman was Riov Liviana Charvanek... my mother." Char paused to let the personal implications of that particular point sink in before she continued.

And sink in, it did. Charvanek was an important figure in history, in both the Federation and within the Imperium, and even Dox had known at least a bit about her. The young woman who had just been intensively drilled on her people's history only a month prior by her Senator Grandmother internally chastised herself for not making the connection to the name earlier.

"When I took on the Victory, I secured the broken cloaking device, under the pretense of 'repairing' it- of course I could repair it. What I sought was a considerably more... transphasic effect, if you are familiar with the concept. I had to redeem my mother's honor... and the only way was to transform the symbol of her defeat... into Victory. You see, the treaty of Algeron would not be signed until 2311. Truth be told, the Victory- or rumors of her capabilities- were one of the reasons that accord came about. Because we were not only a sensor ghost, we literally phased through matter She could go unseen to remarkably sophisticated scanners, and with a little clever application I could even camouflage her... well, as a pre-refit version of herself. But that's still a bit ahead of the story here."



"Stop me if my meandering loses you or if you've questions, Lieutenant. It is rather a long and complex tale... but that's how life is, wouldn't you say?" The old woman with the violet eyes set in wrinkled skin sought those of the young woman with the smooth unlined face.

With the lightest of chuckles, thinking about the bizarre complexity of her own life only among the last year, Mnhei’sahe nodded and smirked slightly. “I can… corroborate that fairly well just with my own life. But no, I’m following just fine. You really aren’t meandering, Char.” Picking up her cup to take a sip, Mnhei’sahe thought out loud for a moment. “But, I remember reading about that incident with the Enterprise. Stealing that cloak was considered an inciting incident in what would become the Rihannsu Civil War in 2276 where… wait.” As she spoke, she all but dropped her mug as her eyes went wide. “If Liviana Charvanek is your mother, then that means that the former Empress… the first Empress, Ael t'Rllaillieu… she would be your great aunt?”

"Who sat upon the throne in my time as captain of the Victory, yes," Charybdis waved off the link to greatness that her bloodline carried, as her great aunt's nobility and courage were historical fact, and had no reflection upon herself. "But again, this was a Tal'Shiar operation that had taken years to take root, and in truth, it had long since gotten away from its handlers- not unlike myself. So while the Empire was settling into prosperity and a return to honor, the machinations of the Tal'Shiar were still afoot, still eroding the federation from within, while the Empress and the Senate were blissfully ignorant of what was being done in the name of our people."

"I learned all of this at the Christmas party at MacGregor Manse- the great house there across the way where my grandson raises his children to rule the clan someday. The party where my mother snuck onto Earth to visit me and meet her grandchildren, and when she slept with the human astronaut Carlow, to eventually give birth to my half-sister Freddie. I know..." Charybdis waved off the circumstances, knowing the improbability of much of her tale, although she was only getting warmed up.

"We all lead such… elaborate lives, in hindsight, But I remember that party and the crew gathered around, all happy to be there, Raine such a proud father, Qurka agreeing to be the children's nanny. It was a joyous time that I still recall.. very fondly." Pausing at that memory with a faraway look in her eyes and a wistful smile, Charybdis refocused on her story. "Through mother, I will say that I became aware of the full scope of Great Aunt Ael's actions, and they did influence me later in life. But we'll get to that part."

Following, Mnhei’sahe couldn’t help but smile at the all-too-familiar insanity of what she was hearing. Along with seeing the positive effect that the happy memories had on Char’s body language and tone.

"I had no means to root out the agents scattered throughout the Federation, manipulating Starfleet itself. Even journeying to ch'Rihan herself would yield no fruits, were I able to do so- the Tal'Shiar only recorded their operations once they were complete, and nothing could be done to affect them any longer. The secret police preferred to be the ones to write history, you see. Which is what gave me the idea for the mad scheme that would be both my salvation and my undoing." Pausing, the old woman summoned up a rueful smile.

"You see, I was Starfleet Intelligence. I had access to information many did not... including Ambassador Spock's equations for time travel. Initially calculated to use Sol, they were easily adapted to any M-class star, if one was doing so for a Constitution-class Starship. If one was brilliant enough to understand the calculations and recalculate them for moving forward or backward in time. I was, thus I had a scheme and determination."

"Which was when one Liviana McCray stepped out of a doorway in space and time, and visited me in my quarters the night before I planned to drop off the majority of my crew, steal my Starship and go racing off in time to change history. What cared I for the future if I were planning to rewrite it, and I had no designs on visiting the past, so no danger of changing our existing history existed, or so I believed. But when my own granddaughter stepped into my quarters, daughter of a babe I had borne on Christmas eve 2286 who was still in diapers at MacGregor Manse, my life stepped onto a very different stage." Indicating yet another image on the wall, the old woman continued to illustrate her tale with the keepsakes she had gathered and the images of lives gone by, displayed in her simple country home on a star far from her birthplace.

The image in question was of a female with coppery red hair and a deep, burnished tan, far from the relatively pale skin coloration with a greenish hint so common in Rihannsu. Her uniform was unrecognizable, but unzipped so low that the 'family resemblance; could not possibly go unobserved. Bright inhumanly piercing blue eyes were languid and knowing, and even the pose was almost aggressively sexual, and one image told you a lot about the woman, if you knew how to read the clues.



But again, it was in the bizarre parallels upon which Mnhei’sahe was fixated. Char had been visited by a relation from her own future to warn her, and the thought evoked memories of the Kodria, the android granddaughter of Enalia Telvan who called her ‘Auntie Dox’ that had endeared herself to the crew of the Hera in such a short span of time. Even thinking of the young woman now brought a smile to Dox’s face as she continued to listen.

"Brilliant, rebellious and determined, Liviana was part of a crew whom had stolen their timeship when it was due to be decommissioned, infused the ship's computer will a full-fledged artificial intelligence, and the Constellation 7 and her small crew roamed the timestream in search of adventure, sightseeing history and righting what once went wrong. This she revealed to me as she offered her services. My executive officer T'vyn, the Vulcan pacifistic behavioral scientist, was to be kidnapped to the future that night, which was where she was destined, along with Carlow, Liviana informed me. Loss often came hand in hand with success for me, you see. I do hope this will not be a pattern for your life as well, Mnhei'sahe."

At this, Mnhei’sahe dipped her head slightly. She thought of the officers that died under her at the Section 32 Starbase. She thought of Ensign Raphael Paulson, killed by an assassin droid sent after her. She thought of all the things she had almost lost over the last year. She thought of the distance that had sprung up in her friendship with Doctor Asa Dael that pained her. She thought of losing her father within minutes of truly meeting him for the first time. Of finally stepping foot on the world she hailed from, only to have to give it up to save everything she already had, and the children on the way. She thought of all of this as she sighed slightly.

“When I was captive on that Warbird, the first two weeks were… different. After a couple of days, I had a choice to make. Had I held my ground and remained intractable, they would have begun torturing my mother. Subjected us both to their… Neural Extraction Converter right there. So I chose to try and play for time and accept my grandmother’s offers to learn what she was willing to teach me about ch’Rihan and the Rihannsu. And about my own family’s history that I knew nothing about.” Mnhei’sahe interjected, hoping not to disrupt her Elder’s tale too far to get to her point.

“But… and this is perhaps the point that has given Starfleet the most pause in reconfirming my commission… in those two weeks where I had made that concession, I absorbed it all willingly. I… enjoyed that time together in spite of the circumstances. She showed me so much. Not just useful tactical data on the functioning of the Senate. Not just history and facts. But she also showed me family, and compassion. She truly believed she was rescuing me by doing what she did.” Mnhei’sahe added, hoping it would lend context to her part of the story.

“But she also told me what it meant that my mother named me ‘Mnhei’sahe’. That it was considered dangerous to name anything for so broadly defined a virtue. To do so, she said, imparts on that thing all the properties of that virtue. For... 'weal or woe,' she said.” Mnhei’sahe smiled awkwardly as she evoked the turn of phrase both Char and her Grandmother used. “That my life would, as a result of my name, be something of a parabola of triumph and tragedy. So far… she hasn’t been wrong.”

The spotted fleshy hand of the old pointed-eared menace reached across the distance to take the hand of the young officer of the next generation into her own, and those nebulous violet eyes sought the dark eyes of youth she sought to comfort- or at least commiserate. "A great Earth philosopher once wrote that we all lead... such elaborate lives. With wild ambitions in our sights. The thrust of that... the idea that we were born to play on a larger stage than we imagined..."

In that moment, Mnhei’sahe closed her eyes for a moment and let herself simply experience the sensation. Had she the time, she wondered if she could feel Charybdis’ energy like she could with Mona. Just as how she was able to, for the briefest of moments, with her mother. But she was nowhere near that skilled, and simply appreciated the warmth of the gesture.

As she paused, she thought of Char’s words. Of her Grandmother’s dreams for her. Of the destinies that had been laid before her by Kodria, and by Death herself. That stage Char spoke of was large, indeed.

Looking off wistfully across the simple cottage cluttered with relics and reminders, the old woman chuckled and smirked, one eyebrow raising up slowly. "My dreams were modest... to escape my captors, to live free on my own terms. To stand for what I believed in, and stop my people from being intergalactic assholes, as Carlow used to say. To love and be loved, to raise a family. I did get to do all of those things and more, but..." Gesturing to the wall opposite the kitchen were, Dox realized, where hung all the images of dead people Charybdis had known, so many in those maroon monster uniforms. Her very own Wall of the Fallen, where she memorialized some of those losses that still pained her heart in recollection, just as strongly every time.

Yet there were some images from the old Romulan renegade's tales that did not hang on that wall, which one might take to mean that they were still likely amongst the living, insofar as Charybdis knew.

"Great deeds, Lieutenant Dox, will inevitably lead to larger things," the old starship commander picked up her chin and summoned some of that old leadership. "It tends to be transformative, and it takes you places you never imagined. The only advice that I may offer, not that you asked, but..." Clutching her smooth and soft hand in both of her own plump and liver-spotted hands, the old spook gripped them with a bit of urgency, and her eyes sought those of Mnhei'sahe Dox.

"Treasure those good moments- the moments of peace. Having morning coffee with your loved ones, or laughing about a joke on the bridge with your shipmates. Savor your victories, but don't believe yourself undefeatable, and just... appreciate it. Appreciate even those tragedies and losses, for they too will forge you anew. Just... try to not let those losses harden your heart. Don't become what you oppose because you chose angry bitterness over hope. It's hard, it is perhaps the hardest thing you will ever know, but I can assure you from here where my perspective is enormous- it is worth it."

"I'm a very old woman- no, I know how long we CAN live. Had I led a normal life perhaps I might go on that long, but I am old and broken down, and I have lost so much and so many. Yet I still love all of them- all the lost, all the fallen, all my setbacks and losses. Because my life has been a great adventure, my friend. I am old and comfortable... well, as comfortable as I can be, at least. I live free, I tend to my garden, I putter in my lab, and I review reports. I still hold out the hope that our people will be saved from what they are now, and returned to what they could be."

"I have done my part... for our people, for history," Char snapped her fingers and shook her head, her absent-mindedness at work once more. "Ah, still need to tell that part of the story so you'll understand. But now, it's your turn. It's your time. The 25th century is nearly here. Let the stars write your epic, play the parts the fates have in store for you, and hope you are canny enough and strong enough to see it through, whatever it may be. Above all, keep hope alive in your heart- for if you lose that, what price victory, hm?"

Nodding delicately, Mnhei’sahe paused for a moment. She could still feel the warmth from Char’s hands on her own and she thought over the elder’s words. And after a few long seconds of silence, the younger woman spoke, “Fate… the stars… it’s difficult knowing that they have plans for me. But I suppose you know a little something about that too, what with your own granddaughter coming to you. And Sonak… from the Hera… he’s been helping me train my own mind. Well, he also came to meet with me as a representative of the Vulcan government, and there’s interest in taking advantage of my family connections to open up new talks towards reunification. I don’t know if I can do anything towards any of this… but I have hope. At least I need to try, if that makes any sense.”

"Perhaps diplomacy will succeed when violence and trickery failed. That would be the Starfleet, way, would it not? To turn those swords to plowshares, and to win with reason and measure what could not be wrested by force... or trickery." The old woman nodded, removing her hands from her grip on the young woman's hand. "I should get on with my story. The sun isn't getting any higher, and we've miles to go ere night falls, so to speak."

“Don’t worry about it, Char. It’s your story to tell and I’m here to listen.” Mnhei’sahe interjected with a warm smile, hoping to keep the elder Rihannsu from worrying. She was, in fact, enthralled with the tale and didn’t want Char stressing herself.

"Since I could not defeat the deep roots of corruption I had discovered within Starfleet in my own time through confrontation, I had decided to leap forward in time, when all of this was history, in order to see how it would play out. I would gather the database of the Federation and that of the Tal'Shiar, then study this period to discover where I could make a change, or see what role I was predestined to play once it was a matter of history. It was a foolhardy and desperate plan, but I was emboldened by the addition of my own granddaughter, who came along paradoxically to aid us- after all, if we failed, she would never come to be born. So I proceeded with some degree of assurance that we... that I... was destined to succeed."

Listening, Dox had long ago stopped trying to mask her feelings as her face shifted to an expression of concern. She recalled Char’s words from just a few moments earlier. A warning of sorts, to not believe yourself undefeatable and feared it may have been a prophetic statement as the story continued to unfold.

"I dropped off most of the crew on Cygnus 4, under the pretense that they were on maneuvers setting up temporary shelters as if in a planetary emergency. I insured they had sufficient supplies for at least six months, and full communications arrays. I brought only a skeleton crew forward with me, under the assumption that I was endangering fewer lives, thus my crime was somehow lesser in my mind. Lacking orders to do so, I set the controls for the coronosphere of the M-class star Cygnus, and I hurtled the Victory one hundred years forward in time. far enough ahead that the historical details would be declassified long ago and the information I sought would be nothing anyone would consider valuable."

“One hundred years... “ Mnhei’sahe did the math in her head with a thoughtful expression. “That would put it only, nine years from now.” She didn’t add her own concerns, knowing full well the danger of time travel, but she feared what was coming next in the story.

At that, Charybdis blinked rapidly a few time, then crooked one of those sharply angled eyebrows. "You mean... nine years ago? I'm old and forgetful, but I haven't forgotten basic mathematics, have I? We departed 2287, arrived 2387? This is the year 2396, isn't it? November second, stardate 74836.10914? Is that not the date? Stupid old woman, you've screwed up the dates, you're going to get it wrong..." The chubby old woman began hauling herself up from the chair, clearly agitated and distressed.

Getting up, Mnhei'sahe rounded the table behind Char, immediately concerned for the woman's well being. "No, you didn't get anything wrong, Char. It's okay."

Coming around, the red-headed young pilot reached out and took Char's distressed hand and tilted her head to make eye contact. More than ever she wished she had been a better student of Sonak's so she might know how to connect mentally to help calm the elder Rihannsu. She wished she could share a piece of her own energy here and now as she did with Sonak's help with her grandmother. But in the moment, all she had were her words and a soft tone, though in her own nervousness Dox slipped momentarily to her native tongue.

"Vaed'rae… Aeuthn qiu oaii mnek'nra." Wincing her face slightly, Dox corrected herself and switched back to Federation standard. "Listen… all is well. Okay, you didn't make any mistakes. You were telling me about the Victory. You came one hundred years to your future. To 2387. Right?"

"Yes... yes... today is November 2nd, stardate 74836.1091? It is, isn't it? I can't have gotten that wrong, it's too important..." Gripping her fingers alongside the palm of her hand as if grasping something, a holographic PaDD sprung into view over her hands. Which was most decidedly not modern technology, as Starfleet had no such device that Dox knew of. At least, not yet. Tapping at it with her left hand, bringing up the stardate, the old woman sagged, visibly relieved. "I'm sorry... forgive an old woman her foolishness. When you said the date was... I thought..."

Standing next to Char, Mnhei’sahe raised an eyebrow. While she was becoming extremely concerned for the elder Rihanna woman, she was also now more curious than ever about what exactly was going on. It was becoming clear to the young Lieutenant that there was more at stake here for the Admiral than just telling a story.

The holographic PaDD, technology unknown in this day and age, disappeared as Admiral MacGregor opened her right hand once more, and the aged woman gripped the chair back for support, her cheeks a bit minty flush and out of breath. "I'm all right... it's just... I thought I had the date wrong, that's all," she explained, clearly working on calming herself from her moment of panic.

“Here… you sit down and relax, please. Let me take care of it, Char.” Mnhei’sahe said, gently helping the aged Admiral to her seat once again, not worrying about the technology she suspected might have been the result of Char’s own granddaughter being from the future. After all, that wasn’t a fanciful idea to Dox, who worked with Ila Dedjoy, a woman in an android body that only existed because of technology from the future.

Still, the younger woman was delicate and controlled with her actions, wanting to help as much as was possible as it seemed as if Charybdis was virtually deteriorating before her eyes. They had been talking for a while now, and perhaps it was the strain of it all, but her faculties seemed to be waning as it got later in the day. Mnehi’sahe took the tea set and placed it on the counter near the sink to address later and got two, fresh new cups from the replicator, ordered to the same decaffeinated specs as earlier.

Hoping that her new friend was calming down enough to continue, Mnhei’sahe set the cups down and walked back around to take her seat and thought about what Char had said about the date. As she did, she thought about her own experiences with time travel both personally and through the bizarre messages that Kodria had left for members of the crew. Messages that the young Android had recorded, apparently, just before being put in stasis designed to be activated by the Hera’s computers at key moments to act as warnings.

Though it seemed that so far all the messages had been left for either Rita or herself. But each message was triggered by specific things happening in time and there was a similar sense of urgency to Char in the here and now. “There’s nothing to forgive. Just… why is the exact date so important, Char? What happened? What’s supposed to happen?”

That earned her a wry and knowing smile, and the first actual stonewall she'd encountered with the woman. "Time... we always think we have more than enough, 'all the time in the world' is the phrase here on Earth. Yet that isn't so... time is both finite and it is finite for us as well. An old acquaintance will be visiting tonight, so it's important to me that I have things in order before they arrive. That's all... I'll be fine, I promise."

It was an evasion, a dodge of the question, and both women knew it. Charybdis was a good liar, as old Rihannsu women tended to be, but Mnhei'sahe had an ear for it after a month in Tal'Shiar captivity and a lifetime with her mother. The old woman was expecting someone, but she would not be 'fine'. At least not in the traditional sense, and Mnhei’sahe knew it. As she settled back down, visibly calming and her panic subsiding, the young lieutenant had to decide if she would press the matter or prompt the rest of the rambling tale the old woman was still trying to impart.

But, dipping her head for a moment, Mnhei’sahe knew not to push there. Thinking silently for that moment over everything Char had been saying, she had a very good idea exactly who the elder Rihannsu’s ‘acquaintance’ very likely was. And if she was right, it was a mutual acquaintance. At the idea, she thought of her father for a moment and a tear slipped out down her cheek. But she wiped it quickly away, lifted her head again with a somewhat forced smile and nodded, letting her friend continue.

"Yes... the future... which is now the past, which is no more," the Romulan renegade recalled enigmatically. "So... Liviana and her wife Lexington had come back in time to help me with my scheme, because she knew if I failed she would never come to be. Plus Liviana had all sorts of tricks she had picked up through her travels in time, so she was an able and capable adventurer, if a bit reckless and wild. We entered the future in the midst of a battle, between the USS Sunfire, a Defiant-class vessel captained by a Trill of Liviana's acquaintance, and the Cardassians."

"We helped turn the tide, but at considerable cost. As advanced as the Victory was, she was still a hundred years out of date. We didn't let on, but we took quite a pounding. We stayed long enough for Liv and Rain to 'transfer' back to the Sunfire, download her historical library, and sneak back to the Victory."



To Be Continued...

 

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