Mirror Masquerade {Star Trek Enterprise Fan Fiction}

Chapter 6 - Unstuck

The half-Witannen's eyes fluttered slightly. "Temporal interphase," Otra whispered.

"Speak to me, Otra!" Boris called out.

"Delta ... radiation," she murmured, "2155 ... Defiant ... Mayweather," she paused, "2267 ... Sulu." Her eyes closed completely again.

"Is she all right?" Milena asked, in some alarm.

"Otra is now sleeping," Yimiva reported after checking. "This vision was apparently exhausting."

Rick was already tapping his left ear. "Yeah, Carmen? I think we finally have something. And it looks like Otra's gonna be okay."

=/\=

Carmen decided on two fast missions, one to each time period, using time portals. Time ships would have been too much bother. Rick was sent to 2267; Carmen herself went to 2155.

In 2155, Carmen accosted a flirty Travis Mayweather as he made his way to Engineering on the Defiant. "Got a minute for a little girl who's lost?" she inquired, sidling up to him.

He leered at her. "I got all the time in the world, baby."

She had on a phaser ring on her right hand. She touched his temple with that hand and then used her thumb to dial back the setting, hitting him with heavy stun. He had a stupid smile on his face as he was knocked out. She waited until the delta radiation had dissipated and then departed, leaving him in a corridor to sleep it off.

=/\=

On the ISS Enterprise, 133 years later, Rick stood at attention near the Agony Booth, pretending to guard it. "Who the hell are you?" asked Security Chief Giotto, eyeing the newcomer with suspicion.

Rick, too, had a phaser ring. Instead of answering, Giotto was hit with the moderate stun setting and his body was dragged into a nearby lab that had been converted to equipment storage.

As Sulu approached, he drew his phaser. "A stowaway?" he asked.

"No, I'm just the guy who cleans up," Rick replied. Sulu joined the small fraternity of stunned men, and was placed in the storage room next to Giotto. Rick put Sulu's phaser away. "Heh, maybe you guys'll wake up and think of something other than shooting each other." Once the delta radiation of 2267 had dispersed, Rick left, using a time portal.

=/\=

Back in 3111, a few days later, Otra sat up in a Sick Bay bio bed as many of her concerned coworkers stopped by to check on her. "I'm feeling so much better," she said. Her chavecoi waved and turned pastel colors. "Seems the petunias agree with me."

The Sick Bay doors opened, and a figure staggered in who could not readily be seen, as that person had an enormous bouquet in their arms, blocking that person's face and, likely, their vision.

"Did you know about this?" Rick whispered to Milena.

"Absolutely," ebsoluttly, "nothing."

The gigantic, nearly two meter-high bouquet was set down a bit roughly on the floor in front of Otra's bed. Her chavecoi began to really bounce. "Take it easy, you crocuses," she murmured to them. "Oh, you shouldn't have," she added, now addressing everyone.

"This is apparently only from one person," Carmen explained. "The rest of us gave you a box of chocolate-covered Andorian red bats." She indicated a box.

A face peered out from behind the big bouquet. "I, uh, I wanted to," Levi stammered. "Don't know what I would do if, if you were stuck for, for good."

Carmen nodded her head slightly in the direction of the door. The rest of the group quickly departed, even Boris and Yimiva.

"I'm okay," Otra explained, "I'm not stuck anymore. I think it was bad because it was the mirror only, and it was a combined temporal, spatial and somatic interphase."

"Yeah, uh, probably." Levi bit his lower lip and hung back. "I, um, I should go, too, now that you're unstuck."

"Don't."

"Don't?"

"Don't." The chavecoi calmed down for a moment. "Don't ever go."