Stardate 52020.9 Mason sat alone in a dark corner of a dark crowded dimly lit room. "Computer, activate Captain's Log. It's taken all my resources and ingenuity just to force a stalemate with these renegade Cardassians. They've attacked twice, and we've had to eject one of the two warp cores on each attack. Syxx joked dryly that if we were the Enterprise and not the Equinox, this would all be over because the Enterprise always wins. The comment reminded me of the time terrorists tried to steal trilithium from the Enterprise when it was deserted during a routine Baryon decontamination. Any engineer knows that, since then, Starfleet has installed protected cores in ship hulls so crews can stay on board in such sweeps. I've assembled the whole crew in our saucer and drive cores so the Cardies won't sense us. Syxx even used the new shipwide EMH emitters to fake a crew. My plan is to wait for a boarding party, ambush them and take hostages. I hope to use negotiations as a distraction while we pull a core back in, separate the ship and pulverize the spoonheads. "On a side note, Ensign White has given me the last updated report. Decks 23 and 24 are gone. Carter is MIA, he may be dead but neither his body nor his comm badge have been found. A third of the Science Department and half of Security as well as our whole medical staff are all deceased. We finally purged the virus, but White did have the chance to take advantage of it and trace back many of the activities. Other than the Doctor's murder, most of our damage or dead aren't the Cardies fault, but Lt. Kalamarina's. I know her record isn't the most reputable, having been court martialed and demoted at DS9. Command even instructed me to keep an eye on her, which allowed an opportunity for me to put Ensign White to my personal use as well. Kalamarina is Romulan and Klingon, but despite all that, she is part Vulcan, and I can't figure out why she'd do all these things." Meanwhile, in the stardrive core, Kalamarina sat at her terminal. She was finishing up some pathway reroutes after their last brush up with the Cardassians. Behind her, Syxx, Tate and McOwen were trying to patch up Elea. When they had evacuated to the cores, someone had forgotten her and she'd been fried by a radiation bomb. She wasn't dead, but she was hurt very badly. As soon as the radiation bomb had been fired, McOwen had remembered she was out there. Kalamarina had then absorbed some of the radiation in a tractor beam and sent it back to the Cardassian vessel through the deflector dish. She held her hand to her head for a minute, wincing. Lopez, who had temporarily been assigned the duties of the Security Chief, walked over and put a hand on her back. "Lt., you all right?" Kalamarina nodded. "You did a good job with that radiation. You probably saved Elea's life." "Maybe," Kalamarina said, "But I killed everyone on the enemy ship. I feel solace in saving Elea but no remorse in killing all those Cardassians. It's honorable, but illogical." Lopez squinted his eyes in confusion. "The music's gone," whispered Kalamarina. Suddenly the comm sounded as Kalamarina collapsed to the floor, "Mason to drive core! Someone beamed onto the Cardassian ship and is preparing to fire a chronometric bomb. What effects will it have on us?" Seeing that the science officer was dazed and dizzy, Syxx leaped to her console and answered, "Captain, it'll probably throw us back in time." "How far back in time?" Mason and Kalamarina said simultaneously. Syxx ran a quick computation and answered, "16 years. Accounting for galactic rotation and stellar drift, somewhere in the Badlands." "Too far back," whispered Kalamarina as she passed out. "Syxx," said Mason, "Fire an antichronometric particle beam out of the deflector dish and get rid of that bomb." Syxx quickly complied. The stream lashed out into space and the bomb disappeared. The scanners detected a mild temporal flux, but it dissipated. Lopez sighed in relief then spoke into the comm speakers, "Captain, I thought everyone on that ship was dead!" "I know. We've been tracking a human female who approached on a shuttle. Commbadge registry says it's Ensign Bruder." "She's early," Syxx said. Bruder was to be assigned to him. "Very suspicious," continued Mason, "We monitored her going on the Cardassian ship first, ignoring us until later, and then going back over there and firing at us. Mr. Lopez, beam her into confined and secured quarters. She's got some explaining to do, and maybe she can tell us something about that ship we can use to destroy it." Lopez bolted out and Syxx turned to tend to Kalamarina. She was gone. Kalamarina stumbled down a corridor, slumping against the wall constantly. Tears rolled out of her eyes. Being born Klingon, Romulan and Vulcan had left her body physically superior, but her mind a maze. It had taken years of training, Klingon rituals and Vulcan meditation to achieve an even remotely balanced psyche, and now it was gone. The music was gone. She came to one empty intersection and dropped to her knees, wailing. Computer records said that her parents had met at Wolf 359 and she had been born after that, but she remembered knowing that a week before it happened. She had thought she was crazy, so she told no one. Then the battle did happen, thousands died, and she could have prevented it. It should have driven her crazy, but that's when the music in her mind had started, only now it was gone. Even with the music, the guilt over what she could have prevented drove her mad. How Starfleet never noticed, she didn't know, but she became capable of acts of utter evil and rebellion. Her court-martial didn't stop that. Here, she had killed a third of the crew indirectly, including her own department and personally eliminated the security chief. No remorse, no music. -But wait, there was a little music. She could barely hear it, but it was there. When she had gone in the core, it had silenced the tune, but when she came out, it was back. Confused, she stood. Why would the protected core influence something inside her head? She turned around slowly, as if trying to get the best reception on an antique radio station. Quickly she realized that there was interference, it was coming from the direction of the Cardassian ship. Whatever was disrupting the song, she had to stop it. All she wanted were answers to questions that no one else had to ask: Where was she from? Where were her parents? Why? Oh, Kahless, why?! If she lost her mind, then she'd never know. She stumbled to a transporter room and beamed to the Enigma. Once aboard, she began an overload in the engines and laid in a collision course for the Cardassian ship. She froze stiff as something familiar behind her shrieked. She turned around to see hundreds of tribbles in the shuttle. Kalamarina remembered suddenly that she had already met Etely Bruder. The Ensign had passed through while she was still posted there under Dax, before her court-martial. Quark had swindled Bruder, not with his usual cheap rocks, but instead a tribble. It had been over six months ago. Kalamarina's heart rate raced as the fuzzballs went berserk, but she focused her mind more on Vulcan ice than Klingon fire and went for the Cardassian ship. Just to be nice, she beamed all of Bruder's personal belongings onto the Equinox, but left the tribbles here to die. As the Enigma approached Dand's vessel, Kalamarina felt the music fade, replaced by another voice, similar yet opposite. She couldn't explain how she felt the presence of the Borg Collective on the Cardassian ship, but she did feel it. She set the Enigma's engines for high warp on two second delay. Beaming herself directly to the Equinox sickbay, the shuttle then kicked in its engines and rammed Dand's ship. Both exploded in a massive fireball. Mason grabbed for anything to hang on to as the Equinox rocked in the aftershock. Accidentally, he wound up holding one of Ensign White's buttocks. Before he could apologize, she glanced at him and smiled. When crew members saw on the scanners that Dand's ship had been pulverized, they began cheering. "Where's Kalamarina?", barked Mason, "Please don't tell me it's Sto-Vo-Kor." Someone shook his head and said "Sickbay." Mason turned to a door and trotted through the empty corridors to there and entered. The EMH was working over Kalamarina's unconscious body furiously. His tricorder was signaling several alarms. "Report Doctor," Mason said. The Doctor looked at Mason and shook his head. Desperately, the Doctor injected Kalamarina with a stimulant. She stirred, barely opening her eyes, gazing aimlessly at the ceiling. The doctor stood over her. "Lt., you appear to be having a massive allergic reaction, your hearts are all failing. There's nothing I can do." Kalamarina's lips began to move, whispering so quietly that only the EMH's holographic ears could hear, "The music is forever, the other voice is gone. Tell the Captain I confessed to killing everyone but the real Doc, and I'm sorry. Maybe now I'll finally meet my parents if I make it to stovvv....." The EMH stood up and ran his fingers over her eyelids, glancing upwards, "I don't know much about Klingon gods, or if you even listen to holograms like me, but as she departs this realm, I ask that you remember the ancient Klingon warrior-poet Splek: 'Fear ye the fury of a woman's heart Like the flames of a star The hatred can maul a man apart And send one from his home far Honor is our goal in death And many warriors may a woman slay With mere words of her breath Until in Kahless' arms she does lay.'" Mason blinked rapidly, short of breath, mumbled something about an autopsy, and left. *************************** Stardate 52021.5 Commander Rebecca Ming sat in her chair on the bridge with two separate reports in her hands. Just when she thought she could get some shore leave, more mysteries were presenting themselves. The autopsy report from the doctor was intense. Kalamarina had died of a severe allergic reaction to tribbles, which was understandable. Also finally maybe understandable was her rampage of death and destruction. Her Vulcan part had been undergoing ponn far, which her Klingon DNA had raised and perverted to an exponential and violent level. As if that wasn't explanation enough, the EMH had found nanoprobes in her head, still active after her pronouncement of death. Analysis of the nanoprobes revealed a Borg origin, but comparing them to the ones in the Cardassian debris ruled out the probes being a part of the known Collective. That one Ming couldn't figure out. She thought Borg were Borg and you were either assimilated or put into a permanent state of irrelevancy. You were never just used. The other report came from Ensign Zenoz, who was to be appointed the new Interstellar Sciences department head. Hey, wait, Ming thought, is Zenoz a he, she or it? How do you label a race with not one or two, but three genders? Unable to settle that one, she read Zenoz's report. Subspace analysis had allowed "it" to determine what had happened to the time bomb Etely had fired. It had gone back in time 16 years and destroyed the U.S.S. Valiant. Allowing for galactic rotation and stellar drift, the bomb had popped out near the Badlands which the Valiant had been investigating 16 years ago. Ming absorbed this quietly for a few moments before notifying Starfleet of the discovery and advised them to notify next of kin of the MIA's. Ming had been an Ensign on the Valiant and transferred off only a week before it disappeared. She had been very fond of Captain Bruder and- Ming broke into a cold sweat and jolted for Mason's ready room as soon as she realized just who's kid it was sitting confined to quarters.