Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Three, Episode Twelve - “Directive”
By Jack D. Elmlinger
PROLOGUE
The morning had started like any other day.
Breakfast consisted of the usual buttered toast and coffee that was rushed through while he donned his red turtleneck undergarment. By the time that he was zipping up his gray-shouldered Starfleet uniform jacket, the plate and cup were empty. His medium-length dark hair only took a moment to fix, brushed away from his eyes as he simultaneously slid into his polished black boots. The standard morning routine was complete in less than ten minutes. Not his personal best, but it was still admirable.
“Captain to Sollik,” Ewan Llewellyn called out after tapping his combadge.
“Sollik here, sir,” replied the Chief Engineer.
“Drop what you’re doing and report to my quarters,” came the order, though it was said without the malice that the words implied. “See you in a moment.”
“Understood, Captain. I’m on my way.”
Sollik arrived quicker than he expected. Showing the Suliban in and offering him a politely-declined cup of coffee, Ewan sat down on his comfortable sofa and let out a small sigh, rubbing his temples with worry. He was about to ask for a favor that he didn’t enjoy contemplating, but there was something in his gut that told him that it was necessary.
The latest Tah’Heen attack kept playing over in his mind. The Starbase Database had been wiped clean while he and Rear Admiral Blackmore had been playing host at a peaceful banquet. The thoughts that he had been having were unsettling. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry.
“Do you remember when I asked you to be available over the next couple of days?,” Llewellyn reminded his chief engineer in a low tone. “I have a few things to discuss with you, and a few orders that I wanted to be implemented on the quiet…?”
Sollik frowned with his green scales folding in confusion. “Captain?”
“You know,” the Welshman pressed on,” outside the transporter room.”
“No, sir,” came the honest reply. “I don’t.”
This was odd. Sollik wasn’t something who played games. Was the stress finally getting to Ewan?
“Come on, Commander,” he repeated. “You do remember, don’t you?”
“Like I just said, Captain, I really don’t.”
“Next, you’ll be telling me that the Tah’Heen wiped your memory too. Seriously, dig in here, Sollik, this is important. You trusted me with the secret of your genetic abilities so now I’m asking for your help in kind!”
The Suliban froze up. His yellow eyes went wide, ablaze with shock.
Ewan saw it. Something was seriously wrong here.
“How…,” Sollik stammered. “How… do you know… of my…?”
“Oh, boy…”
ACT ONE
Captain’s Log, Stardate … well, I’m not exactly sure…
After covering my tracks with a confused Lieutenant Commander Sollik, I’ve managed to establish that I’ve traveled backwards through time. To what stardate and to what end, I have no idea on the specifics. I presume that it’s sometime earlier this year, judging from the Starfleet uniform that I find myself wearing and the status of my crew. Gabriel Brodie is on the Bridge. Katherine Pulaski is in Sickbay… but why, or perhaps more importantly, how? My future is playing without me. I have to find a way back…”
“Computer, seal my quarters, authorization: Llewellyn-Alpha-Foxtrot-two-four-two-one.”
With a satisfying hiss, the doors to Ewan’s quarters locked themselves away from the highest security override, ensuring the confused Captain’s privacy in his moment of madness. Backwards in time… it was certainly a new one for him. Never before had he experienced temporal displacement. Oh, there were stories, classes at the Academy in Temporal Mechanics, and even a Temporal Prime Directive. Ewan had hoped above that he hadn’t just broken it with Sollik and just altered the future that he was currently fighting so hard to protect… or had been fighting so hard to protect.
First things first. A proper stardate.
“Computer, what’s today’s date and time?”
“Stardate 50914,” the familiar voice of the ship’s computer answered him. “Oh-eight-hundred thirty-two.”
“Five-oh-nine-one-four,” Ewan thought aloud. “Right, just after the Tah’Henn virus incident with our new uniforms, but before Sollik and I were captured by those aliens and I learned about his genetic enhancements. No wonder he flipped out! Stupid, Ewan! That’s going to make one hell of a mess in the future!”
“It’s not your fault.”
The Captain turned at the sound of another voice. Hadn’t he just sealed his quarters? Who was in here with him? His silent questions were answered as a figure emerged from the bathroom. Whoever it was, he wasn’t a Fortitude crew member, but he looked Human enough.
He was young with short brown hair, wearing some strange black suit that glistened with fibers that Ewan failed to recognize. Yet somehow, on some undetectable level, he felt a twinge of familiarity surround him. Nevertheless, the Captain’s reaction was one of trepidation, feeling his hands ball up into a pair of tight fists.
“Who are you?,” he barked at the unknown visitor.
“My name is Daniels, Captain,” he stated calmly. “I’m a Temporal Agent from what you would consider to be the thirty-first century… except I’m not really here. What you’re seeing is a holographic representation of me, beamed back through the timestream to this point.”
“Wait, hold on a minute. Hologram, fine, but… Temporal Agent?”
“My job is to protect the timeline from damage,” Daniels explained to the Welshman for the second time in his career.”You’ve fallen back through time and changed history, Captain. Your conversation with your Chief Engineer altered the future. I detected the alteration and traced it.”
“Why am I here?”
“You’re traveled through time before,” Daniels continued. “Recently, in fact, although you won’t remember it. It was a large temporal anomaly that was reversed, meaning that the events that you experienced before never happened. The entire incident left you with a residual temporal signature. It’s an unfortunate side effect of time travel. Rare, but all too common after inadvertent trips in the timestream.”
“So you’re saying,” Ewan frowned,” that I’m here because of something that I’ve never done?”
“It’s best not to think about it. What we need to do is get you home.”
Daniels flickered as the holographic image that he was transmitting became vague. It was obviously an unwelcome interruption with Daniels’ expression growing concerned as he stepped even closer towards the Captain. There was still information to impart and he was ironically running out of time.
“Listen carefully to me,” he emphasized as his face became see-through. “You are falling randomly backwards through time. I’m having trouble with tracing your movements. You’re going to need to make your temporal signature stronger before I can get a positive lock on you and restore you to your proper time.”
“How do I go about doing that?,” Llewellyn asked him, cutting through his bemusement for now.
“The Temporal Prime Directive,” Daniels told him. “Ignore it.”
“What?!”
“Change history. Alter the future and damage the timeline. I can restore everything to normal but I have to find you first. The only way that I can do that is if you make a lot of temporal noise. Changing history is the temporal equivalent of shooting… really loud.”
The Daniels hologram started to lose cohesion.
Ewan reached out to him, trying to keep him in his quarters for just a second longer. None of this made sense. He needed answers.
Daniels had no more for him. Within a second, he was gone.
Letting out a deep sigh of disbelief, Llewellyn collapsed back into his chair. This was absolute insanity with a ton of new information related to him faster than Rear Admiral Blackmore could clean him out at the poker table. There was plenty to distrust. Ignore the Temporal Prime Directive? Was this Daniels fellow mad? Then again… why did he seem so familiar? Was he telling the truth and had he experienced time travel before?
The timeline was already damaged.
There was only one way to find out if all of this was true.
* * * *
“Helm,” he ordered loudly,” reverse course!”
“Excuse me, Captain?”
The entire Bridge shared Arden Vuro’s confusion. Randomly, Ewan Llewellyn had marched in and canceled his previous excitement over the mapping excitement that Fortitude was currently undertaking. Acting as the voice for the crew, the go-between her role as First Officer that was bestowed upon her, Valerie Archer approached his side and showed her concern from underneath her cascading fringe.
“Change of plans, sir?”
“There are alien pirates on this present course,” Llewellyn stated with conviction. “They will kidnap Sollik and myself. Furthermore, beyond that incident, the Korleeanaq system is surrounded by a Tah’Heen dampening field that will strand us for months without sensors or communications with Starbase 499. Therefore, I am reversing course.”
The predictions were met with silence. Everybody was thinking the same thing and none of them dared to voice it. Ewan knew all of them too well and knew their thoughts.
“You think I’ve gone off of my rocker,” he added with a smile. “Don’t worry. Please… just trust me.”
The magic word… trust.
If there was one thing that this crew had in their Captain, it was trust.
“Reversing course,” Arden stated as his blue fingers danced across the helm.
“There,” Ewan whispered to himself,” that should change things considerably.”
ACT TWO
It happened in the blink of an eye.
One moment, he was on the Bridge, gray shoulders adorning the top of his uniform jacket. The next thing that he knew, he was aboard Starbase 499, standing outside a door that he only knew well, with red shoulders belonging to a black jumpsuit.
It had happened again, another trip backwards in time. The old Starfleet uniform was enough of a giveaway for Ewan to deduce that part of the puzzle in seconds.
“Oh, when am I now?,” he lamented. “Computer, what’s the date?”
“Stardate 50485,” was the reply.
“Lost your mind already?,” the husky tones of Edward Blackmore observed as the door to his office slid open. “It must be a sign of stress, Ewan. Don’t let it get to you.”
Thinking on his toes, the Captain flustered an answer. He would worry about the fact that he had now traveled over a year into the past later. Right now, he had to figure out whether damaging the timeline had been a good thing for his present situation… or if it had caused him to slip even further into the history of his life.
“You know how it is, Boxer,” he grinned sheepishly at his old friend.
“Well, this call sheet has all of us worried,” Blackmore growled. “Any news on your end?”
Call sheet… a year previous… of course! The Klingon War!
Ewan immediately felt his heart sink. What a horrid piece of history to relive.
“Uh, nothing new, no,” he answered him, wondering if that was a lie or not. “I’m sorry, Boxer. I thought I had time to stop by, but… uh, I’ve got a few more things to do over on Fortitude. You don’t mind catching up later?”
“Not at all. I’ve got a new Chief Medical Officer to settle in, remember?”
Llewellyn did remember.
He remembered all too well… and he wanted out of this time period.
* * * *
“Computer, seal my quarters, authorization Llewellyn-Alpha-Foxtrot-two-four-two-one.”
Once again, the door to the Captain’s quarters locked themselves down with a hiss. A small frown crossed the Welshman’s forehead as he wondered whether it was really a case of ‘once again’ since the last time that it had happened. It was an unwritten future that he could alter with a single word. Such an insignificant concern… His main focus was hoping for another visit from his Temporal Agent advisor.
It took a few minutes.
“Good start, Captain,” the hologram of Daniels said as it formed slowly with degradation in the signal and static in the voice again. “Your actions were a relatively small change in the scope of the timestream. It was difficult to find you again.”
“You want bigger changes?,” Ewan exclaimed, his arms flapping in amazement.
“Understand me when I tell you that all of the changes will be reversed as soon as you are returned to your normal timeframe,” Daniels reassured him. “You could instigate a full-scale galactic war but once I return you to the future, none of it will have ever happened because you will have never been here!”
“So I won’t remember any of it again? Hmm… nice reset button.” There was another question playing on his mind, a question that he voiced boldly. “How can I trust you?”
“You’re going to have to, Captain,” Daniels said, open-faced, motionless with his palms upturned in a symbolic gesture of proof being lacking. “It’s as simple as that.”
“Damn, you’re full of answers, aren’t you?”
“Will you…?”
“Don’t worry,” Ewan interrupted him. “Despite the Temporal Prime Direction, I’ll continue to shout as loud as I can manage. There’s something about you, Daniels. Something that I feel like I’ve seen before. It matches your story, and frankly, I’m limited in my options here. Besides, history is already screwed up anyways.”
It wasn't long before Daniels lost his holographic signature once again.
For a second time, Llewellyn was left alone in his quarters… but not for long.
* * * *
It was a shocking sensation, looking at a dead man.
“You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“Yes, Ensign Morgan,” Ewan stuttered after a few seconds of silence had passed by. “Do come in, please. Would you like some coffee?”
James Morgan shook his head, his dark hair falling across his dark eyes. The gold-shouldered officer simply waited to be offered a seat in the Captain’s quarters, polite and dedicated as always.
Llewellyn felt his chest contort in pain with emotion, not physical, pain. He hastily threw up a barricade against the feelings of confusion, joy, tragedy, and sadness. All of them surfaced at seeing Jim again. If it was this bad for him, the Welshman prayed to whatever higher power existed out there that Jason Armstrong never experience a fall through time like his.
“Am I in trouble, sir?,” Jim asked innocently, his face painted with a picture of worry.
“No, no… not at all, Ensign,” he calmed him down. “Do you have any thoughts about the call sheet that came through this morning?”
“Some,” Jim revealed truthfully. “Jason has been as supportive as possible but I don’t think he wants me to leave. No, scratch that. I know that he doesn’t want me to leave. Then again, there’s duty. Why do we wear these uniforms, Captain? I know why I’m wearing mine, and I’ve been called to serve. It’s tough… love versus duty.”
“Hopefully, I can make that choice irrelevant.”
“Captain?”
Llewellyn took a deep breath. If Daniels wanted bigger changes to the timeline, this one would be humongous.
“Jim, if you transfer to the McCaffrey as requested by the call sheet, you will be killed in battle near the Federation-Klingon border. Jason and the rest of the crew will be irrevocably affected by your loss. Therefore, I am ordering you to remain aboard this ship as my Tactical Officer, effective immediately.”
Jim’s stubble-covered jaw dropped in unbridled astonishment.
There… damage done.
ACT THREE
It happened again and just as quickly as before.
“Computer,” Llewellyn exhaled, now weary of this time business. “The date?”
“Stardate 48799.”
It took him a moment to exactly recall when he had landed. His surroundings hadn’t been altered. His uniform was still in the old style of pure crimson shoulders and a one-piece body-hugging jumpsuit. In fact, the only change was James Morgan. He had disappeared from the couch, the space that he had been occupying was forebodingly empty. The Captain shook his head clear of the emotional cobwebs clouding his judgment. Sitting there and talking to Jim had been taxing. It was a conversation that he wished he could have again. A warning that he wished was a permanent part of history and yet he knew that it would never be. Daniels had made that pretty clear that all damage would be repaired.
Obviously, saving the life of James Morgan hadn’t been enough.
Turning, Ewan gazed out of the window in his quarters. Outside, the event that matched the stardate was taking place. Starbase 488 hung over the peaceful Santrag II, the pre-revolution Santrag II that was still ruled by Veth Ka’Gerran. In between all of that and Fortitude was the indicator of the timeframe. No lights shone from the windows. No power ran through the nacelles. She was an empty shell, ready to be retrofitted by the ambition of Ewan Llewellyn.
The Steamrunner was arriving.
Damn, this was almost three years in the past! This was the start of it all. Ewan watched her for almost a full minute before he was distracted.
“My signal is stronger this time,” the holographic Daniels stated, pointing out the obvious as his solid shape moved to the window beside him. “Telling Ensign Morgan to remain aboard Fortitude had wide-reaching consequences. You’ve given me quite the mess to clean up, Captain.”
“Then why can’t you get me home?”
“With each temporal jump, you’re fading into history, becoming more and more integral to the events that you’ve been instigating. If you don’t make your next alteration to the timestream a catastrophic one, Captain, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to rescue you from your accidental state before…”
“Out with it,” Llewellyn barked, annoyed by the dramatic pause. “Before what, Daniels?”
“Before you fall back to a time before you were born,” the hologram answered him flatly, fear and terror showing in his simulated eyes. “You will have never existed.”
“Oh, great… motivation, wonderful…”
“Think carefully before choosing your next action, Captain. I hope to see you again soon. Good luck.”
As Daniels disappeared from the space before him, the Welshman returned his line of sight to the view. Steamrunner was a beauty in any time period or in any state of disrepair, that much was certain. Slowly, his focus shifted. He started to analyze the history that he was a part of, searching desperately for something incredible, something outrageous to change. Maybe destroy the Steamrunner? Would the End have overrun Starbase 499 then or even the Borg? Would Fortitude have ever been rescued from the Tah’Heen sensory interference?
The Tah’Heen…
Spy…
“Of course,” Llewellyn suddenly said, snapping his fingers as he dashed for the door.
* * * *
Despite his hatred of Sickbay, the Captain found himself looking forward to this visit.
As the entrance slid open to reveal the neatly-formed biobeds and glowing operating booth that dominated the medical heart of the Intrepid-class starship, Ewan’s attention snapped immediately to the left and towards the Chief Medical Officer’s office. Behind the curved glass and seated behind the desk inside, was the current Doctor. It was a face that he had come to loathe and associate with betrayal, danger, and corruption.
At the moment, it was the cool logical face of a Vulcan, but Llewellyn knew better.
“Doctor T’Verra,” he announced,” do you have a moment?”
“Captain,” T’Verra said, lifting her head in acknowledgment,” how may I be of assistance?”
“Just a general curiosity of mine,” the cutting Welsh accent, laden with sarcasm, dominated the room. “Tell me, does it take a great deal of time and effort to suppress cranial ridges? I mean, to make a Romulan look, oh, I don’t know… Vulcan?”
T’Verra showed a flicker of emotion. Her muscles tensed in reaction to the blatant attack. How did he know? “The process,” she went on regardless,” is a fairly simple one given today’s advances in cosmetic alteration and facial reconstruction. I can demonstrate…?”
“Drop it, Naketha,” Llewellyn snapped at her, done with his game.
The flicker of emotion returned, much stronger this time behind the spy’s eyes. “Captain, I…”
Ewan ended the conversation by raising a phaser.
Unmasked by the surprising clairvoyance of her commanding officer, Naketha stood to her full height behind her desk. Instinctively, she raised her hands in surrender, menace replacing the shock on her face. Like a cornered animal, she was preparing to fight but it was a fight that the Captain had no intention of undertaking.
He simply fired the phaser.
It struck her chest as Fortitude automatically went to Red Alert with the unauthorized weapons fire being detected within milliseconds. Slumping to the desk, Naketha’s body gave up on life, just as Llewellyn felt a tingling sensation blast through his veins. Around him, the bulkheads vanished and the phaser in his grasp dissolved before him. It felt as though a giant hand was scooping him from existence and ripping him from time.
The sensation was a new one. Oddly unsettling… and yet somehow reassuring.
Things were returning to normal.
EPILOGUE
“Well done, Captain. It’s over.”
Light almost blinded him, a torrent of hues from an impressive and beautiful vortex of energy that encircled his floating form. Absorbing all the details of it with an expression close to a schoolchild discovering the joy of fireworks, Ewan watched as events in history flew past him. They were all accelerating wildly, heading towards the moment where he belonged and to the moment that he was returning to. Slowly, he watched his uniform revert to what it had started as, the modern up-to-date design from his timeframe.
Daniels stood before him. It wasn’t the hologram but the real Daniels this time.
“It’s rare to see you smile,” Llewellyn noted with a grin of his own.
“The timeline is restoring itself. Every event that we pass by is an event repaired.
There went the premature unmasking of Naketha, and there went James Morgan… this time, leaving for the Federation-Klingon Border as he was tragically meant to. Suddenly all of the images became of recent events, all of them filled with the ambiguity that dominated Llewellyn’s current task of hunting the Tah’Heen.
“I won’t remember a single piece of all of this, will I?”
“Not a thing,” Daniels confirmed. “I’ll be returning you to five seconds before your first temporal jump. It won’t happen again. You’ll wake up in your quarters and be able to get on with your mission.”
“While this may sound silly,” the Captain pressed on,” since I can’t do anything with the answer that you give me… I have to ask. Since you’re from the future, do you know the identity of the people behind the Tah’Heen? Do you know who we’re fighting against?”
“Yes,” Daniels nodded, his smile fading.
“Will you tell me?”
“You’ll find out sooner than you expect, Captain,” was the only answer offered and the only answer given. “In the meantime, you’ll continue to lead your crew on your distinguished voyage.”
“What about afterwards? What about when I find out?”
“That’s the future, Captain. It isn’t written.”
It wasn’t the resounding prediction of triumph that was hoped for.
“Yes,” Ewan corrected him. “It isn’t written yet.”
The End.