The Par Maru was no Starfleet vessel, but she was at least space-worthy. The small transport slowly trudged away from the asteroid where she had been marooned and back towards the USS Leviathan-A. However, the ship had been heavily damaged and the voyage back to the relative safety of the Leviathan was slow. Eventually, the ship landed back on the hanger deck of the ship and the small crew shutdown all the systems.

Stepping off the Par Maru, Lieutenant Commander Barker and Ensign Blair both noticed the hanger crews staring at the strange vessel and all the damage. Marine 1st Lieutenant Truman was the next to leave, carrying the small engineering kit he'd brought with him in one hand and a small anti-matter canister in the other. The last to leave the ship was i'T'Kul t'Rashad, the mirror universe advisor and the 'Captain' of the Maru.

As the crew started to remove the bulky helmets from their EVA suits, Commander Rashad and Captain Taybar entered the hanger bay and started to walk across the floor towards the small group.

"I see you got back in one piece." Aki remarked. "But what happened ?"

"How is Dukal ?" t'Rashad interrupted, worried about her friend and colleague.

"He's fine." Aki replied. "The Doc was able to repair most of the damage done and Lieutenant Dukal offered to be a blood donor. The Doc says he'll recover, but it might take a few days."

"So what's in the canister ?" Commander Rashad enquired.

"The mirror version of our own Ensign ASHER." Chu replied.

The Captain and Commander were both stunned at the statement.

"Is it safe to bring it aboard ?" Aki asked.

"That's why I requested the canister." Chu replied. "The magnetic containment fields should disrupted the mobile emitter systems. The Lieutenant probably caused some major damage to the emitter anyway, but the canister is just to be safe. Captain, with your permission, I'd like to study this emitter in more detail."

"Why ?" Aki enquired. "What good would it do ?"

"If this ASHER is anything like Ensign ASHER, we might just be able to track the ISS Leviathan." Chu stated. "And I may also be able to extract valuable information on the ship and its crew, which would be valuable."

"And there might be a way of repairing Ensign ASHER." Aki said knowingly.

"This ASHER created the holo-virus, so in theory I should be able to reverse engineer the virus yes." Chu admitted. "And if we can access the entire Protector database held in the matrix, who knows what new technologies we could find."

"I want a full report on the away mission first." Aki stated. "Plus I want maximum security placed on the area where you'll be working."

"Understood." Chu remarked.

"Then I guess you should go and get changed, then write that report." Aki stated. "Dismissed."

The away team headed back to the EVA lockers and changed back into their respective uniforms. As Chu left the locker room, he saw that Jack Truman was waiting for him.

"Can I help you Lieutenant ?". Chu asked.

"Commander, I'd like to help you in working with the hologram." Jack replied.

"Thank you Lieutenant." Chu said, surprised at the request. "I'm having the canister taken to the isolation lab on deck eight. Meet me there at 20:00 and we'll get started."

"Yes sir." The young Marine replied, saluting the Starfleet officer.

"Don't let the other Marines see you saluting a Starfleet officer." Chu remarked.

"Old habits die hard Commander." Jack said, as he left to get back to the Marine decks. Jack had originally been a Starfleet engineer onboard the USS Leviathan, but along with a select few opted to become part of the Marines serving onboard.

Chu headed for his quarters and started to write his report.

Isolation Lab, Deck eight - 20:00

Jack Truman was waiting for Lieutenant Commander Barker as he arrived on deck eight.

"Shall we go in and get started." Chu suggested, unlocking the outer airlock door and stepping inside.

Jack followed and the outer doors closed, followed by a sudden popping in both their ears as the pressure in the airlock chamber was reduced. Once the airlock pressure had been reduced, they could feel the blast of cold air. Finally the inner door locks opened and the higher pressure of the room filled the airlock. Chu and Jack stepped out into the lab and closed the doors.

"I've had all the EPS and ODN systems in this area, along with those on the two decks above and below re-routed, so we'll be working with tricorders, data Padds and hand-tools." Chu explained. "We're also surrounded by a class ten forcefield and I've placed holo-disrupters in the four corners of the room.

"Understood Commander." Jack replied.

"Please call me Chu." Chu stated. "We're going to be working very closely over the next few days."

"Yes….Chu." Jack replied. "And I guess you should call me Jack."

"Right let's start with a basic scan of the emitter." Chu suggested, picking up an engineering tricorder. He passed the tricorder over the inert armband and kept checking the reading he was getting back. "The design is very similar to that of Ensign ASHER's emitter, but its far less advanced."

"Could that be because Ensign ASHER's emitter was based on the emitter brought back by Voyager." Jack enquired. "I seem to remember reading about it in some technical journal, it was 29th century technology."

"You're correct and the article you're referring to was written by me." Chu replied. "Ensign ASHER's emitter was a mixture of our own technology, the Voyager emitter and Protector technology. We never managed to re-create the 29th century technology, but with the addition of the Protector technology we were able to create the emitter that Ensign ASHER used."

"Is it still functioning ?" Jack enquired.

"As far as I can make out, the emitter circuits are fused, most likely from the phaser hits." Chu explained. "This ASHER is as much trapped in this emitter as Ensign ASHER is in his. But the rest of the circuitry appears to be intact, which means the database and holographic matrix should still be uncorrupted."

"So what next ?" Jack asked.

"We take it one step at a time." Chu stated. "We'll start by attempting to disable the sub-space interface. That should stop our guest from interfacing with the Leviathan's systems. Our next step will be to attempt to access the homing signal."

"Homing signal !" Jack remarked. "But won't that give our position away ?."

"Without access to a sub-space transceiver, ASHER wouldn't be able to transmit or receive any signals. But we should be able to determine the sub-space frequency that he uses to maintain contact with the ISS Leviathan." Chu explained. "Once we have that, all we need to do is tune into that channel and look for the encoded signals from the ship."

"I don't understand." Jack stated, sounding a little confused. "Why would the mirror vessel be sending out encoded signals ?"

"Ensign ASHER needed to maintain a constant link with us to survive." Chu started to explain. "I'm hoping that this ASHER requires the same connection. It's a sort of reset switch, a constant signal which he uses to check the integrity of his Protector systems."
"But why does he need a reset switch ?" Jack enquired.

"It was a problem with the merging of the Federation and Protector systems, after a while, the two systems started to degrade and cause programming errors. The longer this went on, the more damaged the systems became." Chu explained. "So we added a check system that Ensign ASHER could use to monitor his own systems. Every three hours, he would attempt to perform a systems check and correct any programming errors that were detected."

"And Ensign ASHER used a specific sub-space frequency to do that." Jack stated, starting to understand.

"Exactly. The channel he used was encoded so no-one would be able to access that data, using Protector systems. If anyone did detect the signals, the wouldn't be able to access them."

The two of them started to work on the emitter armband, but things didn't go as quickly as planned.