What the hell just happened
Posted on Mon Jun 22, 2015 @ 12:35am by Captain Isha t'Vaurek & Commander Caden Aldrex & Captain Maritza Soran
2,485 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Eye of the Beholder
Location: Captains Ready Room
Timeline: MD03 1600
::ON::
Isha was going to have to have some firm words with her daughter. She stared at the iron blade on her desk - Eviess had stolen it from her collection, Eviess was cutting class and Eviess appeared to be friends with an unidentified creature - she assumed that from the way the girl clung to its hand.
"Commander Aldrex, Soran, please join me in my Ready Room," she said with a glance at her sullen daughter and her 'friend'.
Soran arrived a few moments later, having put all the traffic into a holding pattern. With the majority of debris now past DS5, station airspace was a lot less dangerous. She stepped into Isha's office, and hesitated at the sight of two small romulan girls.
Aldrex walked in just seconds after Soran. He was looking down at the report on his PADD. "Captain, it's quite the mess down there. The good news is we can resume normal operations within three hours." He looked up and noticed the girls, too. Not sure what was going on, he held off on further details until the captain said something.
Isha looked to her senior staff members. After all they had just been through what were they going to say when her daughter's 'friend' repeated her story.
"Commanders, we have a situation," she said in a bland tone that highlighted the magnitude of her understatement. She turned her head towards the creature.
It flickered before her eyes.
Isha reached for the old star-iron knife that lay on her desk. At least she could see it then. Her gaze slid to Eviess - for some reason the girl seemed less peturbed by it, despite her insistence on clinging to its hand.
"I've enabled a level ten security field around this office. Our young guest here appears to have knowledge of what has been happening and why."
Soran raised an eyebrow. Level tens were kept for sealing hullbreaches or containing antimatter explosions. Why would they need one for a child?. "How does a child know whats happening?" The level ten was surely overkill.
Aldrex was thinking the same thing. "Captain?" He asked quizzically, looking from the young visitors to Isha and pondering the cold look in her eyes.
"Its a fairy," Eviess said, "and she's not my friend. We caught her."
A solar system, complete with planets, satellite moons and other astronomical detritus had just appeared in an an almost unprecedented cosmological event, that had done serious damage to the station, killed or wounded hundreds, stranded hundred more in makeshift evacuation, and t'Vaurek's daughter was talking about fairies. Must be Tuesday. Or the drugs were wearing off. And yet the Captain seemed deadly serious, treating the other small girl like an antimatter containment breach waiting to happen. "Fairies aren't real," Soran said automatically.
Isha tilted her head to one side as if trying to memorize what the wizened creature actually looked like when it was not appearing to be her daughter's double.
"It might not be an actual fairy," she said handing the iron knife to Soran, "but it isn't what it appears to be."
Martiza took the knife, and did a double take. Eviess's double dissapeared, and in it place was a. No. that wasn't right. They were a story, a myth. She handed the knife to Aldrex. "tell me you're seeing what I saw?" she asked her fellow trill
The XO took the offered knife absentmindedly and then did his own double take at what he saw. The visitor was the precise image of Taani, a character from ancient Trill lore. "Is this a joke?" He asked Maritza, examining the old blade in his hand. No, of course not. This was no time for jokes and he knew t'Vaurek wouldn't entertain them. "Who are you? What's your name?" He asked the visitor.
"Can't you guess my name?" it asked.
Aldrex traded a look with Maritza then said, "Well, this is going to sound silly but you remind me of Enchantress Taani, the mythical being who captured my planet's largest moon with a golden cord and put it in it's place. But that's just a story in a book."
Soran nodded her agreement. "One that goes back over a thousand years. Alternatively, you could just tell us your name, and we can skip to the happy ever after. Or is this not one of those stories?"
As Eviess let go of its hand the fairy hopped to its feet and skittered towards Aldrex. "Just because someone wrote something down a long long time ago does that mean that it isn't true?" she asked him. "Some know me as Taani, others by other names. One is as good as another."
She moved on to the other spotty humanoid, "What sort of ending do you want the story to have?" she asked her.
"A short one," Soran huffed. "With no plot twists."
"How I long for a happy ending," the Fae said, "it began so long ago. We were sisters and we ruled a galaxy that you could anly imagine in your dreams. It was not enough for her. She craved the universes beyond ours. Time and time again she and her followers would make forays into other dimensions, time and time again I had to bring them home."
Suddenly the image of Taani she placed herself between the Trill and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone, "Imagine if I had not returned that moon to its rightful place? What a tragedy would have befallen your world. My sister cared only for mischief."
Soran looked like she;d bitten a bee. The small girl had given way to the traditional image of Taani, the otherworldly beauty, exactly as she always imagined her as a child, down to the last hair. It was too uncanny. "I don't have to imagine. I know what planet wide geological disturbance looks like. Any way if you're Taani, where is your fairy court, sister and all?"
The glamour taking effect, even on those with the star metal, the Fae began to expand on her tale, "Alas her desire to corrupt and enslave the fleeting creatures in this dimension and others grew too great. We have always flitted between worlds but she wanted more - to bring yours into ours.
"I did all I could to dissuade her, but it was not to be. Rusalka knew I would have to take action to preserve the peace - she used our ancient lore to rip a hole in the fabric of the sky. It was in this very location, over ten thousand years ago as you reckon time. For us the wound is raw - mere months since they escaped to indulge their whims on your dimension."
Aldrex nodded to the planet outside Isha's window. "And this? Was it your idea to bring your whole solar system into our space? Have all your people come to capture this Rusalka?" He took a few steps in that direction, examining the features of this new world.
The Fae came to stand by his side, a ained expression on her lovely face, "Alas that is our greatest tragedy - this world, which once existed in this dimension and in ours was trapped between the layers of the sky without air, without light without form. A civilisation destroyed by my sister's greed. We hunters are but few. We have been unable to catch her and her band - your years have given them means to hide.
"She will see this emergent world as a beacon - she will see what she destroyed and come to answer us."
Aldrex glanced sideways at the Fae and arched his brow skeptically. "And how do we know you're not the one we should be on guard against, 'Enchantress?' We've never heard of you or Rusalka until today. But because of your conflict we have dead and wounded below." He turned to Isha. "Captain, don't let this life-form convince you to take sides. Not until we have a better understanding of what's going on."
"I concur," Soran agreed. "If need be I can have the fighter group blockade the planet to prevent anything leaving. Although initial scans are showing that the M-class planet is not home to sentient life"
Tania/Taanis - the Fae - turned back to Aldrex, "But you do know my name," she purred, "and clearly you have heard of my feats." Her fingers briefly brushed his chin then her hand fell away. Her gaze skated over the female Trill and fell on the Romulan.
"I share in your anguish, Captain if my sister has caused further destruction by her behaviour. I will of course do everything I can to bring the culprit to justice."
"So how do we find her?" Soran asked. "Becuase if there is a rogue alien faction running around this station teleporting solar sytems into being, We haven't seen any?"
Eviess' eys flicked to her mothers and back again. She wished the Rainbow Princess was here - they'd listen to her. She swallowed, "I found her. She wanted to make me help her find them as I could see her I could see them," she blurted.
Aldrex stepped over to Eviess and dropped to one knee in front of her. "How long have you been able to see them, sweetheart?"
"I don't know ... I think they were always there ... in the gardens. Nobody believed me so I wanted to catch one then they'd have to believe me."
"Weeks," Isha said through tight lips. She for one had accepted that her daughter's imagination was running away with her and left it at that.
"All that wonderful energy, the love and adoration you have for us allowed us to ..." the Fae stopped talked as she reached the table. She reached out her fingers and picked up the cake box that contained the pebbles. Slowly she turned back to the others. "I see you already have evidence of my sister's mischief."
"Thats not going to help us identify any others of these aliens on board. We should ask Rex or the Doctor up here, get them to run tests and then it won't take much to recalibrate internal sensors," Soran suggested. Then she looked at the beautiful woman and the little girl. "And how did you manage to catch," she waved her hand vaguely at the Queen Of Sprites. "That?"
"We went hunting. me and the Rainbow Princess."
Soran didn't get the reference, she looked to Aldrex, wondering if he understood. "Do you know who that is? I never really read the old myths."
Aldrex frowned and shook his head. He didn't know if Eviess was speaking of the real world or her imagination. "Who is the Rainbow Princess, hon? Where can we find her? Can we speak to her?"
Eviess rolled her eyes. "The tall lady who lives on the promenade. SHe's different colours."
It shouldn't have been possible for Isha's tight lipped expression to become any tighter but somehow at the revelation that her daughter had been near that Cardassian bastard's whore she managed it. He might not be here anymore but somehow his reek still managed to infest the station.
"Ibalin," Isha said. "I want her brought in."
"Yes ma'am," Soran said, "And in the mean time, what should we do about potentially hostile forces running loose onboard?"
Don ourselves with iron-soled boots and try and find them, was Isha's glib, unvoiced thought.
"We need the station back in order as soon as possilbe. Check the Engineering teams are at capacity, keep the fighters on reconnaisance around this new system. I want to be alerted to anything that appears a threat. Have the science department run remote scans - they can verify if there is or was life down there which may olr may not give credence to the story of our 'guest'."
She paused for a moment, "And have anyone with first aid experience who is uninjured to report to the medical bays for deployment. Our guest is going to stay here in this room until I decided further."
Aldrex handed the iron blade back to t'Vaurek. "Do we know how this knife fits into all of this, captain? Is there a special story behind it? Or is it just a collectible to you?"
"It is reputed to have been forged from a star that fell from the sky not long after the original settlers made landfall. It has been in the collection of my family since that time," Isha said, "Its not said to -"
"Don't you read?" an exasperated Eviess asked. "Its made of iron they - she pointed at the Fae - have trouble fooling you if you're holding iron, it stops their power. Its in all the stories if you read." She folded her arms again, how could the grown ups be so stupid!.
"Iron," the XO repeated to himself. He hadn't read any fairy tales in a long time but couldn't recall ever hearing any such thing about iron. Maybe it was common knowledge on Romulus. "Sorry, Eviess. I don't know all there is to know on this subject. Will you teach me if I have any more questions?"
"Not if you ignore me like her - Eviess shot a glance at her mother - or laugh at me like my brother. Mummy might not like the Rainbow Princess but she listened, and we found -" Eviess grasped the hand of the Fae again. "She told me not to let her go."
The Fae, heavily disgruntled sat back into the chair.
Eviess continued, "I'll ty to help," she said, "when I saw the first one I didn't know what it was then I read everything I could find. It made sense to have iron. I'm sorry I had to steal it, but I didn't know where else to get it from."
"Iron's easily made by replicator." Soran looked to Aldrex, then T'Vaurek. "Should we get security to start sweeping the station for more of these beings?"
Isha moved from pacing the floor to the seat behind her desk. She sat, using the action to give herself time to think. Her first inclination was to wait for Ibalin to arrive then tear her to shreds for what she had done, but something told her that there was more, much more to this.
The creature wasn't alone and might have been missed. It also claimed to be trying to find others of its kind. They needed a stealthy approach, she surmised.
"Get representitives from Security, Intel and the Marshal's Office here too," she said.
Captain Isha t'Vaurek
CO DS5
Eviess (NPC Louise)
Tanis/Taanis/'Queen' of the Fae (NPC Louise)
Lt. Commander Maritza Soran
2XO/Chief of Strategic OPs
DS5
Lt. Cmdr. Caden Aldrex
Executive Officer
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