[Golihesh/Doctrine] Through The Looking Glass, Part 2

[Clifford]

“Through The Looking Glass, Part 2”

Lieutenant Commander Tale Gilohesh

Commander Diane Doctrine

(and her son, Toby)

==Starbase Starocca, not far from the Skorr System==

Tale opened her mouth to mediate when—

The deck plates heaved violently. Lights stuttered as a subsonic groan vibrated through Tale's bones. Her neural implant fired like a live wire behind her ear, the pain sparking purple across her vision….

As Diane's cup shattered against the deck, Tale caught her wrist mid-sprint. "Control first," she agreed, matching Diane's intensity with surprising calm, "but you're explaining why my head feels like a warp core breach on the way."

“It has to do with whatever this anomaly is,” Diane was almost jogging down the corridor. “We need more data… I also need to check on Toby. Dammit.”

Another tremor sent them staggering into a bulkhead. “Isn’t Toby in with the Denobulan exchange students on the other side of the Arboretum doing that walk through?” Tale panted as emergency force fields snapped in place one by one nearly cutting off their path with their bluish hue. “New plan… we use the transporter.”

=/\= Gilohesh to Stoffels, lock on to Doctrine and myself, beam us over to the Arboretum =/\= Tale said sternly. 

=/\= No can do Doc Hesh, the transporters are down with this anomaly. Too many power fluctuations in our systems.=/\= Stoffels sounded truly overwhelmed. 

=/\= But what about the kids in the arb? =/\=

=/\= Comms are fragged everywhere, I’m stunned you got through. We can't seem to contact anyone else right now.=/\=

”This is not an ideal situation,” Diane replied, it was evident she was holding back anger. It was time to focus, being angry would have to wait. “We need to find out just what the hell is going on. ” She took a quick look around to assess their situation, “The Operations Center is nearby, we’re going there.”

The corridor to the Ops Center was lit with erratic lighting. “Diane,” Tale tapped her by the elbow, acutely aware of how on edge she was. “Look.” 

Long shadows had begun to form across the floor swirling with distortions. Tale busted out her tricorder. “Temporal anomalies? But that doesn’t make sense… We keep going…”

Diane stopped walking and looked around at the strange shadows appearing around the deck they were on, “Keep going where?” Diane nearly demanded, “Could this be some kind of temporal incursion?”

Tale flipped the tricorder towards Diane with a worried expression and pointed to the nearest Jefferies tube. “I think that’s the fastest way back across the Arb and Toby.”

Diane’s lip twisted while she thought, “Thank you. Let’s go.” The petite woman was already working the hatch open. “They haven’t sounded an evacuation yet… let’s get Toby and then try to find out what’s going on.” With that the hatch opened fully and she crawled in.

The Jefferies tube exhaled a puff of metallic-tasting air as Diane wriggled through first.  Tale trailed behind with her tricorder chirping frantic warnings… she didn't need the device to feel—the air itself prickled with wrongness, like static before a lightning strike.

"These temporal readings are... confusing," Tale murmured, crawling over a junction where the tube's ribs showed strange fractal corrosion. "But not a standard incursion. It's like time is—" The tricorder sparked violently in her hands. "Shit. Move faster."

The access panel's tiny viewport revealed the arboretum in chaos—vines snapping like whips under unseen forces, ancient trees groaning as their trunks twisted in impossible spirals. And there, pressed against the glass with his Denobulan classmates, was Toby’s face screwed up in concentration as he guided younger children toward the sturdiest greenhouse structure. 

“Smart kid, Di,” Tale breathed as she reached to help Diane with the manual release.

“Thanks,” she uttered while working the manual release for the hatchway. The two women poured out of the Jeffries tube into a corner of the arboretum. As soon as Diane managed to get back on her feet she was running towards her son. “Toby!”

A blonde, seven year old, turned at hearing his name, “Mom!” He ran to Diane who embraced him in a short hug, “We gotta move fast kiddo, your friends too.” There were five other children, two Denobulans, a Trill, and two other Terrans.

Tale's boots crunched on broken glass as she covered their retreat, she swept her tricorder across the unnatural geometry warping the greenhouse walls. The air smelled of ozone and upturned earth, the scent thick with the metallic tang of temporal distortions.

“The gardener’s lift goes to the cargo level,” she announced to the group with a calmed sort of urgency. She then vaulted over a coiled vine, slamming the hidden service panel with her palm. The lift doors groaned open, revealing a cramped platform barely large enough for them all. "Everyone in!"

Diane herded Toby and his classmates into the lift. They seemed unsure but followed orders. Next, she shooed Tale in then herself. “I hope this thing works,” she told Tale under her breath. “Maybe we should head right to the hangar. That should be right below the cargo level.”

The lift doors wheezed shut just as a massive tree root burst through the wall where they'd been standing. The children gasped as the entire compartment shuddered, gravity fluctuating enough to make their stomachs lurch. Toby's small hands gripped the safety rail, his knuckles white but his voice steady, "It's okay. Mom's got this."

The lift crashed to a halt, doors screeching open to reveal not the cargo bay, but a nightmare reflection of the arboretum; the trees here grew in spirals that hurt to look at, their leaves vibrating at impossible frequencies. The air smelled of burnt honey and ionized fear. 

"Temporal mirroring. We're caught between—"

“Timelines?” Diane asked. Her knowledge of temporal mechanics was not on par with a scientist who studied that all the time as her strengths were in other areas. “It looks like timelines… but this isn’t my area of expertise.”

“Not mine either,” Tale muttered, staring at her tricorder. “We need to get these kids somewhere… Okay kids! Let’s play a quick game, I want to see how fast we can all run, but we all are going to have buddies.”

“Like a sack race Doctor Hesh?” one of the kids looked at her with his head tilted. 

“Exactly! And we’re going to see how fast we can make it to that,” she pointed her green finger to where Stoffels had the ancillary door for the containment lab. Surely, that would get them some kind of answers. She looked at Diane for approval.

Diane nodded, “Good idea,” she grabbed Toby’s hand, “Everyone ready? GO!” She made a beeline for the door Tale indicated.

The kids all ran as fast as their little legs could carry them. A fear which always was remarkable to Tale how fast a kid could scurry. They were across the cargo bay in a flash. The kids all congratulated each other with high fives like they were at some sort of end of times track meet as Tale input her override code in the door for the containment lab. 

Inside, the lab was frenzied. People running back and forth like crazed bumblebees. “Thank the Prophets!” Stoffels ushered them all in, securing the doors behind them. “I’ve got a field around the lab that seems to be keeping whatever madness around the station from entering here.”

“What is happening?” Tale asked as she watched the kids run into their parents' arms. 

“It’s a temporal storm, much like a tsunami,” Stoffels attempted to explain. “But Heshie, I really don’t have time. We’re likely going to have to evacuate, it looks like we’re missing entire decks here and the Captain is completely MIA leaving Grax in charge, if you’ll excuse me.”

Panic showed on Diane’s normally calm face. It was a feeling she tried to stave off at all costs. Now though, it was clear across her features as she turned to Tale, “If we wait any longer there’s no telling where we’ll end up. We have to get off this station now!”

Tale watched as Diane scooped Toby up into her arms in awe of the maternal strength that adrenaline caused. They bolted towards the ship hangar on the other side of the lab. The diplomatic runabout Tale used was sitting there across the hangar, as they say, with the keys in the ignition. It wasn’t the fastest whip, but it was better than nothing. “Let’s go!” she urged them toward the older model runabout.

No urging was needed, Diane kept up with her old friend the entire way across the flight deck while carrying Toby like a sack of potatoes over her shoulder. 

Once inside the runabout, Diane took the co-pilot’s seat and began powering up the craft and performing the fastest pre-flight checklist in the history of pre-flight checklists.

Toby had been deposited in a passenger seat. He kept quiet and strapped himself in. His mom, having foresight for such emergencies, had her son already trained on what to be sure to do and what not to do in an evacuation scenario.

”All green lights across the board, all systems operational, ready when you are…” Diane mentioned while checking the sensor readings, “You’re a much better pilot than I am, you got this… but there’s a lot of fluctuating gravimetric fields just out there… and they’re fluctuating a lot. Sorry I can’t get more technical than that… I’ll do my best to keep an eye on things.”

Her tone of voice made it obvious to Tale that she had complete faith in Tale’s ability and if there was anything Diane could do to help, she would.

”Toby, don’t forget the shoulder harness,” she reminded her son.

”I got it mom,” a frightened but confident sounding voice replied from behind them.

”Good job kiddo,” Diane’s mouth as a tight, thin line barely turned up at the ends. 

Tale jumped into the pilot’s seat and popped into flight without any much thought, as fast as her fingers would move. “Hold onto your butts, we’re outta here,” she muttered as she punched it the moment the clearance flagged green.

”Bay doors are opening,” Diane informed Tale while working the console in front of her, “We should be able to get through by the time we reach them… I’m also raising our shields.”

Tale adjusted their trajectory with a slight nudge to the controls, the runabout responding like an extension of her body. The bay doors yawned before them, revealing the swirling chaos of the anomaly beyond. 

As they cleared the station, the viewscreen showed the terrifying beauty of the anomaly in full display - space itself warping in concentric rings of distorted light. The runabout bucked violently as it hit the first gravity wave.

Tale's jaw set tight. "Then let's not stick around to see the finale." She initiated the warp sequence, her hand hovering over the final command. "Diane?"

“Sensors showing the station had started evacuating. Escape pods and other craft are leaving along with us,” Diane reported back. She looked to Tale as suddenly as she’d called her name, “GO, what are you waiting for?”

With a little wince, Tale slammed her palm down, the stars stretching into a familiar blue around them. “Shields are at 85%,” Tale said as she dropped down to impulse after a few beats. “The temporal readings are still going buck wild though…”

Diane studied her console for a short moment and told Tale, “Change our heading to zero zero six mark six seven, that’s the closest edge of the anomaly,” she turned to her head to look right at Tale, “and hopefully out of its influence.”

The runabout banked hard, inertial dampeners groaning as they skirted a gravity shear that would've shredded their hull. On the aft display, the station's central hub folded inward like a dying flower, its docking arms breaking apart in slow-motion fractals. 

As suddenly as the runabout had turned, they were met face first with blackness. 

No static.

Nothing.

Then the wave hit.

It wasn’t a gravity shear. It wasn’t a distortion. It was a wall—an invisible force that slammed into the runabout like the hand of a god. The inertial dampeners shrieked, throwing them all forward against their restraints. Toby yelped as his harness bit into his shoulders. Tale’s implant shrieked in her head, making her double over. 

"We’re caught in a tow!" Tale shouted, wrestling with the controls. The engines roared at full impulse, but the ship didn’t move. Instead, the stars outside—those few still visible—stretched into jagged streaks, spiraling inward toward a single, impossible point.

“The anomaly is not uniform in shape,” Diane was working the co-pilot’s station as best as she could, “It seems to have … lobes…” her face made a look of uncertainty, “The next nearest edge is at zero four four mark eight… about forty thousand kilometers.” 

Toby's small hands gripped Tale's headrest. "Why are the stars singing?"

Because they were. A low, atonal hum vibrated through the hull, making their teeth ache and the children's tear ducts burn. The chronometer display spun through dates at random—2371, 2398, 2310—before settling on NO TEMPORAL REFERENCE.

Tale's implant flared white-hot. She felt the anomaly's structure now—not just lobes, but fingers, curling around their little ship with cruel curiosity. "Diane," she gasped, blood trickling from her nose, "that's not a boundary ahead."

Behind them, the station's dying light stretched into an infinite smear across the collapsing sky.

“Mooooooommm…” Toby was trying to say, but his voice stretched out into infiniteness.

Diane’s eyes widened as she studied the readout in front of her. “Dam…..”

She turned to face Tale who looked an infinite amount of space away but still close enough to touch. Diane reached out for her arm and it stretched an infinite distance to reach her green-skinned friend.

She turned around to see if Toby was all right. It looked like there was an infinite distance to the rear bulkhead of the cockpit with Toby sitting in his seat reaching for his mother. His arms stretched an infinite distance to the back of the co-pilot’s seat.

When any of them tried to speak the syllables coming from their mouths were stretched into an infinitely long droning sound.

All at once the lighting in the cockpit dimmed to darkness in a seemingly infinite amount of time.

Then there was a noise that sounded like one hundred thousand people saying ‘pop’.

And that’s when things got really weird.

TBC…