Lt Commander Samantha Palmer Mission Specialist USS Chimera NCC 96899 - Marine Captain Nicolas Harker Acting Helmsman USS Chimera NCC 96899 = Main Engineering Nicolas was working with a young Engineering crewman to reroute the helm controls to a nearby station and connect two screens together to serve as a viewscreen. Some of the systems were badly damaged, but they were making some progress at least. Though he was as always focused on his work, a part of his mind kept wandering off, wondering where Samantha was and if anything had happened to her. He was able to switch off his emotions, but for some reason he couldn’t completely control his thoughts. Through all the chaos of the last few days, he had thought a lot about what happened between them ten years before. They were in love, certainly, but it didn’t seem very serious… or at least so he thought. But he had come to realise many times that you never knew how much you loved someone until they were no longer part of your life. Samantha crawled along the Jefferies tube, hopelessly lost. She was tired, ravenously hungry, and her hands and knees were soon going to sprout blisters. Stopping for a moment, she sighed and leaned against the side of the tube. Her ears caught wind of faint sounds coming from somewhere and she kept very still to try and hear better. As she listened closely, she made out the familiar quality of Nicolas’ voice. Quietly, she moved closer to the nearby hatch and pressed her ear against it. “Perhaps there’s a problem with the power couplings,” the young crewman told Nicolas. “It’s located in the Jefferies tube; shall I go and check?” “I’ll have a look,” Nicolas offered, eager to get out from under Guzman’s hawk eye if even just for a second. “You keep an eye on the screen and let me know when the controls come online.” Dropping down to his knees, he crawled underneath the console and pried open the hatch. When Samantha heard Nicolas opening the hatch she quickly pulled back further into the tube so that he wouldn’t immediately see her. From the darkness she watched him get inside and he partially closed the hatch behind him. She noticed he was looking tired as well… a Black Ops agent looking tired was never a good thing. “Over to your right is a panel,” Nicolas said quietly, only loud enough for Samantha to hear. As soon as he opened the hatch he knew there was someone inside, and from the way she hid herself and the sound of her movements he could tell instinctively it was Samantha. “Help me open it; I need to check the power coupling.” About to protest to his uncanny senses, she rather decided against it and moved over to the panel as he asked. She opened it, revealing the bright luminescence of the plasma power couplings. “What’s going on?” she asked as he crawled towards her. “Guzman has moved Command down to Engineering,” he informed her. “The Bridge is too damaged to control the ship from there… although in my honest opinion Engineering isn’t much better off. How did you escape from the Brig?” “A freak accident,” she offered briefly, not having the strength to explain everything in detail. “The forcefield failed and I managed to escape.” Nicolas didn’t look at her but kept his eyes on the couplings. They were misaligned, perhaps as a result from the power overload. “I’m glad you’re all right,” he said softly, continuing to work. “Thank you,” she replied, not sure herself if it wasn’t meant sarcastically or genuinely. “So what now? I assume we’ve passed through the anomaly? What happened to the X!Chi eggs?” “Yes, we’re through the anomaly… and about 10,000 years in the past. The eggs have not been located, but their last heading was taking them to nearby planet.” “10,000,” Samantha breathed. “The Marsh was hardly even formed then.” Nicolas continued to work on the couplings, not meeting her gaze; she still felt there was something he hid from her, and now was her chance to find out. “Nicolas, do you know where the eggs are?” “No, I don’t…” he replied. Finally he looked at her, half of his face illuminated by the plasma glow. “For once I’m as much in the dark as you are. Intel knew the X!Chi were going to go back into the past, but that’s it. How far back, or where exactly no one knew. We’re pretty much the last best hope the Federation has; if we don’t succeed, there won’t be a future. I strongly doubt if we’ll even live to see that future, should we succeed.” “How did they know?” Samantha asked. According to Peckinpaugh, it had been only a suspicion that the X!Chi might ‘accidentally’ use the Gott’s research. According to Nicolas, however, Intel already knew this for certain. “You know the Gott was doing a lot more than just research in to ‘temporal viewing’?” he asked her. “Yes,” Samantha replied. “I wasn’t informed what, only that the temporal viewing was a smokescreen.” “The real goal of their experiments was to open a conduit that could allow for travel between different times. They were very much in the beginning of their research, not even close enough to open a conduit when the X!Chi attacked them. Intel possesses a genuine temporal viewer in their labs, one that’s tested and works. Its range is very limited… only about a few months into either the future or the past, and its physical range no more than a few hundred kilometres. When the device was activated, for the purpose of viewing into the future… there was none. None in which the Federation existed, in any case; just the X!Chi. Intel had just received news of the Gott’s capture by the X!Chi, and now these new instruments revealed a future filled with nothing but X!Chi.” “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?!” Samantha retorted, feeling very exasperated. “Why am I even here then?” “You know I couldn’t,” he said. “Your presence here was to make sure the ship went back in time to stop the X!Chi. I’m here to make sure that the mission is completed. If we get back to the future, good on us; if we don’t, well then too bad.” “Too bad?!” Samantha said, raising her voice. She realised this too late when a head poked in through the hatch… the XO’s head. “Commander, may I speak to you outside,” Shane Guzman said, looking much undignified. “Aye, sir,” she replied, glaring at Nicolas and feeling like a schoolgirl caught making out on the sports grounds. =