LtJG Jovenan – Opening the Gates of the Universes
Jovenan
((Bridge, USS Artemis))
Kawarda: =/\= Kawarda to Chief Science Officer Jovenan =/\=
Jovenan moved on her chair a bit in a futile attempt not to disturb the other members of the bridge crew with her conversation. She was relieved to hear Kawarda’s voice. After the death of Ensign Tarra and the serious injury suffered by Hiro – of whom she hadn’t heard in a while, which nearly overwhelmed her in anxiety – she had feared that more of her friends might be targeted by the Desdemonans. Luckily, this didn’t seem to be the case, at least when it came to him.
Jovenan: =/\= Jovenan here. Good to hear your voice! What is it? =/\=
Kawarda: =/\= We have secured the prismagons, and I believe I may have "stumbled upon" a way to implement them in returning our guests to their proper reality. =/\=
Jovenan: =/\= Really? Tell me more! =/\=
Kawarda: =/\= As I was attempting to move the prismagon without handling it directly, I observed a reaction to the field I was using. I believe we can scale the reaction to greater result. Can you join me on deck 11? =/\=
He had directly observed all that? The science team had studied the prismagons for a few days now, but they had had little success, maybe because of the cumbersome but necessary safety limits. Due to the unusual circumstances, Kawarda had to expose them to stimuli the team wouldn’t have in a normal situation, resulting in the reaction they had tried to achieve. Based on what Kader had mentioned earlier, this might be the way they might find the way to send the alternate universe counterparts back home, far away from them.
Jovenan: =/\= Thank you, Kawarda, uh, please wait a moment. =/\=
Kawarda: =/\= I will await you in the lab, Lieutenant. =/\=
After the commlink ended, Jovenan turned around in her chair to find the Captain already looking in her direction. Had she listened to their entire conversation? Jovenan’s good intentions not to bother the crew with the call had clearly failed.
Jovenan: Sir, Ensign Kawarda is reporting a breakthrough in prismagon research. Ensign Kader’s information could be of assistance down there. Permission for me and Ensign Kader to join them?
MacKenzie: You can go, but Kader doesn’t leave my sight.
Jovenan was slightly disappointed, but she understood Captain’s decision well. Jovenan didn’t trust Kader entirely right now either, but she also realised the value of the information he had gained from the other Kader and, uh, the Shint. They’d might need to figure it out on their own.
Kader: Response
Giving a nod in confirmation of understanding the Captain’s order, Jovenan stood up from her seat, relieving it to a junior science officer. She walked towards the turbolift, the one which they had used when taking over the bridge. It felt weird now. She had pretended to be her sister whom she had hated at the time and whose relationship with Lt Silveira she had judged. Walking across the room, she pointedly avoided looking at Silveira’s direction, not yet wanting to share in any of the pain he must have been carrying. Just before she left the room, she heard the last few words from Doctor Sadar.
Sadar: Confirmed, Sir. One Yellikan lifesign. Cpt. Luana Yellir is still on the Desdemona. Sensors also indicate a Vulcan and a few Humans in the bridge area, so in all likelihood… We’ve apprehended all Desdemonans still aboard the Artemis.
Jovenan sighed. It was almost over.
((Deck 11, USS Artemis))
Many thoughts went through Jovenan’s head as she rode the turbolift to Deck 11. She tried to keep her focus on the prismagons: a fold somewhat like temporal inversion fold would need to be created through channelling energy to the prismagons, but she didn’t yet know what exactly caused them to connect to other universes instead of travelling in normal spacetime or phasing objects out of existence as intended. Still, her mind couldn’t stop taking detours to other subjects, other people, other duties and finally, sleep. She was so tired.
Walking down a corridor, Jovenan noticed a person walking towards her. Out of the ordinarily mundane encounter they would have had in the corridor otherwise, this crewman had clothes, face and hands covered in blood, and she was carrying several weapons in her arms, all equally blood-soaked. Jovenan didn’t recognize the crewman, and she feared they might have actually left one more counterpart aboard. Obviously, something awful had happened to the crewman, or the crewman had done something horrible. They both looked at each other, and Jovenan decided to give the crewman benefit of the doubt, trying not to assume she would attack her as they came closer.
They came next to each other, and the crewman hadn’t reacted to her. Maybe Jovenan was just being scaredy and judgemental, and the crewman wasn’t one of the bad guys after all. Suddenly, she felt something grasp her arm and pull her. Terrified, she turned towards the pink-haired crewman. She could smell the rank odour of drying blood coming off of her.
Renirs: Fire the pointy-ear or I will fire something at him.
Jovenan: Wha- what?
Without an answer, the crewman let go of her and carried on. Jovenan’s heart still beat fast over the encounter as she looked over to her arm where the crewman had held her. Her bare skin now had a palm-shaped mark of somebody else’s blood.
She really needed to ask Kawarda if he knew the woman.
((Bridge, USS Artemis))
((Timeframe: 2 hours later))
Jovenan had once again taken her seat at the science station at the bridge. She felt like they had condensed a lifetime of scientific work and accomplishments into an hour. Kawarda had, based on a few nifty ideas she had proposed, successfully formulated a method on focused prismic radiation triggering a multidimensional fold using the ship’s standard equipment and the prismagons. This method was supported and strengthened by the information they had acquired from the Kaders. In normal scientific research, they would have spent years, maybe decades testing the method’s underlying theories, but the necessity and the Captain’s orders had convinced them to put it into effect right away. The engineering and ops departments had overdone themselves in configuring the ship’s systems into their demands.
It was soon over.
MacKenzie: Jovenan, are modifications to the deflector dish ready?
Jovenan opened the relevant indicators on her console. She knew that Kawarda was listening to everything that was happening on the bridge and saw everything and more in the lab they had chosen for controlling the experiment… not experiment, the very actual action. His support gave her confidence as she went through the checklist.
Jovenan: All systems operational and within acceptable parameters, Captain.
MacKenzie: Lieutenant Silveira, can you confirm that all living members of the Desdemona crew have been returned to their ship?
Silveira: Confirmed Captain.
They had really done it. They had not only moved all detained Desdemonans back to their own ship, but they had also checked all remaining crew and personnel for further infiltrators. Jovenan felt much safer now, but until the Desdemona was through the fold and gone, she didn’t let herself any room to slack off.
MacKenzie: Alright, then. Mr. Kader, move us into position. Prepare to engage the deflector and use the tractor beam to move the Desdemona through the singularity.
Kader: Response
Silveira: Let’s make this work.
Jovenan didn’t remove her eyes from her console. The numbers remained unchanged, all of their modifications remained as they had designed them, and Kawarda signalled to her console the final notification indicating their readiness. She tried to push any doubt in her and her colleagues off of her mind as the ship moved into the correct position. They were right about this. They were going to do this.
MacKenzie: Response
It’s go time.
Jovenan: Deflector firing… Reaching critical energy level… Singularity forming… Singularity formed.
Kader/any on bridge: Response
For a brief moment, Jovenan let her eyes off the sensor data. Data might be elegant, but the view in her eyes was beautiful. There, in the middle of the main viewscreen, she saw a large swirling rift of colours she couldn’t describe, all against the field of black. The stars behind the horizon of the anomaly looked like they were stretched as the singularity bent the light coming from them. And just next to the large swirl was the Desdemona, the ugly rip in their universe, waiting for the final push through the fold and back to the worlds they came from.
Before the other ship could cross the barrier, Jovenan had to turn her focus back to her console yet again. She observed the readings on her screens as the sensors detected the massive object that was the ship with its crew move closer to the anomaly and disappear in a poof of inconsequential radiation. It was really gone. No goodbyes were needed, for there were no one she wanted to say that.
Silveira: Good riddance.
MacKenzie: Response
Jovenan: Terminating the deflector beam… The singularity has collapsed. No lingering effects or other unexpected events detected.
It had worked. It had worked exactly as she and Kawarda had predicted. She would have felt proud of their achievement if it had not been all the pain they all had had to bear for them to reach that point. She was tired and in need of a hug.
Kader/any on bridge: Response
Silveira: Captain, permission to be relieved.
MacKenzie/Kader/any on bridge: Response
Lt Silveira nodded to the Captain before walking away. Jovenan looked behind him. She could barely understand what he was going through right now. She had hardly known her sister, while he had spent, for what she had heard, much time together with the other Jovenan. His feelings were genuine, and she couldn’t in anyway deny that.
She sighed. She had to remain here for a while longer, to verify that ripping a hole into the fabric of the multiverse and patching it up had truly been as safe and final as she had hoped for. Eventually, she too would request from the Captain a permission to be relieved and leave her posting on the bridge to another science officer. As much as she desired going to her quarters and sleep and wash the ripples of the nightmare away, she had many matters and many people she needed, she wanted to attend to first.
Her dear brother who had been on the verge of death.
Those who were left behind by her young colleague and subordinate who unwillingly had to give her life for them all.
The man who ought not be alone in mourning the one he loved.
And what remained of the sister she never knew.
She needed to be there for them all. For she needed them all.
TAG/TBC
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Lieutenant JG Jovenan
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11