Everything was set for the trip through the wormhole and hopefully reaching home once more. ASHER and Chu had performed several tests on the slipstream drive and managed to create and maintain a slipstream bubble for over an hour. The only problem now was how the bubble would react to the wormhole, which was still a mystery. Even the simulations the two officers had run couldn’t predict the outcome, one simulation they’d arrived safely and the next the entire ship had disintegrated.

But this was probably the crews’ best chance of reaching home and everyone was eager to take the chance. Since the arrival of Ensign Julia Oakenshield and the revelations shown by ASHER about the mirror universe however, the senior staff had become edgy.

In the mirror universe, ASHER was the security chief, replacing Dakul on the Bridge of the ISS Leviathan, whilst Oakenshield seem to be the tactical officer. Both Dakul and T’Kul were missing from any of the images captured by the Interphase’s sensors. It would appear that the mirror Lt. Commander Barker was the first officer, although Oakenshield seems to be able to exert a lot of pressure on the mirror Chu.

Another revelation was the fact that Major Phanan was part Borg. From this it was possible to say that the mirror universe had encountered the Borg at some time in the past.

Captain Devore had scanned every last image captured by the Interphase, noticing that the crew consisted of mainly humans, Vulcans, Betazoids and Trill. There were a few Bolians and a single Adrian aboard, but no Bajorans and no signs of mirror versions of either Dakul or T’Kul.

The Proletarian device that Chu had remembered about had, with the help of Lieutenant Taline, been converted to interface successfully with ASHER’s mobile emitter. The first time ASHER had worn the device, he’d remarked that it ‘felt’ funny against his arm. It had taken several stages of adjustments to get the device to operate, but eventually they had succeeded.

Now they were intending to get as close to the wormhole as possible and use the modified sensors to take a second look into the mirror universe. Chu and ASHER had worked through the night, finally managing to tune the sensors so that they could perform the multi-phasic quantum scan.

Devore didn’t quite understand all the theories behind the system, but the only places you could run this kind of scan were close to spatial anomalies like wormholes and black holes. It had something to do with the barriers between realities being ‘thinner’ around this kind of phenomenon.

"Everybody ready." Captain Devore asked, looking around the Bridge. As he looked at each of his officers they nodded their approval. Only T’Kul and Dakul were not currently on the Bridge. T'Kul said that she had some personal business to take care of and had requested that Dakul accompany her.

Exactly what that business was or why she wanted Dakul with her not even the Captain knew. T’Kul had been acting ‘odd’ ever since the retreat, everyone had noticed how well she had started to get on with Dakul, even though he was a Cardassian.

"Everyone appears to be ready Captain." Chu remarked from the seat next to the Captain.

"OK. Brayden set a course for the wormhole, one-quarter impulse.

Ten long minutes passed before ASHER said anything from the operations console he was using to monitor the sensors and multi-phasic quantum scan.

"Captain, hold position here, the sensors are starting to pick up another universe." ASHER requested.

"Helm. All stop, try and maintain this position." The Captain ordered.

"The scan is working, attempting to access the Bridge of the mirror vessel." ASHER remarked.

"Put it on the screen." Devore requested.

Suddenly the viewscreen changed from the wormhole to a view of the mirror Leviathan’s Bridge.